I've been trying to compose a Last Blog Post in my head all day, with little luck. How do you conclude five and a half years of cyberbabble?
Eh. You accept that you can't.
I'm done here. Thank you for reading, especially if you've been reading all along.
I knew I should have developed a signature goodbye by now. Alas.
xoxo
[I fixed the video!]
***
Bum be bum bum bum di da da di da
I don't like my previous post much. "Oh, here's a whole eighteen paragraphs on a topic I claim I'm not worried about." And then, eh, I suppose I shouldn't gather that my processing something is the same as worrying about it. But still. And I was so hyperbolic. I am the most hyperbolic I've ever been.
hehe
I just ate a ginormous bowl of Kix and a vanilla Drumstick. And I'm soooo sleeeeepyyyyy and I use so many vowels when I'm sleeeeepy. Ys, sometimes.
(I do like that this blog accurately conveys changes in my depth of thought.... "What, pray tell, does the future hold?" shares a brain with "YES! My milk to cereal ratio was LEGIT!")
I've gone a few days without an anxiety episode. It's all or nothing, it seems. Balancing it is kind of fun. Choppy waters groom stronger sailors. And sometimes... it's no fun at all.
My email is broken. That's pretty rude!
I am going to talk to the Registrar on Thursday. Right after I pass my motorcycle licensing test. And just like that, numerous shows are getting on the road. My money show, however, has taken to what feels like a gravel path. While walking barefoot. But I've only ever been at the mercy of God's provision, and I continue to praise that I am. Lack of resources grooms...stronger resource sailors. Stewards, if you will. Stewards of the High Seas.
***
This song plays at work a lot. People don't like it. It's one of my very favorite songs of ever. I told a scoffing colleague that I put this on the first love mix I ever made. She asked if we were still together. Touche, darling. But Joni and I, we did the best we could, and between that relationship and this song, the better of the two survived.
And I felt myself searching for answers that typically satisfy. I said something about being either five years further into vertical growth in my current job, or roughly three years closer to a profession it might take me another two years to determine. They seemed satiated.
I thought about this the whole way home, talking out loud to myself and to God the way I do. Where do I see myself in five years?
How about where does God see me in five years? I mean honestly, in five years, I see myself thankful that I've lived for twenty-five years. Isn't the point that I don't see anything? Who am I to project myself that far into the future on my own strength?
I'm not negating hope. I understand goals and ambitions and dreams. I understand the basic, linear curiosity behind the question. And I don't resent the question. I'm quite pleased it was asked of me, considering it spurred this much thought. I would have thought about it less if not for the amount of recent thought I've put into going back to school. My first thought was, wow! Five years from now, I could be two years into exploring any field I choose. Here's the thing, though.
I know I sound like a hippie, an idealist, or perhaps just plain lazy, but I feel like I chose my field when I quit school. I don't want to learn the way university requires me to. I can't afford to get a degree and travel. Even if I could, I'd have to work around my school schedule. I can't work full-time and take classes. I'll cut my speed of progress in half. Yes, I will have done it for the sake of progress in something else... but what?
There's a giant blank there that I haven't filled. The longer I go without filling it, the more readily I grasp that I might not. I mean, I might. There's time. But I might not. Cause there's time. There's only so much time, and it's not much at all, and how will I wish I had spent it?
I have been attempting to master three things.
1) Separate what I can change from what I can't. Change what I can as I want to. Release what I can't.
2) Be a better friend.
3) Stop worrying.
alternate title:
3) Trust God.
I do wonder if/why I lack ambition. I don't think I would wonder this on my own. I think I anticipate that other people might wonder that for me. It doesn't make me feel very good. It makes me feel stagnant and shallow and loser-y. So, ambition. What do I want to do? Where do I see myself in five years?
By the grace of God, I will have come across someone who I live to love and support. I am realizing how often my happiness hides in others' happiness. I just... want everyone to be who they want to be. And I want to help them get there.
My dream is to help people reach their dreams. I don't care in what capacity. I would set aside every dream I have if it meant I could take some part in encouraging/praying/funding/moving/hard laboring/baking/brewing/writing/laughing people I love into the places they see themselves.
Where do I see myself in five years? Where do YOU see yourself in five years? How can I help you get there?
That's how I feel. That's the furthest I've gotten. And you know what, time and money are finite. God hasn't established a degree as the most worthy recipient of mine. That will always be all the peace I need about forgoing one.
The person who asked me this question concluded our discussion by telling me, "You know, I'll always watch out for you, but I'll never worry about you. You are going to be more than fine."
I could have cried. That sentiment is the most I could ever ask of anybody. I am the most content I've ever been. I am in the most awe of God's love and faithfulness to me than I've ever been. My heart is the most geographically settled it's ever been. Concern for me is laughable.
Where do I see myself in five years?
Still happy. Still prayerful. Near my family. In possession of long-awaited travel memories. In literary magazines? In love? Grateful.
Here's the truth.
I'm just not worried about it.
Hmmm
Thinking a lot about God's faithfulness and provision and my adventures in prayer.
About good friends and excessive laughter.
About ambition and intention and their marriages to action and execution.
About recognizing unproductive thought and minimizing it.
About squeezing peace from anxiety
joy from concern
reality from dreams
truth from wonder.
About abstract nouns and the insufficient depth of language.
Perhaps that's why eyes say so much.
she was terribly hungry.
and she wasn’t a pronoun
not a euphemism for that girl,
not an antecedent in hiding,
not a tally for feminism,
not a manifestation
of anything other than a place
to store waffles,
and she did.
fluorescent lighting harsh
like her eye contact,
a prayer for a dimmer switch basking
in the bottom of every bottomless cup
of coffee
--a euphemism indeed.
she was alone
often alone
shaking with laughter and unease
saying things like
“I’ve lost my style.”
they ask, “How is
everything?”
and she finds that
an impossible question to answer.
expressway blues echo.
later, a train will croon
and it settles into her like a knife
into soft wood
the idea that everywhere is somewhere
people traveling as hopes do:
at the mercy of delays and cancellations.
the only map she can see confirms that she is,
in fact,
here
ordering seconds
of time and of hashbrowns
her eyes alight like the pre-dawn sky.
the grey-blues soften as the sounds in her head do,
internal silence reaching equilibrium
with that of the world at this hour.
counting the number of syllables in the word
“longitudinally,”
she makes Olympic rings out of water circles
and peace with expectations.
she notes that she's only ever seen
one Heinz variety
and that this linoleum booth is no harder
than it is to say goodbye.
Me again. I always attempt a bit of a routine when I find myself buzzing at a frequency higher than I can control. Pray. Drive. Blog. Sleep.
Which is silly, cause there's nothing to say.
When I was in seventh grade, I qualified for a three-week academic summer camp at Davidson College. The course I chose was Mysteries of Human Consciousness. Man, if a degree existed by that exact title, I'd have it by now. Anyway. We watched this video that detailed two cases of abnormal neurological chemical levels, but I can't remember the chemicals. In one case, the patient could find no other explanation for his lack of emotional recognition of his parents than to claim that they'd been abducted by aliens. He was so devoid of love and affection for them that he had to wonder if they were them at all. Something to do with serotonin or dopamine, perhaps. His parents were distraught, unable to convince their son that they were exactly who they'd always been. In the second case, the patient could find no explanation for his overblown care and concern for every single living thing other than to claim that he was God. Heightened levels of the same chemicals caused him to imagine ownership and compassion for every single plant, animal, and person. He was exhausted.
Of all the things I learned during that program, which was the up-to-then best experience of my life, it's this video I recall most often. I have drawn upon it when I wonder what tangible things, if any, cause my crippling sense of hyperawareness. I tire of the mind. I believe in it as I do the soul, but it's like treating a high blood pressure patient for heartbreak. Similar catalysts may intersect to produce similar symptoms, but if what you're doing isn't working, it's time to consider other diagnoses.
I have a regular customer with Tourette's whom I see almost daily. His audible and visible compulsions make people uncomfortable. He tries to control them but is rarely successful. What most seem to see as poor self-judgment of his capacity to handle social situations, I see as courage. Sure, there's a point at which he should be mindful of his effect on other people, but I think that's exactly what he is. The internal plea he makes to himself to be normal is broadcast in the brief eye contact he musters in place of verbal responses to how-are-yous and have-a-good-days.
I've never been close to someone with Tourette's, so I have no explicit justification for my defense of this man outside of my attempt at compassion and kindness. But it unnerves me terribly to imagine how I would process visible manifestations of my mental grievances. Sometimes I wish I were forced to, if only to release a valve in what feels like a pressurized cocoon. Sometimes I feel closer to that man than I do to anyone else all day. Which is fine, considering that growing close to anyone feels like cocoon implosion.
Step 2 found me accelerating up a hill earlier tonight, and as I looked down to check my speed, the needle jumped almost imperceptibly from 45 to 50mph. Not gradually. Instantly. The discrepancy between what I felt in my constant acceleration and what I saw in the instant result... I can't explain it. Incongruencies send in-that-state me over the edge. My attempt to literally shake off the anxiety battled my ability to stay in my lane. The latter won, to be clear. Nothing to see here, folks.
Well. Looks like there was some to say, after all. Goodnight forreal. Step 4 beckons.
Merrhh. If that's what crankiness sounds like.
The pile of laundry on my bed is taller than I am wide. Or deep? Whatever my horizontal dimension. Don't worry. It's clean. It's like napping in a valley. Napping Valley! hahahahahah
sorry.
I love my ampersand! It's been long enough that I can look at it without reflecting on the decision itself. I see it now and think, "did I come with this?! who put it there! it's awesome!" Silly goose. You did. Cause you're cool.
The sunlight filters through dancing leaves and static blinds while I filter through thoughts that pass like highway exits. Attempts to repossess them float away in futility comparable to that of a wintertime firefly hunt.
My rising gas budget is a donation to the therapy that is driving curvy roads, windows down, Dylan Waters Morrison Townsend Mitchell Garfunkel wailing along with me. I do most of the wailing. Well, and Dylan. What a guy.
Spirits are high, I think. The family tackles trials together and only ever loves and enjoys each other more as a result. The job, no matter its sometimes (uh, often) overwhelming triviality, means what it means to me and gives me the opportunity to glorify God through maintained patience and humility and grace concerning colleagues and customers alike. I've settled into a general sense of belonging, but the recognition of such hasn't filled a desperate void. It's improved upon a standard. I'm never lost. I belong where I'm happy, where I'm loved, where I love. The rest is all gravy and buttercream icing. As separate condiments. Don't be gross.
I would like to conclude with the sound of a small smile. I typed all the crankiness right outta me.
Enjoy your evening. Encourage someone. Embrace silence.
xoxo,
Gossip Girl
"She did not want to think, but the sound of thought went on."
I resent affirmation that self-preservation is synonymous with good judgment.
I'm kinda ready to step out of the freezer, but I'm not strong enough to melt.
I'm kinda ready for someone to convince me to stop running.
This empty white box both soothes and terrifies me.
How did I become so guarded? Why doesn't Dagny Taggart's cynicism shock me more?
Why do I get butterflies when I listen to Explosions in the Sky? Why do I insist that people work so hard to see me transparently? Who taught me how to do that? Will I accidentally teach my children to do that?
How do I reconcile my love and contempt?
Where do I sign up to become a monk.
The nuns have too many chicks.
Sometimes I think I can't handle anything more than praising God in silence for the rest of my life, though it's in God that I could.
Sometimes I want to look at everything I love in one place, breathe deeply, close my eyes, and walk away from it forever.
and just walk. forever.
I am a horrid journaler. I always have been. I think up new, inventive ways to journal, in attempts to keep my attention and remind myself of the worth in recorded thought. No sooner have I conceived such ideas than I begin to accept the fruition they'll never see.
I record my thoughts to get them out of my head. All I want, really, is somebody who will take them from me. I don't need to write them down; it's all mercurial and transient and nothing sticks. It sticks to paper and nothing else. As I continue to mull over and evaluate McCandless's proposition that "happiness is only real when shared," I find myself oscillating between the all and nothing approaches. Nothing is real unless shared. Everything is real, even when un-shared. Entire philosophies have been built upon each.
I'm digressing.
I don't want to keep a journal. I want to think my thoughts and lose them as they leave, the same way I lose everything else. They will survive inside of me until I forget them, or inside of those I tell.
Too much of me looks over my shoulder, where I imagine the someone I'd love is waiting for me to turn around.
Why can't they just catch up?
***
I am a linear thinker, but not lately, and it's messing with me. Can you tell? Of course there's worth in recorded thought. To posit anything else meets immediate scrutiny. Something to do with its lack of basis.
What have I been doing here for five years? Recording thought. Its worth spans a vast spectrum, but everything that isn't nothing is something.
Blah blah blah.
This is all aftermath of my sudden suspicion that none of my bones are writer's bones.
True, they're no one's but mine.
But what are they for? If not writing, if not higher learning, if not befriending, if not traveling, if not loving...
Well. They're for some of those things. Must be, if I say so. I am their only judge.
They're for, perhaps, a little bit of everything.
In another life--the one in which my uncle makes clocks and I collect old, mismatched spoons, the one in which my favorite series is Anne of Green Gables and I pepper conversation with in-context passages of Thoreau's Walden, the one in which my brother's been gone for years and I never learned to whistle--in this life that's not my own, I grew up near a marina. I can tie seven reliable boat-docking knots, and I know how to scale a fish. Every local fisherman and fisherwoman knows my name like they do their boat's, and they cast their nets like I cast glances--with the careful precision expert risk-taking requires. I've never ventured from home. I've never had reason more pressing than the paradoxical desire of a dockbound gypsy. I embody the domestic adage "grown and groomed," and I don't resent it often.
***
The towels are in the dryer and the Saab's oil is fresh. Your mom called. Your dad won his match. Nancy said Dan is re-staining the deck next weekend, and would you be willing to help him? I didn't speak for you. I watered the mums on the windowsill, but I fear the tomatoes are past repair. I unsubscribed you from Men's Health and TIME. The library carries new issues within the week of release. I wonder if you're on your way. It's alright, Mr. Kim said they're catering an event tonight and so it would take a bit longer than normal. I called Paul back and told him we went a different way with the molding, and he said it was fine. Did you remember your brother's birthday? The card is next to the toaster. There's a special on tonight I thought we could watch. It's about that man who killed all those people in Minnesota. Something about the mind of a killer. Can you imagine? All those people. I can't imagine. There was a story in the news about a little boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, he killed his neighbor's cat. They say that's how it starts, those killers. I say it starts when someone didn't raise them properly. Too many parents working all the time. They've got to put food on the table for those killers of theirs. I ran into Martha at the store today and she said Mel is retiring as soon as they figure out which route to take from here to New England. On their boat! Can you imagine? I've never been to New England. I wonder if their winters are as bad as they say. I do hope you'll be home soon. I have so much to tell you.
Loving someone is an invincible feeling. Interesting, given the volatility of love. But for what it is and the purpose it provides, it accomplishes almost everything you'd want to, and it does it all at once. If you're me, travel with someone you love, and the "almost" fades away.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't loved anybody yet. Not because it's passed, but because the contrast between life in love and life without spans a length broad enough to sadden me. I suppose it's the lack of anything that pulls us to reclaim what's lacking, but a pull you have no control over begins to feel like a drag through the mud.
No one likes to perform as a shade of what they could be. Most commonly, that's coined as "selling yourself short," if you believe doing so is possible. That's why sudden unemployment is such a source of grief and depression for those struggling with it. Productivity and purpose as they knew it formerly disappear without saying goodbye. I consider living life between loves as living life between jobs. The latter is but a shadow in comparison, but when I think of performing as a shade of what I could be, I think of what I'm doing at any point that I'm not composing phrases of devotion in my head and conjuring ways to make one person smile. In fact, I do it anyway. But the person isn't real.
I don't think I so highly regarded knowing someone as well as they'll allow me--and even better than that--before I'd been in love. It's become my goal in any relationship I have. So much so that if I recognize the person in question has either given that part of them to someone else, or doesn't care for me to have it, I don't care much to have them. I think it's important that I've recognized this, because it's not terribly healthy. It doesn't render me a very good friend. Yet I can't shake the desire for the greatest opportunity of knowledge of any one person. I don't believe this is an original or even rare desire; it's a pride any soul well-versed in companionship would take. But it seems I prefer loneliness to anything less than the gold. Perhaps understandable, considering how precious the gold.
But isn't silver nice, too?
The answer is a dialogue between my head and my heart, and I'm not sure which says which.
"Yes."
"But you can have it."
Hey! So. I woke up this morning with a heavy feeling. If I hadn't worked today, it might have consumed me. It was more of the same; no need to verbalize the sensations. But I sorted through it. Or it sorted through me? Either way.
Anyway, so I'm thinking about ambition and goals and how you can spend all your time dreaming of who you'll be, but who were you while you dreamed?
I'm doing my laundry, washing my sheets. Drinking water. Cleaning my kitchen. Adult-esque things, yes? Maybe? Dusting off the ol' Ingrid mp3s. "I want to change the world; instead, I sleep." All we can do is keep breathing.
I'm looking forward to so much! An entire week at the beach with the family and friends. Friends visiting. Asheville with Becky! Motorcycle course. St. Louis. Chicago.
Man, I just.... just the prospect of travel calms me down. Knowing it will happen makes me want to shriek with glee. Into a pillow, so I don't frighten anyone.
I'm praying about L'Abri, Alaska, and Haiti. I'm praying about school, work, church, and love, and the absence of each, as they apply.
Like a certain favorite and recently very stressed-alternating-with-very excited roommate likes to remind me, you're only lonely if you consider yourself bad company. Or something like that? I don't want to be lonely anymore.
So I won't be.
Hi. I am on my lunch break at work. I am typing this on my tiny phone. I wanted to say that I'm a bit tired of being such a drag all the time. I couldn't sleep last night and realized with a start that I'd like to put all the time I smush into thinking into learning instead. I spend so much time in my head. Granted, I often feel trapped there, but who doesn't like a challenge? I don't want to be so stormy all the time. We all have enough of that. So from now on, I'll post more of the sunshine. I might try a music posting project my brother suggested. Or upload my instagram pictures. And surely, when I have no one to turn while I'm sifting through the dark, I'll turn to you, but I'll steer some clear skies this way, too. Something good this way comes. Anyway, it's time for me to go. Forgive any typos... this post is proofread-free. Good day to you! Good day to me.
I feel like an alarmist when I post such things in the public eye, but then I remember it's my portal that readers choose to partake in, not some platform upon which I assume responsibility to said readers.
that doesn't mean I don't love you.
:)
by "such things," I mean that I don't know where it came from and I can't explain its intermittence, but I believe I am fighting a depression and that I will do so in some degree for the rest of my life.
I've come across numerous postings lately, on tumblr, postsecret, assorted blogs, etc., where people relay their transition from thinking people who say they battle depression are dramatic, stagnant hypochondriacs to recognizing that they are overcome with a struggle they would rid themselves of as soon as shown how to. I tried never to subscribe to the first evaluation, but the second stands in new light.
Perhaps it's not a depression. I don't even really know what that means. In taking inventory of the trends this blog has taken, you know as well as I do that my grasp on my psyche is some balance of intricate and ignorant. I suppose I am just sad sometimes... some deep, overwhelming, weighty, isolating, paralyzing, exhausting form of sad. Maybe I'll grow out of it.
I wonder if I'll be waiting to grow out of it thirty years from now.
Knowing and living in the joy of the Lord does not translate to happiness. That's okay.
Sometimes I imagine that each of my woes is tied to a balloon or a bird that floats and flies away. I would like to take fewer things seriously and to be more fun and not to have a reason to express these feelings at all. But in my consideration that no time is wasted, I am left to gather that nothing that requires it is wasted, either. Whatever fills your life has filled your life. One of those philosophical mumbo jumbos that sounds overly simple but could spin your head like a carousel if you let it.
I'm just me, though, and this is part of it. I don't smile as often as people would like me to, and I laugh at myself more often than people understand. I don't intend to separate myself from humanity; while it's true that I rarely come across people I feel can process some of my wavelengths, I assume that most people feel the same way about themselves. I am no more than one more creation, living under and within the human condition, yelling a whisper about things everyone already knows. And at the same time, there has never been another with the same set of genes, experiences, and thoughts.
It's whatever.
Thanks for reading. I want to tell you that secretly, I'm pretty fun. That I know a few good jokes, and that I'm a good candidate for listening to you talk about anything that excites you. But then I'd be defending myself, and I don't want to do that here.
ttfn, little chickadees. and something dramatic and inspiring, like
Godspeed.
sometimes I catch myself trying to force thoughts into status-sized morsels, and then I remember that's what this is for.
I just want... so many experiences. adventures. destinations. the rearview mirror. I always want to go. to go and be gone.
and some day I may want roots, an anchor, lead feet, down payments...
and some days I want to love somebody, more than I want to be loved, though I refuse to invest the first without affirmation of the latter, and it strikes me today that I'd rather the gypsy adventure than the adventure in love. that one I've tried.
it strikes me today that I dread salesmanship for the same reason any stretch of time without a transition in sight makes my skin feel four sizes too small: fear of rejection.
no one leaves you if you leave first.
unoriginal and straightforward. nothing to dissect and nothing to wonder. but it's there, and it's true.
and the parallel causes me a bit of pain, somewhere southeast of my heart, as though my abdomen maps the country and Georgia throbs with the stagnance of overripe produce.
perhaps tattoos, for me, are a manifestation of this pain.
I hate to run, but I love to run away, and I crave the out-of-breath feeling--the one that arriving in a new place borrows from exercise, the addictive cocktail of discomfort and adrenaline--I crave it every moment it's gone.
