Happy Saturday :)

This bird's nest fell out of a tree in my front yard :)

This has been a tough week, but the past several have been tough, so that really doesn't mean all that much. I hate the depression of summer, but it keeps me from going over the edge and collapsing the rest of the time, so it's worth the difficult days, usually. Mostly I just sit in my apartment with my mini fan pointed directly at me, doing eBay schtuff and listening to talk radio. Television makes me feel a lot more guilty, so I try to take it in small amounts (I don't know where I got the idea that summer television was shameful - probably my mother). Also, I drink a lot of smoothies, which makes me feel like a rock star. They're full of spinach and berries. I figure my iron and antioxidant load is now back where it should be.

Tonight, I am going out with friends to see Magic Mike (I later read this, and had some brain waves to the contrary). I am telling you so that you know that I have no shame (I think). Oh man, at the end of Dear John, when Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried's characters end up together after her sufficiently hot first husband dies tragically, gives me hope that love can truly conquer all. I'm not kidding.

Credit card debt creation

I really can't figure out what this book is about.

I think I've mentioned that my financial poverty has reached an all-time-low. Seriously, I don't know how low I can go. This is the first time in my life that I have chosen to use my credit card for necessities. In the past, I've baulked at people with credit card debt. "How did you buy that much stuff that you couldn't afford?" But now...I don't know.

I've worked my butt off this month, going through all my old inventory, photographing, listing. I don't know what else to do. What happens when a store just stops selling? This has been an okay month sale-wise, but between graduation last month, and the car breaking down this month, and my shop 2-3x as full as it has been all year, I'm pretty much just hoping that this will blow over, and that in the end, I'll come out okay financially.

Okay, thinking time is over. Now it's coffee time.

Little productivity :(

Handmade Wedding Gift - 65 Years in Storage :)

So yesterday wasn't as productive as I would have liked. I got stuck in my brain, and wherever I was, it wasn't conducive to a productive day. I haven't come close to my $1000 goal to pay for the car debacle, and when I spoke to the shop this morning, they said it was taking longer than they'd predicted. Does that mean that they will charge me more? Only time will tell.

This morning will be my second car-borrowing in 24 hours. It's really difficult for me to ask for help, even when I am asking people who I trust. I guess what goes through my mind is, "I don't want to annoy this person." I really hate the idea that I annoy anyone. I don't know if I need to get over that. It may not be doing me any favors.

Gotta run. Talk soon.

A challenging task

 

I am not feeling so great about myself right now. I feel like people are judging me for having a masters degree and not having a solid plan for my life. And these aren't imaginary people - these are people I love! So I'm sitting here trying to convince myself that somehow it's more important to be myself than it is to be who other people expect me to be, even when those people are the people I love most in the world. That's a challenging task.

In school, I had a teacher who scared me, and no matter how much time I spent with this person, I never felt truly accepted. I felt small, and insignificant; not enough. As time went by, I realized that even though I respected this person more than I respected myself, I had to let go of the need to be accepted by them. In order to maintain my own sanity, I had to throw away the idea that my identity somehow hinged on their perception of me, even though that perception was super important to how I saw myself as a person and professional.

So now to be faced with that same dilemma in any form is only a stiff reminder of how important it is to love myself first. I will crumble if I allow an imagined perception of someone else's judgement to determine who I am, even though my faith tells me that other people are more important than me.

Ideals vs. reality

Today was not a good day for me personally, but it was a pretty good thrifting day. I spent less, which is always great. I didn't take care of myself as well as I should, though. I'm losing steam, and making unwise decisions, or maybe I'm just being thrown complex problems. Who knows?

The dog and I are not a good fit. We're just not. But I'm caught between the ideal of never going back on an agreement, and the reality of a dog who needs a different structure to thrive.

Can someone bring me some ice cream? I think that ice cream would make me feel better.

I'm done hiding my crazy.

 

My new motto is just to own the crazy. "Do what you feel!" I say. There is only so much emotional health I can cram into my body. Eventually, I have to just roll with it.

I've spent the past few decades over-analyzing every thought and feeling, and I'm just done with it. So I love someone I shouldn't love. What of it? I was in love with my ex-boyfriend for ten years after we broke up, and I spent way too much of that time thinking about it. I never did anything about it. I never talked to my therapist about it. It just sat in my gut, and in the dark parts of my brain, embroiled in guilt and shame. By the time I broke down and confessed it, it made no sense to anyone because I'd never been honest about it. I'm done with living that way.

Now I'm going to be honest. I love who and what I love, and not everyone understands, but I'm done hiding. The honesty isn't always pleasant, but it's way better than holding onto secrets because I'm so afraid of what people will think, or what it means about me as a person.

Oh my goodness! Who cares what it means about me as a person?! It's just a feeling. I'm not any crazier than anyone else.

So I'm just leaving behind all of the extra crazy that comes from thinking I'm crazy, and just owning it. Everyone can think whatever they want to think. I know who I am, and I'm okay with it.

Put the gun down.

So I'm watching Law & Order, Season 1; good stuff. Less technology, but the same general script. Anyhow, in this episode, two cops are chasing a suspect. One goes into the vacant building making a racket. The other positions himself at the fire escape, and sticks his gun into his pants. Then he looks around, sees some trash cans, and picks up a metal lid (old school trash can). The kid comes flying down the fire escape, gun in hand. The cop waits, then sticks the lid out just as the kid runs by-breaks the kid's nose. Awesome (i.e. the conscious choice not to kill).

I am a pacifist, to the core. I abhor violence. I'm even having to watch myself lately so I don't let my own feelings about violence cloud my relationships in my work. It's important that we allow others to make up their own minds about things, and not assume that we should bring them over to our side of any debate. Right now, I'm dealing with the issue of horror films. It's tough to stay quiet about my own opinion, but after I began doing it, I was better able to hear what the person was saying. Instead of spending my time trying to figure out how to convince them that they should never watch a horror movie ever again, I was spending my time hearing them, a much better option.

Anyhow, the kid's nose was broken, and I'm excited? Yup. Anytime I see someone with a more lethal option at their disposal, put it away and reach for something less lethal, I applaud. Violence will never go away. Human beings will always be stupid and try to hurt each other in any way they can; this is part of being human-we mess up. But we infinitely compound that stupidity when we purchase guns. More people get hurt, instead of fewer. More people live in fear, instead of fewer. Yes, the alternative might be strange (e.g. trash can lid), but it should always be first in our minds, rather than a grievous afterthought.

I love you...goodbye

There was a time in my life when I had to give up every vice. I think I tried to give things up for God, like God cared about my love for chocolate/peanut butter ice cream. For Lent one year, I gave up ten things. It was ridiculous. I think I tried to fast too (as in not eating for days). I was trying to purge my life of everything I thought God wanted me to get rid of. It was very monkish of me. I've joked for a long time about becoming a nun. It's probably because I've struggled for a long time thinking that I am a terrible person (I'm completely over that now).

Well, those attempts failed. My love for chocolate/peanut butter ice cream hasn't gone anywhere, and I'm not troubled by it. I have, however, gone to the grocery store three times this week looking for my SO Delicious and it's been all gone-every freakin time! But I digress...

The point is, sometimes the things we think are vices are really less important than the negative thoughts we think about ourselves and other people, and the negative influences we allow into our lives. Sometimes these influences are people. Sometimes, as painful as it is (and believe me, I've lived the unbelievable pain), it's the only way to move forward. Maybe someday you can return, but you have to grow and change on your own before you can return to those who you've worked with to become the broken person you are today.

I highly recommend Laura Davis's book I Thought We'd Never Speak Again. I have a wonderful ex-library copy by my bed that I read when I'm feeling particularly blue. It gives me hope that loss can be a good thing, and that I am currently becoming the person I want to be, and maybe, just maybe, someday things will be different.

Do your own dirty work

So I've been watching Mad Men on Netflix. I'm on Season 2, and there's a scene where the Draper family has a picnic and leaves all of their trash behind. It's a metaphor for all of the trash in their lives that they aren't willing to deal with; they're just leaving it for other people to clean up.

Cleaning up, or dealing with, your own garbage is a time-consuming and thankless task. All one gets is perhaps a self-directed pat on the back. Sometimes only you know what you've done. The greenbelt in front of my house is a full-time promenade for the neighborhood. It's always packed with groups of people and children, especially after school.

On a walk last night with the dogs, I noticed that there was trash everywhere. The riding lawnmower had been through, and made lots of big pieces into many more little pieces; it wasn't pretty. I didn't know how to handle it. Do I pick up other people's garbage to set an example? Do I ignore it because it isn't my problem? I thought about making signs that say "Respect the Greenbelt". It seemed like a communal message, "Let's take care of our shared space". But I know that I very rarely, if ever, am able to get someone to do what I think is right, so maybe I'll just hold off on the sign-making for right now.

Sometimes I wish I could throw my messes on someone else's doorstep. But I don't. "Why not?", you ask. Because I wouldn't go shit on someone's doorstep just to make them smell it. If it isn't productive, I don't need to whip it out and throw it around. That just causes more pain for everyone. There is no deserve. No one deserves pain. We all just kind of deal with it in the best way we can, and hopefully, along the way, we won't cause more of it.

Hopefully.

Ah, the guilt

I spent all day yesterday working on my paper. I have nothing left this morning to go to church.

I feel like I let people down when I don't go, especially when a friend is preaching. I feel like I owe it to her to be there. I feel like people will forget me if they don't see me often enough, that they'll stop caring about me the less they see me.

But I'm so tired, and I've seen what happens when I wear myself too thin. It's not pretty, and I need to leave some wiggle room. I'll get sick at this pace. Ah, but the guilt.

I don't have the energy to analyze this right now, so I'm just going to do it, because I have to. I will suffer the guilt, because the fact is, I don't got have anything left to give right now. I'm all out. See you on the flip side.