October 1st, 2008
Seriously, what the hell is up with me? Well, I think it’s time to come clean, to lay it out on the table, be free of it…
I am not myself anymore.
I mean I am not the person I thought I was striving to be, I’m better than that.
August of this year turned me upside down, and if you need a point of reference listen to this entire album from start to finish (not on shuffle) and you’ll understand just a little bit. If you want the Cliff’s Notes version here goes:
-Everything I had come to know as my routine, my being, my center, my marriage, my living situation, my feelings on the state of the world has changed so dramatically that I find it hard to even slow down and recognize where I am or what I am doing.
-I feel more alive than I have in years, or maybe I just woke up for the first time.
-Happiness and comfort are not the same thing.
-Trust has a lot more to do with understanding and realization, than familiarity and assumption.
-I am having a hard time letting out what I need to let out and it’s getting awfully crowded inside my head.
-Losing touch with the outside world is self-alienation and is only counterproductive.
I am not lost anymore and I have so many obligations to fulfill starting with getting my blog up-to-date, September proved to be a very difficult month to complete, so that is my goal for today. I didn’t not complete my 365 blogging commitment out of laziness or out of forgetfulness, it was nothing so surface as that. I was afraid to write, August was too much, too easy, too exposed… I held back in September. I need to find that in between.
Here’s to a new month.
Filed under: Emotions, Etsy, Family, Food, blogging | Tags: blogging, David Cook, Eli Manning, Emotions, Etsy, Fij, Food, food porn, jenn, Mike, mother, Ricky, Sick, tag cloud, Work
July 18th, 2008
I don’t know who coined the phrase “food porn” but my sister gets the credit for introducing it to Mike and me. Ame’s a vegan so just about everything “consumable” fits into this category, and consumable, she’ll argue too. Food porn is fried, greasy, processed, sugary, evil and oh so good! The other week Mike turned our kitchen into a greasy spoon by throwing just about anything into a pot of oil turning out the best fried food this side of the Mississippi (seeing that the best fried food on the other side of the Mississippi happens to be found here.) We even considered frying the Twinkies but even I passed on that one. I don’t crave as much as I used to, I have an occasional hankering for something sinful and wrong, like eating at a chain restaurant… I know! We have all but ruled them out but I can’t say that I’m not excited to be going to one tonight. It almost makes up for having to attend something educational on a Friday night… can I bring my iPod? Can I text during it, please? I feel like a kid needing the promise of something heavenly at the end of something painful like having to go to the fabric store or the adult section of the public library… and I don’t mean adult like that, I mean like big ol’ dusty reference/microfiche section of the library.
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I installed this new feature on my blog, it’s called a tag cloud, my friend Fij has it among others* and I thought it would be interesting. And it has been, to say the least. Maybe even eye opening, but not so much in a good way. There are those topics that I’m glad are there, like my Etsy shop name (yay), Mike’s name, Ricky’s name, Jenn’s Etsy shop (how sweet) and of course “David Cook” because I’m an obsessed crazy fan, but who’s really counting. Oddly, I guess I talked a lot about “Eli Manning”. Didn’t know that I had. But the one’s that really stick out for me are: sick, work, and emotions. Why aren’t happy, healthy, and feelings there? We are half way through the year and those are the highlights? Wait, I’m pleased with all of them through Eli, but after that… I’m sick of work, work makes me sick, and I’m emotional about it? Haven’t I been in that place for too long? A friend of mine turned it all around just a little while ago and he seems happier… I think. I mean, he’s so busy he doesn’t really update his blog anymore, as much anyway. So he assures me that he is well, and I believe him, he’s an adult and he can take care of his shit. And that’s my point, I’m not taking care of my shit.
I don’t know where this is coming from really. It started up again yesterday around midday. I knew something was in the air and then my mother called me almost near the end of my shift at work. Do I really want to air all of this here on my blog, f*ck yeah. This is my place, I don’t care how public it is… isn’t that the beauty of it all anyhow? I want to go on and on about how this was sh*tty and that was f*cked up, and how there was no love in my life for the better part of it… but where will that leave me? With more angry, sick, emotional tags popping up in my cloud. That damned cloud!
* * *
And that last thing… I don’t think that’s a good idea… and I’m not talking about an alcoholic bender (been there, survived that), I’m talking an emotional bender. I think I’m due.
May 29th, 2008
Is it a memory, or is it something you know you need to do before you die? What if you never do that one thing, then was that one thing not so important after all or had you already finished that thing? What if I did that one thing when I was five and the rest of this is all up to interpretation?
Where do I go from here?
Filed under: Commentary, Emotions, Family, love, marriage, soapbox | Tags: Emotions, love, relationships
May 25th, 2008
I know these two people who just ended their relationship. It is sad because they are both dears and who wants to see people go through that time in their life really? I don’t think you ever sat there and routed for someone to end their relationship with a person, aside from say, abuse, cheating and the like. I surely can’t say that I was excited to see this relationship come to an end, but when it comes down to it, who am I to judge anyhow?
I’ve ended many relationships in my life, both romantic and not, and even had some relationships ended for me. Which side is better to be on? In hindsight, it doesn’t matter because both sides have ample and unending lessons to be learned. The one constant, on both sides, is the inevitable feeling that you have lost something. Bad relationships cause you to compromise too much, but when you are giving yourself up at the time it seems worth it, does it not? I’m going to give up the things that make me happy/make me me/make me who I have been identified with my whole life because in this very instant I am accepting this instant gratification of acceptance and wanting. Mistake. If that makes you angry, then you are doing that right now. If you said, “Yup, been there” then you know you’ll never do that again, and if you are giving your computer screen that bewildered look then, watch out.
We will never be in a perfect relationship, as much as we try. But when we have to give up ourselves for the sake of the relationship then that relationship is doomed to fail. Sure there are compromises we always have to make even in our successful relationships. That is sharing and growing and allowing the other person to outshine you now and again. But if we are being out shown we will get hurt and feel lost in a life we didn’t see coming down around us. And if we are burning too brightly we won’t even see the other person in our own shadow. Don’t know which side you are on? Dig deep. And there are no absolutes, you may be a bit of both. I think the mistake I always made was that I thought I was being out shown, I was always the victim of the other person. That was my own demise. I always felt hurt and ignored and I always felt that I was overcompensating in a relationship. Funny thing about the irony there was I was again not thinking of myself, not looking at how I was poisoning the relationship with my inadequacies, my hang-ups. I let my lack of confidence be my own undoing. Was it the other persons fault that I let them over shadow me, or was it my fault all along?
Blame is an ugly weapon and we can’t help ourselves to it, it’s a crutch, a vise, an easy out. Putting blame aside, accusation and anger, what are we left with? What attracted us to that person in the first place? Was it the quest for love, companionship or something else? That something else can be experience and there is honor in that if what we have learned from this love we use to create something better for ourselves in the future. We should never forget the ones we have loved because denying these happy memories is forgetting a part of ourselves. When the dust settles, you will remember the good things about that person and about yourself. It will take time, it always does.
May 18th, 2008
Things to be happy about today:
1. Mike coming home from a business weekend in Phoenix… if the van is a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.
2. Making a friend of mine smile by leaving her a comment on The Space, of mutual interest.
3. Knowing that what I’m doing creatively is because of my faith in something greater. This isn’t religious, just spiritual.
4. Finally cleaned out the fridge.
5. Finding out that I like country music. I know! Who knew?
6. Scooping up a bunch of new supplies from Etsy shops late last night; can’t wait to get my hands on them.
7. Learning new functions on my iPod by accident, like the On-the-go function.
8. Clean laundry.
9. Emailed a friend I hadn’t heard from a while this weekend and knowing that he is doing okay makes all the difference.
10. Watch The Full Monty, one of my top ten movies.
Filed under: Emotions, Family, marriage, movies | Tags: Emotions, harry connick jr, iTunes, movies, ps i love you
May 16th, 2008
Beware: Watching P.S. I Love You will make you cry and feel good inside and make you remember what it is like to feel alive, to love and to want to be that better person you are always wanting to be.
Watch it and you will see. Plus Harry Connick Jr is so gorgeous and was unexpectedly the best part of the movie, for me, although I don’t think he was supposed to be.
That was the sad movie I was talking about watching and I’m really glad I did.
Sidenote: Do they have a word for iTunes addiction? Like a -holic or something?
May 15th, 2008
I hate being in this state of mind. Actually I love it. The weather has been on a kind of edge here lately, raining and dark and I love every moment of those days because they are so infrequent in the desert. It’s a funny thing, saying that the sun can depress you, but having sun 355 days a year will do that to you because of its constant unchanging perseverance. So it puts me in that mood. The only way I can describe it is melancholy but not sad, nostalgic but not bittersweet, empty but full of something like yearning but not needing. It’s a creative and dangerous place to be. I feel like drawing again, and I haven’t for 11 years. I feel like pouring over old pictures and letters and maybe for the last time feeling something I don’t want to feel ever again.
Maybe I should just get drunk or watch a sad movie… or maybe both.
April 28th, 2008
that all hope is lost, two people can come to an understanding together and without harsh words or blame, a common ground is found.
Filed under: Commentary, Emotions, marriage, soapbox | Tags: Emotions, marriage, Mike, soap box
April 16th, 2008
If you have ever been around me, especially at work, you know that I have a big mouth, I say what I want to say and I use the power of my voice and my large vocabulary to talk anyone under the table. That’s my super power I suppose, yay for me. No flying, super strength or cunning, no, I’ve got the power of the spoken word. There is only one person I know of who is more wordy, more boisterous and more opinionated than I: my husband, Mike.
My mother-in-law puts it like this, and remember this is her pride and joy she is speaking of, “Everyone else is normal, it’s you.” When she is saying “it’s you” she is referring to the fact that he is so over the top when it comes to tackling challenges, defeating the competition, obtaining a new skill, even day-to-day routine activities like how he does his hair and how his military training taught him to expertly iron a shirt. I’m not picking on him here, I’m pointing out the facts. He is worldly, chock full o’ information, can readily understand what the hell the Science Channel is talking about, and has mastered every subject he has taken in college.
So, what am I complaining about here? Not complaining really, just needing to get this off my chest and what other venue is there but this one, somewhat anonymous, oddly vast? It is the constant need for him to fill me up with his chatter, his knowledge, smidgens of fact, nuggets of smarts. Is it that he is smarter than me that bothers me? Am I jealous/envious/intimidated by his brain power? Unlike him I have not memorized every lyric to every song ever written. I cannot tell you what the periodical chart abbreviation for Plutonium is. I am not completely sure/nor do I really care what the difference between centrifugal and centripetal force is. I mean, I know I learned that at one point, probably from one of his ramblings, but I don’t retain knowledge, never have.
I think that is the real problem to this problem, I shut him off now and he knows it and he gets mad at me for doing it. He takes a lot of energy to listen to. I’m sure I do too to a point. I’m a moody person, I have needs too. That is the root there, I liked to be listened to too. I have to be a very attentive audience. He almost demands that I not only understand what he is saying, I acknowledge that I am paying attention/understanding and here’s the one that gets me every time, that I agree with his point of view. And here we introduce the argument segment of the problem. I can’t possibly disagree with him. In his defense, he assumes I agree with all of his points of view because he believes that I am also a very intelligent person so we must see eye to eye. This is an illogical argument. Okay, there’s one thing I am smarter at, logic. Neither here nor there in this problem.
So I have become accustomed to just smiling and nodding and even that is becoming increasingly hard to do. He sees through my veneer of weakened interest. I don’t know how to fix this or at least to stop doing this. I use my little voice now. I don’t disagree or agree, I don’t give my input, any input is just filtered through and spit out at me or disregarded usually. I don’t like using my little voice because when I am able to use my big voice I end up unleashing it on some unsuspecting soul, like a co-worker. I have an opinion and I like debating but what I have to say is just as important as what you have to say. There is no winning in a conversation yet I always feel like I’m on the losing end nevertheless.
My little voice may just turn into my silent voice.
