I am many things: loud, opinionated, competitive, stubborn, hot- headed. But I am not a hypocrite. Some nights I blog because I am not sure what I need to say. Some nights I am unsure of whom I need to say it to. Some nights I blog because I really want to tell someone about themselves and I can't because my razor sharp tongue will fillet you when provoked and I'm trying to be a better person. Tonight is one of those nights.
It started where it usually starts when I get really pissed off- Facebook. (I bemoan the fact that I still have a Facebook. Let's just not talk about it.) I was on Facebook doing what I do and I came across a post. It was a post of a bunch of kids, all under 10, and they were being presented with different dolls. One black, one white. Same mold, same clothes. They were asked which was the "good" doll, "pretty" doll, "bad" doll, "mean" doll etc. Anyone well read can guess the results.
Time and time again the clips were shown of the kids saying that the positive traits were associated with the white dolls and the negative traits were associated with the black dolls. I want to go on record as saying that I have taken enough statistics classes to know that you can make any set of numbers support your theory. Ergo, who knows what clips were edited out. I saw no numbers, just sad clips. But whatever. The reality is that the societal image of beauty does overwhelmingly look one way. Any Black or Brown or Beige girl can tell you that. Said person went on the say, "This is a serious problem."
The thing that pissed me off is that the person that posted this has an affinity for the cultural norm of European beauty. And he is not European (I won't say where he's from but it rhymes with Pafrica, and I ain't talking American Black). Now look- love who you love but be real about it. You can't on one hand say that it's a serious problem that kids value the standard of white European beauty when you also choose that standard. A standard strikingly different from what you happen to be.
It's a double standard.
I am EOE. I was told I am a "connoisseur of all things male" and that is a factual statement. I find beauty in them all. But I am raising a boy and a girl- and we have many conversations about the complexities of race and stereotypes and what the media sells as beauty and what makes a person really beautiful. I try to help them to see that the right person will see their value and they in turn should see beauty in all different flavors. I'm getting off topic....
If said person had not implicitly told me that while they find all women attractive they "really like White women" I wouldn't be angry. I don't begrudge them their choice. I begrudge them the right to appear to reject a stereotype that they buy into. That's asinine.
I really can't stand a hypocrite.
Said person might or might not still read my blog. If you do- well I imagine you're about as pissed off as I was. But seriously- take the post down.
You have no right.
A
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Journey
"Life is a journey,
Not a destination,
There are no mistakes,
Just chances we've taken
Lay down your regrets cause all we have is now."
-India Arie
We are told, emphatically and often, that life is a journey. We all logically believe this. Yet we usually act in the polar opposite direction. I have had a lot of time to think during my life reset. Think about who I am. Think about what I want. Think about what I don't want. Think about what parts of myself I've lost touch with. Think about what parts of myself that I needed to leave behind. I have done a massive amount of thinking.
I think that my conclusions have boiled down to something simple. That the above is true. And that I can't be afraid to live as if the above is true. A journey is defined as an act of traveling from one place to another. Synonyms are an expedition, excursion, trek, jaunt, wandering or odyssey. How many of us actually think about our lives as an expedition? We don't. We are in a rush to get to a place. To achieve a status- relationship status, parental status, economic status, professional status. We are sold the fiction that once we achieve the status we get a golden key of happiness. The synonym for fiction is a lie. That is a lie.
We are told that both the journey and the destination are the means of happiness. But they are diametrically opposed so both can't be true. I have achieved many status titles- Wife, Mother, Stylist, Teacher, Girlfriend, Director, Boss, Home Owner, Business Owner, Financial "stability". All of these roles in my life have been important but they do not, in and of themselves, make me happy. They are my fragments. They are the result of who I am because of what I have done. Where my journey has taken me.
I realized how easy it would be at this point of my life for my story to be written. I could easily slide into the epilogue of what is my story- with a great book already written. But that would mean that I have arrived at my destination. That would mean that there are no more treks to be made and jaunts to be had. That would mean I'm ready to lay down and die. Obviously I'm not.
That means that I have to, that I had to decide what I want my next segment to look like. I had to determine my expedition and prepare accordingly. I think maybe that's why adults stagnate. The are afraid of the work of preparing for the next journey. After all a good expedition takes planning, maps, the right gear, the right knowledge and so on and so on. As people age they are afraid to embrace the unknown. Arrogance really- to think that we have it so figured out. Or practicality- if I go back to school I have new student debt. If I move to a new land I have to sell my house and start a new mortgage. If I change anything it means I have to start over. However the term "to start over" indicates that you think you've finished and that goes back to the whole destination vs. journey mentality.
There are probably a type of person that wants the destination. That craves the stability and the predictable. That is content with working 5 days a week and gets excitement from yearly vacations. I hold no judgment against those type of people (unless they pretend to not want it when they really do- everyone should be honest with themselves). I simply am not one of them.
I am excited by what is next. And what is next after that. I am internally driven by the journey. All of this thinking has brought me back around to that. To the idea that my life will be that of an epic odyssey. An epic- used correctly. It is no surprise in retrospect that I was starting to feel smothered by my life. It had turned into a destination.
So now what? Well- start preparing for the next adventure. Another synonym of journey is globe trotter. There is a lot of globe for me to cover.
I better get packing.
A
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Life Reset
... and if my Son samples this I'm charging a royalty. Find your own inspiration. Millennials- ugh! ;)
I decided that I needed a life reset. If you are old enough to remember when you needed to "reboot" your computer because it was crashing you'll remember that you needed to press 3 keys simultaneously and hold. After a while your computer would unfreeze, shut down, then either re-start or you had to press the power button to turn it back on. It was a manual override to an overload of information that had caused the computer to stop working.
I had a rather trying month. Won't bore you with the details but I decided that like a frozen computer I needed to step back and - well at the time I couldn't think beyond breathing. It's funny how life can snowball on you with no encouragement on your part. When you preform a computer reset you hit 3 keys. A life reset dictates that you also hit those same 3 keys.
Control- When life starts to spiral it is a result of the fact that somewhere along the way you have lost your locus of control. And maybe you don't even realize it. The job you took starts demanding more and more of your soul. The relationship you are in decides they want a deeper investment. The toys that you bought can't play with themselves. The friends that you have can't function without your input. These things start to crowd each other and eventually overlap. Their sides bumping and pushing and layering over each other until the part of you that is uniquely you loses her voice. Loses her space. She is no longer the driver but a passenger being billowed about by the whims of the demands that are asked of her. A life reset demands that you take back control of your time, your choices, your financial/physical/emotional investments and take stock. You have to coax your voice back out from the layers and then wait patiently while she remembers how to speak.
Alt(ernative)- As you are taking back control you have to start looking at alternatives. There is a reason that your life spiraled as it did. In order to avoid a repetitious cycle you need to be open to different paths. A true life reset is not a life break or a vacation. You don't walk away just to pick it all back up. You make changes which take unconventional thinking and the ability to embrace alternatives. I think in life we may convince ourselves that our path is set in stone and it must look one way. This is a fallacy. We have as much or as little choice as we determine. Gifted with free will, especially in this country, the choice is ours for the choosing. Catch is you have to be willing to ante up and pay the cost. There is no magic bean. No life algorithm that equals success. There are cliques that people like but only because it makes them feel safe. Cliques like "Beggars can't be choosers" or "Time heals all wounds" or "Everything happens for a reason." These things are simply not true. In life no one story has to be your story. You get to ditch the script and take up pottery whenever you want. You just have to be brave enough to leap into the abyss of alternatives.
Delete- I mean, right? How often in life do we purge our homes, our cars, our closets? Why don't we purge our lives? Maybe it's because we feel guilt for acknowledging that we have outgrown a relationship or career or hobby or status. We think that since our past has shaped us we owe it a shrine, even when it's draining us. Why? A life reset necessitates a deletion of things that no longer serve a purpose. Ouch right? But don't be hasty. That teddy bear that you have from 1992 does serve a purpose. It reminds you of a lighter more innocent time. You can't help but remember all of the tears that it's soaked up and you know in the back of your mind that if push comes to shove you'll pull it out to cry in again. Some things in our lives serve a covert purpose, one known only to ourselves, and that's ok. I'm talking about the things that serve absolutely no purpose- or that require more time, energy, and effort than they are valued at. The things that drain. They need to be deleted. Why? Because they're using data and are bogging up the whole system. No one needs that. Hitting delete takes courage though. Deleted things do not go quietly into the night. They beg and whine- try to induce guilt. You have to carefully weigh what you want to delete and then keep that button pressed.
As with a computer reset a life reset only works if you hit all three buttons and hold on for a bit. Yet it does seem to work. I am a few weeks into my life reset and the clarity that I have stumbled across is astounding. The sleep alone has been worth it. Do any of us realize how tired we all are? How intently under pressure? How much what we feel like we should do causes us to do what we don't want to do? Gotta step back man. Gotta fight back.
I can't say that I've found any answers, actually that's not true. I have. A lot. I think that what I didn't realize was that in some cases the right answers don't match the questions.
So you have to throw the questions out.
A
I decided that I needed a life reset. If you are old enough to remember when you needed to "reboot" your computer because it was crashing you'll remember that you needed to press 3 keys simultaneously and hold. After a while your computer would unfreeze, shut down, then either re-start or you had to press the power button to turn it back on. It was a manual override to an overload of information that had caused the computer to stop working.
I had a rather trying month. Won't bore you with the details but I decided that like a frozen computer I needed to step back and - well at the time I couldn't think beyond breathing. It's funny how life can snowball on you with no encouragement on your part. When you preform a computer reset you hit 3 keys. A life reset dictates that you also hit those same 3 keys.
Control- When life starts to spiral it is a result of the fact that somewhere along the way you have lost your locus of control. And maybe you don't even realize it. The job you took starts demanding more and more of your soul. The relationship you are in decides they want a deeper investment. The toys that you bought can't play with themselves. The friends that you have can't function without your input. These things start to crowd each other and eventually overlap. Their sides bumping and pushing and layering over each other until the part of you that is uniquely you loses her voice. Loses her space. She is no longer the driver but a passenger being billowed about by the whims of the demands that are asked of her. A life reset demands that you take back control of your time, your choices, your financial/physical/emotional investments and take stock. You have to coax your voice back out from the layers and then wait patiently while she remembers how to speak.
Alt(ernative)- As you are taking back control you have to start looking at alternatives. There is a reason that your life spiraled as it did. In order to avoid a repetitious cycle you need to be open to different paths. A true life reset is not a life break or a vacation. You don't walk away just to pick it all back up. You make changes which take unconventional thinking and the ability to embrace alternatives. I think in life we may convince ourselves that our path is set in stone and it must look one way. This is a fallacy. We have as much or as little choice as we determine. Gifted with free will, especially in this country, the choice is ours for the choosing. Catch is you have to be willing to ante up and pay the cost. There is no magic bean. No life algorithm that equals success. There are cliques that people like but only because it makes them feel safe. Cliques like "Beggars can't be choosers" or "Time heals all wounds" or "Everything happens for a reason." These things are simply not true. In life no one story has to be your story. You get to ditch the script and take up pottery whenever you want. You just have to be brave enough to leap into the abyss of alternatives.
Delete- I mean, right? How often in life do we purge our homes, our cars, our closets? Why don't we purge our lives? Maybe it's because we feel guilt for acknowledging that we have outgrown a relationship or career or hobby or status. We think that since our past has shaped us we owe it a shrine, even when it's draining us. Why? A life reset necessitates a deletion of things that no longer serve a purpose. Ouch right? But don't be hasty. That teddy bear that you have from 1992 does serve a purpose. It reminds you of a lighter more innocent time. You can't help but remember all of the tears that it's soaked up and you know in the back of your mind that if push comes to shove you'll pull it out to cry in again. Some things in our lives serve a covert purpose, one known only to ourselves, and that's ok. I'm talking about the things that serve absolutely no purpose- or that require more time, energy, and effort than they are valued at. The things that drain. They need to be deleted. Why? Because they're using data and are bogging up the whole system. No one needs that. Hitting delete takes courage though. Deleted things do not go quietly into the night. They beg and whine- try to induce guilt. You have to carefully weigh what you want to delete and then keep that button pressed.
As with a computer reset a life reset only works if you hit all three buttons and hold on for a bit. Yet it does seem to work. I am a few weeks into my life reset and the clarity that I have stumbled across is astounding. The sleep alone has been worth it. Do any of us realize how tired we all are? How intently under pressure? How much what we feel like we should do causes us to do what we don't want to do? Gotta step back man. Gotta fight back.
I can't say that I've found any answers, actually that's not true. I have. A lot. I think that what I didn't realize was that in some cases the right answers don't match the questions.
So you have to throw the questions out.
A
Sunday, April 30, 2017
The blackest parts of the night
There are days when you get that feeling. The one that feels like your throat is closing and something is sitting on your chest and your eyes tingle then burn. Some days are like that. All you can do is wait for it. Wait for it to resolve. Wait for the sun to come back up. Wait for the silver lining to appear. All you can do is hang on to hope.
Hope is a rather elusive thing. It's a mindset really. In order to have hope you can't have yet attained the thing that you are wishing for. It has to be just beyond your grasp. Maddening, that. Many times the things that you hope for deflate. And you have to console yourself in knowing that there is still something else to hope for. It seems to be a paradox. Can't have what you want. Have to find something else to want. If I had more energy it would anger me.
But I don't. Instead I will sit on my hands and curl into a ball and try very hard not to move until the sun comes back up.
At the same time...
Coulda been worse
Hope is a rather elusive thing. It's a mindset really. In order to have hope you can't have yet attained the thing that you are wishing for. It has to be just beyond your grasp. Maddening, that. Many times the things that you hope for deflate. And you have to console yourself in knowing that there is still something else to hope for. It seems to be a paradox. Can't have what you want. Have to find something else to want. If I had more energy it would anger me.
But I don't. Instead I will sit on my hands and curl into a ball and try very hard not to move until the sun comes back up.
At the same time...
Coulda been worse
Friday, March 31, 2017
Sometimes
Sometimes my words get stuck. Like too many people trying to enter the elevator at once or exit it. They bottleneck themselves and adhere to an all or nothing free flow policy.
Sometimes some of the best stories are best left untold. Sometimes they can't be trivialized or marginalized or shrunken down into two dimensional characters created by 84 keys. Many of my best stories make their appearances only in my mind, in the moments between my sleep and my wake.
There is something to be said for the sacredness that is born of knowing a thing by touching a thing. I could describe the smell, the texture, the look, the color in vivid detail. But some things demand more honor than that. Some things deserve no less than to be experienced.
I have a box at home. I call it my box of special things. The box itself was a gift and through my life I have added things to the box that I intrinsically value. I open the box periodically. Handle each thing. Allow myself to remember all of the moments I've lived that have made my life uniquely special. Then with love and care I put them back.
Sometimes I do that with my words. I am verbally stingy with the things that matter the most.
Interesting side note- on more than one occasion I have had people that know me say, "What?! I didn't know you were _____! I didn't see that in your blog." I find that humorous. My blog is not my leather bound. It's my space to vent, my echo. Much like FaceBook isn't the proper venue to play out your relationship. It's cyber space. Life happens in real time.
I think this point in time is one of those sometimes. These words have gotten stuck because they know that they hold a value too deep to be relegated to an echo of an abyss. They know that if they get shared, when they get shared, they would be allowed to breathe the same air of you and I. The kind that carries energy and life and love and laughter. The kind that is only gifted in real time.
Therefore my stories move on.
Dewberry
Sometimes some of the best stories are best left untold. Sometimes they can't be trivialized or marginalized or shrunken down into two dimensional characters created by 84 keys. Many of my best stories make their appearances only in my mind, in the moments between my sleep and my wake.
There is something to be said for the sacredness that is born of knowing a thing by touching a thing. I could describe the smell, the texture, the look, the color in vivid detail. But some things demand more honor than that. Some things deserve no less than to be experienced.
I have a box at home. I call it my box of special things. The box itself was a gift and through my life I have added things to the box that I intrinsically value. I open the box periodically. Handle each thing. Allow myself to remember all of the moments I've lived that have made my life uniquely special. Then with love and care I put them back.
Sometimes I do that with my words. I am verbally stingy with the things that matter the most.
Interesting side note- on more than one occasion I have had people that know me say, "What?! I didn't know you were _____! I didn't see that in your blog." I find that humorous. My blog is not my leather bound. It's my space to vent, my echo. Much like FaceBook isn't the proper venue to play out your relationship. It's cyber space. Life happens in real time.
I think this point in time is one of those sometimes. These words have gotten stuck because they know that they hold a value too deep to be relegated to an echo of an abyss. They know that if they get shared, when they get shared, they would be allowed to breathe the same air of you and I. The kind that carries energy and life and love and laughter. The kind that is only gifted in real time.
Therefore my stories move on.
Dewberry
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
The Interim
There is so much to say. Yet, my words can't seem to assemble themselves. Nights are the most challenging.
A
Sunday, March 5, 2017
3 O'clock in the Morning & Texas
It's 3 O'clock in the morning and I am awake. I am wake because I made the choice to allow myself to go to bed at roughly 8:00 pm last night. In no space-time dimension do I need that much sleep. I was also dreaming of my ex (recent) and I think it was undesirable enough that my brain put a kabash on the whole sleep idea.
I laid awake in the darkness for about an hour, trying to let my body determine if it was sluggish enough to go back to sleep or not. I debated texting people. I debated calling people. Fact- Single people are notorious for being up in the middle of the night. I debated a middle of the night run to the airport to chat and drive around in circles. I decided to blog.
Blog about what? Texas? Weird compliments that people give you? Status updates on What'sApp? People wanting to imprint on my house? Following threads? Young men? Old men? New shoes? How funny it is to hear your kids respond to your blog in real time? Especially when I discourage them from wasting their time by reading it.
I think if I were to wake someone up in the middle of the night tonight the thing I would want to talk about the most is how you never know what life may bring but sometimes you have to go with it and see what happens.
I guess we are talking about Texas.
One of my favorite poems is called, "The Road Not Taken" by Frost. I will not give you a summary, hopeful that you'll google it and Frost can speak for himself, but that poem describes what seems to be my life philosophy. Another favored is called, "First Fig" by Millay. When you put the two together it explains how my life is lived. What does this have to do with Texas?
I, in a moment of thoughtless decisiveness, bought a non-refundable ticket to Texas. That isn't true. It wasn't thoughtless decisiveness, it was a heavy decision made quickly. One that if I had waited I equally both would have and would not have made. Since more time debating taking the trip would have placed me squarely in the middle I have no regret of the purchase.
Here you could insert the obvious question of, 'What's in Texas?' N.A.S.A. of course. That's funny.
I don't actually think that the point is what's in Texas. Have you never or ever had a gut feeling- a gut feeling strong enough to drive a decision but you don't know what the question is? That's what this trip is about. There is a question to be answered in Texas. I'm not sure of the question but I'll know when I find the answer.
This happens often in my life. In looking for nothing I find a lot of something. Some days you just have to follow the thread. How much of this has to do with N.A.S.A? I don't know. I'll probably go again. I think only by being there will I be able to determine if it was as cool as I thought it was the first time. I was pretty ill when I was there. I have no expectations, false again, my expectation is to be rather disillusioned by N.A.S.A.. But I still want to go because I still want to know. I want to get to the end of the thread.
That drive, that need to know if what I think I know is so, it takes me on wild rides. I have a feeling... How many of my more interesting life choices have started with that same sentence? Most of them. How many of my choices to not do something originated with a feeling? Most of them.
I think the point is there is a question to be answered (don't know the question) and it seems as if hopping on a plane will suffice in answering the question. Even if the answer is no, the question will have been answered.
I know. I know.
I'm running in circles.
Metaphor- I came across a ball of yarn. I've been unwinding and detangling it. I am almost at the end. As I detangle it I realize that the layers of brightly colored yarn have disguised a misshapen center. Maybe at the center will be a rock. Maybe it will be a toy. Maybe it will be a map to another ball of yarn and a whole new adventure. Maybe it will be oddly shaped yarn. I am not sure what is at the center of the yarn but the only way to know is to unravel it.
Hence I travel to Texas.
All things being what they are, at the very least, someone else will make the bed and coffee every morning. That's always nice.
A
I laid awake in the darkness for about an hour, trying to let my body determine if it was sluggish enough to go back to sleep or not. I debated texting people. I debated calling people. Fact- Single people are notorious for being up in the middle of the night. I debated a middle of the night run to the airport to chat and drive around in circles. I decided to blog.
Blog about what? Texas? Weird compliments that people give you? Status updates on What'sApp? People wanting to imprint on my house? Following threads? Young men? Old men? New shoes? How funny it is to hear your kids respond to your blog in real time? Especially when I discourage them from wasting their time by reading it.
I think if I were to wake someone up in the middle of the night tonight the thing I would want to talk about the most is how you never know what life may bring but sometimes you have to go with it and see what happens.
I guess we are talking about Texas.
One of my favorite poems is called, "The Road Not Taken" by Frost. I will not give you a summary, hopeful that you'll google it and Frost can speak for himself, but that poem describes what seems to be my life philosophy. Another favored is called, "First Fig" by Millay. When you put the two together it explains how my life is lived. What does this have to do with Texas?
I, in a moment of thoughtless decisiveness, bought a non-refundable ticket to Texas. That isn't true. It wasn't thoughtless decisiveness, it was a heavy decision made quickly. One that if I had waited I equally both would have and would not have made. Since more time debating taking the trip would have placed me squarely in the middle I have no regret of the purchase.
Here you could insert the obvious question of, 'What's in Texas?' N.A.S.A. of course. That's funny.
I don't actually think that the point is what's in Texas. Have you never or ever had a gut feeling- a gut feeling strong enough to drive a decision but you don't know what the question is? That's what this trip is about. There is a question to be answered in Texas. I'm not sure of the question but I'll know when I find the answer.
This happens often in my life. In looking for nothing I find a lot of something. Some days you just have to follow the thread. How much of this has to do with N.A.S.A? I don't know. I'll probably go again. I think only by being there will I be able to determine if it was as cool as I thought it was the first time. I was pretty ill when I was there. I have no expectations, false again, my expectation is to be rather disillusioned by N.A.S.A.. But I still want to go because I still want to know. I want to get to the end of the thread.
That drive, that need to know if what I think I know is so, it takes me on wild rides. I have a feeling... How many of my more interesting life choices have started with that same sentence? Most of them. How many of my choices to not do something originated with a feeling? Most of them.
I think the point is there is a question to be answered (don't know the question) and it seems as if hopping on a plane will suffice in answering the question. Even if the answer is no, the question will have been answered.
I know. I know.
I'm running in circles.
Metaphor- I came across a ball of yarn. I've been unwinding and detangling it. I am almost at the end. As I detangle it I realize that the layers of brightly colored yarn have disguised a misshapen center. Maybe at the center will be a rock. Maybe it will be a toy. Maybe it will be a map to another ball of yarn and a whole new adventure. Maybe it will be oddly shaped yarn. I am not sure what is at the center of the yarn but the only way to know is to unravel it.
Hence I travel to Texas.
All things being what they are, at the very least, someone else will make the bed and coffee every morning. That's always nice.
A
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