I mean, I don't know...

Cartoon me is back. Fun!

Sometimes being alone, without a full time relationship that is, seems pretty inviting; being one of those women, mature of-a-certain-age women that are just good with being single for probably, most likely, the rest of their lives just doesn't seem that bad.

Obviously I want friends, close friends, community, and ... lovers. But maybe I would prefer to live on my own.

Don't get me wrong, everything here with the Greek is great, but I feel as though I've lost some level of autonomy. In the words of people who's words make my skin crawl, me no likey.

Love can inspire romantic illusions that are just so captivating and delicious. They beg to be devoured. And perhaps today, I feel... full. Maybe even a little stuffed?

Now, I don't know about that...

Oh. And, the tickets to Italy are booked. We're going to Italy.

I feel a "fuck me" is in order

Other things I've been a little glutenous about, Jordan Peterson.  Like many other sensible people in the world (or North America), I've become a little obsessed with the guy. He's dangerously almost perfect.

I've never been one to engage with social politics, because I just don't want to donate my time and mental real estate to people who appear to be stuck on a path that is, well, beneath me. I figure, they'll either catch up or live out their lives in a semi-miserable dysfunction that, in the end, they were comforted by.

I did JP's personality assessment, I scored low on compassion which then sums up my above statement pretty succinctly. BUT, when the clamouring intellectually and emotionally under evolved people start freaking the fuck out at each other, panicking and asserting, suddenly stepping on each other's heads to get out of the hole that was in part dug for them and that they then dug deeper, the affects of their actions start oozing over onto my side of fence. Now, I've created a very nice garden for myself and when I start to see that it's in threat of being overrun by mass hysteria disguised as left/right political correctness - the road to hell is paved with good intentions - bullshit.... Well, now I gotta get involved.

The Lord of the Flies kids are getting outta hand and somebody needs some grownups to come in and make some sense of this before the kids choose a volatile leader that promises order but provides or promotes, I don't know, genocide and,  because the tribes can't get along, a let the strong survive mentality.

Having said that, this really only results in me reading, reading, and more reading - and probably, at some point, stirring a pot somewhere. Not really my cup of tea, but neither is letting something that seems dangerous to my children's world, grow and evolve.

Don't fuck with my kid's shit. And DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE!

So, yeah, passive, compasstionaly lazy me says, "we'll see where that goes."

Gentle, gentle, gentle

The period train is slowing down these days. I've approached that station. However, my state as of these last few days would suggest that this missing period of mine is right around the corner. So emotional. Sheesh.

I'm here, living with the Greek, and sometimes it's like waking up from a bout of amnesia, looking around me and saying, "What the fuck? This isn't my life."

And last night, when I was despondent because a) I don't recognize my life and 2) I didn't prioritize sculpting  when I really wanted to start a new project, he asked why - he probed even.

I'm feeling out of sorts, living in someone else's home - no matter how you slice that, it takes some getting used to - and I don't have my own flow. I feel a bit at the mercy of his lifestyle. And it's not that he makes it that way, it's just the natural results of moving into someone else's home/life. It's weird.

And so I was awkward - didn't want to turn the TV on in my boredom (because he is one of those that "rightly so" hates it), which I would have normally done, didn't have a book to read, didn't start the project I wanted to but it was too late now, didn't have a fucking thing to do, didn't want to write or blog, didn't want to surf and endlessly scroll the fucking internet....

So I sat there, despondent. Then he put a blanket on me when I didn't ask for it and said, in that cute voice, "look at you, you're so lazy..." to which I responded (rightly so), "are you fucking kidding me?"

I'm not LAZY, fucker. I'm LOST. STRANDED. AND LOOKING FOR DIRECTION. I was fucking thinking.

Ugh.

Anyways.

After wistfully averting my view (which was, from my prone position on the couch, the ceiling), by resting my chin on the couch and staring out the window, followed by a ladened sigh, he asked, "What's wrong?"

AND I really tried to sell the "nothing" as if there was really nothing wrong, because nothing was wrong, I was just out of sorts.

But he did that thing where he is curious and probed and asked questions and we talked in the way that I always make people talk. In that way that no other partner has done with me.

And the days before, we had spent away on a tug boat B&B and had dinner with other guests and chatted with folks and walked in forests, played mini golf - and it was lovely. All of it was lovely.

And then tears well up around my eyes as I recall this feeling that I keep having, which is:

This wasn't supposed to last, but I keep falling more in love with him. This keeps working, so much so that I imagine a home that we share. I imagine the symmetry that we build, and it's beautiful.

And then I think, "but this is exhausting... how long can I keep this up?"

I don't know what this is. I suspect I'll find out one day. It very well might be joy and not knowing how to let it be a normal thing. Instead, it feels like a thing thing that requires thought and attention and a clear divergence from my past life which was struggle, struggle, struggle.

Also, it has something to do with this amnesia - waking up, seeing my new self, and then thinking about parts of the old me that got left behind - I miss those pieces. I think.

Time to go to work now - to that tech job that I would have only dreamt of having, that tech job where I'm pretty sure I'm doing some good stuff - time to go live my best life. Oh, and there it is, what's exhausting is clinging to this constant wonderment of, how the fuck did I get here? 

Well, I can tell you this FOR SURE, I worked very hard to get here. I just never anticipated it working so well in return.

This... this only proves out the rest of the journey.

Work. Pray. Breath.

This is where I ask the universe some stuff.

I need some help. I need you to come through me now. Now is the time. I feel the creation inside of me and I need your help to give it form. 

Universe, Gods and Goddesses, please help me find the divine and pull it out to see the light of day.


Focus.
(that's the word I heard)

That Day I Moved In With the Greek

I'm at my old home, my matrimonial home. I come here a couple of days a week to be able to visit/live with my youngest. I come here to create some level of mom/daughter normalcy in her last years of living at home.

Her dad and I live our day to day lives so differently. The home he creates by way of not creating anything is cold and lonely for her. I don't want that for her. I'm happy to have this time with her when I come up. I'm happy to remind my former life partner that life can be a little bit more warm and inviting, too.

This trip up has been a little different. I've been here for a week while he's away. I'm really living in my hold home. I cleaned up some stuff that was beginning to border an echoing, dirty state of neglect. I made it clean and loved until it sang (this is the stuff my daughter is used to living in. I get that she feels like she went from a garden to a grave). And boy did it sing. It felt nice. For a moment.

My last day here and my daughter has been a way at a concert. My kids are growing up and they are off living their lives most of the time. My last day here and I remembered how lonely I was when I lived in this house and in this town.

I made a house sing with love and joy and shared it with someone who wanted to be no one, and then with no one at all.

I'm here and I'm alone - most of the time.

In the other half of my life, I've moved in with the Greek. The road just naturally curved that way.

I'm going to take the dog for a walk.

Day 13660

Well, when you put it like that, it doesn't seem that long.  Which, for me, begs the question, what was I thinking that made me see that my age in days seems positively small or early... or something.

I just couldn't come up with a title and was going for Sol 42 kinda sci fi feel. Suddenly, I'm perked up because 13 660 days seems like nothin. Forty-seven years apparently comes with a lot more stigma - that I am laying on thick while being in total denial that I am.

My body... hurts. I can't remember it hurting this much, this consistently in my thirties. And apparently, I'm still really young so it sucks to have this much discomfort - upon wakening.

I'm noticing that I'm doing that thing lately, where I never feel like I can get a full breath. Which means, I'm stressing out and not telling myself that I am. I'm watching my life from the sidelines because I can't believe that what's happening is not weird. But my body self seems to be okay with all. As if it knows the future of "it's gonna be fine" and I don't.

The people that live above me, the woman, when she's home, what the fuck is she doing? It sounds like she's arranging rocks, and then, oh I don't know, shredding small shrubs in a industrial blender? She's fucking loud.

Right, and her walking about the house: it seems to me that she walks about, from room to room, repeating to herself, single-mindedly, "I'm as heavy as an ox, I'm as heavy as an ox, I'm as heavy as..."

Luckily, she  travels a lot for work and is gone for long stretches of time. When she is gone, her husband-dude-guy is as quiet as mouse. It's like he's not even home. That must be why they got the Roomba, so that he would remember her and feel comforted by the noise. Fucking Roomba.

I remember what I wanted to write about: I'm sick of myself. Also, I'm sick of myself being sick of myself.  Enter Dissonance.

I want to write but I hate who I look like as a writer. I don't like how my words sound, they sound like I'm trying to be someone other than who I am and I can't seem to locate true north. OR... or, I'm not accepting who I am as a writer. I suppose my first exercise can be "accept yourself as the writer you are today."

I can't change those things if I don't get them out of me enough so that I can see the pieces and then rearrange them. I need to shut the fuck up.  All this languishing on what a douche bag I am is simply self indulgent. Write and re-write.

And every time I have a thought, I must acknowledge it as what it is, a thought, and return the goal of true north.

This morning, I opened a link from Bored Panda, some look at these every day photos that make you think twice accidental optical illusions post. I anticipated seeing 7-10 images but there was 17 pages of images, 5-7 images a page - a fucking forever of fucking cool, weird images - and I could not stop going to the next page EVEN THOUGH I WANTED TO STOP.  Just one more page I could hear my brain say.

It was like gum. The way I feel when gum is in my mouth and it demands I chew it.

It's like cigarettes when they're close to me, dancing about saying "smoke me, smoke me."

It's that feeling of doing things when I really, really don't want to do them.

These actions feel like little sandpaper razor blades cutting the skin above my heart. I can't stop cutting. And then I look up and am confronted with the house plants I refuse to water.

I am unhappy with my un-doing. Although, as far as the house plants are considered, perhaps I no longer want to have the responsibility of those - that's fair.

There is nothing else to be done but to get out my compass, find true north, and not be pulled from the path by thoughts (or stupid Bored Panda posts) that only offer blackholes of brain gum and cigarettes.

And bad feelings are often only negative thoughts masquerading as truth.

STOP YELLING!

actual cartoon version of me

Who do I present to the internet? The fun me, the intellectual me, the spiritual me, the I'm-all-those-things-at-once me? Who is the cartoon version of me and why do I need that?

The internet you is a cartoon version of you. Maybe your cartoon is a New Yorker kind of cartoon or maybe it's a Anime/pop culture super hero cartoon. Or, a Ready Player One video game avatar cartoon (also, if anyone wants to make a grown up version of that book into a movie, please call me). OR... or a Andy Warhol painting cartoon.  Whatever your genre, the internet highlights reel version of you is a fucking cartoon.

The fact that I can not escape this is driving me nuts. And that people are wholly blind and/or absorbed by this is freaking me out.

I don't want to be the cartoon version of me, but I still want to exist in this new world.

Everything internet is about manipulating the user down a path. Glitz and glam. Pretty magazines of information everywhere, connecting you to everything. Scroll! Scroll, SCROLL BITCH, SCROLL. Muhahahahah.

No, I didn't just figure this out. Until now, I accepted it, enjoyed it even. Then, I decided to accept it 150%: yes, market to me, listen to everything I say, because maybe you can curate decent content to me. Maybe you can show me local businesses that I, in return, feel self-righteous about supporting. Great! Feeling superior is exactly what I wanted.

Only, it ends up feeling like I'm wearing jeans that are way too fucking tight.

Because the fucking internet tells you what a super mo fo you are if you support local businesses. Now my super power is being a comfortable do-gooder... of shopping? 

It's all so painfully vacuous.

And every time I open my browser and visit a page that I think is going to entertain me - it feels like walking down a very noisy street of venders, artists, intellectuals, journalists, "stupid" people shouting their opinions and making me judge them,  screaming at me.

They're all fucking screaming.

My computer and phone have become a portal into a vortex of screaming animals. All foaming at the mouth mad to get my attention. That's all I see and I can't un-see it.

I don't want to be political, intellectual, or beautiful. The internet is killing my desire.

Perhaps it's simply the difference of living in the city and then deciding the city is just too fast and too loud, so you move out to the country.

But if you don't know that your suffering from living in the city every time you open your fucking computer or phone then maybe you feel like you're going crazy and have lost control of your insides. And then cartoon version of you is always attempting a take-over so that you can keep up the pace.

It's telling you that if you post a quote about being quiet and moving to the country, everything will be okay. Just make a country bumpkin cartoon version of you and everything. will. be. okay.

Reject progress and chill

When I searched for my bitmoji for country or bumpkin, there was no match. Cartoon me apologizes for this inadequacy.

Side note (because I'm totally judging my own drivel and want to beat you to the punch): Yeah, I know that a lot of people just aren't affected by this and simply turn off the internet. I guess, right now, I wish I was a bit more like them.

And! I know a million people have written the exact same bullshit as this and I'm late to this party. I'm just taking my turn. Okay?

Did you catch that that was cartoon me admonishing me-me for being a late blooming internet hater? It never ends.

The Struggle

Two lives that, in fact, are one. FUUUUUUCCCKCKKKKKKKK. YOU.

I'm sick of myself. I truly am. I'm sick of thinking. I don't want to do it anymore. Contemplating can fuck itself.

Sometimes I smoke, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm a mom, sometimes I'm relieved of that duty. Sometimes I am upstanding employee that gives 100+%, sometimes I'm a woman. Sometimes I'm a woman with a lover, sometimes  I'm a woman wearing her flesh inside out.

Why must I think about any of those things?

I don't want to think about meditating and the benefits of being a more present version of me.
I don't want to think about how I can change the world from the inside out.
I don't want to think about wearing my flesh inside out.
I don't want to think about the weight I'm gaining.
I don't want to think about who the cartoon version of me is.

Thinking is hurting me.