September 30, 2005

Crazy with the Busyness II

I'm still attempting to dig myself out from under a mound of files at work, and piles of dishes and laundry at home, but wanted to post a couple of thoughts:

I walked outside yesterday, and the air just smelled so good. It smelled like summer, even though it is autumn now. It didn't smell like cut grass or any other recognizable smell, but smelled like sunshine and leaves with a slight hint of poolwater. I walked as slowly as I could just breathing it in.

And I think I have outgrown the Cranberries. When I was an angsty teenager, they were a soothing balm. Now, they kinda grate. I've got several of their songs on my ipod, and everytime one comes on I hit skip. I'm not sure if I should be sad about that or not.

Lastly, a recap and pics of Caryn's wedding will hopefully be posted this weekend.


September 19, 2005

Looking Back

Last year my life saw a very tumultuous summer and fall. I moved, my housemate's son, T, was taken from our house in a fairly COPS-worthy scene, I met blogger friends at a great party in the Santa Cruz mountains, I lost two men I had met online, both of whom meant a great deal to me, one due to my inability to deal with his mistakes, the other due to his inability to deal with mine. I lost friendships in a very emotional pre-wedding flare, and lost other friendships for reasons I don't fully understand.

I pulled into myself and away from some of these people, due in large part to my own inability to deal, or to understand what the hell had just happened. I'm not saying it was terribly mature of me, I'm not really saying any of the decisions I made last year were terribly mature, but somehow things have recently come to a head and I am forced to deal with some of them. Not forced by anyone else, but forced by my own need to work through feelings and situations and make them a part of the past, and make the resolution of them, even if only resolution of my own feelings about them, and not always with the other people involved, part of the future I am attempting to create for myself. And since this is supposed to be the place I say the things I need to say- even if sometimes I forget that- I'm going to ramble for a while.

T's being taken from our house actually doesn't have a whole lot that needs to be resolved, I mention it now mainly because it scared the hell out of me, and it was just one more thing in a series of highs and low last year. The same with the blogger party where I met Jules for the second time, and Dan and Brad and their respective wives for the first time. Again, the party itself has nothing really to be resolved- it was wonderful and it was great to meet other bloggers whom I admired. I think however, the party had some fallout in the form of my own expectations that does need to be dealt with.

The pre-wedding flare was dealt with about two months later, and I finally got reasons for what happened. And honestly, they were bad reasons. But, the agreement was reached that we would all talk to each other, and not about each other, an action that I have tried to carry into other areas of life, not always with the most successful result, but I try. Sarah and Ida and I aren't really friends anymore. We're civil, and even reasonably friendly when we see each other, but there are no more Sunday afternoons sitting around sewing, no more Tuesday night dinners. And almost a year later, it still hurts, but, as I and others predicted, it does not hurt as much as it did.

The Friday that everything went down, I called Jules, and poured everything out to her, and she seemed supportive. I said that Keegan and I had talked about going to Santa Cruz the next day, to be far away from everything, and maybe, if she was up for it, we'd come to Capitola, and she said sure, call her the next day. And I did, quite a few times, but I couldn't get through to her. Two days later, in a post entitled Monday Mishmash, she wrote the following words: "Anti-social breakdowns had over the weekend: just the one, on Saturday, unexplained and ultra-rude". I emailed her a few days later, trying to make sense of what happened. She never responded, and that rejection, so freshly on top of Sarah and Ida's, was far more devastating than it probably should have been. I thought she was mad at me too, though I could not understand why.

I had already pulled into my shell of protection due to what happened with Sarah and Ida, and I put Jules outside that shell as well. I stopped reading her blog because it hurt too much. Somehow, Dan ended up outside that shell as well, I think because the connection between he and I at the blogger party was not the one I had hoped for or expected, and given all the other recent rejection at the time, his blog fell off the daily reads. I've recently realized how childish that was. At first, I stayed away becaue it was too hard. Then, I stayed away because I sort of realized that it was silly, but I had been away so long that it would be weird to suddenly pop back up. But there was no real reason for me to go away in the first place. Neither of them had said, "yeah, so, we decided we don't like you, please go away".

I posted a couple of weeks back about how I was obsessed with adoption blogs. How I was hooked on reading about these families, whom I had never met, bringing home their children. This morning I clicked on Dan's blog for the first time in about 11 months. And saw pictures of Zach, the son he and his wife adopted. I IMed Brad like "Holy Crap, when did that happen??" And I realized that I had missed out on the adoption story (I'm not sure how much there was of it, since I haven't been reading) of two people I have met in real life. And I was really happy for them. And then I started bawling. Mid-IM with Brad, I logged out and left the office to go have a good private cry in the bathroom.

The tears have been brimming behind my lids pretty much since then. I've been noticing lately that I feel kind of stupid around my friends. They're all so much smarter than I am, more well-read, more socially aware. I've realized I still have a lot of growing up to do. I long for a relationship more than I've longed for just about anything in my life, but I've heard it said that you can never love someone fully and completely until you love yourself that way. I never wanted to believe that because it seemed like way too much work and it would take way longer than I wanted to wait.

But in the past few months, I have been trying to make a lot of changes to the way I live my life and the way I interact with the world around me, and have really had to grow as a person. Not being in a relationship, and not depending on my friends for everything, tells me that I am making these changes for me. I'm changing because I see the need to change, not because someone else thinks I should. Sometimes the changes hurt, a lot. I don't think I expected it. Some of the changes are hard, and suck more than anything, but I know they are healthy and they are the right decisions. I didn't expect it to be easy breezy, and I know I expected certain things, like OA, to be hard. But I didn't realize how many of the changes would bring with them other changes. Quite often it is the unexpected revelations that are the painful ones. But, at the end of the day, I know I need this and that the culmination of the results, someday, will be worth it. And I know that while everyone wants people to like tham, what people think of me does not define who I am.


September 17, 2005

Living

(this turned into a lot of complaining- just a warning)

I've sat down to post so many times in the last couple of weeks. And I'd sit with a blank screen as I slowly realized that I didn't really have anything to say. I read something the other day where the guy said that he and his wife stopped doing their blogs for a while because they realized they were spending way too much time watching other people to get amusing anecdotes to post about, and that they weren't spending enough times living their own lives for those to be worth posting about. And I realized last night, at about 2 am, that that is how I feel right now.

Not that I spend too much time watching other people live their lives, but that too much lately I have been living my life for other people and not for myself. It seems like everything I do lately, it is because someone needs me to do it, and I've become too helpful and too nice for my own good. I've spent so much time needing to be needed, that I let myself be needed allll the time and don't make time for myself or my own life anymore. As I write this, I've got a dress I hate in the dryer, getting ready to wear to a wedding today. My friends are having a medieval themed wedding, and so, I'm dewrinkling the dress I haven't worn in a year because I don't have time for SCA anymore.

When I get home, I have a scrapbooking workshop I really want to go to, but don't know if I'll have the energy for. And I also have lines to learn for yet another show I didn't audition for. Maybe in October I can have my life back.

But it's not all bad. Caryn's wedding is next week, and I am So. Freakin. Excited.

Oh, and Charlotte and I went and saw "40 Year Old Virgin" last night, and HOLY CRAP. I really expected to kind of hate it, but that movie was so funny it hurt. I'm totally buying it on DVD...


September 07, 2005

Those darn kids!

So, cats are totally like kids. You tell them to stop the thing they're doing that you don't want them doing, and they whine at you, then keep doing it anyway. I discovered last night that my cat has a middle name. It wasn't a conscious decision. But last night, I totally two-named* my cat. His name is Julie (yes, *his* name). It is short for Julius. Well, last night, he was scratching at the door, which is a no-no. I put laundry hampers in front of the door at night when I sleep so he doesn't keep the housemates up all night (or me for that matter), but when I'm in the room, he gets told no, he gets snapped at (finger snaps), he gets squirted with a water bottle- nothing deters this cat. So last night, he was being annoying and scratching at the door -he is jealous of my laptop, and he acts out, just like a child, to get my attention. And at one point, I totally snapped my head up and hissed "Julius Michael!" and he stopped for a minute, but then started back up again ans I sat there and thought, wow, my cat has a middle name. Who knew?

*you know, when kids are in trouble and you call them by their first and middle names


September 06, 2005

Not Feeling It

So once again there are extended silences on my blog... I just haven't felt like posting. There hasn't been anything I really wanted to say, and I think I'm just exhausted by the pace life was setting for a while. I'm spending more time at home, spending more time offline, just reading a book or watchng TV and relaxing. I spent much of Labor Day weekend at home not feeling well. I'm hoping once life gets back to normal, i.e. my general balance of work, friends and various extracurricular activities, life will become interesting enough to blog about again.

But for now, I'm feeling rather "blah" in light of my dad's surgery and that thing that happened that will not be talked about here because Dooce has shown by example that it is a bad idea to talk about such things here, but suffice to say that that thing has made my daytimes far busier than they used to be. I miss blogging, though, so I'm not taking a hiatus or anything, I'm just a little quiet.