6 posts tagged “free-range restless”

It's interesting.  I've had a week at my parents' house, slouching around and falling back into that routine briefly.  Before that, I moved.  I'm back in Chicago and the promise of next week (the part that I'm honestly looking forward to) is the return to some kind of regular routine.  I always thought my annoyance with summer was the heat (which is usually is...thankfully this year...no worries there...yet).  But, I'm finding now that I'm much more peeved at the lack of routine...and possibly more so the lack of routine of my friends.

To put it simply: No one is where they're supposed to be.  I recognize I'm a party to this.  While I've found a couple of phone calls this week endearing for going something along the lines of "when are you coming home because this is getting ridiculous," this is how I've felt since mid-May.  And that kind of upheaval can tire a girl out. I'm glad to know that I'm missed by some as much as I miss them but it doesn't stop the fact that summer doesn't pan out the way it used to.

I have to believe that this pesky twelve-month work schedule is mostly to blame.  When the last day of school was June 12 (and it was always June 12), it marked the beginning of a measured amount of time to be away from some acquaintances (school people) in lieu of hanging with other acquaintances (teammates, friends, whatever).  Since my hand has been guided by forces beyond my control to "grow up" and "get a job" which, technically, I've resisted but most of my friends have not...there's nothing to come back to.  The joy of June 12 was always that for a couple weeks, we could relax and then August 27th would roll around sooner than we thought and the normal order would be restored. Now, the normal order is everybody scattering to the four winds somewhat permanently. I find myself getting panicky and wish for October because that's always some kind of stability. (October, don't fail me this year!).

I wish I wasn't such a control freak.  I do wish I could sit back and enjoy the lazy days of summer (whatever those are) with the people who should be there. Instead, it's the middle of July and I'm not sure why we were all just laying in wait for it.  Now that I'm here, I find myself waiting for the leaves to start changing.

Check back in October.  Guaranteed I'll want it to be Christmas.  And so it goes.

What you're witnessing here is the breaking of a bad habit.  Exciting isn't it? Here's what happened...

The other day I started a new blog.  [Insert joke related to the number of blogs I'm currently authoring here].  My thought was that I was sick of looking at this huge long list of archives, this stale design, this old and tired conversation that just kept happening in the same way all the time.  So I wanted a clean start.  I ambled over to Word Press and started me a blog. 

And then I got itchy about it.  I couldn't get it to look right. It didn't feel right.  I labored over the design only to be brutally rebuffed by the fact that you have to pay for the privilege of writing your own code.  Nothing was right.  And I found myself missing my little beach tent here.

But the realization of what I was doing hit me at Ikea, the jumbo house of overstimulating home improvement possibilities.  I took a trusty friend with me (hi Monica who doesn't read blogs) to help me stay focused. And as I stood before a blinding array of dressers, discussing whether I should get the six-drawer brown black or the three-drawer yellow, I said out loud, "Well, I wonder where else I'd be able to use this."  I was buying new furniture for my new place and thinking about how it might fit in the next place.  Monica (and this is the reason she got the Ikea nod...okay, actually she drove me there so that was probably a huge factor as well) just look at me like I was an ass and said, "Yeah, no." And then I saw the light.

For some reason, I am just uber-resistant to settling in anywhere.  I am a chronic re-starter...this may be directly linked to my perfectionistic tendencies...if it's not perfect, then I have to start over. I don't like to dwell on my past messiness or re-live the pain of it.  Somehow, the joy of it always gets lost.  I'm like that dog in Alice in Wonderland whose tail functions as a broom, sweeping up the path he just made.  I keep erasing my footprints.  And then I sit, head in hands, wondering how I have no history to lean back into when the times get tough.

So, the beach tent stays.  I am going to move it to it's own domain name so I can re-design it to be it's most glorious, tent-tastic self.  But the structure will remain.  As will the history that it represents.

I'm so predictable sometimes.  There are times that I do things that totally surprise me.  Today's not one of them.  It's Sunday which means 1) I'm totally restless, 2) I'm resistant to the new week, 3) I can't focus on anything, and 4) I also can't fall asleep.  Thank god I just found Lost on late night network tv, so that should help.  But I'm still trying to get to the heart of my restlessness.  Why does this happen?

I just read the last blog I did and I think it's related to this feeling right now.  I had a super week.  It was REALLY good, perhaps just because we're getting to a point in the year that I've been looking forward to for awhile.  And, to my surprise, my support system has just gone nutso in the best way possible this week.  They may know that and maybe not but I keep getting this horoscope that I'm loved and respected and I think it's not kidding.  That's exactly how I've felt all week long.  Every day was better than the next.  And then today happened and it was good.  Not awesome.  Not spectacular.  Just good. And (here's the crazy part), it seemed like a letdown.

So, maybe I'm not restless.  I'm just selfish.  I get too attached to the great things going on and when I have a "normal" Sunday, it seems sucky.  And, I'll be honest, some great things happened today too.  I think they just weren't what I wanted to happen.  And what would that be?  I don't know.   There it is.  That's the problem.  I just don't know what I want.  OR I know what I want and that I just can't have it. Or won't.

I generally never say this, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  I'm pretty sure it'll have some answers.

Man, today is going to be one of those days.  You know the kind.  I woke up and knew I didn't want to get out of bed. And I'm fairly sure nothing is going to make it right today.  I'm just not going to let it.  And that's okay, I think.  If in all things there is balance, I'm due for a couple melancholy days after the past six days that were just filled to the brim with joy and fulfillment.  Melancholy isn't ever bad for me and I never really see it as the effect of suffering or want.  It's just a sadness or, even better, a grayness.  Everything looks gray.  I feel gray.  The world smells gray today.  And that's cool.

But, the thing about melancholy lately is that I've been pairing it with "letting go."  I used to have sad days and assume the sadness was coming from something; that it was caused by an event or conditions that created it.  Letting go allows me to disassociate sadness with events; it becomes just an ambient feeling.  And I rejoice in it, actually.  In a world that wants nothing but pre-packaged, shiny happiness all the time, moodiness presents itself as a familiar, comfortable friend.  I don't have to try nearly so hard. And it's not a bad friend.  There's coziness in it somehow.  And I don't have to worry about fixing it.  I can just be with Sadness and welcome it like any conversation I have with a friend.  Sadness and I drink tea together and lay under the red down blanket and talk about how things could be different but not wish them to be that.

And one of the greatest effects of Sadness is that it always brings with it the realization of Love, I think because the two are often juxtaposed.  Love is an easy sell when things are happy; we allow the two to go hand in hand.  But the Love expressed when Sadness is at the table is much more recognizable.  It works harder and stands out on its own merits.  It's uncovered as the hidden "good" in Sadness which we always try to run from.

Today I'm hanging with Sadness but I don't mind it.  Having said that I look forward to Happy's (more specifically Guffawing Laughing's) return.

Well, I'm officially depressed.  It won't last long but this happens after any major holiday into which I've flung myself head-first.  The days afterward are just completely uninteresting in comparison.  Mundane, actually.  Days after holidays are mundane and gray and boring.  This, of course, always passes as I sink back into the usual cycle of the week and the predictability of the movements of everyone around me.  I return to counting the week in books read, tv consumed in some particularity to the day, and hours until I get to sing again.  Somehow that schedule works when I'm in marathon mode but the holidays are sprint mode...and once or twice a year every marathoner likes nothing else that to just run freely and unbound as fast as one can.  But there are always consequences.

This is not an original reflection nor is it even interesting.  I think this happens to everybody.  It's the inevitable flip side to anticipation.  This is the reason that I think having a wedding would destroy me: you wait and plan and wait and plan so long that when it's done, there's a little sense of your evolved "wait and plan" self that actually dies with it.  At least I know Easter will come back next year.  And, hey, before that Christmas will come...but not before Thanksgiving!  (You've just witnessed the rebirth of the "Wait and Plan" cycle...)  But in the same breath that I want these things to come quickly so that I can experience the joy and particular sense of "special" that any event brings, I can't hope for them to get here fast.  My life has to have time to evolve to that point.  And so, I wait.

That for me is the challenge of living in the present and not focusing on the future too much.  In waiting for the next "event" I will lose everything that's specifically NOT mundane about this day...or this moment.  And there are things that I can celebrate right now, even though I'll have to pack away the adrenaline rush of the "Hallelujah Chorus" until next year. Perhaps my challenge, as I'm understanding it now, becomes to accept the days and moments for what they are.  Every day cannot be a super-infused excitement fest; but every day does have something in it that can be celebrated for its own sense.  Maybe even its usual-ness.  Something tells me that celebration is much lower key in comparison.

Happy Tuesday.

It's been a slow e-mail day.  I find that maddening...one of those days when I log in to my inbox at least once every five minutes, hoping and praying that something good will be in there.  Distinctly different from one of those days on which I'm waiting for something particular to show up in there, this Monday I'm just waiting for that little inbox to show me some signs of life.  I think it's a Monday thing.

Sundays are generally annoying to me in that I feel like anything occurring after 7pm is an unwilling slide into Monday. I go kicking and screaming into every single Monday and I have for as long as I can remember.  Somehow, technology has become the salve that makes this bearable.  I was looking at my stats on GoogleReader the other day; no surprise to find that Mondays are heavy blog-reading days.  They are also heavy blog writing days (just take a look...I'm documenting my own craziness on this count) as they are heavy Facebook days (although the line between heavy Facebook days and everyday is getting distinctly more blurry as time goes on.) 

On the other hand, I was looking at my task list (in Gmail, mind you) for the past couple weeks and I have to report--Mondays are also becoming one of my more productive days during the week.  I still have a lot of energy and feel like I can tackle just about anything (as opposed to Thursdays when I just want the world to go away). I think it's an interesting relationship.  Do you?

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