Shoot for the Stars

The paint on every ceiling in my house is peeling. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried about it, but I spent so much of today looking up at it, that it became a reflection of my life. I shine up the surfaces at eye level, in the hopes that all the guests to my sad little world don’t notice that it’s secretly falling apart at the seams. Just like me.

I cycle, and cycle, and cycle some more, turning over ideas, concepts, and my reality like it’s a skipping stone that I picked up on my last trip down to the river bed, and I’m trying to find the bumpy patches and wear them down with love.

Love for myself, what a foreign concept. To find that I am enough, exactly as is, in the house that I’m in, with the job that I have, and the degrees, and the knowledge. I don’t need anything else to make me lovable, to make me “enough”, the ever elusive enough. I shouldn’t need to shoot for the stars in a soyuz craft in order feel like what I’m doing with my life is good enough.

But part of me does. The small part, the petty part, driven by ego and desire. I say fuck her. And I’ll shoot for happy instead.

The Forgotten Days

We caress the edge, becoming familiar

with the ins and outs of nearly falling,

of being so close, and yet, so far.

 

We contemplate forever, thinking of love, of that closeness.

Precious butterfly-like fragility paired with beauty and grace,

Scathed by the slimy oil of the brush of a fingertip.

 

We know that responsibility lies in wait,

accountability lurking with her at the edge of our view,

waiting to pounce, to punish us for eyes shielded from reality.

 

And we pretend, that spending just a few more hours

won’t hurt us both secretly, once we’ve parted ways,

and look back, wondering,  just what happened?

 

In the hours in between, in those forgotten days.

Waiting; Scared.

Waiting.  Scared.

Or scarred.  Or both.

What’s an “r”, when there’s so much

time between the pain and the present?

When there’s so many lies

between the truth and the tale

that we tell ourself in order

to tuck ourself safely into bed each night

to turn the lights out

on another day, another chance

to change to it all, to make

the dreams that haunt our nightmares

become more than just the bitter taste of waking up

not knowing who we are

or who we were

or how we ended up here

Scared.  And waiting to understand.

Waiting to know

what came before what comes after

The purpose of the proposition of productivity

when every day is filled with busy

work work work

heads stuck in the

sand sand sand

because running frantically is easier

than knowing.

understanding.

not waiting.

scared.

Batman Socks

I’m wearing Batman socks today, as well as an orange shirt from many years ago that made an ex of mine realize that he actually liked bright colors.  Because of these itty bitty little objects, I can feel power and excitement surging through my veins.  I feel like I have super powers.

So, I spoke with my mother today on the phone about my research.  She wanted to know why I sounded like Eyore on the phone whenever the subject of my research came up.  I tried to explain to her that I was just not excited by it.  That I didn’t know what I was doing.  That I was unmotivated and unenthusiatic about it, so every time I even considered coming to campus to work on it, my heart sank.  I realized, as I chatted with her, that I’ve been struggling to do this project for months and months because I never bothered to get myself interested in the background of the project.  To just expect myself to pick something up in a completely new field that I’ve never studied in and suddenly want to work on it, without understanding the need for that tool, without really having a feel for the context of why the work is being done, is something that I just am incapable of doing.  Without the context, I loose all interest in the actual problem.  So, in future, I need to remember that for me: motivation is born of contextualization.

 

Sure

Keys clicking away in the dead of the night,

Opening and closing of offices

boxes full of trash, emptied, one-by-one

e-mails read and pushed aside with a left

index finger

pointing, always pointing

right back at us as we point away

“it was him. no really.  It wasn’t me.”

but it was always us, hiding away from

the turning of locks

of hair, of keys

to hearts, to shackles

binding us to the choices we never knew

we were making

or breaking ourselves, with every action

every smile, every heartbeat, every breath

but we were.

A slight change of pace…

in a slightly different vein than recent posts, and far more cool, was waiting for some runs to complete at the office today and so each time I was waiting, I worked on the following:

I sometimes use BBC’s Day in Pictures as inspiration when drawing.  This is one from today of a “Libyan National Transitional Council fighter wearing a bandana that reads “free” in Arabic … , waiting near the front line of Bani Walid, south of the capital, Tripoli.”  I loved the shadowing across his face and the reflection/opaqueness of his glasses, so wanted to try my hand at capturing that.  Thoughts?

Here’s a link to the original photo, if you’re curious! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14894299

On Finishing Grad School: Week 2

Well, week 1 is over.  And I feel like I procrastinated it away, watching Glee and trying to pretend that I was busy, all the while letting go of the stress of the summer.  Normally, I would be a little disappointed with myself for that, but honestly, I can’t help but think that it was for the better.  At the start of another week, I feel great.  The house is cleaner than it’s been in months.  I’m sitting down at the office, working through the second chapter of one of my books, actually giving a crap about learning the material in advance of the class tomorrow.  These are great steps towards being a more responsible person!

On the down side, I think I’m terrified of doing research.  Which is going to make it Really hard to finish my thesis this term.  So that’s the next thing to tackle in life.  Everytime I think of working on my research, I fill with dread.  I feel like I’m stuck, spinning my  wheels in the mud.  This isn’t at all fair, as I’ve got a few really good next steps that are just waiting to be implemented.  But I haven’t made significant progress in so long, I can’t help but feel stuck.

So, this week, I’m going to implement all of the things that my advisor and I discussed last week and stop procrastinating.  I’m going to just take the leap. Stop being scared of my own work.  Stop feeling sorry for myself and avoiding it, and just dig the fuck in.

Ambiguous overarching goal, MADE. Results: Still to come…

On Finishing Grad School: Day 2

Old habits die hard.  Slept in again today.  Didn’t get up until 10am.  On a weekday.  Started the day slow, with the second half of a movie and two cups of coffee, to boost me.  Then it was back to the living room for another morning warm up, just 10-15 minutes of easy exercises, followed by 10 minutes of stretching and 5 minutes of “meditation”.  I call it “meditation” because it’s not really formal “meditation” as taught by any kind of religious or spiritual leader.  It’s just relaxing, letting go of all of my concerns, and letting myself breath.  I made myself take the time to embrace the relaxation.  To think of all of the people that I’ve been harboring discontent with lately, and then to breath out while letting go of that discontent, of that disappointment.  I feel better emotionally because of it.  At peace with my past, at least for the time being. I feel better physically because of the stretching and small amount of exercise.  More limber, ready to jump and sprint and take on the world!

Which is exactly what I’m doing in my small way.

I was reading a book on simplifying your life yesterday (who I can’t for the life of me remember the author of right now… :-S…sorry buddy!) but it asked us to sit down and write a list of “What I most want to accomplish in life.” As corny as this is going to sound, the only thing I could think to write yesterday was ‘loving.’  So I wrote it.  I have a list of length 1 that encompasses so much.  Loving friends, loving family, loving complete strangers, loving myself.  There’s so many areas where I can work more on this.  And I will be, believe me!

Peace, love, compassion…that’s my mantra for the week…(possibly longer )

So, when I got to campus, Seth Godin, a world famous blogger that I’m sure you’ve heard of before, had a post on a book that the Domino Project had created to try to earn money to bring an end to malaria and I decided, what the hell, and purchased a copy.  There we go.  Today I did something I wouldn’t normally do that was a way of loving strangers.  It was a tiny thing, that only took 5 minutes of my time, but that’s a start.  At least I spent 5 minutes of today loving strangers, which is 5 minutes more than I often spend on the average school day!

 

 

On Finishing Grad School: Day 1

I’m all zen about it, about almost being done, but still being no where near.  I wake up and work out in my living room for the first time in months.  I feel the burn in muscles that I’ve forgotten I even had, muscles that might as well have ceased to exist, with all the use they have gotten.  Then I stretch, the tension slowly leaving my poor knotted up muscles.  I’ve lived nothing but stress and pleasure the last month, jumping between the two seemingly effortlessly.  It’s the internal shift between the two that’s always the hardest.  I can still feel the emotional recoil from the abrupt shifts, the confusion, “what is this feeling?” I ask myself. “Things can actually be pleasant, can make me feel happy?”  And then as soon as you get used to the joy, get acquainted with life not being all bad, she throws a curve ball your direction.  Here, deal with this.  Okay?

I stretch out the bad memories, breathing in peace, breathing in love, breathing in compassion.  And before I know it, I’m all peace, love, and compassion.  I’m all focus, on this feeling of relaxation.  And I know I’m on a better path this month, this term.

It’s day one, day one of a the rest of my life.  Day one of finishing off a master’s thesis at one of the hardest schools in the world.  Day one of being more gutsy.  More alive.  And simultaneously more calm and in tune with myself than I have previously.

At least that’s what I tell myself. “It’ll be different this time… No…Really…. It will.”

Sure, I’ll believe that when I see it.  But that’s why this is here.  A blog post, sent out into the ether.

I’m determined to learn healthier lessons from grad school this term than I have lived previously.  I don’t want to pick up more lazy slovenly  habits and behaviors.  No, I want this process to help me build myself up, not self sabatoge.

Now to eat my fiber cereal and walk down to campus and do research.  And Go!

Two beers and a Bass drop

I close my eyes, letting the bass of the song take me.

It’s a Thursday night at 10pm and I’ve spent the last 2 hours on my hands and knees, scrubbing my kitchen floor.  My hand are raw from the chemicals.  And I can feel the dehydration starting from cleaning after drinking.

Normally I would be dancing right now.  Normally I wouldn’t have a care in the world.  I would be free, if just for the briefest of moments.  Free from my past.  Free from the fear that fills me, when I think of the trying again, when I think of the future, when I think of the fact that She is coming to visit again tomorrow.  I love her, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t scrub my kitchen floor for just anyone.  If your kitchen floor is any indication of who you are, I fear that I may need to clean the cob webs off of my soul and wipe the general gray grim away before I walk a step further in my own shoes, because I never quite realized what a state of disrepair my entire life was in. It’s so easy, to run too fast, away from everything, and to loose track of where it is your life is at.

But you know what, eventually it all comes back around.  Eventually you have to wake back up again.  To accept that fiction will always be false stories.  That movies will always be sappier than real life ever is.  That just because the hollywood version of life includes characters that live perfect lives, that doesn’t mean that in the real world, where dirt builds up on kitchen floors and life has a way of catching up with you at the most inopportune of times, we have to expect perfection of ourselves.  No sirree.

I’m not perfect.  I’m just a girl.  Who listens to Chase and Status, feeling her heart beating, breaking, and dreams of a world where the beauty of each individual wouldn’t be sullied by fear, by darkness, by tragedy.  A world where we would all be able to dance like no one was watching.  Where we would be able to follow our dreams, encouraged and lifted by our families and friends, instead of drug back down to a “reality” where we were never enough.  Where we would be able to achieve the impossible, and in that achievement, would create a better future for ourselves and our posterity.

Sure.