22 posts tagged “reflections”

I'm just realizing today that it's July 18th.  That's like, half the summer--over.  For those of us on school schedules, we've got 3+ measly weeks to count down to d-day.  This flitting past of summer this year is remarkable to me simply because usually I sweat the summer OUT. And yes, I mean both figuratively and literally.  So, I thought I should sit down and contemplate what exactly those factors are that are lubricating the usually tenuous, sun-burned path to October and autumnal freedom.  Here we go:
1. 70 degree temperatures.
I am not gonna lie...no complaints from me on this one.  I get so ticked when people dig on this weather.  Something in a whiny voice about not getting to be by the pool.  Ugh.  Are you kidding me?  I haven't had to turn on my ac more than a handful of days which means I'm comfortable, my electric bill is low, and I'm not sweating through two shirts a day.  Stuff it, you "I wish it would be 90 today" people.  I've got news for ya.  There's a state just a bit south and east of here that would love to accommodate you; it's called Florida.
2. Top Chef Masters on Bravo.
Just when I started pining for the real thing, Bravo comes up with this that is arguable just as exciting and somewhat totally different.  These are enormous names in cooking...all on the same show...sometimes screwing up...big.  What more could I ask for?
3. "Active" for Wii.
Just to parlay the criticism of those nay-sayers who poo-poo'ed my purchase of the Wii a couple years ago, when EA Sports ( in my opinion, far superior game developers for Nintendo systems) came out with their answer to Wii Fit, I thought, "What the hell...if I'm gonna be a Rock Star by night, I gotta get in shape by day."  Despite one little glitch brought to my attention by my downstairs neighbor (oops...no jumping), this is brilliant.  And my triceps are magically defined even as we speak.
4. Not spending 45 seconds out of every minute wanting to move.
This new place looks like home, feels like home...is home.  I'm putting away the boxes and packing tape confident I don't have to keep them too close to the surface.  Yay Team Apartment Transition Because We're Moving to Bloomington.
5. Diet Hansen's Natural Soda.
My new favorite drink of choice when it's too early to go with vino lest I be considered a sot.  The "spicy" flavors are the best: Ginger Ale and Root Beer.  And, according to the label, there's, like, discernably nothing in them.  I have no idea how they taste like anything other than air, but it works.
6. Trader Joe's.
My new grocery store of choice.  Excellent in all ways. Including the friendly cashier who has the voice of god.  I go to his lane like a loyal little puppy.
7. Big Love via Netflix.
This is the Showtime brain-child about fundamentalist polygamists living it up in the great state of Utah.  Surprisingly introspective and appropriately critical while also having a heart.  I've never understood Chloe Sevigny's appeal until now...I get it.  I get it.
8. FarmTown on Facebook.
This is literally a new acquisition yesterday.  Even now, it promises hours, days, weeks of unexplicably nerdy, obsessive-compulsive fun. At my computer.
9. Harry Potter is back on track.
All the books have been out awhile now and the post-poning of the 6th movie took him uncomfortably off the map for over a year.  But he's back now on the big screen which has re-united a need for me to go back and read the last 3 behemoths in the series.  And I still love them enough to plan to read them again. Should I have kids in the future, I'm already planning a bed-time reading extravaganza.  Should I not, can I borrow your children?  Not in a creepy way?
10. Entertainment Weekly.
I've been getting this weekly magazine for years but it deserves a shout out because it always delivers.  I read it every Friday or Saturday afternoon and bask in the fact that it's really close to being as trashy as People but with just a smidge of credibility, thus making it arguably an academic endeavor. Ha-HA.
11. Stretch Slip Covers from Target.
In one move, this fairly inexpensive slip cover turned my old crappy (but still luxuriously comfortable) ugly couch into a socially acceptable, luxuriously comfortable, living room furniture piece.  It transformed the bejesus out of it.  I'm so impressed.

So, there we go.  I'm breathing more freely for all of the reasons listed above and perhaps a couple I'll just keep to myself for now.  I think I wouldn't mind summer so much if they were all like this. Naw.  Jury's still out on that one. 

I've just survived my 4th move in 5 years and I have a couple handy observations for those who want to undertake this kind of quasi-permanent lifestyle:

1. Don't.  It will mess with your head.
2. If you must move, hire movers.  Completely worth the price. 
3. Do not be fooled by the notion that packing is somehow more painful than unpacking.  I know this to be, largely, a personal preference.  But I'm kind of amazed at how arduous unpacking is.  Find a place for all that stuff.  Who needs it? I wonder if this is a marketable service?  I know I, surely, would have paid for the privilege of someone else setting up my apartment.  There are just so many decisions to make.  And I'm not qualified to undertake those. I don't knowI'm barely qualified for a Super Saver card at Dominick's.
where the tupperware should go...
4. Stairs, no matter how they are arranged, are always a nightmare.  Good lord. 
5. Ikea is my new friend.  I've always loved Ikea but only aestetically.  Turns out they're functional too...in that they've given me new places to put said stuff.  Like  yellow dresser that's moving into my bedroom this very afternoon.  It's excited.  I'm excited.  We're one happy little pre-fab family here. Although, said dresser almost killed me on getting it up the aforementioned stairs.  That box weighed roughly 400 pounds.  Before assembly.
6. Moving into an apartment previously occupied by friends is good.  All the colors work. It was clean.  And I don't have to worry about the potential serial killer that may have lived in the space and dirtied its karma.  This has possibly been the most brilliant part.

My list could go on but I'm really just interested in going and enjoying looking at the uncluttered, bare floor boards completely without a majority of the boxes that were here just days ago.  This might be the first time in 10 years that I'm not living out of a box. It's...different.

One of the hardest things to convince people of is the fact that my life as a graduate student is not care-free.  Regular 9-to-5'ers get a hold of my schedule and immediately say things like, "You don't know how lucky you are," and "How I wouldn't wish to have so much time..."  Yeah, okay people.  Let's back that truck up.  The fact is (and Judy Wittner has said this time and time again), this kind of "care-free" life comes without vacations.  Even though my schedule looks flexible and is flexible, I think about my school work 100% of every day. (Do I do anything about it, almost 99% of the time the answer is "no.")  So, this week I came to Cleveland to get some vacay in and I've learned a couple things, some disturbing.  Walk with me.

• I no longer understand the notion of vacation.  I literally cannot put my work away.  I brought a suitcase full of books with me. (Have I looked at them? No, of course not.  But there here.)
• I have a developed serious anxiety over thinking about going back to work.  I've had to wrestle myself to the ground several times to remind myself that this week I'm supposed to NOT be thinking about school work.  I have bruises.
• I look more human if I've had a little sun.  It's unfortunate that the glare of my computer can't tan me...because I sure do look better after a little sun.  And feel better too.  I'm now convinced (as I wasn't before) that sitting by a window doesn't count as being outside.  Somehow, I'll have to work this in a little bit to the every day.
• Walking always helps.  I'm generally so annoyed by those people who count "working out" as a hobby.  To me, that's a chore.  But if I take a walk, my head clears out and I can relax...even more than when I grunt my way through yoga.  Go figure.
• Kung Fu Panda is an excellent movie.  That has nothing to do with the price of rice but I'm not kidding.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.

Now, how exactly to I work that in to leaving my school books at home for a week?  I'm sure it fits somehow but I don't see it...yet.

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.

It always amazes me that there are times in my life when the muddy path gets more well-marked, that a little light shines through the dimness, and that all that is sometimes fuzzy comes into clearer relief. I've learned to live for those times.  I can't neglect the time that I'm in, but often I find myself hoping for these moments because they're life giving and breathe a new kind of spirit back into everything.

What I'm always surprised by, though, is that these moments aren't always happy.  It seems like they would be.  No.  Sometimes they really surprise me.  Like now.

I'm down today.  I knew it was coming.  I hit a calendar date I was dreading and we all know how that goes.  There's always fallout.  There's always doubt and worry.  There's always speculation.  So much uncertainty.  But I find it remarkable that with these times that cast shades of dimness, there is always something that catches me off guard.  And today it's something in the resiliency of the human spirit.  Maybe it's mine a little bit.  It's definitely a friend of mine who just coincidentally did the exact right thing at the right moment. It's the unfolding of a lot of new beginnings. And it's in the ability to realize that even though today stings, it stings for the right reasons. That all of the uncertainty has an end that's foreseeable.

Maybe some would call these coping mechanisms but that seems dour.  They're living mechanisms through and through.  They allow persistence to happen.  And maybe even a little hope, too. 

Oh man.  I'm moving again.  I'm standing in my half-packed, half-unpacked, half-still-packed-from-the-last-move apartment realizing that the countdown has moved into the "weeks" range and I'm doing what I swore to myself I wouldn't do again at least for two years.  Moving.  I hate it.  But the frequency with which I do it suggests there's something I love about it.  Perhaps it's time to unpack that...both the apartment and the "stuff" surrounding it.

Last year at this time Meghan (hi Meghan) graciously agreed to search for new apartments with me.  What a trooper.  But she joked that I have a commitment problem and it's stuck with me; I think she hit on something of a universal , running truth for my life.  It's clear to me that I have a problem "settling."  I've never thought about it literally before but it's true.  The possibility that there's something better out there haunts my dreams.  It motivates my every move (including apartments).  It suspends me in something of a web of anxiety.  Searching, searching, searching.

So, here's the beauty of this move: It's a chance for me to do something I've not done ever, really.  It's an opportunity for me to allow this new place to become home and not just my "Tent on the Beach." (Wow...the implications of this are far-reaching...I might have to do a blog overhaul.)  I think, possibly out of sheer exhaustion, I need to stop searching and just learn to settle here...as the first settling in a series of settlings that, I think, I've been putting off for a long time.

Yesterday I read an article about contentment...I always read these things like I would an instruction manual: "How do I get this Contentment?"  The point was really good.  It basically said it's a matter of choosing it.  Contentment is always there for the taking.  It's being appreciative for what you have and letting the reins loosen on what you want.  It's a living in the present, I guess. It's letting go of searching so fervently.  Already I feel better.

What a nice thought: to fully believe that, in 3 weeks, I'm going home.

[Sigh of relief.]

There is certainly something to be said for quiet.

I went home to Cleveland this weekend, a place not known for its quiet.  My brothers were home with their respective dogs in tow, so our house is not a place known for its quiet.  But, I ended up sleeping on the living room floor and I'll tell ya, when everyone had gone to bed and I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, there was quiet and somewhere in its folds was a little peace.

We somehow tend to assume that silence and quiet are the same.  They are not.  Since I've started writing again, I find that silence fills a lot of my days.  I spend long stretches of time in spaces designed to block out noise, other's conversations, and the sounds of life.  It's those places in which the buzzing of fluorescent lights starts to wear on me.  There is no peace in that kind of silence.  My attention-deficit mind yammers along barely stopping long enough to catch its breath before launching into four separate conversations simultaneously. The tap of the keyboard always pushes through. That silence can drown a person.  It gives me anxiety and makes me run from it.

Quiet, though.  Quiet is not the absence of noise, like silence is, but the absence of want.  Quiet is rest. Several moments of quiet strung together can be peace.  And several stretches of peace strung together can become contentment.  Quiet is calm.  Even when there's noise, there can be quiet.

I have to remember that.  I've been mistaking silence for quiet for too long and it's taken it's toll; I find myself getting angry and scared when those stretches of silence leave me agitated and edgy.  I have to remember that one is not the other.  And start to look more readily for the state made possible by resting.

I'm in search of some quietude.

You ever been there?  Ever done something that seemed hilarious at the time but, given the ability to use the keen powers of hindsight, you realize that you just really looked like a huge ass? Yep.  That's where I'm sitting right at this very minute.  I'm always surprised at how novel or surprisingly new and uncomfortable this feeling is considering the fact that I'm comfortable knowing that I've become something of a clown in my almost middle age (and by almost I mean, my thinking  I'm middle-aged when in reality that's still a ways off...unless I'm destined to live only until I'm 66.  In that case, I'm right on target).  On a regular basis, I do things that cause my friends to turn to me and say, "Oh my god...aren't you so embarrassed?" I'm usually able to respond, "Um...no." There's a kind of freedom in embracing life in a bold, unconventional way.  I've grown completely used to laughing too loud or saying something completely true but with no tact whatsoever or exploring what can be a very zany, wildly creative side of myself.  All of this is done with a measure of my own moderation.  I decide who, I decide when, I decide...WHO! (That's a movie quote, by the way...if you can guess who said it I'll give ya...well, a well-deserved, validated feeling of accomplishing absolutely nothing...)  I think I feel dumb because I failed to moderate myself and know it.  So now I've left myself out there, hanging by a thinly veiled shroud of "Oh my god...I am so embarrassed."  These are the times when I wish that time itself was not forever etched in stone.  The past is done.  I'd like it not to be today, thanks very much.

Am I going to confess to you this most egregious social error?  Um...no.  The truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter.  I can almost guarantee that what you're thinking might have caused this feeling probably goes well above and beyond the actual event...probably.  What you're speculating happened most likely is not even remotely close...most likely. Truth be told, the details of the situation are immaterial at this point.  All you need to know is that I feel dumb.  And I think the only remedy is to try to forget it happened.

But since I can remember with pinpoint clarity the exact outfit I wore on my first day of school (that's right...kindergarten...) down to the socks I sported and how they felt on me (they were horizontal striped knee socks...the elastic band at the top was too tight...), I've got a long road ahead.

Ah well.  Se la vie. 

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.

This is a first.  In some ways, it's very exciting. In others, I feel a little defeated.  But I think not for long.

Usually when I write about finding Zen I do so in a reflective state; I've had hours to think about something and Zen helps clear me.  But I am having a moment in which I need Zen right now.  I'm not sure why but I just hit this moment that made me enter the early stages of panic.  Honestly, I'm beginning to think this is a Sunday night thing.  I get all caught up in that and the scope of the week which leads me to the scope of the year which leads me to the scope of my life and the scope of the universe.  I was just thinking that I wonder how far down in my lineage (should I end up having kids) that my (not existing right now) prodigies will encounter the end of the world.  I'm not kidding.  This was my thought.

So I did 20 minutes of yoga and I feel better...at least I'm headed back onto the right track.  But what's so amazing about this moment is how fast my brain gets away from me.  It's also being evil in an inter-personal way.  I've been nothing but surrounded by people for the past 5 days including today.  Today I even was surrounded by people all doing things we absolutely love.  It was a great day.  All of a sudden, my brain starts suggesting that I might feel lonely.  That my friends don't really like me.  That people are making excuses to not spend time with me.  WHAT?!? Where is that even COMING from?!? That couldn't be even farther from what has transpired over the past couple days. Shut up, brain.

I think that has been my new insight into Yoga that I've never had before but that has really taken hold this time around.  This is not a linear activity.  You don't reach a certain stage and then "graduate" to the next level.  It's catching yourself at every moment that this starts happening and going back to "letting go."  If I can manage to take things one step at a time and concern myself with only one step at a time then my whole world becomes much more manageable. Expectations, good or bad, cease to exist. That becomes a much more relaxed and able way of being.  That I can handle.

Courtesy of my moment of Zen.