debris

I was speaking with my mother a few days ago and I was telling her that she and dad brought us up to feel very optimistic and confident about the world. I internalized everything as terrifying though, and very early my sense of perfection coloured how I viewed my own efforts. I believe that only now do I feel the confidence that came from theorizing things, Life and experiences gave me a sense of the pessimism I expected. I see it in others too. I think it comes from a number of places. Internally from family experiences, but also from what you are listening to and reading at home and then hearing from people in and around your family, including Teachers and aquaintances. I think that the subtle self talk and ambient noise of the world can settle like silt at the bottom of your consciousness and get stirred up whenever another type of stress gets to you. It is a constant struggle. I have written here over the years of looking in on the lives of people I know and of strangers, observing the knowing smiles, the everyday normality of a hug, a good talk producing laughter, a parent lifting a child into the air, and wondering about the fragility I felt at being on the other side of that. I asked myself many times what was it about me that was leaving me feeling as though my world of happiness had been blown up and I was sitting in the debris. I was sitting in it. Most definately. My mind was sitting in it, trying to find the horizon that shone through it. I kept asking myself, when would I become friends with the only person I could not ignore? When would I just trust myself all of the time? When would things someone said off-handedly not wound me and leave me in a ball of pain? When would I take up those great moments of confidence as a permanent battle cry? Then, very, very slowly I saw myself as a person for real. I saw that I will have moments of doubt, of setback, of pain, of confusion...but it would not have to hang around me like a bad smell. It is life happening, and I am inside it and part of it and I am a shard of that energy and refraction and reflection and I am right where I need to be.

bright lights ahead

The year is nearly at an end and I am looking back at it. What I did, what I didn't do (yet) and what I want to do soon. This year my time has been cut down by scheduling between my mother and aunt regarding my fathers health. The time that I get with my daughter has also arbitrarily been cut down by her father. As usual, I have had projects that I have wanted to establish this year. I would say that I have had this same mood about that for the last five or so years. I always feel that I am so close, and then things have not worked out. I feel that closeness again, as I am presently waiting to get an email from a company specializing in something along the lines of my big project. I am very excited about that. I know that as soon as I have something that I can see as consistent, I shall feel much better about all of the things that presently stress me out in that area. This year I had to confront so much about human frailty in myself and others. I had some breakthroughs with travel and looking in on my self confidence and goals. It has not been a bad year. I could always use more money. Lol. 2020..... I would like to travel more, particularly to somewhere I have never been and want to experience. I have the group show to work on, as well as three books to complete. The months ahead can be filled with everything I want to achieve and then some.

Questions

A friend of mine is currently abroad for three months, she does that every year, so we end up speaking via Skype or Whats App. After one of our chats, she mentioned something that has made me curious. She stated that I know very well that I give myself my own issues to deal with. I agreed, but now I want to take a closer look at that. Time flies, I remember being twenty-one and wondering about this future. I certainly did not see any of this ahead of me. I wonder as well about the next fast twenty years ahead. What will I grapple with, what shall blindside me? What will bring me joy? What am I doing now that I shall look back on and wish or honor having done? Suddenly there is no more time sometimes. Suddenly, the fears are so great that acting in any direction leaves me un-mobile in my mind, but somehow, I want to have these conversations with myself on paper. I would say that 2019 has brought me to a place where I am willing to dream again and to set forward plans based on pure speculation for a change. I finally understand that the planning does not have to be perfect, or even long term. As to the question my friend put to me, I will write that if I give myself these tests, then I shall continue to write them and respond to them the same way. What matters to me now is the times in between. The times when I am not being predictable. I know that I am being a bit of a smart-ass here...about time. I have some set ways, and this year I have been very confrontational with the parts of me that I usually downplay. I have noticed them piping up and have been feeling a lot more balanced for it. The messy and not so messy sides are facets and assets. It is also so funny, I could intellectualize all I want, but there is much to be said for experiences. For whatever is ahead, that freedom to THINK for a moment, to rest in an assurance of your next step...that is so important. You make the best plan or you wing it from thing to thing producing....what? You at this moment. I saw it in an article in "O" magazine once....the actual number of brushed teeth, sleeping, eating, walking that one will do in a lifetime. All life times add up. We all impact each other. It is wearisome for me at times to consider that I am creating my experiences to "feel' something I need to prove or disprove. To add or to subtract. Why? Because I feel everything in the end...and I go straight into analysis mode...why, how? What was the point of doing that? All of that is me. I sit at home and I plot the course and I hurt my own feelings and I get up and do everything all over again in a different type of sequence that makes me feel that it is all new to me....again. What a life?!? Yet, can there be anything better?

Overwhelmed by it all

Today I am feeling a little down and stressed. But I shall be fine. I am just aware of some things that I want to achieve and some changes are happening and I am trying to juggle everything. I had planned to write yesterday, but I got all caught up with some work and thus, I am only now getting to this entry. I was in a very different mood too. But what is good about this is that I know that I shall be alright. I think that that is big for me. I would say that I used to get into a funk and never really gave myself a space to say, ok, this is how it is at this moment, but it will pass. This year I find that the learning has been largely about myself and coming to terms with things that I sometimes cannot change right away, and more so, aspects of my personality that I have watched almost like an out of body experience, feeling out what a circumstance can make me focus on. My level of dis-satisfaction is something that I embrace now, because i know that it means that I will somehow, some way find a way to produce a shift and a change. What I do know for sure is this sense of discomfort is a huge yes to who I am and want to be. The things that seem like a stack of no's and don'ts over the yes's are all telling me that I see myself and know what I do want. There are things that I can no longer tolerate. My sense of neutrality is all well and good, but shit! Come on now, I also see that I deserve so much better with so much that matters in my life.

appreciation

This could be a long entry. But I won't do that. Last year and year before at this time, I remember being very frustrated with where I was. This year I appear to be in the same position again. However something has changed for the better. It started out with the usual sense of frustration and trying to figure out how to move forward. After much effort, I just decided to surrender to what I was feeling, and low and behold,I realized that what I feared most had no power to move me one way or the other.With that understanding, I was able to breathe out. It was as though the ending I was expecting suddenly was the end of one book and the opening of another. That achieved, old considerations came to the fore and I saw that whatever I choose to do next is simply a matter of deciding. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be large and elaborate either. I don't even have to make it a permanent situation. The wash of relief was blissful once known and once I discovered that what I was doing was embracing myself as good enough.

what a thing

A few weeks ago I was in another country, walking in a very scenic place, contemplating my next move in my life and career. It was a lovely, breezy day and I felt optimistic enough to consider the possibility of getting back, as the saying goes, on the market. That wistful sentiment proved to have been true, for as I returned to my home, I was met with the request of a suitor. Yes, I have been watching Game of Thrones and inclined to want to use the language for this particular entry. Anyway, it led me to have a moment where I had to conclude that my mind was receptive and because it was, I manifested the results. Now, less than two weeks in, I have already ended what it could have been before it had a chance to bloom into anything. It died on the vine. This time I was greatly helped to see that it was no one's fault, just a very different approach to life and particularly to love. I am taken by the fact that I have known the person for so long, and yet know so little about their emotional life, although I know all of the details that mattered as a friend. What I know about him as a friend and what I have already experienced as a prospect are two completely different things. I also saw the way this man sets things up to please himself. I do not believe that I factored much in his plans apart from what he wanted. Oddly enough, yet again, he has all of the proper traits. He is a loving son, a hard worker, a creative person, polite, funny, thoughtful...so what could go wrong? or what is it that wrung wrong? Selfish, egotistical, clueless skip quickly to mind. I know, who would have thought. He is very nice on the surface but not too far underneath he is also intolerant. But you don't pick that up until you're in a relationship, or a romantic situation with him. I think it may be that he was made to believe that to be a man, one must assert ones strength...brawn or something over the person one is attracted to?It came about in our conversations. I am not asked what would work for me or if I state what I desire, it is responded to with doubts on his part. He either has never done it, not interested in it in the past or can't afford it. This is so strange the way I have spoken to this person for so many, many years, and now, I do not know him at all...I am cautious with my criticism because I know that you react to what you are at any given time. So I would ask, is it inevitable that I cannot find happiness? I don't believe that to be the case. I am now overthinking. Sometimes people are just not compatible, even if they are friends.

coming in handy

Lately I have been wondering whether life just goes around in circles giving us variations of our lives?I have been friends for years with someone who recently expressed interest. Recently divorced and childless, he made some obvious moves that were quite endearing and being friends, we talked about looking into something more. Lo and behold, he reminded me of someone I had known twenty years ago who is now dead, as well as an amalgam of someone else I have already mentioned. But I chose to suspend belief. I was dealing with the strange experience of taking a friendship I had never thought of acting on, further. It is so funny, You know someone forever, but you know absolutely nothing about their sexual side at all. Thus the awkwardness began. My instinct which has become sharper and sharper, but I have been battling with of late, because I believe that it was on vacation with the last person...was very clear throughout this encounter. It was telling me that the whole thing was too weird. But speaking to a dear friend of mine, the opinion was that this is a long standing friend, and what could be healthier? Basing a relationship on such a foundation should be 'magical'. This proved to be very true, magically mind blowingly BAD. His taste is so unappealing to me that I cannot get around it, and this is after trying just to consider romance, he drops a hell of a bomb on me with what he considers good sex. To him it involves only penetration, caressing the other person and kissing. Ok, that doesn't sound horrible. However, if you read that over a few times it should hit you. It means that foreplay, the most obvious, most (to me) purposeful reason to engage with another human being, is off of his agenda. He just wants to focus on upper body and then plough into female flesh.I have never heard anyone liking that, but it is clear that he has met women who love it, as he said the typical thing to me, " I have had no complaints!' Smirk. I had an instant complaint! What made it all the stranger was that I had taken a week to wrap my mind around the image of him and I actually doing couple stuff and possibly being together in the hazy future. It took some doing, but it began to seem possible.Now I must conclude that great friendship may not mean great romantic relationship! I have seen in the past that common held beliefs about what you look for in a man does not always mean that it translates into something meaningful either.Keeping an open mind is key, but also, I must state that in this situation my instincts were sharper than ever. I just had to say no right away and my boundaries were unwavering. Sometimes people are just not compatible no matter how they look on paper.