Quote of the day :)

She did not believe that she could ever stop hating Nicky and Lee, until her pastor told her that when God was going to do something wonderful, it started with something hard, and when God was going to do something exquisite, He or She started with an impossibility.

Anne Lamott, Blue Shoe

Making good choices.

I believe that I am the master of my own destiny, that I in fact can determine the course of my life merely by making decisions that point me in the perfect direction. This is flawed logic. See, I can't predict what will end well with 100% certainty. I can guess. I can use past experience. But I can't emphatically know what will make my life as awesome as possible.

Seriously, I don't even know why I keep trying. All it takes is one bad decision to royally fuck it all up anyway, as the protesters at Planned Parenthood remind me every morning on my way to work. Life is not a series of equally significant moments. Life is a series of benign, uninteresting moments, interspersed with crazy important ones that change the entire trajectory of one's life. Yet I continue to believe that I can be more powerful than I am, that I can predict the future, and thus completely avoid pain. And it is these times, when I have set everything up in such a way that absolutely nothing can go wrong, that everything goes wrong, and I am painfully reminded of how small and helpless I am in the face of an infinite universe and unpredictable people.

So I eat more chocolate chip cookies, because I predict that they will be good, and then they are, in fact, very good. Nothing else matters. I have control over nothing else.

Does failing make you a failure?

Original Framed Oil on Canvas Painting

Today I am considering the idea that failing does not inherently make me a failure. I'm a person who wants to make everything right, do everything well. I don't consider myself a perfectionist. I am capable of letting little things go, and not agonizing over little trifles, but in the great land of "Being an Adult", I am finding that these skills only need to be amplified, strengthened, continually over time. It's not like a plateau we reach, where everything after that is straight ahead without potholes.

Perhaps I never would have identified this as a characteristic in myself, but I have been acting as though I'm finished as a person, that everything should be perfect now that I'm a fully functioning adult. I've been living in an imperfect body, with an imperfect mind, and wearing clothing that is imperfect, even selling things that are imperfect. Yet I have been expecting more from myself than I expect from anyone, or anything, else.

Now I'm going to sit in a pile of my own imperfection and hope it melds with my thrifty self. See you later :)

I fix things.

Vintage GE Mist-Condition Hairsetter

So in the past year or so, I have fixed the following: my toaster oven, a blender, an aquarium, and a very fancy coffee maker. I believe that in some way, I broke all of them. And when they broke, every single time, I had an absolute freak out. Then I decided to fix them, because what the hell else could I do?

Fixing appliances is a lot less scary than some people think (or maybe a lot of people are like me and enjoy fixing things - I dunno). I'm a clumsy mess sometimes, so am left with the reality that this clumsiness will continually end in some kind of mess.

But in the end, nothing is unfixable. Injuries heal, appliances can be repaired, relationships can be rekindled, and diseases, well, those raw foodies have something to say about that. Perhaps if we admitted to ourselves that things will break, we'd be more open to doing the dirty job of fixing them, sewing up those socks, filling in those holes in the wall, going to see a therapist. Maybe if we acknowledged that we ourselves are all broken, we'd be more okay with the brokenness of other people, and the inevitable brokenness of the world.

The full moon :)

Aren't these pictures funny and weird?

Tonight, after yoga, I stood by the bread factory in my short shorts, yoga mat in hand, watching the train go by under a full moon, and cried. And the train kept going, and going, and I knew I needed it to pass before I could cross the tracks to go home anyway, so I just stood there and got out as much as I could.

I'm okay. I can be big and loud sometimes, and that includes being sad, but I'm okay. People always think that I'm worse off than I am. The funny thing is, when it was really bad, several years ago, very few people saw me in my total life-stops-completely grief. Now I just cry and watch the train, then go home and make dinner, and do it all again tomorrow. I'm really doing well, and sometimes I have long, difficult days, but that doesn't change how I feel on the inside about myself.

Anyhow, having a job where you help people makes you have to constantly remind yourself that you are powerless to change other people. Sometimes I just have to say that to myself (I'm always talking to myself), and the fog lifts, my furrowed brows lift, and the world is right again.

Nothing.

The thing about trash and recycling, is that there's always something there, a tangible object, a thing to feel and see (and sometimes even smell). When you throw something away, that thing goes somewhere (usually to a landfill). You recycle something, and it gets transformed and used again. The cycle goes on and on and on. It's a beautiful thing.

But with love, sometimes there is nothingness and emptiness, and "no more". Sometimes feelings disappear, and can never be found again. Where they go, we don't know. We go to marriage counseling to find them. We take lovers, hoping to feel good again. We drink. We laugh. We try to want and long and ache the way we used to.

Nothing.

I am feeling a bit empty of love at this moment, wishing and missing for what I once carried with me every day like a warm, tear-soaked, blanket.

No more love like a life force that could leap tall buildings. No more love. No more love. No more love.

Summer house-sitting

Vintage Italian Race Car tie

I am often asked to house-sit, since I'm single and people assume that I will jump at the chance to live in a real house (or maybe they just know I love dogs and central air, and know that I won't have to get a housesitter for my own house, seeing as how I live in a garage and carry all of my valuables with me when I leave).

It's pretty difficult for me to leave my bed for more than an afternoon (it's really an all-purpose piece of furniture: desk, chair, kitchen table, sleeping mechanism). So my experience this summer of housesitting has been a really positive one. I was able to pack up my stuff and drive away, and I was super proud of myself for just doing it, without planning to go home every day to check on my store, but just putting it on vacation, and saying, "I'll mail it Tuesday". I'm proud of myself for getting out of bed, for weeding the garden and playing with the dogs, for taking the opportunity to walk down to the river and stumble upon a pack of super-tan cyclists on some sort of long-distance jaunt with bike trailers. And I'm proud of myself for being the kind of person that people trust to leave their dogs, cat, and schools of fish to care for.

And finally, I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to use the coffee maker, because that kind of failure would have been tragic.

Laziness & Photographing Textiles

Vintage Vera Neumann Curtain - A Rare Find!

So I have a ridiculous procrastinating habit with photographing textiles. They're so big! So yesterday, I faced my fear and did a bunch all at once, just laid them in the driveway in the early morning light, and shot the hell out of them. Yeah, so it's not professional, but it got the job done, and in the end, that's really all that matters.

In my professional, non-eBay life, I deal a lot with the term laziness. People tell me that they don't/can't do something because they're "lazy". And in response, without fail, I say, "Bull. Laziness doesn't exist. Find another word." It's my shtick. It's my higher self speaking, because in my darker moments, I am just as likely to think those same things about myself. But I don't want to be a person that ever talks about myself that way. Would I say that to a friend in a condescending way? Would I insult them like that, or would I be understanding and acknowledge their weariness/exhaustion/pain and need for rest? Probably the latter.

Calling yourself "lazy" is a cop-out. It's the end of the sentence. Nothing can follow it. It prevents you from digging deeper and figuring out what's really going on. It prevents you from acknowledging your own humanness and forgiving yourself from being imperfect and a non-superhero.

So forgive yourself already and take a nap.

Word.

Operation "Sell Car"

I just returned from the shop. It's my engine mounts, and front axle. $1000. I know I've said this before, but I am done. I am so done. I need a new car, like today.

Operation "Sell VW" commences today.

Not enough makeup

Time travel with authentic Jacobean embroidery!

So over the past five years, I have worked myself into a continual semi-conscious state by putting myself through school - by myself. I never payed a cent for tuition; unfortunately, my government loans did all of that (ack, repayment!), but I did do the rest mostly by myself (minus some dollars here and there from scholarships and loan overflow). Boo-yah.

Unfortunately, this doesn't feel like such a big deal on the flip side. Now it feels like I'm some sort of hippie dreamer who wears used clothing and got a masters degree for fun. I don't wear enough makeup to be taken seriously. I swear everyone's teeth were whiter than mine at the ceremony on Saturday. I had a weird growth on my eyebrow. And then when it was all over, I ate a burger made of beets.

It really just couldn't get any worse.

Too busy to care

My idea of Hell is to be young again.

- Marge Piercy

As I get older, I find that life is never what I expect it to be. It is always more difficult. It is always more complicated. This past week, I have found myself at an end I've never experienced before, some sort of emotional place I didn't know existed, where life can be physically exhausting, and still continue. I can be more tired than I've ever been before, but still go to work, and still be good at my job.

Everyone is limited. We are human. But to choose to live in that imperfect humanness, accepting all of one's faults and limitations, allows us to be who we were truly meant to be. For me, that means that I am less able to be "on" than other people I know. I have less energy to give than other people I know. And every effort I make to fight that reality just puts me further behind.

Today, I didn't go to church. I felt guilty. There are things I need to take care of, and people expecting me to take care of those things. But I only have what I have. I can only give what I am able to give. The past few weeks have opened me up to a new reality of understanding what people mean when they say that the older they get, the less they care about what other people think. Older people also say that they like themselves more than they did when they were younger.

It's way better being a grown-up.

One fatal flaw

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

I am obsessed with keeping my computer clean and orderly. And in the past two weeks, this has come back to bite me in the ass, and not in an ass-scarring kind of way, but an ass-maiming kind of way. I lost an editing job I spent a day working on. Tonight, I lost a page of notes from meetings that cannot be recovered. I just spent the last half-hour going through the recycling bin and putting together the puzzle pieces of the printed copy I'd torn up (the details really don't matter).

I can't keep living this way. I can't keep obsessing about "computer baggage". I need to start holding on to things, not because they're important, but because it puts me in the mindset to hold onto things so that when something actually important comes around, I don't act like a dipshit and throw it away.

Dear self - In an attempt to protect yourself, you've created a world where you leave no trace, where you quietly enter and exit rooms so that no one notices you. And for a time, that was a good skill. It kept you safe, and you did a really good job staying safe in very dangerous and ugly situations. But now, life is different, and you don't need to cover your tracks anymore. You can leave footprints. You can be visible. It's going to take some time, but this is a first step. Buying a jump-drive is probably sufficient, but you might need to purchase an external hard drive. I'm sorry that this lesson has been so painful and stressful. Life lessons often are. But don't beat yourself up over it. You did the best you could. Now, you know better, and you're gonna do better. Much love. - M

Coffee filters don't degrade quickly.

 

I have begun transferring dirt from the rotting pile to the dirt pile. I have a cement double sink outside and I use it to compost my crap. The coffee filters are ridiculous, but everything else seems to decompose pretty quickly. I'm going to have to start using the dirt for something, but I'm not much of a gardener. I'm more of a dirt lover, a maker of mud pies and the like. I don't know. I guess I just feel like it's a guaranteed failure. I kill plants, so I figure I'll just keep things from dying and never try.

If you know something is going to fail, is there really any sense in trying? I started an MA program 4.5 years ago, and it was clear from the beginning that I was not going to make it. I fell apart so often that I lived in an almost constant suicidal depression. I was in over my head before I even knew what was happening, and I was a pretty smart cookie. I grasped at anything and everything, used sex to cope, and in a kind of broken-down delusional state, was still left with an intangible determination.

Now here I am, all these years later, and I am a different person. Few people got to see the transition-it was ugly and I remember little of it. But I know that it happened, because I am alive. Somehow, in the end, I got composted. And like non-food products, I was pretty tough to break down.

I make a bad first impression.

I am in a rut today. I got some feedback from an eBay customer that was not very favorable, and I'm taking it to heart, but for a good reason.

I'm wondering if I need to pay more attention to the way I package my items. Honestly, I don't really think about the way it looks as much as I do about the safety of the item. "Is it going to break?"-that's the only question I ask. Who cares if it doesn't look pretty? I'm not trying to win a shipping beauty contest. But then I started thinking, what if the customer really is always right, and that I should make a bigger deal about shipping?

I guess "The Recycling Ethic" means that I use what's available. I see it as a pioneer activity. I'm not just trying to run a a business-this is a way of life for me, and I want to reflect that in the way I operate. Unfortunately, I think that this looks like laziness to people who only have a single interaction with me.

So that's where I'm at. I am challenged, and I think that this interaction has given me an opportunity to grow. It's uncomfortable, as always. And I have to mediate the self-hatred with the desire for growth, which is quite the balancing act.

If you have any pointers, I'd sure love to hear them. Also, if you have any ideas about how I can be frugal, thrifty, not wasteful, and at the same time aethetically pleasing, that would be awesome.

"Stay classy, San Diego."

Cigarette smoke = yuck

You've put me in a quandary, Jack Donaghy. A quandary.

Tracy Jordan

The past couple weeks, I have been the unwitting purchaser of cigarette smokey clothing and shoes. I am far more likely to smell things that are old, rather than items that are new or newer. I ended up buying five (!) pairs of cigarette smokey pants and one pair of very expensive french boots. I was able to wash the smell out of the pants, but I felt weird about the whole business. I am all for full disclosure, but I really don't like having to include the phrase: "When this item was purchased, it smelled like cigarette smoke."

I guess I'm adding sticking-my-face-in-pants to my regular thrifting ritual. It was not worth the time for those pants, but I didn't want to lose money, so I went through the effort of cleaning them, and in the end, it was no big deal. I don't know what I'm going to do with the boots yet. They're leather, and I've cleaned them with saddle soap, but that did nothing for the smell. I'm considering getting them professionally cleaned, but I don't know if it's worth it on my end to do that. But who would buy them if I didn't?

Normalizing differences

I'm too smart for my own good sometimes. Sometimes my intelligence leads me to be judgmental and impatient with other people, instead of compassionate and understanding. I was the clumsy, daydreaming kid who didn't have common sense. Now I treat children in some of the same ways that I was treated. Well, I don't treat them that way, but I do get annoyed in my head, and have to work extra hard to be patient.

So all in all, I'm not failing. But my difficulty in this area reminds me to slow down, and think about the situation from the child's perspective. What must it feel like to not know how to do something in the presence of an adult? That must be so scary, and shameful. How could a kid admit that they don't understand if the adult understands everything? I need to remember to foster a culture where asking for help is normalized and being wrong, or "failing" is not indicative of a person's core worth.

Failing at fixing

 

I keep trying to fix things and then my life only gets worse. My sink gets clogged from the broccoli I had for dinner, but then I can take all the pipes apart and clean them, right? Wrong, because then I don't put the pipes back together and now it's leaking. My toaster oven's button breaks, so I bought a new button, and now I'm overloading the circuit. What the heck.

SO basically, my whole life has fallen into the toilet over these two things, because that oven made my life okay. I got into this little apartment with no kitchen, but I had an oven, so I felt like a person. Now I don't have an oven. You see what's happening? I imagine that I can fix things, but then nothing gets fixed. I even put the time in. So now I'm tired, and feeling like a failure. Does this mean I have to buy a new toaster oven? Does this mean that I'm not a person who will ever be able to really fix anything? I would like to just find out now so I don't spend the rest of my life failing at fixing.

What's up with that?

 

At my job, I can make one hundred good decisions, and generally just be my bad ass self, and then one bad decision, and suddenly, I'm a failure. Everything I've done for the past few days is for naught, and I should never be gainfully employed, and I suck suck suck.

What's up with that?

Forgiving ourselves: treating ourselves the way we'd want to be treated by other people, is a difficult thing indeed. I can't tell you how many times this subject comes up for me in conversation with other people. At least once a day, I have to explain that it is unacceptable for you (i.e. the person sitting in front of me) to demean yourself in my presence. Don't do it. It serves no purpose. It is never therapeutic for you to hate yourself. It will never do you any good, no matter how much you think about it. So knock it off.

Speech over. Peace out mofos.

Minor freak-out

I spent 48 hours (minus sleeping and eating of course) working on my senior paper this weekend. I came home last night and went to sleep at 8pm. I woke up this morning at 9am. I am still exhausted. I still have a headache. I can't remember the last time I have worked so hard.

I almost wonder if I overdid it. Because I have to do it again next weekend, and probably again the weekend after that. And every time I shared some new "ah-ha" moment with my retreat partner, she was easily able to debunk it. Blerg.

What am I saying? Why am I saying it? My topic doesn't even matter, even though it matters to me. At the end of the day, I love philosophical and theological ethics. Who cares about that shit? I want to be practical, but I'm not. I'm lofty and in the clouds. I want to change the way the world operates, and that's why I study what I study. But after this weekend, I'm feeling like I'm failing, and I don't know what to do.

I'm really tired. I need to rest. I will feel better after resting :)

Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate

 

This recent post by Katy over at "The Non-Consumer Advocate" got some heated responses, so much so that she shut down commentary on the post.

I myself have been the recipient of some pretty nasty online communication. It hurts when people are rude because they can be, instead of assuming the best and perhaps beginning some dialogue about their "negative" feelings. I think that people on Katy's blog were generally able to say how they felt, and the conversation was cordial and honest.

I talk about online manners a lot because I work online. Very, very rarely do I get to meet a customer face-to-face, or a reader for that matter, and I have learned time and again how important it is to be literal in one's communication, and kind above all else. Sometimes, it is even appropriate to anticipate problems and address them before they happen.

I admit that this week, I did not respond well to an online overreaction. I was curt and annoyed when someone took offense at something that was in-no-way meant to be offensive. But in the end, I am only reminded that I am also human, and often fail. Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate.