Sometimes you’re in the middle of folding laundry and are watching Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix at the same time and thinking about how you’ve been in this really weird frustrating place for the past several days. It’s a place you find yourself over and over again, probably once every couple of months at a minimum. It’s restlessness to the extreme, but restlessness that causes stagnation. You have so many things you want to do and creative ways you want to spend your time that it overwhelms and you shut down because you don’t know where to go with it and you have so many other “real life” things that have to get done so those other things take a backseat yet again and this whole process just causes angst and irritation and well, stagnation. How can I be both/all things? I don’t have time for everything I want. Then I freak out and write in both first and third person on the blog I’ve neglected but love and frantically text my like-minded friends to vent. And then I go back to laundry and cubicle nation work. Because that’s what makes the suburban life go ’round, right? That’s what pays the bills and the health insurance, not my random ideas and creative bursts of whatever it is I do in my head but rarely do in reality. I’m having a moment of overwhelming-ness and tears and anger and panic over all of it. Is it a time management issue? Because even great artists and writers and creative people have kids and mundane responsibilities to handle. Maybe they don’t have the cubicle-nation job that stifles them until they can’t breathe, but some do. So how do they do it? There’s a sense of desperation in me right now that is suffocating. #franticwordvomit
morning ride and the state of my brain
15 Oct
I thought since last night’s walk was so pain free and relatively easy that this morning’s bike ride would be the same. Um, no. Apparently my legs are still in rebellion mode because those 6 miles were more than a bit lackluster. There is one TINY hill on this route and I was struggling to get up it. But it still felt good to be back on the bike. Tonight I’ll walk the pup again and call it a day.
Things are pretty meh in my head today. I feel like my head and my heart are never simpatico. I feel like I’ve always made smart decisions, practical logical decisions and where has that gotten me? A big house in the suburbs, sure. A job that pays for the house in the suburbs, yes. Some nice toys, you bet. But for all of those things, I still feel like I’m in the wrong place. Not where I’m supposed to be. In the right place as far as my brain is concerned, but not so much where my heart is concerned. I love my family. I have a good life. But while my body is there physically, my head and heart are somewhere else. I need them to match up somehow. Its a quandary for sure.
For one thing, I don’t feel fulfilled in my work and that would make a HUGE difference in my mindset and matching up that whole heart vs. brain thing. And its why I volunteer but that doesn’t pay the bills. I feel trapped by a dependance to pay the bills. Hell, I feel trapped by having to be a responsible adult. But I digress. Its soul numbing to feel like you aren’t making a difference. That you’re just taking up space. Wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to remedy this but I feel like I go through this career cycle thing every few years and haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I fail at career development because I don’t know what I want my career to be, and when I actually say out loud, “I want to be a travel writer and a nomad”, people just look at me funny. And by the way, I hate that word “career”. It sounds so…stuck, trapped, non-flexible. Ugh, frustrated.
Anyway, just feel like I’m failing at life lately. Thus, meh.
this is why i’m in therapy folks
25 JulTexts this morning from yet another friend who is struggling for different reasons. Sometimes people are incredibly mean, closed minded, and heartless in their well-meaning-ness, if that makes any sense. I know life is difficult and there are struggles to be had. Its not all peachy keen, hunky dory, sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, but I really don’t think it should be THIS hard for some people to find happiness. Sue me.
I had a bit of clarity last night. Something obvious that I hadn’t thought of in this particular way I guess. Not that it was all that helpful but more, interesting. I do this thing where I put different scenarios in my head and daydream about “test driving” them to see if that’s the ticket to contentment and fulfillment and all that crap. Like….Oh, I wonder if I’d be happy being a hobo travel writer? Or, maybe I’ll try teaching English in Thailand…how about waiting tables at a Parisian sidewalk cafe and I’ll live in a dumpy hipster flat in Montmartre. Etc etc. I’m a hopeless dreamer and while a nice mental escape, when you have to let reality hit you in the face, it can be quite the downer if you let it. Which I am an expert at doing.
So I realized that I don’t have to stress over exactly WHAT it is that I want/need, I just need the flexibility and freedom to SEARCH for it. That’s it. Flexibility and freedom. What’s that thing Emerson said about life being a journey and not a destination? That. The problem with my little bout of clarity is the fact that I don’t really have a plan to go about getting the flexibility/freedom for all my wanderings. Then you have to think about money and bills and responsibilities, yada yada yada. So you throw up your hands and say screw it, hand me a third cupcake and yes, we can watch Tangled for the millionth time after I empty the dishwasher. The moral of the story is…being a responsible adult can be frustrating and suffocating for some of us.
Life is short and the world is wide (Simon Raven). And I’m freaking out that I’m missing it. I want to do things, see things. Bigger things. Enter obligatory disclaimer…not that the life I have is bad, not that the life I have isn’t full of good and beautiful things and people….but, there’s much more out there that I’m missing. I know you can’t do everything but….grrrrr. You can’t live wishing you’d done this or that but I do it all the time. I should’ve joined the Peace Corps, I should’ve studied abroad, I should’ve bungee jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. No, I do not care about doing the damn laundry, can’t you see I’m busy hiking the Alps in my brain!!?!?!
Something is seriously wrong with me.
And this has turned into a rather depressing post and I really didn’t mean for it to.
Meh.
Valentine’s Day. Quit yer whining.
3 Feb
Today kiddo and I made Valentines and then I attempted to get her to nap. No dice. So we went to the grocery store instead and got Super Bowl food (just an excuse to buy junk) and stuff to make Valentine cupcakes tomorrow. Should be fun. And messy. And yummy.
I’m not a Valentine’s Day hater, like many. Of course, these days most every holiday is centered around the offspring but even when it wasn’t, I still didn’t mind Valentine’s Day.
So you’re single? Cry me a river. We all were at one time. All the cheesy love crap make you feel bad about yourself and not -so-secretly jealous? Girl please. As a married chick with a kid, I’m jealous of your free time, your ability to sleep in, the fact that you can come and go as you please, the silence you can enjoy if you want to, etc etc. So lets just call it even on the jealousy thing shall we?
Feel its society pressuring you and your significant other to be romantic? If you’re that sensitive and gullible maybe you NEED a box of creme filled chocolates and some flowers to chill the heck out. Stressed about commercialization of love? Use handmade cards, bake something, just say I love you, be creative and personal. Or don’t. What’s the equivalent of a scrooge at Christmas? Be that guy/girl.
Is it a “Hallmark Holiday”? You bet your sweet bippy it is. Big deal. Celebrate it, hate it, be apathetic or ambivalent towards it. What I’m trying to say is…and it’s rather cliche…don’t get your Hello Kitty panties in a big wad about it. Besides, single or attached, everyone gets to enjoy the 50% candy sales the next day. We all win in the end.
Testy
14 OctI’m on a short fuse today for one reason or another. Its Sunday, so by this time every weekend I’ve responded to 20 gazillion calls of “mommy mommy” and my patience is taxed. I know that I am kiddo’s whole world at this stage in her life so I try to keep perspective and channel my inner Zen. Its just….eh, whatever.
Moving on.
People really don’t want you to question things do they? What they really want is for you to agree with them. What’s really meant is “sure, question all you want as long as your final conclusion is the same as mine, which is the one and only right way of thinking of course”. And ya know what, that’s fine if that’s how it is but lets call a spade a spade, just be honest and say so and don’t try to act like you’re pro free thinking because you are so not. Also, don’t tell me what my kid can and cannot wear on Halloween or who to vote for.
The End.
Dear Runkeeper,
30 MarThank you for sending me this.
However, I am in fact, NOT “bored with my routine”, as you so helpfully suggested. You see, I no longer have a routine, unless you count lots of sleeping, cupcakes, and mentally tripping the senders of these relentless running emails as they walk down stairs.
So by all means, please, I insist, have a handful of Whoppers and some ironically named Rocky Road ice cream.This is called me, sharing my lunch with you.
And after that? Bite me.
(hugs)
Finn
grumpy mcgrumperson
29 DecI am not a fan of small talk nor am I very good at it. Post holiday small talk tops the list of all categories of dreaded chitty-chatty-for-no-reason banter. Hello person with me in the elevator who I don’t know but who I think works in accounting…”how was your Christmas” they ask me…I say “it was great, how was yours?” And we carry on. This bugs me. The waiter at lunch asks the same thing…I answer in turn. Drives me crazy. A friend sincerely wants to know, ok fine, we’ll discuss. By the way, my Christmas was pretty great, thanks for asking. How was yours? Maybe I’ll post about it soon and then I’ll just direct curious passersby to this site so I don’t have to rehash. Heh.
I’m a bit gloomy doomy today. Not that you could possibly tell that because I hide it so well. The weeks after the holiday build up and then the inevitable descent tend to bring me down in weird ways. I think it’s the anticipation and preparation, then BANG the big event, and then…nothing. Except dreary weather, stashing away holiday decorations and continuing with the normal. I don’t particularly like being the kind of person who always needs something to look forward to, some sort of carrot on a stick to chase. But that’s me. No wait, make that chocolate cake on a stick. Now that I will run for. Screw the carrots.
And I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if a Life Is Good tweet did not just pop up on my twitter feed to tell me to get over it and stop being such a grump…”Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”. Now I feel a smidgen of guilt but I refuse to delete! Refuse I say! *shakes fist in air defiantly*
New Year’s Resolutions…I was considering making some and then decided I’d have better luck keeping promises to myself if I don’t make any. Which when I write that out, makes no sense but in my rumblybumbly brain it does. I think I set goals that are too much of a stretch. I need to learn to work within that whole babysteps concept. Oh, speaking of New Years…know what else DRIVES ME TO THE BRINK OF HOMICIDE??? It is a sure thing that come Dec 31st that as I am leaving the office some moron will say…”see you next year!!” and then laugh at their brilliant originality. I need to go ahead and come up with a sarcastic comeback to that one. Suggestions welcome.
I mean really, I don’t know where she gets this from…Its such a mystery…
