future – Page 99 – hannah ananas

Making space in my life

Today, I spent almost an hour going through clothes, organizing, folding, and putting them away into a dresser, etc., as well as going through four boxes of books and organizing them better and putting them onto a bookshelf. I have two new small sections of floor visible in my room.

That’s a message I just sent to my brother. Tomorrow onward, I have to spend at least 15 minutes each day, doing cleanup/clean-out in my bedroom and/or bathroom, six days a week. I am reporting the completed tasks to one of my brothers each day.

This has been one of the most difficult things in my life, moving to a near-minimalist lifestyle. We have this bit in our DNA, in our blood, that has us sit as though we need hoarding in our lives. My brothers and I have been intent on freeing ourselves from its grasp. I am the youngest, and have spent the most time with the family who exudes the gene so obviously, so I am the last to reach my own breaking point – I will live free of this. Now, I am simply dealing with my own laziness and exhaustion after a full day of work.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t able to get rid of things. I had clothing, among other things, that I did not want to wear. And yet, I could not get rid of it. Today, I noticed that, if the cashier girl had complemented my bracelet, I would have offered it to her willingly. And this isn’t just any bracelet – it’s one of the natural stone bracelets that I made. I love these bracelets. It is as though I am two different people in these two scenarios. The difference was what happened one day in my apartment.

I was looking around at my colorful explosion of clothing all over my wall bedroom floor. I enjoyed the color and the explosion at first, but I’d wanted it to go away after, at most, an hour…, and it hadn’t, and I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t even have enough space to store all of the clothes around me, so putting them away just wasn’t an actual option. After some amount of time, I found myself crying, sobbing, really. I don’t want this stuff, I cried to myself passionately, so why can’t I get rid of it? And then the revelation hit me: I would be wasting my mom’s hard-earned money.

My mom was a mom initially, once she started having children. After she and my dad split up, she had to take on a more full-time work schedule, on top of being a mom. And she was a massage therapist, so her work was physical labor. I grew up knowing that the money she earned took a good amount of effort. It kind of was “hard-earned money”. And, for me, if I ever were to get rid of something, I felt to my core that I was wasting my mom’s efforts. And it applied to just about anything I had, whether it had come from her or not. I just couldn’t get rid of anything, because I subconsciously saw it as a sort of slap to my mom’s face, theoretically, of course. That very day, when I found myself sobbing on the floor amongst my clothing, and I discovered this simple fact, I was able to begin getting rid of things. By the end of only a few days, I had two or three huge trash bags of clothing ready for donation. (My cousin went through them first, just to pull out whatever she would use gladly from it all, because we always do that, anyway, and then she dropped them off at the place by where she lived.)

After that week, my struggle has just been laziness. I have a couple decades worth of things that have been living at my mom’s house. I have gone through about 15 years’ worth of boxes and bags so far, and things are really looking up. I have accumulated less and less these past several years, and so I really only have about 7 years’ worth of things left to clear out. I know of, I believe, two boxes in the attic, and an unknown number hiding somewhere in the garage. Otherwise, I only have two and a half small boxes remaining in my room from childhood. The rest of the boxes are from my apartment, and I don’t exactly have a need to be unpacking kitchen supplies, nor getting rid of them, when I’ll just need them all again in another couple months. I do, however, want to verify that I don’t have any excesses in those boxes, though that will wait until I finish getting rid of all of the other stuff, and possibly until I am actually moving, depending on the timeframe.

My plan is to finish things with my bedroom by the 30th of December at 11:00p.m. Then, I’ll have January and February (and hopefully cool weather) to do whatever needs to be done with the garage and attic. After that, I can move to helping my mom with whatever I can around the rest of the house. And then, possibly, grad school begins, and I decide where I will reside.

Anyway, that’s just what’s on my mind right now. I feel good about what I accomplished tonight, though I know I need to take things slowly, which stresses me. If I spend too much time on it all, two things will happen. I will get burnt out quickly, and stop doing things altogether to clean up/out, and I will get too little sleep, and suffer for it. So, as much as I dislike taking so long on all of this, the task moves from daunting to doable, when I split it to 15 minutes a day, six days a week. And that means that I can have it all be happening while I’m still working over full=time. I’m looking for a beautiful and easy transition to January, and that includes a clean, clear, and organized room, with an easy place to work. So, I’m hopping to it, and I have my brother helping me to stay accountable, in spite of my laziness.

Post-a-day 2017

What’s next’s what’s next

I have been worrying lately about my future. Every time I aim to figure out how to steer my career for the long term, I end up somewhat sad and upset, and totally uninspired. Thinking about this this weekend, I had the sudden obvious realization that I don’t have to know my long term – I don’t have to know what’s next after what’s next. Just one what’s next is good enough. It’s better than good enough – it’s actually great. Ideal, possibly. Yes, I have all sorts of ideas for my future, but they don’t need to be solid, set in stone now and forever. Every year, my dad is ‘about to retire’, and that’s been for the past decade, I believe. And yet, he’s still chugging along happily (mostly happy with it, anyway) at his job. And he’s one of the most plan-y people I know when it comes to work, finances, and career choices.

So, if I go for this now, I can be looking for what’s next while doing it. I certainly know that I end up becoming a new, different person after every phase of this or that, so how could I possibly know now what the future, new I will want most? Though I have my amazing moments, I’m not God, so I don’t know all.

I guess it is kind of just a slightly altered perspective of “What About Bob”’s baby steps. Worry about this room… then, when I’m in the hall, think about that hall…, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I’m down with that.

Also, Brad Paisley was interviewed by Jeff Foxworthy on the radio this evening, and it was delightful in an unexpected way. Find the recording, if you can. They now plan to write a song together, as a result of the interview. I’m looking forward to it. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Sleep, or stare at the wall?

Do you ever find yourself lying in bed at night, thinking about nothing in particular, and just lying there with the last light still illuminated, unsure of what you are doing? It happens to me every so often. I wonder if it has to do with stress or decisions, or even something else like that. I was doing it just now, though I’m not sure why. I just know that I suddenly realized that I am uttlery exhausted, and yet I have not even tried to do my bit-o-writing and reading for the night so that I could actually go to sleep – I was just observing my fairy lights on the wall (my main night lights and room illuminations ever since I saw it at my cousin’s friend’s house when we all were in college), and not intentionally. It’s as though I want the moment or night to last longer, without realizing the want… or something like that, anyway.

I don’t know. I am exhausted, though, and that I do know.

Post-a-day 2017

Hmm…

I have felt recently as though I am at one of the most quizzical times in life. The feelings of being young and twenty-something are being contradicted by simple counting and addition, and the unofficial job status of ‘semi-wanderer’ seems more and more out of place. To add to it all, I didn’t even know the year when I was putting the date on a paper I was signing this morning.

Every other day, I have new feelings and ideas about the direction I want to pursue now and next in my life. Today, I consider one thing. Tomorrow, I am excited and content in pursuing that same thing. The day after tomorrow, that idea seems somewhat bleak. And then, the day after that, a new idea arises, and the cycle repeats itself.

For now, I think I need to stick with today and tomorrow, and what I will do with myself then. I will put forth my own good effort, and do well and good in the world around me. For some reason, that always had a wonderful result for everyone around me, including myself. As for the other things, I think they will slide into place as I take each of those daily steps that seem right for today and tomorrow. And, day by day, my life will be filled with such love and joy, shared with the world, as I never could have imagined from where I am right now. Baby steps and hope, as I learned from “What about Bob?” and “The Shawshank Redemption” (I plan to read the short story by Stephen King soon enough.).

Post-a-day 2017

Family and music

I love my family. And I miss getting to spend time with them. I had somewhat forgotten the existence of one of my cousins, because I hadn’t actually seen him in so long. I knew he existed, of course, but it was as though I had accepted that it wasn’t ever an option to see him. And so, it was a wonderful surprise – though I knew in my head that he would be here ahead of time – actually seeing him and spending time with him tonight.

One of the things I love about spending time with him is his musical gift. He can be given any instrument, and, whether he has ever played it before or not, can be playing lovely music on it within a maximum of a few minutes. We always end up humming and whistling and singing beautiful music together, whether we have an instrument or not (though we often have at least a guitar).

Tonight was no different. He pulled out one of my favorite songs, and early on in the visit. Oddly enough, I hadn’t listened to or sung/played the song in years, and so it was a fun surprise. I had to look up the words, because it had been so long, but it was too good of a song not to get all the words right (“White Man” by Michael Gungor Band).

As he fiddled around on the guitar, my mom and I sat with him on the porch, listening to him play, and working on our puzzle/mystery boxes we were creating for his brother’s wedding reception this weekend. The kind of music he was playing reminded me of why I ever wanted to learn to play guitar in the first place. I want to play John Denver and Jim Croce music, and other things similar in style. It has always been my long-term, distant future goal, since it really isn’t the easiest music, but there are plenty of things I can learn as stepping stones (and I have learned a good bit of them). I just don’t play when I don’t have the company of someone else’s music.

When I am with my cousin, we almost always take the time to sit down and teach me something new and, of course, beautiful to play. Now that we are back living in the same country, we might actually be able to set up semi-regular music meet-ups for the two of us. We’ll see.

Gosh, I love my cousin.

Post-a-day 2017

Sometimes…

Sometimes, things fall apart, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

Sometimes, things come together, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

And sometimes, the difference between the former and the latter is that action was desperate and limited in the former, but honest and free in the latter.

Life sure is beautiful, ain’t it? 😉

Post-a-day 2017

a place in our world

Sometimes I wonder about whether there really will be a place for me in our modern, developing world. There so many things that are becoming commonplace that go against so much of who I am. From the simplest tiny things to morals to lifestyle to core beliefs and thinking patterns, I notice a difference between so much of how the society functions around me and what is in me, myself. I realize that, somehow, I will have a place in the world, but I wonder if it is in the part of the world I already know, or if I will find myself in an entirely different society, somewhere else in the world… not in what I consider my home.

I just wonder…

Post-a-day 2017

The non-traditional route

Today, someone put words, and therefore solidity and realness, to a thought that has floated nervously in the background of my mind recently. He said that, since I will be piecing together my work, and arranging my schedule to work with whatever work I do, I will be like an entrepreneur for myself (Hannah entrepreneur, he said), organizing things and my schedule out myself, as opposed to having my schedule and expectations already set out for me (as is typically the case with a job).

I liked and still like that idea – I get to design my life and be creative with it, instead of having to accept whatever some job tells me has to be my daily schedule for at least a year.

He also asked me all about things that interest me for my non-normal-job time (which could end up being close to a year, depending on how positions open up places). I almost have a sort of game plan already, just from this one conversation, and I have scheduled to sit down and think through things tomorrow, all with today’s conversation and ideas in mind.

A few of the things that stand out most to me as ‘something I want to do,’ but have never pursued, are becoming trained as a yoga instructor, improving my knowledge of massage therapy, teaching dance (for money), and working/volunteering at least once at The Texas Rennaissance Festival (Renfest for short). I am already added or applied to be added to various substitute lists, and I am on one tutoring list (need to make some decisions on location, and then make calls for that within the next week for more lists). And I need to check up on lacrosse officiating recertification within the next week, too.

These are my present ideas, and they inspire me. 😀 I am excited about my planning tomorrow.

Post-a-day 2017

Without a purpose

Have you ever lived without a purpose? I’m doing it right now. I almost feel even more like a crazy person than I ever have. I find myself wondering the point of everything I’ve done in my life, seeing it all as useless, as though I am somehow at the end of my productive and useful phase in life…, as though there is nothing good left to come.

I don’t actually believe this, but it is my experience right now. It is the result of having no purpose, I think. And yet, I am almost terrified of finding what I could call a low-level purpose, for fear of being stuck in it. I worked at Starbucks for a while a few years back. I was quite good at it, and I occasionally miss parts of it (like interacting with all the nice people, and making people’s days and such). However, I want to do so much more, that a job like that makes me sad for all the unused potential within myself. And yet, every day feels a little bit worse on the confidence front (not for confidence in myself, but for confidence in my future). These goals and desires I have for my future seem so unlikely to align, I am beginning to feel desperate and hopeless. Why bother?

I suppose it might be time to talk to Jude a bit, and to try out something new.

Post-a-day 2017

Mr. Right

I’ve been thinking tonight about my Prince Charming, my personal one, my desired future. It all started with thinking about musical theater as I showered. As most shower stream-thoughts go, I ended up on a very loosely connected tangent. Do you know the song by Chris August called “Stranger”? It’s a beautiful song, and I fell in love with it several years ago. A lot happened related to that song, but let’s not go there now. While some specific lyrics rolled through my head over and over again, as song lyrics so often do, something struck me.

I dreamed you.
Now, I’ve found you.
Call off the search,
’cause I found my stranger.

Those were the specifically inspiring words tonight. Though I have listened to the song more times than I know, and I know every word still, despite having stopped listening to it years ago (for reasons I won’t mention just yet), I have never had the thought that followed those words as they repeated in my head tonight.

“I have never dreamt you.”

Though I have wished and wished, and even hoped and prayed and asked for my partner in life, I have never dreamed him up. I have begun ideas before, but I have never come up with what my partner in life actually is. You could ask me now, and I would have no idea what to tell you about the partner I want. Sure, there are plenty of things I know that I don’t want, but everything else seems to change with how I feel each day, each time someone asks me about it.

Now, I don’t exactly see this as a bad thing. I just happened to realize that I have never dreamed him up. So, I can never have Chris August’s song become a reality for me – I can’t find my stranger. I don’t even have a vision in my head of what it looks like being with someone. Every time I have dreams where there seems to be a sort of partnership, I always seem to be the one taking care of someone else – the traditionally male role. Or, perhaps it is the mother role I play. I already seem to do that all over the place in life. It’s the reason I have always wondered if I can ever find someone to take care of me. But I digress…

I realized in the shower that I have no image of a person. I don’t know if I’m looking for someone tall, dark, and handsome. I don’t know if he is foreign or domestic made. I don’t even know what kind of skin he has. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as bad. I am just noticing it. I also notice how so many others seem to have dreamed up their partners years before they even have begun dating others. I mean, they seem to know what they want. By having that idea of what they want, they are able to seek it out. Sometimes, when they find it, they realize they didn’t want it after all. And sometimes they find something better along the way. But they have something to pursue. I don’t even have an idea to seek out, a type of someone or something to pursue. Perhaps that is an issue with being so open to the world and to new ideas, and for knowing that what I see or think isn’t always the best that the universe has to offer.

Post-a-day 2017