Tag: stress

Ugh…

What is my story right now? Well, I spend my days hanging around, only doing a workout three times a week, and living vicariously through film and shows, while completely alone in the house.

It’s kind of a weird place to be, really – I feel like so much is close to happening in my life, but it also feels so difficult to do anything these days, with nothing really happening already, and no one even to see on any given day…

Ugh… and Benedict Cumberbatch does a spectacular job of making me want a partner in my life – he plays the adorable, slightly crazy, genius smart-ass quite well, and it really makes me want to have my own. 😀

Anyway… the show actually kind of gives me nightmares, so I can’t watch it after dark, and must pointedly watch something happy before bed, so the Sherlock stories don’t get to me too much at bedtime…. As I said before, I think I might be able five years old, sometimes. 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Perspective

Today, one of my best friends from college told me that, though it is a vague idea, she knows what kind of book she would want to read if I had written it. She told me that I am the only person she knows who lives for the journey, and not the destination. Most people plan out their lives based on where they want to be down the road…, But then, as she mentioned, I take a two-hour detour on a 14-hour drive, simply because I saw something that interested me…, And it doesn’t bother me one bit that it added so much time to the already long drive. She gave other examples, too, that illustrated her point quite well.

What stuck out the most for me, though, is that I have never considered my life with these words…, Yet they seemed absolutely true. In the past six months, I have been struggling with a regular question of whether I am living my life all wrongly, if I’m messing everything up by doing things the way I am doing them. And I see now: the whole reason I’ve been feeling that way lately, is because I have been comparing my life to everyone else’s lives… But that is like comparing bananas to chairs – they are not comparable, not in the least.

I am not playing the same game as everyone else, and when I compare where I am to where they are, I am certainly failing their game…, But, as I said, I am not playing their game.

Some might say that I take the road less traveled, but I really think that I often don’t take the road at all… I explore the detours, and end up somewhere completely unexpected.

(This point can be quite literally illustrated by a recent hike I took with a friend of mine… She wanted to stay on the main path, and I was curious as to what this possible detour path would show us… Where we ended up was spectacular, and completely unexpected… And then I found another semi-path back to the main road, way up ahead, while my friend went all the way back the way we had come…)

I’m beginning to think that this is a huge part of why, whenever I have been asked the question of where I see myself in five or ten or 15 or 50 years, I could never quite provide an answer… It’s not that my imagination isn’t great enough, but that I genuinely have no clue as to where I will end up and what I will be doing. I know the person I will be, I know that I will love and I will be loved. Beyond that, though, there’s a world of possibilities, and each one has an innumerable set of detours I might explore. It is likely that, in this moment, my wildest dreams couldn’t tell me where I will be in five or ten years… Or even in one…

When I considered jobs growing up and throughout college, and even now, I’ve always kind of had the feeling of, ‘Why pick one? Let’s give them all a try,’ though, without actually putting it into those words.

It’s funny to me how much sense this all makes, simply because of two sentences that a friend of mine said to me today… Let us remember that I words carry so much power – whether we realize it or not, whether we feel it or not, someone feels it more than we likely ever will know.

You know, for the first time in several months, I think I can breathe fully easily now… I was right that I am failing at this life…, But I had forgotten that that life was not the one I ever wanted to live…

Now, I am free to live my life…

And that is just about the most exciting thing I have ever considered or said… 😀

P.S. Early, early this morning, the world lost the physical presence of one of the greatest people I have ever known, and possibly ever will know… I haven’t talked about it with anyone, and I don’t want to yet – I’m not ready for that. However, I feel like she was with me today in this whole realization… She has been a huge part of almost every major moment in my life since I began college, and I swear she was here this evening. 🙂 I have a feeling she will continue to be here in my life.

Post-a-day 2020

Achy Faith

My body has been sore the past several days, and I am extremely grateful for it.

I have finally begun to do exercises again, thanks to my having reached out to a friend for help with accountability and support, and her acceptance of the request… It seems only fitting, because we used to go to the gym together in the first place, before everything closed, and then she moved.

Now, for the time being, anyway, neither of us is in Houston.

But we work out st the same time together, she at 5:30pm after work, and I at 4:30pm, the time I used to attend in-person classes…, and it works, because she is on the East coast now, so we actually exercise at the exact same time.

It still sucks to be paying for a gym membership to a gym that medicine and society tell me not to attend, but I would rather be safe than yelled at or blamed or sorry (or, even, sick)…, so, I stay away from the one place I ever really feel called to be on a daily basis, the one place I miss most…

But I am, at last, doing workouts at home again, using the workouts the owner originally made for us back when the gym closed for a while, and everyone had to work out at home together.

So, I could technically just cancel my membership, and do these workouts on repeat for the rest of my life, if I wanted… but I don’t want to do that.

I am using this gym’s workouts, even if they are old, and so I will maintain my membership.

It feels absurd, but right – I have thought on it many times, and I feel incredibly uncomfortable at the idea of canceling my membership…, so, I have let it go – I’ll stay a member and just suck it up… something about this will balance out, and it all will be beautiful and perfect.

I have faith in this.

P.S. A family friend – he’s our personal car and motorcycle expert – wants me to buy this great quality vehicle off of him, since they never use it anymore… it’s a Porsche Cayenne… what on Earth???… So, I might be upgrading from an old, crank window, semi-falling-apart Hyundai Accent, that was ranked as being worth $245 two and a half years ago on Kelley Blue Book, and that is not very reliable beyond an easy ten- or fifteen-minute drive… to a Porsche… Woah…

Post-a-day 2020

Good night; goodnight

Watching the film “Pretty Woman” tonight with my mom and uncle – one of my favorite films – I found myself saying, either aloud or merely within my thoughts, “This is one of my favorite lines,” an absurd* number of times.

I knew what was coming up next, and my brain grew extremely excited – I was even giddy – at the prospect of the upcoming line or exchange in the film… it just has so many good lines in it, my list of favorites comprises half the film!

Anyway, it was a lovely night together with my mom and uncle, despite his annoying what felt like pestering about managing yet another file transfer for him, simply because he refuses to move himself into the digital age…, so we have to handle things for him… (He wants to give files and photos to my grandparents, his parents, for them to put on their iPad… they are 89 and 90 years old and have and successfully use an iPad…, yet their child, my uncle, will not get himself an e-mail account or computer or an answering machine/voicemail, or use a cell phone of any kind…. and it isn’t about money…. If you don’t want to do that, I get it – I didn’t have internet at home on purpose…, but live life in agreement with that determination… don’t constantly burden other people for the use of their digital tools, because you won’t get your own… if you don’t want it, don’t make other people do it all on your behalf… it would be different if we were wanting to give him digital photos or something of the sort…., but he’s the one wanting to do these transfers and such all the time… do it yourself, man…. stop bringing us into it.

Anyway, that’s my stress express for tonight… haha

We had an interesting yet entertaining time doing a Monday crossword puzzle on my laptop before watching the film tonight… they both were intrigued and surprised at the opportunity, and it was a cool little mental activity for us all… usually, a puzzle is too small for three people to huddle around it and complete it together, and my mom always complains about my handwriting or the darkness of my letters…, but, on the computer, it was practically full-screen, and each clue was lit up while we were on it, and it simultaneously lit up the relevant squares on the board at the same time, so it was even easier than a regular paper puzzle is visually…, and the three of us got to do it together, all at once…

It was cool.

Annoying at times, but cool overall. 🙂

So, yeah… it was a good night together. 🙂

*I notice that I use the word absurd rather often when describing things within my life… I wonder if I am being overly dramatic, or if my life, in fact, is rather full of absurdities… at the very least, we know it is not normal, as made clear my cousin those several years ago during the acrobats conversation over dinner. 😛

Post-a-day 2020

Hormones and brain cells aligning once more

I feel that I am very close to being back to normal again… almost there…

It was actually really cool and then funny when, earlier today, I had completely forgotten that I hadn’t been normal lately – I was just so normal, and didn’t even consider that this normal hadn’t been my normal until the past couple days.

When something a little odd happened, as I considered how I hadn’t yet done something on the mental list of today’s tasks, and whether I would do it at all, it suddenly occurred to me that, until that moment, I had been being completely normal for myself… and it was a fabulous realization.

Sure, I was noticing it because I was entering into a tiny state of my miserable not-normal from the past few weeks, but that didn’t even bother me… which shows how close to normal I have come as of today.

I voluntarily worked on and almost completed (I genuinely didn’t know three clues) a Tuesday crossword puzzle, I did the extra assignment before an online workshop, I helped multiple people over the phone, I exercised without prompting from my friend (and she apparently skipped her workout today), and I even went out walking for a bit, despite the rain.

As I mentioned, I certainly had some struggle points today, but most of the day was not struggle…, and that was and is an immense relief for me.

I’m a few more days, I am hoping, I will be completely comfortable in my skin and life again…, and I am comfortably looking forward to it.

As for now, gotta sleep ASAP, as I volunteered myself to drive my grandma around for errands… starting at seven AM… what’s with me, you wonder?

We all know I’m a late night person, a night owl more so than the early bird… Well…,

I am with me… at last.

Post-a-day 2020

The Dick Pic

Women just about everywhere hate them, yet single women just about everywhere with digital means of communication cannot escape them…

They are The Dick Pics.

Why do men seem to want to send them to us women?

After much contemplation and casual discussion, a girlfriend of mine and I hit something that made a lot of sense: Guys would love to receive the reciprocal from a woman, and so they somehow believe that 1)women will appreciate their offering theirs free of charge or request, and 2)it will be a way for them to receive the response photo from the women receiving their photo.

It makes sense.

Except for the fact that women don’t typically like the dick pics… like at all…., and they openly say so to the public.

Yet men keep doing it.

It is even illegal in some places now, to provide an unsolicited photo of one’s penis.

I have never received a dick pic, actually.

But I’m not on dating sites, for one thing.

And I also wouldn’t be interested in dating anyone who might consider a dick pic to be a possibility period, let alone a good idea.

So, while a small part of me feels like I am missing out by having not ever received one of these photos, a much greater part of me is grateful for not having to have that in my life.

If and when I have a partner in my life, I can see all the up-close and personal genitalia I want – until that time, no photos, please… and thank you.

Tonight, I could have remedied this small situation of minor FOMO*, as a distant friend of mine reached out, telling me that he was in the mood, and could he send me a photo?

That wasn’t the typical request regarding photos… usually they ask for a photo of us…, so, I asked what he meant, and he replied:

🍆📷?

I’m in the mood

A long messaging conversation ensued, in the middle of which, I reached out to a close male friend of mine for guidance as to how to handle the situation.

Apparently, this guy just likes sharing himself with women who enjoy seeing him (specifically his genitalia) – he gets a rise out of it.

And he admits this openly and fully.

And, while I adamantly denied the dick pic request, I thanked him for his frankness and for his asking me for permission – the two are rare, and they were much appreciated.

He said he didn’t understand why a guy ever would send such a photo unsolicited and without permission, and was surprised at the idea that they nonetheless do it often.

Whatever the case, we ended up messaging about other things, once it was fully settled that I did not want what he had to offer to me tonight, and it was actually really, really cool.

I actually feel like we have more of a friendship now, because of it… and especially because of our openness and honesty with one another.

At any given moment, I could have gotten all offended.

But I didn’t… I have him space to be himself, and accepted his honesty… as I said to myself earlier, he was genuinely just asking for help.

Just because it was not a common request or one with which I was very comfortable did not mean that I needed to freak out or grow angry or grossed out with him.

It was rather refreshing, then, dealing with pure honesty in such a situation.

It was like the opposite of an affirmative yes, and in the best of ways… an affirmative no, in a way.

So, I still have no dick pic, and I am totally happy with that… totally…

And I am also grateful for the upfront honesty and no-nonsense of this guy tonight – it was awesome. 🙂

*For those who are not aware, it means Fear Of Missing Out.

Post-a-day 2020

Last night

Couldn’t seem to sleep well, but had to get up early this morning.

Went back to sleep after morning work was completed.

Slept hard.

Really hard.

Woke up and had breakfast at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Accomplished lots more, including a real workout for the first time in a couple weeks.

Hastily closing up chore shop, as I realize it is almost one in the morning, and I have to be up early in the morning…

Goodness, I am still not very good at this early morning thing.

Fortunately (and unfortunately), I have things I must do that will last well into early afternoon tomorrow, so I won’t end up back in bed for hours that will keep me up at night (which is almost a guarantee that I likely will be tired for most of the day).

**Sigh…

Goodnight, I suppose… there is much more to be done here in my room, and it has me wondering if I wouldn’t prefer to hold off another day on my departure to ‘the small-town house getaway’ that was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon… we shall see… tomorrow!

Post-a-day 2020

Under the same roof

My mom and her two brothers are all staying in my aunt’s house tonight (aunt is out of town) with me.

I think this might be the first time they’re all staying together – and even without their spouses – under the same roof at once in decades… perhaps even since they lived in their childhood home together.

The dynamic is partly totally weird and partly totally easy… kind of like, ‘Why couldn’t we have done this dynamic years ago?’

Instead of the regular struggle they all seem to have around one another, getting on each other’s nerves and all.

Anyway… it’s neat, and I like it. 🙂

And it makes me think of how my brothers and I all get along so well together.

Post-a-day 2020

Life

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