Why This Picture Has a Story About It

Today I dressed up for work.  We had a meeting and I figured that I oughta dress for the job I want sometimes, though I spend most of my day alone in my cube listening to podcasts and typing letters to customers.  Either way, sometimes you need to put your best foot forward.

Then on lunch, I took a 1.8 mile walk in the general vicinity of our building.  And when I got back, I had a little time left, so I found a shady patch of grass along the little trail and decided to enjoy the return of the 70 degree weather.

And I wiggled my toes out of the shoes I was wearing and ran them through the soft, damp grass.  And I wondered if the ground was damp enough to give me a mudd butt.  Then I laughed because...you can't prevent mudd butt when your butt's firmly planted on the ground already.  And I wiggled my toes again, and I took this picture.

Because I hope that I never worry so much about mudd butt that I won't ignore the benches for the shade of a little tree and a good patch of grass.  I hope I won't ever be in too fancy a suit or at too fancy a job to kick off my shoes and enjoy the sun.  Because that? That's who I really am.

I like to be outside. I like to smell the lilacs and smile at the dogs being walked and listen to music and laugh at myself when I inevitably trip on a piece of sidewalk because I'm not paying attention to where I'm going.

I want to be me in the face of everything.  I don't want to be the girl who has to make sure every hair is in place and every eyelash evenly coated in perfectly black mascara just to be seen with a guy.  I don't want to be the person who uses exacting language and corporate lingo and plays the office game the right way.  I don't want to be the person who doesn't call you for a few days because that's how the game is played and I can't always be available for you, and I don't want to be the girl who's never got her own thing going.  I don't want it to be a bad thing that I miss someone that just a year ago I couldn't see hardly ever if I don't see them for a few days.   I don't want it to make me a bad person that sometimes I get sad because there's someone in my life that I never thought I would have to miss that I still do.   I want it to be ok if my heart is still broken and I'm still confused sometimes.  I want it to be ok that sometimes I'm not ok.  And I want it to be known that I try.  I love deeply, I let down my guard, and I put those same walls back up sometimes when I feel threatened.

I want it to be well known that I can wear that black dress and put every hair in its place but sometimes I just want to be there next to someone in my Tigger boxers, my grossly oversized Up shirt with a big mug of milk and some cookies and zone out watching something useless.  I want to laugh at myself when I sing Gloria Estefan and I want to sing it whenever I want and not care who's watching.

And that's a little me and a little all of you, accepting me as I am.

But I want to be barefoot in suit pants and make it work.

21 Days...

 So Today is Day 21.  I'm counting down because it helps motivate me more.

Day 21 of what, you ask?  Well...rumor has it it takes 3 weeks, or 21 days, to establish a new habit.  I was thinking about this the other day when talking to someone about my hours being cut at work and how I was feeling bad about it because I was feeling...non-productive.  Just...like I'm not doing enough. 

I don't want to feel like that.  And I don't have to.  If I'm not working as much, that's one thing.  I can't control that.  But it does mean I have more time for other things.  I know a large chunk of this could go towards some of the things that have been taking up most of my time lately, and I'm grateful to have that time to give.

But I don't want to stop there. I want to take 21 days and do a little Mind/Body thing.  Namely: I want to make sure I take time to exercise both every day.   So this afternoon I took a 1.74 mile walk on lunch (in case I was busy after work, which worked out because after work I was randomly feeling really nauseous)

And tonight? Well, I'm writing.  My goals are to make sure I make time to take care of my skin/body and to write/photograph every day for the next 21 days.  I don't want to give this up halfway.  I don't want to half-ass it either. I need to do this to prove to myself I can.  And 4 things at once may seem like a lot, but it's really not so much.

I decided it doesn't have to be something giant every day, and on Thursdays I give myself a pass on writing if need be since my mind will be working on music for quite a while Thursday nights...but it needs to be all.21.days.  

I need the change, I need to make time in my life for things like this.   And occasionally, I need to overachieve and make chocolate chip cookies, exercising my cooking/baking passion.

Here's to Day 20 around the bend!

Drool if you must, just don't short your keyboards. :P

I Like Everything

This is my friend. Why the mask?  Uh...witness protection perhaps?
This is a story about things I like.

I like....road trips. The kind where you only check the miles on the signs to make sure you haven't passed where you're supposed to be going because you were having too much fun talking about favorite song lyrics, future plans, bad boyfriends and nothing inparticular.

I like (though I never thought I would) not having to ask for some cheetos, because they're public domain.

I like setting off at least 11 singing sock monkeys, including one that growls. 
I like getting high on rubber cement and Sharpies building the most obnoxious bunch of posterboard flowers to put in a pot covered in even worse poetry.

I like when the guy at the Mexican restaurant calls us amigas, and I look at the girl on my left and my right and think "amigas for life!" and giggle to myself. I like seeing the lemons lined up on the counter and remembering when the baby was just a baby and made lemon faces and got passed around the restaurant.

I like trying on hats and scarves and being collectively aghast at the silky, pillowy, awful jumpsuits. I like turning 15 colors at the makeup store and getting all glittery.
I like spraying 35 perfumes, each one slightly worse than the last until someone gets nauseous.
I like poking some giant, half smashed bug we think was a cockroach outside the store.

I like sitting on purple and orange couches with my friends, calling dibs on the beds and deciding on the next name for the next band we'll never start.

I like knowing that when the door opens, we're gonna get the smile we've been waiting for.
I like sitting on the deck making inappropriate jokes about sausages.
I like telling stories about high school, and remembering where our lives intersected the first time.

I like beans, but I guess that's not the point...unless it is!

I like that alcohol was not a factor.
I like making up the words to songs.
I like laughing and singing at the same time and the way it kind of hurts your lungs.

I like tangents, the way we always get on them...HEY!
I like the voices mixing.
I like the quiet of a simple song.

I like falling over laughing, doing the Carlton dance, growl-singing, stomping and swearing
I like the way time passes like a bullet train in a room full of music and laughter.
 I like the way time doesn't pass.

I like how things never happen as they're planned, but always happen to be better than I expected.
I like finding the voice to sing and forgetting everything else.

I like jamming to the Spice Girls and Jonathan Coulton and Queen and Metallica and Big and Rich.
I like all these things.

But I *LOVE* my friends.
I wouldn't trade you for the world. 

Around the Corner

It's a beautiful evening.  The air is smelling like spring, and you may not be able to see the stars, but the rain is falling softly and a change is in the wind.

I was driving home enjoying it all and I realized I was just on the edge of something that at least *I* consider pretty amazing.  My jeep, as you can see, is precisely 1001 miles from a quarter million.  I didn't think I'd ever get there, and then as I was enjoying my windows down, music up sanctuary...there it was.

I guess something I found today is that no matter what's going on, even when things seem awful...something amazing can turn out to be just around the corner. 

Wordwind

Wind crashes through the window in violent waves, washing over my body. It takes no prisoners, and it does not knock. Blowing back the curtains it exposes me to the night, forcing me to look at the stars burning behind gray clouds and darkness.

This is a wind that makes the trees ache, sweeps clean the streets, and slithers into homes through holes in unwatched stones. Forces its way inside of me. Makes even the puddles and ponds tempestuous seas. Forces me to forget the pins and needles keeping me from being free, fiery, messy.

This is a wind that takes the nearly burnt out ends and makes them sweeping wildfires. The one that presses at the sails and sends me slicing through the waters.

It brings change without asking permission. Picks up the places I've been and puts them places I'll go. Sending scents of lost loves and changing seasons. Reminding me to be a force of nature, the insistent whisper of something stronger. The cooling kiss in a silent storm.

Diet and Exorcise

So I've been on an unintentional internet diet here.  Those internet issues I mentioned a while back? Well it was almost a full month of them.  Seeing as I couldn't do my posting at work, I was pretty much without resources to start telling the stories floating around my heart and my head.

As it turns out, though some good things have been happening...it's been a very stressful time.  I can't say with 100% sincerity that I'm happy right now.  I'm not really.  Especially in the past week or two, some things have come up that I have been having trouble with.

I'm fantastic at bottling things up, and I've done nothing but do that for at least two weeks now. Time to break the bottle. I'm fighting it as I'm doing it here...

So I think as much as people have positive mantras or words they live by, they have negative ones too.  Things you believe because you feel like you haven't been proven wrong yet, or you think you haven't.  And when you're stressed or tired or when you see an old situation crop back up, it's really easy to let that thought consume you.  If we could only let the good ones consume us....but it never seems to work that way.

I recently kind of opened myself up to getting hurt almost intentionally. I didn't realize what was about to be said would get to me, because I figured I'd turned my heart off to it by now.  Which in itself is something that disturbs me, in hindsight.  But on some sort of devil-may-care whim I pretty much threw my arms wide open and said "hit me with it!" thinking I could handle it.   And I couldn't.

One of the things I've lived a lot of my life believing is that people always leave. That the only person you or anyone else can count on is you.  And I've amassed files upon files of evidence to that point, and when I'm hurting, I tend to sit there and convince myself that that's the only way it can go, despite any evidence to the contrary.  And it sucks, and I'm old enough to know that that's what I'm doing and I need to stop, but in the face of a particularly poisonous arrow, there's that old ghost lurking in the shadows again.


It's not what you'd expect to hurt either.  Because a part of what I heard I was expecting to hear.  It's this...have you ever felt like no matter what you do, you'll always just be that person it's convenient to turn to?  Or the one it's convenient to be around?  You know, like "always a bridesmaid, never a bride?"  Sometimes I feel like it's "Always a lover, never loved." or "Always finding people important, never being important to people."  A throwaway.  And I was listening to a friend with a broken heart beat up on herself in ways I never want to hear anyone talk about themselves.  She was saying never enough, hates this about herself, hates that...can't possibly be enough for someone.  And I was overwhelmed with the urge to just shake her silly and go "YOU ARE AMAZING." because she is...but I heard my own voice in it too.  And worse, in the state of mind I've been in, I let it marry with the voices telling me there's never anyone to count on.  I let it tear me up enough to doubt the arms holding on to me.   I let it bubble up and spill over other places...and while that wasn't all bad, because I finally spoke my mind and told someone what *I* need instead of just trying to be there for what everyone else did...I didn't want to spread the bad feelings, and I probably did.

I was thinking about who I've become lately, and I don't like all of it.  I think I've put up bigger walls than I ever have before.  And I feel like a lot of times I turned off my heart, to the detriment of myself and others.  I can't look straight in the eyes of what I want to see most because I'm afraid it'll turn into something else as soon as I see it.  And I wasn't always like that.

At the same time, I feel like even though I've grown and become more assertive, and been able to look at people and tell them no, flat out. I can't, or I won't... that I still operate a certain way. And I don't know that I want to operate any differently than I do, even though it contributes to this problem.

Time and time again I get that "Oh you're so naive" look.  Or the one that says "we think you're a doormat."

But I'm sick of being apologetic for who I am.  I'm a passionate person. I always will be.  If I love something, I show it.  And that IS NOT WEAKNESS.  It's looked at as weak, especially in relationships with people, friends, family and otherwise.   It's the only way I know how to be.  If you're in that group of people I love with my whole heart, it's always going to be that way. And I can't change that. Sometimes I try.  Lately I've been trying, because that hurts a lot sometimes.  It hurts to go 30 miles for someone who won't go down the street for you, you know?   It hurts to pour out your heart every day for a year and have it not really make any impact on that person (that's the hardest one. it hurts to type it).  It hurts to be a close confidante but never really valued as a friend.   All these things are true, but I don't want to let it change who I am.  I don't want to let this get in the way it has these past weeks.

And I apologize, because this entry is less for anyone else than it is to just purge some of this bile inside of me that I've been carrying around.  I don't feel like walking around under a dark cloud is where I want to be.  And I don't want to freeze out my heart, so I purge here.

Here's one thing I did want to say.  As Hallmark as it sounds...if you read this and you ever felt like this...I guarantee you someone else in your life has too.  So...remember someone.  Think about the people in your life who have made a difference that you haven't told in a while.  Then stop thinking and tell them.

Two things will happen: It will remind you, if you are feeling like me, that you're not unloved and you're not forgotten, and you ARE worth something...it will remind you of the people who cast bright light on all those ghosts in the shadows-who became family, or stood beside you when you needed it the most

And it will make someone feeling that way, or just having a bad day in general...feel like someone out there cares about them.

Let me 'splain. No no, there is too much...let me sum up (and thanks for reading the long version)

Give a little bit
Give a little bit of your love to me
Give a little bit
I'll give a little bit of my love to you

There's so much that we need to share
So send a smile and show you care

I'll give a little bit
I'll give a little bit of my life for you
So give a little bit
Give a little bit of your time to me

See the man with the lonely eyes
Take his hand, you'll be surprised

Give a little bit
Give a little bit of your love to me
I'll give a little bit of my life for you

Nows the time that we need to share
So find yourself, we're on our way back home

Long absence

Hi guys...
So you may have noticed the lack of updates here.  I've been having intermittent internet issues for at least 2 weeks now and before that I was new to a job...so I've just been gone a lot and then without technology a lot.

I have had so much floating around in my head, my camera, my phone and my heart and I will get back to regular posting here. 
You'll see.
Or I hope you will.