What's Going On

I may not have mentioned that I've moved into this place with my best friend. Most days I love it. I love having my own space, I love having a washer/dryer literally inches from my bedroom door, I love having a kitchen stocked with things that I bought, etc. I love that we're walking distance from the river, and I love that some nights when I drive home, the air is swimming with fireflies.

I thing I have mentioned that I've been working at this daycare-type place, but it isn't really for me. I've told them that I want to leave, but have not officially put in my two weeks' notice. I don't have another job yet. Some moments this seems incredibly reckless and misdirected; other moments it seems reasonable and necessary. I am not the person they want or need for the program, though I know that better than they do. They are not a program I want or need to be a part of. It plays up my weaknesses and does not utilize my strengths, and possibly more importantly, it does not help or encourage me to move toward my goal, which is to be a counselor/therapist. I will miss the children, though.

I didn't get enough sleep last night, and I woke up feeling discouraged and somewhat depressed. Floundering a bit, where earlier in the week I felt confident. I need to remember how important it is for me to make sure that I don't blow off my sleep schedule, as has been my habit for almost my entire life. When I do, my performance and my mental health suffer. And my attitude suffers. And attitude is everything.

I was browsing Pinterest a week or two ago and saw a link to a video of a commencement speech delivered by Neil Gaiman, who is one of my favorite authors. He's a rock star in my book, and he seems like a pretty wise guy. Toward the end of the speech he said that a woman he knew had called him once, and asked how he thought she should go about doing something that she considered to be quite difficult. He told her to pretend that she was a person who was capable of accomplishing her goal. It can be difficult for me to remember to pretend that way, and it can take some energy, but honestly, this is some of the best advice I have ever heard, and it has been helping me greatly. Attitude is everything.

About Ian: he's not perfect, we don't always see eye-to-eye, and like just about every other relationship I've ever been in I'm not 100% sold, but he is pretty awesome in a lot of ways. He is caring and funny and sarcastic, complimentary and generous, forgiving and flirtatious and attentive. And I really appreciate those things.


But back to the job issue: probably tutoring would be wise for me to get back into. I'm also looking for flexible hourly positions that would make it somewhat easier to a) hold multiple jobs, should I so choose, and b) take classes. Not that I know what I'm doing AT ALL when it comes to researching and applying to graduate schools. So if anyone knows of good companies to work for, or if anyone has any advice re: higher education, feel free to let me know.

I would like to take a moment to complain.

I'm leaving for the beach after work tomorrow, and, as I will be working from 7am to 7pm,* I will have exactly zero time tomorrow to pack or shower or nap, or eat for that matter, so these things need to happen tonight. And I LIKE TOTALLY do not feel like doing anything at all except reading for a few hours and then going to sleep and then sleeping in WAY past 6:15. And then just teleporting to the beach, rather than hanging out in a car for four hours or so.








































*Okay, maybe 6:45. 6:40 if I'm really lucky.

Holla

Today was the day of what was probably my best with-campers caving trip ever. They were great. They were singing the Klondike Bar jingle in the van. They were helping one another out and holding each other's flashlights. Those that may not have liked caving very much hid it so well that I didn't know until it was mentioned by my co-counselor. Tracee spoke nothing but Spanish the entire time. Kat and Nadine led the way out of the cave almost completely without assistance. Remind me: why are they not yet old enough to be on staff?


In other news,

1. I was kept up far later than I would have liked a couple of nights ago, and I have not yet caught up on sleep. and I am getting a cold. and it is lame.

2. We had Christmas this morning, and that was pretty great.

3. I am just about out of free time for today.

VS.

I really need to sleep, but it appears that I also really want to write. It's 1 am, of course. Convenient.

This post made from 85% post-consumer recycled material.

It's spring, it's spring, it's SPRING, and the staff retreat starts tomorrow. I mean, two days from now in my mind, but technically tomorrow.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned this? The fact that I have many strengths, but that regular sleep is not among them.

Back to the beginning: the staff retreat. It makes me so happy to think about it. I am so looking forward to being there, and for so many reasons. I'll be taking a break from work, I'll be taking a break from everything that is my life in Richmond, I'll be seeing so many people I love and living in a place that is, in so many ways, the home of my heart. I can't begin to explain the logic or the depth or breadth of my love for the place. The air is different. The tone is different. Obviously people are still people there--people still do stupid things, people still have the same personality flaws that they have anywhere else--but still, somehow, sometimes it feels like wings begin to sprout from my shoulder blades when I step into the car to leave for camp, and when I step out into that gravel driveway and I hear the sound of the creek and see the trees stretching up around me, they unfurl. When I think about being there this coming weekend, I literally feel as though I've been breathing stale air, or like I've been holding my breath. I literally look forward to being able to breathe this weekend. That's all.

Early spring softness

The night air is so gorgeous this evening--soft and warm. It makes me want to sleep outside. I considered doing so for a moment, but it is important to remember that as warm as 50 degrees might feel while you're walking a dog, try to sleep outside in 50 degree weather and it's suddenly cold as anything. In early summer in the mountains it gets down to the lower fifties at night, or upper forties if we're really unlucky, and I end up supplementing my blankets with sweats and socks and longjohns and a hat. It's really flippin cold.

But anyway my point is that it's a beautiful night. Summer is coming.

It makes no sense.

Why do I have such an aversion to bedtime?

You know, if we hadn't effectively ruined natural selection, I'd be an evolutionary dead end. THANKS, SCIENCE.

What the F

Why the crap am I still awake? Somebody please explain to me why the hell I'm still awake. I'm a moron.


Still feeding my addiction to that stupid POF website. I'm a sucker for low-pressure email friends. And it's like Lays. No, not that you can't eat just one--more that (generally speaking) they were never very good, but you just can't stop eating them anyway, because they're crunchy and greasy and give you something to do. It's an issue. Somebody smack me. I should just go hit on guys at the gas station instead. I considered doing this, the other day, but drove off before the plan was fully formed in my mind. (Read: wimped out.)


My Bon Ami du Festival stuff came in the mail today: shirt, sticker, handwritten note, and membership discount card. FTW. I'm too tired though to be all that enthused about it. How strange.


There's more to write, but dammit, it's 3:15. Forget it. Goodnight.

Maybe I should re-title this blog.

"Midnight Dog Walking in Va."

It's a wonder I get any hits. I swear I'll stop talking about the moon though when Sara stops insisting that she likes what I say even when I say silly crap. Or at least I'll think about stopping.

Seriously though, I promised myself I wasn't going to do it tonight. I even closed my computer before we went outside. I should have gone ahead and shut it down completely. I just... I just don't even know what to do with myself. I look up and I see the moon with that round rainbow halo it gets around it sometimes, hanging up there and shining through the tree branches, and it's so perfect I just don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I could just stop time and stare at it forever. I get the same way every time I hear wild water running. You're lucky that there's only so much one can say about the sound of the creek at the bottom of the hill. But then, I guess some might say the same thing about the night sky. It has a moon, it has a bunch of stars, there are clouds sometimes, the end. But, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. I was going to throw in a quote about obsession, but my three-second Google search only yielded quotes about how "[x] is my obsession." How profound.

On another note, I would like to say that I am completely disgusted with myself for being up until 3 am. Again. This is so stupid.




EDIT:

Just kidding! Found one! Lucky you.

"I do not think that obsession is funny or that not being able to stop one's intensity is funny."
Jim Dine 

Stuff I need to do

Introduce sparkles to my wardrobe.

Apply for this thing.

Get my jacket off the sofa.

Stop participating in this pattern: stay up till 3 (or 2 or 4) am; sleep till 9; be awakened for some unforeseen thing at 9 or 10; lie angrily or dejectedly in bed, trying in vain to lose consciousness, for a couple of hours; get up and do stuff.

Look at this picture some more.

I'm pretty sure I forgot something, but I think it'll be ok.



I have been interested to mull over the idea that when I make these grand (or perhaps not so grand) proclamations about myself or the way I feel about things, they are actually just snapshots of moments. I feel this way in this moment, and this moment may last for ten seconds or for a year, or two, or more. That my life is (I began to type "just," but thought better of it) a continuous, interlinked strand of moments. That I am a collection of moments. That all of my relationships, and all of yours, are built of them.


I also had a conversation with Sara earlier about things I am afraid of doing, and how I should probably allow for the possibility of them happening anyway, even though almost everything in me rebels against the idea. (I'm not good at opening up to people. It doesn't feel safe to me.) And after I came home from tutoring tonight*, I was suddenly having trouble remembering why I shouldn't just stay closed off and keep myself safe that way. Why should I try to connect with people, again? Then I remembered.

Look. I tried living out of fear. I tried shaping my life around the avoidance of things I was afraid of. It was no kind of life. That's why.























*It's finals week, and I missed four sessions over the holiday and Scotland, so I tutored Suzanne for two hours last night and two hours, fifteen minutes tonight. English yesterday and social studies today. It was great. I should maybe ditch this swim thing and find more people to tutor. Does anybody need tutoring in anything?

ice

shortly after 2 am I stumbled out the front door with leaden feet and a dog leash clutched in one fist. eventually I began to realize that I was passing most of this walk with my chin tucked down into my chest (no doubt a subconscious message that any person in her right mind would be tucked into blankets just then, rather than scarves), but when I convinced myself to lift my head I could see that it was (is) a beautiful night. the sky is purple. purple! and the stars are, of course, just lovely. sleet obviously has its downsides, but in the small hours every tree branch gleams in the porch lights, and the liriope*plants looked like dim green sea anemones underfoot. Walking on the thick frozen grass felt pretty spiffy, but it was less fun to hit a spot that had been tire-flattened earlier in the day, and slide on the ice-slicked ground. another note: wind chimes on an extremely early january morning sound pretty mystical. That sounds horrible. "Mystical" is not the word I want to be using, but I'm not sure there's another that fits better. You know? When you picture wind chimes, it's sunny and hot, 3pm on a july afternoon. (it's 3. f capitalization.) hearing them in the dark cold of january is so unexpected, and somehow a little amazing.


I noticed on the way to work tonight that the ground was all frosted. it irritates me a little that when you read this, you'll read "frosted" as a reference to cake, when actually cake frosting is almost certainly a reference to the phenomenon I was noticing on the grass. worse, if you're really doomed (like I evidently am), you'll hear "frosted" and think of the "ladies, frost yourselves" diamond commercial from "how to lose a guy in ten days." /shudder.


okay, TO BED. for real this time.






























*Evidently I've never written that word before. Had no idea how to spell it. Thank you, google.

The Arts

Tonight was "The Sound of Music," performed by the kids from my highschool, plus a few from middle and lower school as well to make up the Von Trapp kids. Long movie, yeah? It's a long play too. The intermission came an hour and a half in. They did a pretty decent job though.

Relatedly: am I the only one bothered by the practice of giving a standing ovation for pretty much every performance of anything ever? Am I wrong in thinking that a standing ovation should be reserved for special occasions? I hate to break it to everybody, but the way things are now, a standing ovation pretty much doesn't mean shit. So I didn't stand, and I felt like a curmudgeon. Just like every other time I didn't stand.


In case anyone other than Sara has been reading my formspring, which I doubt, but whatever, I have remembered an answer to the "favorite food" question. It is this: toast (preferably potato bread toast) soaked in the juice left over from cooking meat in a pan. Pot roast will do; roast chicken is miraculous.


It's finally cooling off, at least for a little while. Should get down into the forties tonight, I hear. I haven't checked the weather.

The moon rose sleepily tonight, heavy-lidded and cycloptic, and peered down through the trees. Miley, true to form, was a pill half of the time and angelic the rest. Oh well. I have to be up at eight tomorrow to get to the RBA and help stuff envelopes, and I've been yawning since seven. Better get to bed.