It is important to remember that life is a jagged line, not a straight one, going upward and onward.
Perfection is not reached with utter ease and constant perfection, but with ups and downs and huge strides forward and several steps backward, and either one could come at any given moment.
And that’s okay.
Life is a jagged line, not a straight one.
And that’s perfect.
Post-a-day 2020
How do you define success?
Success is doing what you love and loving people while you do it.
That answer was from the glorious, adorable performer Anthony Ramos.
He is an absolute joy to watch, to hear, to feel through his performances, and I highly recommend taking note of him in the recent release of the recording of “Hamilton”, found on Disney+.
But that is somewhat beside the point here… the point is that his words in response to this simple question speak quite strongly to me.
I have never worded it as he did, but his words give exact language to my wordless thoughts and feelings on the subject of success…. success is not about money for me, not about social status nor fame nor beauty nor where nor how I live… as Anthony Ramos said (or, perhaps he wrote it, as it was a written article, and didn’t use quotation marks [nerd alert here]), success in my life is about doing what I love and loving while I do it.
Thank you for the words, sir… they are greatly appreciated. 🙂
P.S. Gosh, in a different world, I would love to learn to love this man, and for many reasons! Alas, he has found his partner in love, and I wish them all the best as partners to one another. 😉
Post-a-day 2020
Let’s talk briefly about a mental health oddity slash ironic circle of annoyance.
When I am struggling mentally, and I really just need some regular love from people, I start to reach out to people.
Say that I tell them that I am struggling, and could really use some love right now.
So, they start checking in, asking how I’m doing, and telling me they care about me…
Which is completely annoying and stressful, because 1) I only wanted some regular interaction and friendship love – nothing special or over-the-top emotional – and 2) it only reminds me of the fact that they weren’t interacting with me on the first place, showing me the regular love I so needed.
You see, when I feel the need to reach out for love, it usually doesn’t work to reach out… it, instead, only emphasizes the stress I was already feeling in my experience of being alone and unloved…, the experience that had me want to reach out for help.
And so, instead of asking for help when I am in need, I have, in a way, to trick people into interacting with me.
I’m not looking for any words of, ‘Hannah, you’re amazing,’ or anything of the sort… I’m just looking for those everyday expressions of love that we share with the people in our lives… the people with whom we interact on a regular basis… the kinds of relationships I tend not to find for myself very easily in adult life…
People just don’t with me… they don’t call me just to say hi, they don’t call me first for things, and they typically don’t reach out period… I am the one who reaches out, almost always in my life.
The only person who always checks in regularly with me is my mother.
I had one friend in town who did it, but she’s moved away now, so our lives don’t have our everyday hangout part anymore…, but I don’t blame anyone for that – we just don’t live in the same state anymore.
That one friend and my mom aside, though, I am the one who reaches out almost every single time in any relationship I have, friend or family.
And sometimes, it gets to me… when a whole bunch of other stuff kind of piles on top of one another all at once, the loneliness can hit me really hard… and I know that I need help…, yet asking for help in that case kind of defeats the whole purpose of asking for the help in the first place… thus the annoying circle of downward-spiraling irony…
Whenever someone calls attention to my need for love, be it be staying it directly or by saying how they wondered if I’m okay or if I needed anything, it just makes the whole things worse for me… it’s one area where talking about it doesn’t help, and actually makes things worse for me… it draws out my experience of being pathetic and unloved… it is embarrassing that I have to ask for signs of being loved…
So, I sometimes wonder if there’s a way to ask for help that says, ‘Hey, I need some love, but pretend I didn’t tell you this – pretend you just felt like talking with me, and so reached out to chat about nothing in particular…’
Does that all make sense?
Anyway, so that’s where I am tonight.
I could really use some love… love unsought, but nonetheless much needed.
Post-a-day 2020
I never quite understood what was going on in the song, though I listened to it multiple times… I attributed this to my lack of knowledge on the history being referenced within it…
Even when I watched it happen on the stage, and I listened carefully and understood almost every single word in it, I was still slightly lost… as I considered it afterward, I saw that it just still didn’t quite make sense to me – why such a title and then have the song be talking so much about what it was discussing?
I was guessing that it was showing how problems in the government’s leaders’ lives always had a risk of being life-threatening, and so there were two sides to being in politics at the time (and a third during the war itself, but from an enemy, not an ally)… thus the “dual” of it… the duality, would it be?
Anyway…
It suddenly clicked for me tonight, though, as I prepared myself for sleep, and contemplated Lafayette’s 19 words in under three seconds –
And I’m never gonna stop until I make ‘em
Drop and burn ‘em up and scatter their remains, I’m
…
Is it “duel” instead of “dual”?! I asked myself in sudden doofus–feeling inspiration.
I quickly checked, and, of course, it is, indeed, the “Ten Duel Commandments”.
Still a play on history and phrasing, but not in the way I was interpreting it… similar, but not really at all the same idea. 😂
Oh, the fun of spelling. 😛
P.S. Extreme gratitude yet again for the beautiful gifts that Lin-Manuel Miranda shares with the world at large… Thank you, good sir… 🙂
P.P.S. Daveed Diggs,…. dude… I kind of love you for your space of fun and for your spectacular precision. 😀
Post-a-day 2020
And I’ll be ready 🙂
…
Do you ever start to feel like you might not be good enough for something, or that something you love just isn’t practical enough, and so you might just need to give it up…?
I’ve been feeling that lately.
Yet tomorrow – I can hardly quell the rising butterflies of delight within my chest and lower rib cage at the thought of tomorrow – I will be doing something that is reminding me of exactly why I started doing this in the first place… I do this, because I love lively moments of life, and lovely perspectives within life…, and I find them worth sharing, as far and as wide as is possible.
And it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the fanciest or greatest quality of equipment – what matters is that I see it, and I use that ability to be able to share and forward the love to others.
Even if it isn’t in perfect of perfect focus and lighting and blah-blah-blah… 🙂
And it’s nice to be reminded of that…
Because I am super excited about tomorrow. 🙂
Post-a-day 2020
Well, the unexpected has arrived again, and suddenly… I suppose it can serve for me as a bit of a reminder that I can prepare and prepare, yet still not be ready for what will meet me every time, even I’m a seemingly familiar situation or scenario…
I think that is a good one for me to take forward with this whole book thing and magazine thing I’ve started but about which have begun to panic… “What if I do it the wrong way?(!!)” my brain seems to ask on repeat…
Then I do it the wrong way, and I have the opportunity to learn from that way’s having been the wrong way.
And I can do a better job the next round, because I now 1)have done it, and 2)have learned even more than before the first effort… sure, I may have messed up, but I am better equipped now because of it.
So, basically, prepare as I can, and then just go for it already, ready to get it done, ‘the right way’ or not…, whatever the case, have an open mind and be ready to learn… period.
😛
P.S. It is so warm in here, and I’ll be sleeping on a fleece(? It’s something else, but I don’t recall what it is… almost like wool, actually…) blanket, as there are no sheets for me to use… I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep very well, if much at all… 
Dear God, please, help my body cool off enough to sleep well and fully these next few nights. **gratitude hands** 😉
Post-a-day 2020
The thing is: At any given moment, there are an infinite number of possibilities as to what could happen next.
Our futures aren’t set in stone.
Sure, there are several paths that are the more likely and most likely and almost definite next moves, based on our past behaviors and ways of thinking and all…
But that doesn’t mean they are the only possibilities, the only options…
All the others are still out there, in every moment – any given moment still could go any direction, despite what came before it.
And we get to choose that next move…
No matter what, anything is possible.
And I think it is important to remember that.
Even if we fall into the deepest despair in life, we can still choose to make a different move from those “most likely” and “almost definite” moves… we can choose whatever we like.
Anything is possible, and the limit is only that of our imagination.
So, let’s get creative, and start expanding our move vocabulary. 🙂
Post-a-day 2020
You know how people have a tendency to disappear for a while from a friendship, when they start dating someone?
I, myself, did it once in high school (and promptly learned that it is not worth it and that I’ll not do it again…, I had been at the other extreme the time before then, spending so much time with the friend and too little with the boyfriend, that I lost the boyfriend!), and it took a long time for me not to feel bad about it regarding the friend that I almost lost.
Anyway, so I think it happens rather regularly in people’s lives, right?
We probably all know someone or many someones who have done it.
But have you ever had two friends doe it at once, because they start dating one another?
I had that happen several years ago… I was extremely excited just these two friends from different parts of my life had met and were dating one another.
But they slowly began to disappear from my life… now, the two are married and about to have a baby, and I don’t remember the last time we talked or even messaged one another… it’s been almost as long as their relationship, really.
Slowly, but surely, they each disappeared from the friendships they had held with me, and I now feel like I barely know either one of them.
And, while I miss them, I miss them from before they got together… who they are now as a couple is a unit with which I can’t seem to connect… and so I don’t actually find myself wanting to spend any time with them nowadays… they aren’t the same individual fiends I loved having in my life… as it goes with people’s getting together, they are different from before… and I don’t exactly like them now.
I don’t dislike them, I believe… but I definitely don’t like them.
And I am still undetermined as to whether it is how they actually are now, or if it is more how they simultaneously abandoned me and our friendships… I am thinking that it is both, approximately a 60/40 split, respectively.
Anyway… odd how that came to mind tonight… hmm…
Post-a-day 2020
I’ve been up north for over a week now, and I hadn’t even noticed it.
I had some definitely intense decompressing that happened at the start, and then have begun truly embracing the weather and the nature here in the more recent days.
I had expected to do much more sooner, but I apparently wasn’t ready for it… today, even, I finally woke up after having slept for ten hours (with bathroom breaks, as usual)… clearly, I was still struggling to catch up on my sleep.
But things in my brain have been healing, and my body is beginning to understand the healing, too.
Hopefully, it all is rolling well now – I want to enjoy my time here by doing more than just catch up on sleep, you know? 😛
On a separate note, I might have two spider bites on my back… not sure, but they seem like massive welts from a bite of some sort, but they don’t really hurt… they just sting a tad if I scratch at them.
So, I put some special stuff on them just now, and we’ll see how they are in the morning… fingers crossed that they improve dramatically overnight, and that the rest of my skin stays well and smooth.
Anyway, I’m off to sleep… here’s a small teaser from today’s afternoon activities.
Post-a-day 2020
“I only have about ten minutes, so, nothing about me – just tell me about you…”
He begins to list questions related to things and areas in my life.
“…and how is your social life? Do you even have one right now?…”
And the questions continue in a quick flood…
“…How is your body? Are you still gorgeous, or even more goddess-like now?…”
Eventually, the questions end, and he sits quietly to listen for the next ten minutes, attention focused…
…
Some friends, in even the tiniest of conversations, remind us of what true friends are… they are the ones who, when we’ve been in a tough spot, without their even seeming to try, say exactly the right thing to warm our hearts, and often thereby put us right at the edge of tears…
As I said, in taking with him, my heart felt so loved… breathing was so intensely filling and satisfying, my heart was so loved by him…
That is a sign of a true friend.
And, though we are a whole world apart from one another, I am grateful for the friendship and all of the love that has poured out and continues to pour out from and for it, like an everlasting waterfall…
Thank you, true friend, and thank you, God for the help… I needed this, and tonight especially… thank you, both and all.
Amen. 🙂 ❤
P.S. It is particularly important to me that this is a heterosexual man who expresses honestly and openly his thoughts and opinions, even with women, allowing for a spectacular and genuine friendship between the sexes… (When Harry Met Sally wins no fight here!)
Post-a-day 2020
hannah ananas 