For those who wanted to know…
Why I picked a cherry blossom tree for my first tattoo.
In Japanese culture, the cherry blossom is considered the most beautiful of all blooms. Even so, it blooms for a very short period of time, sometimes as short as two days, and then dies away until the next spring. It represents the changing nature of life… how a perceived end can also be a beginning… how everything old can become new, better, stronger.
The cops are coming for me on Thursday at 11am unless I can fork over the $2600 in bail money I need for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
I need YOUR help to reach this goal. Please go to my participant page to make your TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation to MDA.
MDA serves people in our community with neuromuscular disease by providing clinics, support groups, assistance with the purchase and repair of wheelchairs, braces and communication devices, and summer camp for kids. MDA also funds research grants to help find treatments and cures for some 43 neuromuscular diseases that affect people of all ages, right here in the Shoals. Continue reading MDA Lockup in 48 Hours!!
I’m really tired tonight… tired from far too many nights of just not sleeping, not resting… tired from putting on my happy face all day long… tired of thinking and wondering and trying to make sense of this life and the people in it.
This life is mostly about relationships. We all have jobs or hobbies or distractions to fill the time, but it’s really about the people we know and share our lives with. But then, when you think about it, how well do we ever really know someone else? All we see is what they let us see. All we understand is what they choose to elaborate on so that we can understand. When was the last time someone asked how you were and you thought about it before you answered? For me, my mom and my best friend are the only ones who cause me to think before I respond. For everyone else, it’s a well-rehearsed, “I’m good. How are you?” And even with those two people, people I love so much and who I know really care what my answer is, I don’t have the heart to say how I really feel most of the time.
I’m blessed with a few good friends and even more people that I don’t know incredibly well but who surprise me with their compassion at times. Some of you are old friends who have become new myspace friends. Some of you are casual acquaintances who I am only just getting to know. And I am thankful for all of you.
But life is hard and when I struggle, I tend to withdraw because I don’t have the energy to put on the happy face anymore. And right now, I’m struggling. I’m too proud or too scared to admit what I’m really feeling to all of you so I’ll just say I feel weak and ridiculous and girly. I feel like I don’t know where to go or what to do next. I feel like I can’t do one more favor for one more person because I’m just going to break at any moment and I need to save all my brain waves and all my energy for keeping myself together. I feel used and unappreciated and worn down.
I feel like karma is a lie or I would be happy by now.
And Monica wrote today about being happy vs. being content, something I’ve spoken with her about recently. And the truth is that I think being content is no more equivalent to being happy as it is equivalent to being unhappy. Content is middle ground. Content is existence. Content is, at best, survival. It’s not happiness. But does that elusive happiness even really exist? Or are we so conditioned by images in movies or books that we are hoping for a fantasy that is no more real than a porno flick?
I don’t have the answer. But I need it. If this is all there is, then I need to have that knowledge so that I can accept and move ahead. I need to be empowered to stop holding out hope for something that is never going to happen.
And if it’s not, well… I’ve paid my dues and I need to know that too.
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected.”
That’s a great quote from a fabulous book/movie. It’s my sig on a couple of forums and I feel like I should be wearing a tee-shirt with it printed on the front lately. I feel I’m at the proverbial rock-bottom of life. I’m struggling to sleep and to wake, to work and to play, to laugh and to cry… Nothing feels good or right and I need someone to pick me up and hold me.
I just prayed for the first time in a long time. My hands are trembling and I finally cried.
It has to be uphill from here right?
Thanksgiving is just around the corner and much to my joy, my parents have decided we’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner at their place rather than all of us running around to all the obligatory family dinners. It sounds evil, I know, to say that I don’t want to go see these people on the holiday… but it’s just so exhausting trying to make all the stops and being obligated to eat everywhere we go. And to top it off, it prevents me from getting to spend quality time with my parents and my brother, which is what I really want to do.
So this year, Mom and I will are going to cook. I can’t wait! I love to cook but it’s not something I do very often now that I’m single. For one thing, cooking for one is just difficult. Most recipes serve four at minimum which leaves me either eating the same thing for practically a week or throwing food out. Second, my “kitchen” is small. And when I say small I mean ridiculously small… it beats not having a kitchen, but to prepare a meal there would be almost impossible.
We’re going to start early on Thanksgiving morning in my parents kitchen and we’ve already started on the menu. We’ll have all the traditional Turkey-day goodies from turkey and dressing to cranberry sauce to macaroni and cheese. Okay, I have to stop now. This is making me hungry.
Wow, these next few weeks are going to be rough. With four events in six weeks and all the traveling involved, I am exhausted just thinking about it.
This weekend I have a Yu0Gi-Oh Sneak Preview and a WoW Regional Qualifier in Birmingham, AL. I’m off next weekend then it’s off to Visions in Montgomery, AL for a WoW TCG Sneak Preview event on 11-17, followed by Thanksgiving, then back to Birmingham the next weekend for Yu-Gi-Oh regionals. And then, if I live that long, I will have an entire month off from working weekends and driving all over the state. Then I will be able to do my Christmas shopping and finish redecorating the upstairs of my apartment.
Speaking of the apartment, I got the new linens (need to post a pic) and they are so uncharacteristically girly. I fear the older I get the more feminine I become about a few things. And yes, I did say “fear”. Don’t get me wrong — they are not adorned with ruffles or lace. But the colors are very serene and the fabric has a silk-like texture and there may or may not be embroidered flowers about.
I took home paint chips from the store today. I’m going to tape them on the walls and see if I can FINALLY decide what colors to put where. Now if I could just get my dad in the mood to finish out those cabinets for me… One thing at a time I suppose.
I really love to learn new things. Not much compares to the feeling I get when I’m absorbed in something I am really interested in and I’m flooding myself with information. I’ve thought about going back to school many times but I can never settle on what I want to study. It’s hard for me to narrow it down to just one thing. Continuing education classes are probably better suited to my needs… a class here and there on random subjects.
Not to imply that I don’t value my education or that I’m completely convinced I’m in the wrong field. I just get bored so quickly that I bounce around to different things and wonder if maybe I did choose the wrong path. Lately, I think I should have majored in something computer-related. I’m old enough that most of my college work was done on an electronic word processor and not a computer (that thing was pretty nifty actually… had a small LCD screen and I could save to floppies).
I took a basic (not BASIC) programming class in high school but outside of that, everything I know I taught myself. And honestly, I know a pretty good bit for someone who has never had any formal training. But that’s just how I operate. I wanted to build myself a simple website the summer after I graduated from college so I bought “HTML for Dummies” and learned how. HTML became dated so I learned what I know about PHP and MySQL from installing and customizing web applications like phpBB, Joomla and OsCommerce. And then there’s hardware… I’m still mostly a novice when it comes to actually building machines, but it’s something I want to know more about.
The internet was created for people like me. It still amazes me that there’s rarely a question that can’t be answered by doing a Google search. I wrote a paper my last year of college (my actual major was in Communication Arts) about an all-in-one box that would combine computer, tv and phone and every new development gets us closer to that reality.
Maybe I didn’t choose the wrong field. Maybe I’m just an intense hobbyist. Or maybe I’m just a geek.
I really need to learn to let the little things go. I don’t know why I let myself get so frustrated and stressed at things I can’t control and that really shouldn’t matter anyway. Life is full of ups and downs. I know this. Only a select few (please tell me how they get selected) get to stroll through life without drama or distress.
A large part of how I react to things is genetic. Historically, my family is made up of a bunch of worriers. We stress. We hold things in. We have ulcers and migraines. I really want to learn how to stop doing this. I have enough big problems to worry about without bogging myself down with the small stuff.
I hate the limitations of my humanity.
The pace of your life is a lot faster than you may realize right now. Your unconscious speed may not be bothering you, but it might be bothering the people in your life. This go-go attitude of yours might be sending out the wrong message — a vibe that says you’re not willing to wait for anyone else to catch up, that says you’ve got too many important things to do. But that’s not really true, is it? Make sure you’re in step with everyone else right now. You could use the company!
Actually, I realize exactly how fast the pace of my life is and I am doing so many things right now to try and slow it down. It may not be spring but things are blooming all around me and I want nothing more to have time to stop and take them in.
At what point do I stop feeling like I’m walking uphill every minute of every day? My body is exhausted and my soul is beaten down. You’d think as much as I work that I’d be getting rich. But I’m not — I’m just getting old.
I try to make adjustments, to do new things, talk to new people, change my routine… but nothing ever really changes. I’m in such a funk that all I really want to do is stay home where there is no one else and just be myself. Everything I do and say has to be filtered or edited to make it “appropriate” for the person I’m talking to or the situation I’m in and I’m sick of it. I just want to be myself. If I feel like shit today, I just want to be able to feel like shit and not have to justify it to fourteen different people.
I want to wake up in the morning with something to look forward to. I want something to be excited about. I wrap myself up in this blanket of work and busy-ness and it’s nothing more than insulation. And it’s not working nearly as well as it used to.
1:00pm. Time to put on my blanket…
Every time I start a blog/online journal for the purpose of having some place to actually express my TRUE feelings, eventually the anonymity goes away and I find myself searching yet again…
Too many “real life” people know of this blog now and I can’t post with the freedom I once had.
I’ve lost 10 pounds!! woohoo!
Most of the time lately I feel like one (or both) of these two things. What is up with so many people in the world being “takers”? Is there no one left who actually enjoys doing things for those they care about? Or, are there others out there, I am just unfortunate in that I don’t know any of them?
For example, my co-worker (there are only two of us who run the store here) has been out of town for two weeks. Which means, I’ve had the store on my own for that amount of time. This means I have to think of every possible situation that could arise and prepare for it before I open the store each day. If I run out of ones in the register, I’m screwed… folks are getting quarters back for change. If I miss the mailman with our outgoing packages, I have to lock up the store for 10 minutes while I run them to the post office. If I don’t buy food, I have to be hungry. So one day last week, the mailman ran early and I had a ton of packages to ship out. And these eBay folks take their auctions seriously so there’s not putting it off til the next day. A very close friend of mine is here at the store as I package everything up and complain about having to lock up to take them to the post office. He leaves for work (where he only works 3 hours a day, btw) and proceeds to call me around 15 minutes later asking if I’ve gone yet because if I haven’t he wants me to go to the store to pick him up a pack of smokes! Nevermind that he could have offered to drop those packages off for me. Nevermind that I was having to close my store in the middle of the day to do it. Nevermind that he only has to work 3 hours a day.
Or, for another example, the guy I’m seeing (who shall, from this point forward, be known as KB) had a birthday last weekend. He’d asked for a special gift (there was an “outfit” involved) and I was happy to oblige. I went to LOTS of trouble to find the perfect outfit with all the right accessories and details. We had planned to get together to celebrate on Saturday night (the day before his birthday) for several reasons, none of which are all that interesting so I’ll skip that part. Anyway, at the last minute on Saturday night, he gets invited to a bachelor party, says he feels “obligated” to go, so he blows me off to go get really drunk and get multiple lapdances from the stripper. Which I get to hear about IN DETAIL when he gets back as the guys who went share their stories with those who didn’t go. First of all, I don’t enjoy being around people who are really drunk unless I am too. It’s just irritating. Second, our relationship is strained right now because of circumstances that make me less than confident so I really don’t want to be hearing about any stripper. Third, I went to A LOT of trouble for this birthday thing and to just be blown off as if it was nothing really hurt me. I know it was his birthday but I could go my whole life without knowing he’d drop me like that. Anyway, I sucked it up and got together with him after the party and it was great fun (of course it was fun; how can it not be fun when there are outfits?) but I can’t deny that the whole thing left me feeling used.
And I guess that’s the point of this post. I’m not a user. I don’t take people for granted. I appreciate even the smallest gestures made by others. So what the hell is wrong with everyone else? I’m pretty sure it’s my turn now.
Since I’m still old, and I don’t have Cindy-Lou’s fantasy time machine and I’d really like to be treated like a girl at least one more time before I die, I followed my doctor’s advice and signed up tonight for the The South Beach Diet online. I’ve let frustrations hold me back from following through on any of my new year’s resolutions and it’s time for that to end. So starting Tuesday, I’m on the new plan (Monday = shopping day). Hopefully I will be disciplined and have some success with this plan and it will help me be more positive in other areas of my life.
I don’t really know what to write here. I dumped the blog a long time ago because I felt like I’d built this network of blogging friends and my entries were doing nothing but bringing you all down. So I just stopped writing all together because I felt guilty about that. But the truth is, I miss this. I don’t have many friends and the few I do have really have no desire to listen to my endless ramblings and analysis of my non-life.
That being said, I’m going to start writing here again because I need it. I need the self-therapy, the release, the occasional epiphany. I need to express myself with the bravery of being out of range and out of sight of those who read it.
Plus, I miss you guys. So now I’m going to check all of your blogs and see what you’ve been up to.
More to come.
I know it’s been way too long since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been doing some re-grouping as most people do this time of year. And here’s one thing I’ve learned: posting here, perhaps, makes me a bit too introspective. I firmly believe that self-awareness is a good thing, but I need to better learn how to achieve that self-awareness without absolutely dwelling on certain aspects of my life that, more often than not, make me unhappy. So hopefully I will be able to post here more often, and actually make myself feel better rather than worse.
To catch you up… a few things that have happened during my AWOL period:
And because I was absent and missed the day we all did resolutions…
In 2005, I resolve:
Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence |
 You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. |
What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?
With the exception of cleaning up some formatting, the second screenplay is done. Just finished as of about two minutes ago. This one is a short, probably around 40 minutes, and it took us about three times as long to write it as it did to write the feature. Go figure. Anyway, when we get the formatting all pretty, I’ll post it up for you guys to read. Maybe after Thanksgiving. It’s a romantic comedy called Saving Grace.
Okay, and now it’s nap time before I have to really start my day. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
A digital space feat. poetry, prose, art, reviews, and interviews by marginalized creators.
Gillian Glover
Random verse from a digital poet who writes in graphite.
we accumulate vintage stuff faster than we sell it
Writing left handed
I mostly tell stories. About my projects. About my adventures. Occasionally, about art, culture and big ideas.
Motherhood, Art, Creative Play, and Finding Joy in Everyday Life
damaged calm 