reflections

Gah!

It's been over a month since my last post, this is getting ridiculous. What's even more ridiculous is that I was just re-reading what I've been writing lately, and I sound like a whiny little beeyotch most of the time.

I recently (today) sent someone the link to my blog, and just for fun I came here and re-read some of my stuff to see what kind of person I sounded like...you know, as if I didn't know me and was reading all this stuff for the first time.

I am beginning to think giving out the blog link was a mistake. :

Ah, oh well. What can you do? It's me, right? That's the whole reason I do it. As a healthy thirty-two-going-on-thirty-three year old woman, it's probably no surprise to the readers I do have that I have had experiences much like anyone else, I've been in relationships and had my heart broken, had the odd attempted kidnapping or two, you know, your typical run-of-the-mill stuff.

So what is this if not an attempt to shine a better light on myself, make myself seem not quite so crazy and depressed as my last few posts would have it seem?

Maybe that's exactly what it is.

Or maybe it's just a reflection about how interesting (or scary) it can be to see yourself as a stranger might. I mean, living in my head every day, I seem pretty normal to me, but isn't that pretty subjective? Aren't we all pretty normal to ourselves?

Changing topics - just got back from LA last week, and heading there again on Sunday for another week. Which reminds me, I haven't made reservations yet! Crap.

This last week in LA was exasperating. It's always difficult when beginning a new project - you typically have a newly assembled team, you're trying to see where everyone fits and what their contributions will be, and it makes it immeasurably harder when you can't really stomach the people you have to work with. It's work and all that, not personal, but cheese and rice! I have a real winner on my hands this time. I typically like to come to work, get the job done, and go home. I don't like office politics, or jockeying for position, or having to prove myself and my role on the team to yet another superstar who thinks they know everything and don't see why they have to respond to my emails or phone calls with anything resembling respect or courtesy or even structured sentences.

This is going to be a blast, I can tell. Onward!

damage control

OK.

I have got to keep a positive attitude. I read in USAToday that people don't get lonely because they're depressed, they get depressed because they are lonely. Lonely people also are sick more frequently and lead shorter lives.

How's that for a reason to be optimistic? :

I have therefore compiled a list of reasons why I am glad to be single:

1. I can sleep on my back and not wake anyone up with my snoring.

2. I can now talk to myself (awake and asleep) with impunity.

3. I can text all my ex boyfriends and find that they have girlfriends now (I especially love that one).

4. I can finally have my Sex And the City marathon that I've put off for far too long.

5. I now have a for-real excuse to hustle down to Castle and get myself a brand new vibrator.

6. I can finally satisfy my curiosity about that personality test on eHarmony without feeling guilty.

7. I can sleep like a starfish. All spread out in the middle of the bed.

8. The Dog can sleep in the bed again. Actually, that's more of a bonus for him than for me, so maybe not.

9. I can have meaningless sex. Assuming, of course, that I can find someone to have meaningless sex with.

10. I can free up some of the millions of picture frames around here and add all my "before" pics (motivation for #11)

11. I can now devote all my time to the gym and to becoming a skinny little stick figure. This will up my chances for #9.

That's probably enough for now. This was a good exercise, right? Right. Glad we did this.

here we go...again.

After three failed relationships in just over the same number of years, I am reluctant to trust myself. Or anyone, for that matter.

I read a lot about myself this past week. I did one of those Myers Briggs tests. You know, the ones where you get the four letters. It appears that I am an ENFP. What this means, I guess, is that I get into these relationships, build everything into them, and then get crushingly disappointed when they don't pan out. I don't know how to change this. The only thing I can think of right now is just to avoid getting in relationships at all, because thus far they've been nothing but a disappointment.

I know that when one door closes another door opens, this is just a bump in the bicycle path of life, this is the beginning of a whole new chapter, plenty more fish in the sea, I'm still young, blah blah blah. I am chock full of sayings and cliches that should make me feel better, but don't. Not yet, anyway.

I don't know how to change myself...and I don't know, really, that I want to. I mean, I'm me. I can't help how I feel. When I get into a new relationship, I love that feeling of hope and newness and the thought that maybe, this time, this is it. I don't know if the disappointment at the end is enough to wipe that initial good feeling out...right now it feels like that, but I know that won't be forever.

I know I should spend some time alone, and I really do plan to. Maybe by doing that I can really start feeling better about myself, and what I'm doing with my life. Right now there is a bunch of turmoil and change - some good, some bad - and I still don't know where I'll be when the dust settles. I am pretty sure that the next six months will see me in drastically different circumstances. Maybe it's best to be single in a time like that.

I think the thing that is hardest about contemplating so much change is that there won't be anyone to lean on or confide in, or anyone to hold my hand or just hold me and tell me that everything will work out. I am a strong person, I know that...it's just, it's nice(r) to have someone there. Someone who loves you at the end of the day even if you totally screw up. It's difficult to think about spending the next few weeks, months - years, even - without that feeling.

It seems like I can't stop crying. I think about all the things we did, and said, and places we went, and places we planned to go, and things we planned to do, and it's like I'm a leaky faucet. I can't turn it off. I don't know when the next time will be when I'll feel that way again, so full of hope and promise, and have that feeling of being cherished, and loved, and with someone. The thing that scares me the most is, what if I never do?

I joined a gym. I am determined to get to the point where I can look at my naked self in the mirror without cringing. That will be one way that I will fill up my time. I also got USAToday on my iPhone in an attempt to feel a little more connected to the world around me. Maybe I'll do something like join some sort of adventure singles club or something. I don't know. It's way too soon to think about something like that, I suspect.

I did take one step today, I finally put my status on Facebook as 'single'. I couldn't figure out how to stop it from being plastered on my Wall and all my friends' walls, but hopefully everyone else has put enough updates on their pages today that mine will be lost in the shuffle. I feel embarrassed that I'm here. Again.

The worst thing is, how do I tell the Kid? I feel like a terrible mom for allowing this guy into my life so thoroughly. Kid is going to be devastated and I don't know how to soften the blow. I've never been good at hiding my feelings, and he's pretty perceptive. He doesn't hold any punches either. When he thinks I've messed up, he's definitely quick to let me know. I don't know how to tell him, or how to avoid it, or what he's going to say, but I am definitely not looking forward to it.

Gah.

herro?

Well, I'm in LA again this week, and for some reason tonight I feel indescribably, unfathomably lonely.

Lately it's been on my mind that I have no close ties to anyone, other than the Kid. You know what I mean? I talk to my family like once a year practically, and I love them, but have no idea what's going on in their lives. I have great friends that I love dearly, but I haven't been friends with any of them very long. My oldest friend that I have today I still have only had for five or six years. It still feels like most of them go only to a certain level and no farther...like I have twelve degrees of friendship or something, and most of my friends like to stay at level three. Or something like that.

I feel like I missed out on that whole childhood friend thing. And the whole family thing. I have two sisters, and I love them both, but I can't (or don't) sit down and have a nice cozy chat about my life. They both have families, and friends, and I don't know if they ever think of me at all, or wonder what I'm doing or if I'm okay, or have any idea what's going on in my life. Probably not, since I have no idea what's going on in theirs. I feel like I am kind of like a shadow sort of drifting through life - almost like I'm not always completely there. Like as if I disappeared tomorrow there'd be no one to point and say, there...that's who she was, that's what she was all about.

It makes me feel really lonely. I mean, I'm surrounded by people but I still feel isolated, cut off, I guess is the word. I feel like in a lot of ways my life is going completely down the freaking toilet and there's no one really at the end of the day that I can just pour my heart out to that will understand and know where I come from and make it all better.

Maybe that's just part of being an adult, or something. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first lonely person in the world...if I was I'd be the only member of match.com. So I know I'm only feeling what millions of other people in the world feel all the time, probably to a lot higher degree than I do...it's just that now, it's ME and that makes it more important now. To me. I guess.

Anyway. Sometimes when I blog it's like talking to an old friend, or what I imagine that would be like. Someone I don't have to explain myself to and who knows every little last secret about me so I can just talk and say whatever and it doesn't matter. Even if no one ever reads what I write, it's still soothing to at least write it down and get it out there.

I've been working more on my book. I write a few new pages then go back and re-read and edit a lot. I don't know if that's how normal writers work. I don't even know if it's total crap or not, but I enjoy it. It feels right when I do it. So maybe that's all the reason I need.

Work seems to be about the only thing going well for me at the moment. The only area of my life that I haven't managed to completely cock up in one way or another. I find that I do it more often for that reason - I work extra long hours and am constantly thinking about it, because it makes me feel good, to feel needed, to spend time doing something I am reasonably good at. Maybe that's why the rest of my life is in the crapper, maybe I don't have enough of a balance.

Now I feel like I'm slipping into self pity, and that's not really what I wanted to talk about, just more to throw a little something out there so I felt like even if it's only me that knows it's there...at least it is.

this is it

You can always tell when it's laundry day just by looking at me. Laundry day is when I have on my black sweats with the paint all over them, and my white tank top I use when getting tattooed - it's got ink all over it.

Somehow I can't find my other four pairs of sweats...they seem to mysteriously have vanished somewhere in the depths of my clothes closet.

So, I have started a book. I went out this weekend and bought like eight books by my favorite chick-lit authors, and somewhere in the middle of book 5 I realized...I could totally do this. I could totally do this!

So I started as soon as I got home from the grocery store. Last night I had a dream that I had taken my book to the publisher and they wouldn't take it because I had used a lot of the content in blogs, so I don't think I'd be doing much on here other than excerpts...but still, I wanted to tell someone because I'm pretty excited. I have a lot of ideas. Maybe this is why I haven't been able to blog...my ideas are all bigger than what would fit on a reasonably sized blog. Maybe it's my time. Maybe this is it.

Who knows? I'll tell you when you can go buy it. :P

all the things i didn't know i needed!

Don't you love how on a sunny Saturday morning you can take the top down on your Jeep, cruise over to Target, and find all sorts of stuff (on clearance, no less!) that you never even knew you needed???

Case in point: had I not done that very thing this morning, I would never have known that I needed this piggy bank for ONLY ten dollars!

I also would never have known I totally needed this brilliant shiny necklace, this cute table and chair set for the patio, or even this little cart that I can fill with all my gardening supplies and scoot around on!

I tell you. It's lucky I went there today. I would have totally missed out and would have spent the rest of my life without a flower-covered piggy bank.

Tragic!

are they friended????

I hate being curious about the ex-significant other.

You know what I mean? Obviously the person you're seeing/dating/married to/whatever had a dating past, unless you are one of those terribly tragic people that met the love of your life in pre-school and have been together since diapers (in which case you have a whole other set of problems).

I just wish that their dating past never needed to be in my present.

It's because of crap like Facebook or Myspaz or MyLife or whatever the hell other "social networking" sites are out there, seriously. These sites really are nothing more than to keep tabs on people that really don't concern you at all. For example: your boyfriend's exes. Or your exes. Either way, it's not good.

On Facebook today I see a name in my news feed and I know immediately that it's HER. You know...her. The Ex Girlfriend. The one that I still think holds a piece of him.

So what do I do? I click, of course. I click to see what she looks like, and to see whether it really is her, and secretly (or not so secretly since I did it in broad daylight) I want to see who she's friends with. Because suddenly that's really super important - does she know anyone I know? Are he and her actually already friended? Am I the only one she's not friends with????

See how terrible it is? I hate being curious about the ex. It's really none of my business. At all. Especially right now when things are really unclear and up in the air, I wouldn't have the right to be upset even if they were friends (which they are not, as far as I can tell, in case you were wondering too).

She's also, in case you were wondering, disappointingly cute and not fat at all. Which really kind of sucks, in my opinion. I don't think exes have the right to be disappointingly cute and not fat. You should always be able to feel superior to the ex. Dumb, I know, because I am an ex as well and there's something a little discomfiting about knowing there might be another woman out there scoping out my Facebook and feeling superior.

Oh wow, that's a whole other set of insecurities right there. Is there another woman out there scoping out my Facebook? Is she jealous or releived? Worse yet, has she scoped out my Facebook already??? Clearly she can see who I'm dating. She can see my pictures just like I can see hers! She can check out my friends too! She might be feeling superior to me!!!

Jiminy crickets. This is way too much neuroses in one morning. I need a cigarette.

tarnished? i think not!

My subconscious works in the wierdest ways.

Last night I had two completely separate, completely disturbing dreams. In the first one, my very first boyfriend ever turned up out of nowhere. He had a son, very rude, and wanted to rekindle a relationship. He had a condition, however, that I had to be less fat. (I'm paraphrasing here). Totally depressing. His son had no manners, either.

In my second dream, my boss was telling me (and I quote) "I have received some very strong feedback lately that makes me worry that my shining star is tarnished."

Me! Tarnished! Total nightmares.

Obviously I am having some subconscious fears about being too fat and losing my job.

Jiminy crickets.

it's okay to miss

Way back when I got my first supervisory position, I wasn't very good.

In fact, I sucked. My team staged a mutiny.

It was embarrassing, heart-rending, humbling, and an enormous blow to my pride, all at once. The facilitator of the meeting stayed with me after they had all left and said something to me then that I have never forgotten.

He said, basically, that it doesn't matter if you miss. Every good leader misses, at some point. What makes a good leader, he said, was how you recover.

At times since then I've forgotten what he said, and I beat myself up over screwing something up, or making the wrong choice. I forget that it doesn't matter if you miss, it's how you recover afterwards.

This past year seems to be one miss after another, and I keep forgetting that I need to recover well. That it's okay to miss, and be wrong, and make the wrong choice, as long as I recover well.

So I've been thinking about that a lot lately because I feel like I missed, again. Again! I made a series of choices that seemed so right at the time and instead, I missed. I'm trying now to recover well but it's slow going. It gives me hope to remember what that guy said, and that it's okay to miss. No matter how many times, it's okay. It's only a failure when you don't pick yourself up to try again.

Which is good news, because I'm not even half done with my life yet!

are you drinking or pouring?

Band Geek had an interesting observation yesterday about whether the glass is half full or half empty..."it depends on whether you're drinking or pouring."

So basically, it depends where you start. Do you start with a full glass and drink half of it? Or do you start with an empty glass and fill it up?

This is an interesting metaphor for everyday life. Starting the day with an empty glass might mean that we're totally open to what might happen that day, and everything that happens gives us energy and adds to our cup of water - a half full glass all day. Alternatively, we could start the day with a full glass of water, without any room for anything else, and spend all day draining our glass until it's half empty.

Most likely I'm reading way too much into the comment, but it seems to make sense to me.

Instinctively, I look at this picture and think, half full. I can't help it. MAYBE, on a really really bad day, it might be sorta less than half full maybe more towards partly empty but really. I feel pretty fortunate that most days, MOST days, my glass is permanently half full.

Lately my glass-is-half-full philosophy has been pretty well tested, though, my friends. It hasn't been very fun. I miss writing and I wish I wouldn't go through the day forgetting to write until I'm just at the point of falling asleep and have really great blogs run through my head when I'm too tired to get up and go post. That part really sucks because I think I've composed like twenty blogs in the last month. They were mostly pity party feel bad for me types, but still. It was writing.

I feel kind of flat lately. One dimensional. I'm a little afraid of getting stagnant, maybe that's why I'm making a special effort to write tonight to actually do something a little different.

On another note, the ONLY thing about these stupid fire safe cigarettes is that they don't go out while I'm smoking. This is the ONLY thing.

only in times of trouble?

A friend recently asked me whether I found it easier to write when traumatized than when happy. In thinking on this, I do believe it is true.

Reading back over my blogs that I wrote when not having my heart broken, experiencing some sort of dramatic angst, or recounting drunken exploits are kind of boring. I wonder what that says about me.

Band Geek also finds it easier to write about trauma than happiness. I wonder why it is that writing about sadness is easier than writing about happiness. Right now I'm the happiest I've been in a very long time...and no blogs. THAT truly is sad.

Maybe it's because I don't want to go on and on and on about all the good things in my life for fear of sounding way too saccharine. Maybe it's the whole "misery loves company" thing - writing about miserable things lets people sympathize with you, whereas writing about good things just makes people pissed off. I dunno. All I know is, the only time blog topics occur to me is in the middle of the night - entire blogs in my head.

Time to start keeping a notebook on the nightstand, methinks.

bodoply

Monopoly (or, "Bodoply" when I'm sick and my nose is stuffed and I can't pronounce m's or n's very well, as has been the case a time or two over the past month) is pretty much the best game ever invented. For my iPhone, anyway.

I downloaded it for a whopping 7.99 about a month ago, and didn't play it except once up until about two weeks ago. Since then I don't think I've cracked a book once. Obviously I haven't blogged much either.

It's Bodoply's fault, I tell you.

There's something about the trading of properties and slow collection of millions upon millions of dollars, combined with the quiet (or, sometimes loud, depending on how many apple martinis I've had) satisfaction of bankrupting the poor computer player and getting all his properties that is just totally addictive.

Second place is Scrubs.

Euphemisms aside, I love this show. Literally. Over the past three weeks I have purchased all six seasons on DVD. I am currently in the midst of the first disc in season 1. I think this will come close to competing with my absolute and utter adoration of the Office. Seriously. Hard to believe, I know, but true.

Roomies are all moved in. They and their cat (henceforth FatCat because, well, he is simply the fattest cat I have ever seen) are comfortably ensconced in the former attic-turned-living-space. This has somewhat discommoded the Cat That Formerly Lived In The Attic since the door between the upstairs and downstairs is now permanently closed and she has nowhere to go to escape Demon Kitty. FatCat doesn't have any claws in his liddle front paws so we're thinking that its best if he and Demon Kitty never meet. Hence, closed door.

We had like, a minute of snow yesterday. I only got to use four wheel drive once before it all melted which kind of sucks but I guess that's better than three weeks of ice and snow that we just got done with, so...whatever.

Tonight I'm off to finish tattoo # 7 (shown above corner) and am VERY excited. This is the first one that I've actually been able to watch clearly as it's being done - the rest being on my back, upper chest, or ankle (being just a little star, it was watchable but not very interesting). So I should have updated pics of that by tomorrow.

That is all. Hope all is well for you!!

to blog or not to blog...that is the question. maybe.

I think most bloggers fall into three different categories.

Those that use blogging as a way of communicating with their family and friends, those that are blogging with a specific purpose, such as for their jobs or hobbies, and those that use blogging as an online journal to get out their thoughts and feelings.

I think I fall into the last category, and this can get me in trouble sometimes.

Because I'm a pretty open person, I probably share more in my blogs than the people I write about really feel comfortable with. For me, blogging is a way of sharing my feelings and thoughts with (mostly) people I have never (and probably will never) meet...sort of like an online group therapy session, I guess.

The problem is that a lot of times, I write about my thoughts and feelings and those thoughts and feelings directly pertain to someone that is not me and may not feel as happy and fuzzy about my sharing as I do. As an example, sometimes one might write that one wishes someone's penis would fall off...which can be awkward if they read it.

Not that I know anything about that, of course.

I am on the fence. Do I censor myself and not write about other people? Or do I continue to write what I think and feel and not worry about what other people feel about it?

I can see both sides, I guess. For me it's a release, a venting. For others, it's airing my dirty laundry for the world to see. I guess for the people reading, it might be a little off putting to read about someone's intimate thoughts and feelings on everything, I suppose. For me, when reading, I like reading about people's thoughts and feelings because it helps me identify with those people and know that I'm not alone. I guess that's my hope with blogging as well...that someone will read about the angst I am having that day and realize that there are other people out there that have the same problems they do, and maybe they realize that the world is smaller than they think, and maybe in that small way I make the world a better place.

Of course, it's also possible that I'm totally off my rocker and need to zip my blogging lips with judicious application of duct tape.

It's a pickle.

In thinking about it over the last few days, I'd like to apologize to anyone I've ever written about that was hurt or offended by anything I wrote about them, and I will do my best to limit my online brain dumps to discussing only my own feelings and thoughts and not involve anyone else.

Hopefully that will work. We'll see.

so there

Resolution for the new year: stop handing control of my situation to other people.

GoodMan, who now REALLY needs a new name, has really kind of pushed me past my limit. My tarot card reading the other day counseled temperance...but I am having a really hard time feeling the love right now.

After several cases where he's conveniently forgotten to return my calls, or flat out ignored my emails and texts, I confronted him yesterday about what sort of bug, exactly, he has up his ass.

Apparently, he's not ready to discuss it. That as soon as he is, we can sit down and talk. That yes, he's mad, though not as mad as he was, and when he's ready, we'll talk.

Two months from when he started acting like a jackass, and "when he's ready, we'll talk."

This kind of behavior is exactly why I left him in the first place. He is a good man with a good heart but has this thing where when he's mad about something, he will give you the silent treatment until he's ready. Frankly, at 34 years old, and a MALE, I would think he'd be beyond this behavior. Apparently not.

I realized during my post-encounter rant that this is his way of maintaining control over our relationship. As long as I'm on pins and needles trying to figure out why he's upset, he maintains control.

So, instead, I will just withdraw from the situation. I am doing the things I am supposed to do, I am making my support payments when I am supposed to. I will continue to do that, and expect to see my son when I am supposed to see him, and if I get more "forgotten" callbacks or overnights with friends scheduled on the night when I am supposed to have him, I will make myself into a royal pain in the ass.

I'm rather good at that.

For those that might not know, my son lives with my ex (fka GoodMan). For more background, review the 100 Miles stuff.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, my ex started acting really wierd. He stopped meeting me on my days to pick up my son, instead sending his wife. When I called several times to talk to my son, no one returned my calls. I sent an email asking what the hell was going on, and didn't get a response. On nights when I was supposed to have my son, it would turn out that he didn't have time to meet me, or had scheduled an overnight for the Kid or some other bullshit reason (or refused to give any reason at all) to prevent me from seeing him on the days I am supposed to.

Then, when I confront him, he says "when he feels like it, we will talk."

Well, all I have to say is, fuck that mess. He can be mad at me as he wants to be, but if he thinks for a second that he's going to keep my son away from me, or restrict my contact with him, he better sit down and have a good think about that, because there will be a come to Jesus meeting the likes of which he has never before experienced. I am not even joking.

So. This year, my new year's resolution is: no more handing out control of my life to other people. It's ridiculous and stupid and self-destructive, and I'm just not gonna do it anymore.

So there.

Happy New Year!