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8:26 a.m. - 2003-05-05
Stuff and things
AQUARIUS:

>>Saturday May 3 & Sunday May 4

Even if those around you are imploring you to "put your rose-colored glasses/blinders on, for heaven's sake" and leave them there until they tell you it's safe to remove them, you probably should decline the invitation. The Sun is at odds with Neptune, and what is and what isn't really is anybody's guess.

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Um... yeah... I suppose this is a good way to look at the weekend. I saved this horoscope all weekend so I could use it in a post.

I have a lot to think about.

I have a lot to say.

But there's more to think about before I say anything.

I want to write.

I can't do it here... not the things that are in my head now.

I'll get to those things later.

Sometimes I'm glad I know my own head.

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The "AGONY" of finding ones' self.

It's easy to forget what you were before you became what you are in the current time. Because we all change. We all "used to be" someone else. We are never "the same as we have always been". People who subscribe to that theory are blatantly ignorant to their own changes. Things happen every second that change who we are. Be aware of them people... be aware.

The journey is never sweet and it is -always- what you make of it. It's all dependant on you and how you react, not on what happens to you and what a tragedy it is and... lament lament. I think we all go through it though. I think at our shallowest, most lost moments we choose to blame everyone else for where we are rather than realizing that we alone have the power to empower ourselves and make the most of the things we've learned and are learning. Sometimes we need to re-evaluate where we are and how we got there, what tools we have now and realize that we can use those things to move forward instead of sitting around with those things stacked next to us in categorized boxes, labeled all nice and pretty.

I can't number the times I've sat on my duff after learning something new, discovering something new about myself. It would simply be impossible to count. I will be the first to admit that I am probably completely abnormal in that I don't "wait" probably as long as most people... I don't have the capacity for "wasting" time (from my perspective, not everyone sees it as such) that some people do. I don't sit idle well.

Most of the time when I hesitate to move forward with something it has to do with fear. There are a variety of fears associated with access to new tools (be them physical tools or mental ones). There's the anxiety of "what if I mess up" and "what if no one wants me" and "what if I start off great and then screw up and get sent back to square one". I'd say these are the major demons of change that I deal with on a daily basis. I'm not impervious to the whole system.

Back not so long ago now that I would have forgotten, I was stuck in a place mid-way between my last major life and this current one. I say it that way because I went through a period of "rebirth" in many ways. I discovered that giving birth to ones' self is potentially as painful mentally as childbirth is physically. I remember being stuck in between lives. I had traveled down the path of this new life far enough to understand that it all made sense to me. That it could work for me, that it was actually probably better for me because it felt right. It felt more right than anything ever had in my life... including my marriage.

I became embroiled in a constant argument with myself. One that at various points caused me to point fingers at all the parties then involved with my life. I questioned my sanity on many occasions. Leaving a life that was 100% the "American Dream" to forge ahead into something tenuous and new. Something that was, at best, unstable and uncertain but something that was at the same time comfortable. I was at a point in my life where things had become incredibly stable. I had a husband, we both had careers and were making decent monies combined. We had just bought a new house for which we were planning new things, parties, pets, and perhaps someday children. Why would anyone want to leave that life?

But I had found a lifestyle that far outweighed the comfort of anything that I had known my entire life. I had found a new series of activities and mental exercises that far outweighed the complexity of anything I had ever done in my life and far exceeded any of my expectations about the challenges and treasures pursuing them could lead to. Those treasures were personal happiness, personal contentment. For me, that was a life of servitude. Of being a possession. Of being disposable. Of being treasured as a possession.

I questioned myself. What -sane- person would choose the unsteady life of servitude over the concrete future of the "American Dream"? I weighed the benefits of both sides. I weighed the risks. The risks were numerous. Risk is scary. Risk often involves change and I was staring down the barrel of monumentous change.

I could have settled back quietly into the life I knew. The life that worked, even if slightly dysfunctional. The life that was comfortable, known and safe.

But could I have?

I had tools, knowledge. I had tasted the blood of something new. Something I found invigorating, intriguing and enthralling. Something that possessed me entirely when I was immersed in it. Could I forget it all? Walk away to the safer choice? Those who know me well have already answered that question in their heads.

It was an opportunity to free myself. To pursue things that lived within me. To escape from where my acceptance of the comfortable had led me and to forge ahead in a direction that was uncertain but terribly alluring. It was change. It was a giant risk.

How can you give up everything you know, everything you have, everything that has ever made you the person you believe yourself to be and be okay with it instantly? It is my opinion that you can't.

For the handful I probably was for Him before I gave up my vanilla life, I was probably 90 million times worse in the months that immediately followed the point at which I moved out of my vanilla life and into my new life. I played the anguish game. I played the fool. I played the guilt game. I played the lost and alone game. I played the pity me game, the depression game, the doomed destiny game. I questioned my life and where it was leading me every night that I sat in my big, empty apartment alone and stared at the computer screen.

I had nothing. I did nothing but work and chat� and even that was becoming less and less appealing at this point. I'd look around the apartment and wonder how I was ever going to afford furniture. How I was ever going to make it on my own. I worried that He'd leave me high and dry, or perhaps give me to someone else whom I didn't know. I was scared an uncertain and this, for me, was horrifying because I had spent a good portion of my life being in complete control of everything that was happening to me. I felt lost. I felt lonely. I felt helpless.

I suppose I could have stayed like that for a very long time, but I get frustrated easily. Especially with myself. I've always had a severe problem with feeling sorry for myself. I learned it from watching my mom feel sorry for herself on numerous occasions while I was growing up. It did nothing for her and it angered me. Perhaps that is partially the reason I was so driven to make my life better than what I had growing up� I don't know, but it's irrelevant to the story I suppose.

I had just started the new job (I had only been there for 2 months when I decided to move out) and I was, at best, anxious about my performance there and making a difference. I dumped myself into my job. I needed to make a difference there and it gave me the opportunity to forget about the fact that I had changed my entire life. I love my career. I work hard at what I do and because of it, I'm good at what I do. I'm not perfect, I mess up (Heck, just last week in the middle of the day I was a total idiot and accidentally shut down our major production database� tell me I don't need a vacation!), I get bored, I get sloppy� it happens to the best of us in all situations but I made it my life back then and it paid off.

I worked a LOT back then. I worked day and night and let the hours just run by. It was time I didn't have to spend at home alone the nights that He wasn't there. When He was there we'd talk about where I was, about how I felt. He would support me and eventually I learned to look at things a little differently I suppose. It wasn�t easy. I won't ever claim that it was but I just gave up on lamenting my seemingly bleak position at the time and started doing something with my time. My career teaches me much that applies equilaterally to my scene life (patience is a top runner there). Then we started slowly getting in contact with local people and started finding munches and such more local to us which allowed me to feed off my people craving. I need to be around people sometimes. NEED.

I'm jumping around a lot. It's getting to that point in my day where my brain starts operating on too many levels.

I guess my point in all this rambling is to explain that you can't just gather tools and put them in stacks or boxes next to you and stare at them. You can't learn to build a birdhouse if you never pick up the hammer and the nails! You can't let the fear that you might whack your thumb or fingers a couple hundred times while attempting to build the birdhouse stop you from moving forward. You just have to grab your tools and go. Otherwise you have a pile of wood, a pile of tools and a pile of nails. All useless unless you use them.

You have tools that are applicable across career and "life". Use them. Don't stare at them. Apply yourself and learn more about yourself because maybe you don't understand or like the "new you" that you know now, but just like meeting new people, you shouldn't fully judge before you get to know them a little better.

I should have just said that to begin with� hell of a lot shorter than my dissertation on all things Tara.

I won't ever purport to be "the norm", but I will always subscribe to the things that have worked for me in the past and sell them as what they are, tools to grow by. Maybe they won't work for everyone but it's worth a try. If you don't have the perfect claw hammer for the job, so what, use the ball peen and a crow bar until you can find the hammer you need!

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Got in touch with my feline side this weekend. A playful comment about pouncing turned into a wrestling, stalking, batting, clawing, struggling match with Kristy. It was interesting. Another experience where the world faded out for the most part and instinct took over. He was watching over us and I was aware that He was there but it provided the security to let go of myself and touch the instinctual reactions inside of me.

I enjoy being able to let go like that. It's something I wish my counterpart in the battle could also enjoy� I think, although she proved to be a fair opponent as she were, that she would have been an even more formidable opponent had she been able to "go native" within herself.

I was so lost in myself that though I was aware of Him, while I was backing up and away from Kristy at one point, I wasn't in my head enough to realize that when I saw the chain fall He was going to grab me. Oddly I reacted in an animalistic fashion, freaking and attempting to pull away and consequently hurting myself. In my head I feared that He would hook the chain to my collar and restrict me when, in reality, He was trying to bring me down from the place I was in. Apparently it was starting to look as if we would hurt each other� interesting thought to me.

I'm not much of a transpeciesist and I don't ever see myself heading in that direction but it was just a fabulous example of where the mind can go and the feral instincts that live inside of us all. It's these things that would protect us should the world ever go to hell in a hand-basket and we need to protect ourselves. Instinct. A very interesting, personal subject matter to ponder.

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Well, I suppose I should do some work.

I got some writing out. I wish I had brought the laptop so I could pontificate further on other things during lunch time but� as is the case, I forgot the laptop AND my gym bag this morning so I will have to wait to write about things. Maybe when I get home from the gym tonight I'll sit and bang some thoughts out. See what's in my head.

I feel better having written even though I didn't tackle those subjects which I feel I need to.

Writing can be terribly therapeutic.

 

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