Next Step

My life has stabilized now. I'm on a nice plateau. I've figured some of the big issues out. I'm not worried about much anymore. I'm at a nice point. It's now that I think it'd be nice to share it with someone for a little while. Long while, if possible. However, these things cannot be planned ahead. Either you mesh with someone or you don't. Someday, I hope there is a test to see what brings two people together well, and what doesn't. This trial and error thing hasn't worked out in my favor.

In the coming months, it would be nice to have a little shared time. I think I'm finally ready. I've pushed it away and to the back burner for a long time. I've covered it with stories I was writing about things I wished for. I've focused on things that weren't in meatspace, to save myself heartbreak. Now, though, it's time for more.

As far as my work toward returning to school, I have to make a phone call to a support person at UC to have a hold taken off my records. In going online to request my transcripts, I was told I had a hold for an outstanding/overdue bill. I clicked on the link, and it said I owe $0, which must be paid right away to release them. Another step added to all the other steps. This is my life, though. Every step forward seems to result in a half step back, if not a whole step back.

What will I go back for? I don't know yet. Maybe I'll enter undeclared. Maybe I'll decide later. I don't care, as long as I work toward finishing something. Even if it's an Associate's. I need completion. Not perfection. I decided a few years ago I'm not really a perfectionist. I'm a completionist. If I feel I can finish something, even imperfectly, I will start. If I can't, I become distraught and irritable. If I don't feel I can complete something, I won't even bother to begin, sometimes.

Returning to school is somewhat along those lines. Calling that number seems fruitless. What's the next setback? My 23 year old grades, I guess. Then I suppose there will be forms to fill out and tests to take. Then maybe they'll say I didn't do those right? Then what? It sounds tiring. And my job will have to stay as it is. Which means I have little to no energy five days a week, as it is.

This whole process feels insurmountable. Is it? I don't know. No one really knows.

Plus, there's the election, then Bevin wrecking university funding, already. I feel bogged down and could use support I don't have. Then I start thinking about it, and I get down again. The "why bothers" get the upper hand in my head.

It irks me to no end.

Second Time

Morrissey remains that kick in the gut that I need to keep an eye on things that slip past me, emotionally. In the midst of burn out, there's something incredibly energizing to me about watching graphic and brutal video set to loud music to remind me even when feeling so done. The people who have made activism look like a joke have been shoved out of the range of thoughts in my head, again. It's interesting to see how my mind deals with this. The videos all circulated, and I saw them the first time, but the police brutality all laid out, back to back has a different effect. Each one, individually, when new, set off the parts of me that withdraw in horror and hopelessness. All presented together, the picture is galvanizing. I'm not pulling back into myself, at all.

Of course, the concert was amazing to me. All of the chosen songs were fabulous to hear. My favorites include "Ouija Board", "You Have Killed Me", "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris", "The World Is Full of Crashing Bores", "What She Said", "Irish Blood, English Heart", "Speedway", "Everyday Is Like Sunday", and "Suedehead". The last two are probably pretty obvious. So glad I got to go. I'm probably forgetting something there, but those were the ones that I treasure.

Unlike Cincinnati, last year, only one person attempted to run on stage at the end, but Morrissey ran off and security gave the guy warning. There were no jumpers before that, either. More people were moving, in the crowd, too. Cincinnatians don't fucking move. Ever. Annoying when you want to, and people are acting like you're the oddball.

I didn't feel any of the fog that I did beforehand, and I feel rather energized this morning. Perhaps I will drive up to my favorite woods, today, because it's been months and months since I last went.

My only problem last night seemed to stem from an allergy to something in Louisville. My throat was swollen and so I didn't sing along at all. I did dance in my spot a bit. My neighbors weren't the dancing sort, but that's okay. The crowd was good for the first half of the show, then two people arrived late and filled an empty spot in front of me, and proceeded to talk a great deal. One of them was loud and pointed at my ear just right. It was a bit infuriating during "Ouija Board" because I didn't know if I'd get to hear that one live, and I have loved it a long time.

I <3 music.

I've Said It Before

I hope this is not a repeat of last year. Just on the cusp of the Morrissey concert then, it took everything in me to get it together to drive to the concert. I knew I wanted to do it. It just didn't feel as powerful as I needed to get through the swampy, unmotivated morass of my mind. I feel a little of that today. I'm doing far too much comparison of myself to other people. I don't regularly care how I measure up.

Since I'm not exactly enamored with humanity, I don't try to let it get to me that the feeling has been mutual since my birth. I ignore the world and the world ignores me. However, today, I'm allowing things to enter my brain that don't deserve even a millisecond of my time. It's the same old song everyone goes through, from time to time. It's dragging me down into another foggy mental state.

I must break it. This time, I have an hour and a half drive before the concert. Not like the five hours I'll drive next month, but not the 20 minutes it took last year.

I do hope I'm left feeling just as euphoric as I was last year. That will be all I need to coast on through another few months. Music, especially my favorites in a live setting, has a power nothing else has. For me. I realize other people experience life differently. Music is my golden fount of exuberance. I need it the way others need congregations in religious settings. I don't get the vast amount of supernatural experiences others do, most of the time. That's why religion, even paganism, never stuck. I have a couple unrealistic thoughts that pester me, from time to time, but it never lasts. Music is that experience, for me.

Had I even a shred of actual talent, and not just the willful force of skill I finally started to show at the end of my music training, I'd have nothing but music in my life. Unfortunately, it was always just out of my reach. So, I spend time and money on those who have the talent and skill I wish I had. It's all I have, right now.

I realize I explain this a lot. It's just that it's constantly an experience I must express. Tomorrow, I hope for another musical saving.

Teacups

There are good times for anger and outrage. There is a good use for such things. In doing the work that needs to be done, anger can be useful.

Then there is abuse and becoming the very thing you say you despise. I've watched the line crossed a few times, this week. Unfettered rage in some instances is good, but to lash out at everyone and everything, and dogpile on top of an individual is... less than helpful. If we can't see that line, then we have no business calling what we do justice. It's vengeance. I'm not interested in vengeance. Call me whatever name you want. I don't care. Learn to harness the rage, or drop it, but don't pretend all lashing out, at all times, is going to solve our problems.

I get blocking a highway. I get snarking at someone who is a rape apologist. Ousting someone and lying about them because they used the word stupid is just too much. I can't. I just can't. It's not equivalent to the big words that start with n or k. Dogpiling and alienating because someone might use the word crazy again, on accident, because it's a word that doesn't resonate the sort of oppression that the big words do, is too far for me to go. I get that some words are hurtful, and try to avoid them in casual instances, when there are people who made it clear this is a line in the sand for them. However, people who lash out over something that doesn't ring as loudly a bell as the n word does are not helping. Make note of why you don't like that word, but really, when the word stupid has so little impact and is as plentiful, making someone an outcast because of it is just too much.

And then the victim blaming in another circle. It's okay to blame those women for their abuse, this time, because reasons... Nope. Blaming a woman for being in an abusive situation isn't right, full stop. I get the movement has good reasons to be mad at the men involved. This is not how it gets solved, though.

I'm not going to fit into the cliques, ever. It is something I accepted long ago. No matter where I turn, people always throw me out. Believers and non-believers alike. I just never go far enough for some people.

The woman who refused to eat because there was a bowl of ranch dressing on the same table as the vegetables comes to mind. Or the way she pouted through her meal because the restaurant offered her a straw which was wrapped in paper. The roommates I had before I was vegetarian, in 1992, who screamed at me because I'd had a burger or something when they were out, and they could still smell it in the apartment. Getting in a rage at people over the word "stupid." These are where I draw the line.

None of them made the world a better place. They just added more shit to the pile. There are legitimate ways to use rage. I don't think these are the ways to use them for effective solutions.

Now, on into a new night. Next week, I go about arranging my life in a new way, now that I have extra time in the weekday afternoons. Away from the keyboard warriors. Away from tempests in several teacups. Off I go.

Burnt

I'm serious when I say that music is the only thing I care about anymore. I have thoughts and opinions. There are issues I want to see resolved. The world goes around and around and around. Very little seems to truly be better, but maybe some things are trending toward better. I don't know. Just because I want these things doesn't mean I'm as invested as I once was.

Not emotionally.

Actively, in my pursuits, my actions, and as much as I can, my words, I guess I still seem to care. It's habit, now. Much like someone I know once told me his vegetarianism wasn't about caring about either health or animals, anymore. It was habit. Emotional volley can only push you along so far. At some point, it's just about what kind of habits I've created. If I want to change a habit, I put in some effort, but no longer can I rely on my feelings to keep me going.

There is just a point where it washes out. Like fabric sitting in the sun for months. The basic structure remains, but the color has all faded out. I've tried to inspire in myself the will to care. I've listened. I've thought. I've come to that place again, though, where I'm burnt out. It happens. Humans are like that. Believe it or not, I am a human.

Let the cogs take over, and momentum move me through this plateau. I'm tired. I need to rest. The acceptance of shitting on a person in order to try to emotionally abuse them to the point of suicide, just because they spoke from a place you don't like has taken too much of a toll on me. Just because you've been given a place of authority doesn't mean you should automatically get out a whip. It makes you exactly the kind of person some of us thought you were trying to expunge from the world. Call it whatever the hell you want. It's not helping anyone. Maybe yourself. Just like the people who cornered me in 9th grade to point out every flaw they could while the teacher was out of the room at the end of class. Put it under the banner of justice, but it's not justice. Save the vitriol for a forum where it's needed. Dumping on an individual person doesn't interest me.

Yes, I'm burnt out.

It's time.

Irritations

The theme of the day is apparently agitation. All the things that happened have piled on this thick layer of irritation.  I have a laundry list the size of someone in the quiverful movement.

When the woman outside starts screaming like a stereotypical tired toddler at her elementary school aged child for dropping a bag, I want to run to the window and scream right back at her. My covers aren't soft enough for me. The cat keeps digging his paws into the sheets and snagging the fabric. There are still some fleas jumping on me, after a week of treatments. The food I've eaten hasn't satisfied me. There have been comments online that remind me that some activism is not making the world a better place, but adding to the shittiness of life. I'm sorry that life is shitty, but being shitty to other people only deepens the shit. Telling people to kill themselves, plastering them as garbage, trash, shit, and victim blaming people in bad situations "they get treated badly too, but it's their own fault for offering to suck these guys' dicks" (I don't care that it was said about women with one specific privilege over another set of women, victim blaming is fucking victim blaming)  or more to dehumanize them, and piling on top of someone to humiliate like a classroom bully fest is not making the world better. It's furthering the divide. People entrench themselves in their horrible ways far more often than they find an epiphany in being told to go die. Life may seem long to some, but it isn't. It's short and it's vile. Adding to the vileness isn't helping rid the world of injustice, no matter how you justify it. You've made a new clique, and that new clique is just as bad as the old clique. Con-fucking-gratulations. The world remained at zero. There was no bettering as a result. "Meet the new boss, same as the old."

All I have learned this week is that everyone of us is prone to shittiness. Not just me. Even people with higher levels of ideological purity than me. I'm done caring about who thinks I'm okay and who thinks I'm problematic. Fuck the labels and fuck the perceptions. I'll do what I can to minimize my human flaws, as I can. If it's not enough for you, so be it. Move on. I have.

Completion

It's all about what needs to be done to move me on in life. Strangely enough, the idea of taking a journey always appealed to me. Perhaps because I never saw it as a direct route from one place to another. More like the sort of journeys I read about in mythology. Exploration, ventures, adventures, mishaps, disasters, challenges, losses, and all of that epic storytelling appealed to me. It's come to my attention that there is a challenge to this view of life. I'll investigate it, eventually. Maybe it'll shift my own internal paradigm. Maybe not.

At the moment, I see myself taking steps toward a new unknown land. Something dangerous and unknown to me. I see myself on a path, wandering along, veering off the worn road. Now that I've got things together for my son in college, it makes me want to get myself together and finish a degree. It probably won't be in education, at this point in my life. This is the second half of my life. I'd like to do something less intensive, this time around. Something for me. I think I know what I'll attempt. If things go well for me, anyway.

It's going to take even more work than what I've done for my son. There's just this need to complete something. (I discovered a few years that I'm not a perfectionist so much as a completionist. If I don't feel I can finish something, no matter how imperfectly, I don't want to bother starting. If I start something, and get interrupted, it causes chaos in the extreme.) I need to finish the degree. Perhaps if I hadn't started it at all, I wouldn't care so much.

Now that I've got the pieces put back together, and the finances have smoothed back out, I am beginning to look into that future of my own. It remains incomplete. This is unacceptable.

Ponderance

I swear there was a time I had so much to say. Now, there are people saying all that needs to be said. I just point to them. Let them sort it out. My voice is just more noise, now.

The only things they can't talk about are the things that are part of my personal life. Of course, I won't post all of that, either. Only the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of iceberg, it's that time of year when I actually wish I could take a cruise to the Antarctic. Or spend time at a research station. All this relentless heat and humidity. It isn't the extreme that it was last month, but it just doesn't seem to be letting up. So I begin to dream of icebergs. Especially when people post pictures of inverted icebergs and Blood Falls. How can I resist?

There is a big hole opening inside me. One of the kids flew the nest and even though I have the second one with me, it just feels like something's wrong. I'm not sure how long this will last. The feelings that it inspires in me are unpleasant. A mixture of the fact that I'm aging, things are changing, my identity is changing, and I'm not as needed as I was. Lets hope I get through this quickly.

Also, there is a part of me that is lonely. I'd rather be lonely than trapped in deeply unhappy situations. However, I always found it rather annoying that the people who constantly tried to remind me that a relationship shouldn't be your focus, it's merely the cherry on top of the sundae that is your life, were always people in safe, warm relationships. Believe me, I get it. Relationships are not the only thing in life. It would be more than nice to know what it's like, again. Much more than just a small good thing in life. I wonder how long most people would be able to go bouncing from one brief encounter to another before they began to resent the platitudes.

Frivolity

It's Supernatural Day as named by the fandom, and encouraged by those at the helm. Spoiler alert. I'm watching the episodes that give us any real history of Mary Winchester. Not the "What Is and What Should Never Be" or "Dark Side of the Moon" episodes. "Pilot" though she was fridged with almost no lines, "Home" because she apologized to Sam which means she remembered what she did at some point, then "All Hell Breaks Loose" because we see her acknowledge she knew Azazel. The moments in the ones where the boy(s) time travel are the weirdest to watch right now. Michael scrubbed her memories, yet she did remember Azazel when she saw him in the nursery. What else was jarred loose? Or will she even remember that or her death? What are they going to do with her? I have so many of my own ideas. I'm sure, as always, I will wish I could write my own version.

I've been contemplating how this Talamasca style Men of Letters thing probably needs a good kick in the ass. Secret societies like that  cannot be good. They watched all that happened, and yet blamed the Winchesters for the harm done to the world. But everything the woman pointed out was due to the dickhead angels. With mom representing the "legacy" of hunting, and dad representing the "legacy" of the Men of Letters, now would be a good time to revisit the original theme of kicking the idea of "destiny" to the curb. Upend the family legacy the way they upended the destiny imposed by the angels. The secret knowledge of the secret society irks me. If that kind of knowledge was kept secret, it would undermine our survival. Making the information available widely would be key in this particular alternate universe. Keeping it secret is what got them all into the messes they were in. If Sam and Dean were just trumped up hunters as she asserted, whose fault is that?

Anyway, I'm going to stick closely to watching my favorite episodes. My top ten go something like this:

10. All Hell Breaks Loose
9. The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo
8. Soul Survivor
7. Don't Call Me Shurley
6. Baby
5. Dark Side of the Moon
4. Sacrifice
3. Born Again Identity
2. Mystery Spot
1. Swan Song

Based on how much I tend to watch the episodes. Of course, there are over 200 episodes and I watch many of them regularly, like bedtime stories, when I don't want to really think and just drift off to sleep.

I suppose I should go for a walk in this wonderful weather. Now that I've explored this newest fandom obsession of mine. Hee.

Things I Like

When sleep finally reaches me, it seems to hold on for ages. It is my second best friend. Music is my first best friend, in case you wondered why that "second" is there. I'm in another holding pattern. A treadmill, hamster wheel, knowing I'm not going anywhere, but going faster and faster, wearing myself out faster and faster. Finding that age is starting to hit me, and I can't seem to keep up with the things I used to do. I'm not that old, and there are older women than me running circles around me.

I found out that there are people who can't form pictures in their head, and I've actually been cherishing each picture that comes up onto the backs of my eyelids. I do not have a perfect photographic memory. I have a photographic imagination, though. Movies play out in my head, and I'm so glad I had this to hold on to. I relied on that imagination throughout the hard years.

Nowadays, though, I can't seem to write what I see. I used to have so much to tell about the worlds that swam up in my head and showed their treasures to me. Sometimes horrors. Either way, I adore this part of my experience of life. I appreciate it more, knowing that it wasn't a given in my life. Some people don't picture anything at all.

Well, I'm off to the land of sleep, again. I get to stay up a bit later than usual, because I don't need to get up until 7 a.m. tomorrow. I still live a different schedule than most people, even though I'm not working nights. Oh well, sleep is welcome for as long as it will grace me with its presence. These bursts of rest are another treasure. Maybe my two favorites will combine. Or maybe all three. I could dream while sleeping, in living, vivid picture details a concert. Music, sleep, and imagination. Let it all come at once. Give me something to hold on to.

I have a concert to go to in a week. Morrissey in Louisville. It is something I am looking forward to. Only a week to go!

Stall

We all know the drill. It's all money, sleep, loss of control, inability to see the light at the end of the tunnel, loneliness. It's not sadness. It's not anger. It's not grief. This is just me stalled out. I'm circling something that is bothering the holy hell out of me. A series of memories I should have moved on from by now, but obviously they're sticking around for some forsaken reason.

I've been sleeping. A lot. I don't always feel rested. It's just like being stuck on one of those super slow moving sidewalks at the airport, right now. Twenty people deep both in front of me and behind me. I can't see anything good, right now.

It's the big crash. I hope I get out of this soon. I hope things improve drastically. Hope.

If it crashes more, I don't know what I'll choose. We'll see.

Wish This Would Let Up

None of what my brain is telling me is true right now. It feels very true though. I can't seem to conjure up enough counter-examples to overcome it, though. This pit isn't very deep, but it is closing in on me.

So much for the good streak I was having.

Time to get out the refreshers to work my way out of this pit.

While, all the time, wondering if I should even bother.

This is ridiculous. That is all.

Anxiety

The feeling that started a few days ago has grown worse. There has been a lot of sleeping and not a lot of accomplishing being done. The drained battery in me is not recharging. I feel like I should be doing something to make it work. I know that it isn't my fault, though. This is just something that happens, sometimes.

I'm also worried for the boy in college. I hope I hear from him today. It's so bad that it's gotten into my dreams. A nightmare, no less. Perhaps it is just adjustment to changes - and he hates change, even when it was something he wanted.  I can't shake the fear and anxiety of it all, though. I gave him some big news this morning, and he hasn't responded. It was pretty damned good news. The disbursement should be coming, and it is a cushion beyond my imagining. It would make everything even easier. The fact that he hasn't answered me about it has me in near panic.

This sucks.

I hope things improve all around, soon.