Next?

       My favorite quote of the day yesterday was not exactly poetry, although it came from someone that has a gift with words.  He said, "I'm firmly against gratuitous violence...but if you get carried away with a new promotion and don't finish your novel...there is a very high probability that I will personally come and punch you right in the tits! I mean that in the most caring of ways.**"  It was born from a conversation where I mentioned how I want to move up, have more responsibility, make more money.  All of those things take sacrifice, and what suffers most in these scenarios is typically the time taken for self.

       Sacrifice has been just a part of life, as I've "back burnered" my own personal goals and desires, if you will.  It was done with open arms, without a thought about it, really, in order to make sure that shit just got handled. That's what I do...I take care of things.  While I was taking care of things, all of my friends and family got married and had kids.  I have my own accomplishments that I am proud of...and I feel like I've done pretty well for a kid that came from a poor family with no overt advantages, but there are things I feel I missed out on. I know there are other 30 somethings out there that feel the same, that feel like they're still getting their shit together.  At least...I hope there are. I hope I'm not the only one.

      The above mentioned novel is not yet finished, and I can blame a lot of things.  Not enough time, other responsibilities that take priority, the fact that my left brain gets most of the exercise and my right brain at this point is like the flabby guy at the gym rolling off of the treadmill...those are all pertinent and realistic reasons that the book isn't done. The others are sheer procrastination, and fear.

My right brain, getting destroyed by daily math.  Statistics: a shot to the balls.  

     What if my book sucks?  That's a real fear a la Marty McFly, "What if they say I'm no good? What if they say, "Get out of here kid. You've got no future"? I mean, I just don't think I can take that kind of rejection."  That is partially true.  The other weirder one is this: What if it's awesome?  What if I had the ability to write for a living, as I've always said I wanted to do, and had access to unlock my happiness?  That kind of change, although I fully realize would be 100% terrific, is scary as hell.

      While I've always embraced change,  I've never fully embraced this one.  Writing and having it published and actually sell has always been "that ridiculous dream" for me.  It would mean, in a way, I would no longer own it all to myself, in that world existing only in my head, wondering "what if?"  And that...that may be my biggest fear: to expose the story in my head to the viewing public, to attain that goal, and instead of asking "what if" I would be forced to ask "what next?" It's a ponderous thing, how "what's next" can leave me feeling skeptical of both the now and the next.

     It's an uneasy feeling, looking ahead and realizing that this is new territory.  This isn't a cyclic rehashing of old patterns and defenses...this is brand new, fresh out of the box, some assembly required, not-sure-how-I-feel-about this stuff.  This is saying, "I want this to work out" and then trembling in fear as I do something about it.  And then of course, I either sink or swim, which is a terrible metaphor because I am terrified of the water. 

       I know that if I don't finish this novel, I'm in for an unpleasant punch in the tits, and so I will probably start with just avoiding that.   A fear of success is a very real fear, and I certainly have it.  I just have to ask myself the age old question: what's worse: the pursuit of success, or a jab to the boobs?

    

 
Skeptically Yours.




**None of my friends actually abuse me, though it is commonly threatened.

    

Who we were.

      I come from a small town that revolved, for me as a kid at least, around the beach.  I was allowed to roam free, mostly, as a child, carefree on my pink and grey ten speed bicycle that I received on my 9th birthday.  Some things about that world, as I have learned in my adult life, were not as I remember them and the world was not as safe as I believed.  Perhaps my free roaming rights should have been a little more restricted, but if that were the case, I wouldn't have had those long sun-filled days burning the bottoms of my feet and picking sand spurs out of them at Englewood Beach, grabbing a hot dog and Coke lunch at Circle K; or spent my evenings at Pelican Pete's Playland earning enough tickets for a slap bracelet or some other useless plastic bit and running the go carts until I was out of the money my mom had handed me in the parking lot.

      Englewood is where I was a kid at Englewood Elementary watching the Challenger explode, where I was re-zoned into Vineland Elementary and became a Pop Warner cheerleader,  and where I suffered through middle school at L.A.Ainger where I was both bullied and the bully at one time or another and our class of hooligans was denied the benefits of the classes before and after.  Lemon Bay High School, by comparison to high schools in the city, was a tiny school where essentially everyone knew everyone, and you'd run into them eventually at the beach, because it was really the only place to go in town.

      For that reason, when we lose someone that ran the same roads in high school, that hit the beach on the same weekends, that you can trace all the way back to elementary school---it hits home in a different way than people you lose from your adult life alone.  It's happened again, and it's happened all too often.

      It's different because when I see his face, I see the 11 year old Darrell Baxter that used to run me into the wall on the slick track at Pelican Pete's, but still let me win in the end.  I see the Darrell Baxter with spiked hair giving me a Suicidal Tendencies CD for my 11th birthday, after which "All I wanted was a Pepsi" became a running joke. I see the Darrell Baxter spinning himself on a bar stool until he puked just to make my brother laugh.  I see the Darrell Baxter that made me watch bad horror movies, and then secretly held my hand when he thought no one was looking.  Even in High School, during Mr. Pearcy's History Class, I saw 11-year-old Darrell when we'd talk. He was definitely still in there.

     Who we were back then, in a small beach town with nothing to do, set us on our paths towards the places we'd go and the friends we'd keep.  It also means that when we lose one of the pack, looking back is inevitable and hurtful.  I'm looking back a lot today at the moments I had with my friend, with all my friends in the storied beach town of my childhood, sentimentalized as it may be in my head.  I'd rather look backwards with fond memories and forget the harsh realities that must have co-existed.  And I'd rather remember Darrell as that 11 year old boy, digging in the sand on Englewood Beach with 11 year old me, still mostly sure that things would turn out okay.

Skeptically Yours.


Our friend Darrell took his life on February 27th, 2013.  


    

    

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

I've been a Bowie fan for a long time (Labyrinth, anyone?). I'd be the type of parent that completely Zappa'd out and named her kid "Bowie."  That's probably why the universe has kept me from procreating, but that's neither here nor there...

I'm the type of music dork that gets hooked on a song for a few hours, clicking the "repeat" sign and just absorbing the song ad nauseum until, somewhere in the fourth hour, I never want to hear that damned song ever, ever again. I do that with TV shows, food, etc.  Maybe it's the part of obsessive behavior I let roam free.  In any case, today it's Bowie, and I can't stop listening to "Changes."  It's this line that nailed me to the floor: "I watch the ripples change their size but never leave the stream of warm impermanence, so the days float through my eyes."

The idea of impermanence has been something that seriously resonated with me for awhile. Nothing is permanent, and as the song implies, everything changes.  We change.  I use science often as a major defense mechanism against long term relationships, so the idea of change is just...biology, and thus, not scary at all.  Our hormones change.  Our bodies change. We are essentially becoming different people all of the time. 

 So, in the ongoing relentless change that my body and my mind undergo--in my thirties, everything seems different. I feel different. I react differently. I want completely different things. I was laying on the couch the other day with my dog, Joplin, who gazes up at me with deep brown eyes filled with both love and mischief. I felt completely happy and content.  Part of me, at some point in my youth, would have been itching to DO something and not "waste time."  John Lennon once said that "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."  I fully agree and understand that now. I also cry easier, tell people "I love you" often, and find myself wishing to be a part of my nieces' and nephew's lives. Changes---you know---oftentimes for the better.

All it takes, really.

I also stopped buying into the excuse that because we change as part of our biological destiny, that we can't maintain good relationships long-term. Obviously, there are plenty of people that have already proved this theory wrong.  I've not been one of them. Or have I?

When I talk about people I know and love, most of them I have known for a decade or so (give or take---28 years with my oldest, dearest friend). Somehow I have maintained those friendships that long (patient friends is my theory). I guess I have always believed in, and been a part of long-term relationships, just...the platonic ones.

Proven then: the acceptance and belief that impermanence is life and vice verse, and change is our only constant, is not mutually exclusive to healthy relationships. The patterns I have created for myself, now that they have been proven illogical, are likely to fade...just like "Changes."  43 times...it's enough, already.

Okay, maybe just a FEW more listens....

Skeptically Yours.

Lessons from my past self.

Change and flux, realizations and goodbyes. That's the stuff that 2012 was made of.

The staggering amount of people that left my life last year is still quite dizzying.  I've been censoring myself a little in these last few months, partially because I fear rocking the boat with the people that I know personally that read this blog, and partially because I've curtailed a lot of my skepticism by promising to see the glass as half full (seeing it half full of coffee, or beer, certainly helps my positive outlook.)  I've not committed to hitting the "publish" button on this blog because of those reasons. I've written frequently, but it's not gone to press, so to say.

Besides the people that have gone in 2012, I also started to leave behind some of my own terrible tendencies...as my friend says, my "defense mechanisms" that were once useful, but are no longer necessary.  Those defense mechanisms served their purposes but they also segregated me and hurt people I care/cared about.  They made foggy my moral compass.

So part of my own "therapy" has been to dig though the decade-long practice of journaling, and to read through my past self's experiences, emotions, failures and (perceived) triumphs.  Here are some highlights:

1. I was a fucking idiot.  In my early 20s, I was exactly the type of girl that I now disdain.  I overused my  lifelines, I wanted things handed to me, and I didn't appreciate what I did have.
2. I trusted my emotions way too much.  I wish I knew then how deceitful those pesky "feelings" would   turn out to be. Troublemakers!
3. I never made peace with a lot of the things I should have.  There are a lot of areas where clearly I brushed things under the rug, and largely ignored the issues.  Bitterness seeps through barely concealed language. Early 20's me just needed to get the fuck over shit. Moving on never was my strong point.
4. Early 20's me had opportunities I foolishly stepped over.  I didn't even see them.
5. I spent way too much time thinking about men. Worrying about men. Dating. Fighting. Doubting. Early 20's me didn't see how pointless that was, and despite being nowhere mature enough for an actual  relationship, it occupied about 75% of my thoughts.
6. I forgave too easily. I didn't make people earn it. I kept the douche bags around and I let the good ones go distant, minus a few positive examples.
7. I thought getting a stupid tattoo was a brilliant idea.  And then I got three more.  I was defaulting on my student loans but sporting a Sagittarius tat.  Someone should have kicked my ass.
8. I worked on partnerships and relationships more than I worked on myself, and I didn't even realize why those partnerships/relationships didn't work out. Duh.
9.  The truest of friends are those that drive to your aid because you're having a hair crisis. Keep them.   Keep them forever. This one, I did right.
10. I didn't apologize enough. I had a lot of asshole moments, and a lot of people should have heard me say,  "I'm so sorry. I'm so FUCKING sorry. I'm a dick."

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if I could tell my younger self from a decade back a few things, it would first start with a thorough ass-kicking.  Then I would pass on the wisdom to apologize often, make peace with the past, take advantage of opportunities and not people, balance your head and heart, and stop justifying why you hurt people.  I, of course, would surely not listen, because what I've also learned from my past self is that I was pretty sure I knew how to live my life.

I hope 33 year old me is smarter, more gracious, and more loyal.  For those of you that knew me way back when...I'm sorry...I'm so fucking sorry...I was a dick.  And...thanks. For not killing me.

Summation: Dumb girl, Boys...Boys...boys...Dumb girl...

Skeptically Yours.