around and around we go

I've always known that my life was one big merry-go-round, situations just keep getting recycled. I've tried to be dynamic and make changes, but I just seem to end up in the same place again and again. I have a job, it is the same job with the same company that I had when I moved back to Seattle in 2005, except a different physical location. My boss is one of my former coworkers, and the big boss is my former supervisor. It is in the same building I worked in with the shit-ass company that let me go in December while I was struggling with my health, so I will likely run into people from the company at some point. Definitely in a two steps back part of the old adage.

today is a day

Here I am and I am here, having mostly recovered from an illness that has upended almost every aspect of my life. I am middle aged, unemployed, and generally feeling pretty down about life. I'm told this can be turned into a positive because I have the opportunity to start again, like rising from the ashes or something equally trite.

boo-hi

I never forgot about this thing. I guess it's my yearly pilgrimage to remind myself that I'm still here and as irrelevant as ever.

march of the middle aged

So here we are, more than half way through 2016 and most likely my life cycle. What have I done in the last two years since my last post. Nothing of substance. I am in a holding pattern of nothingness. I haven't done anything. I don't do anything. The few things I have tried have gone into the nothing abyss. If I weren't so dead inside, it would be depressing.

making lemonade out of lizlemons

I've been re-watching 30 Rock recently. Objectively speaking, I could be Liz Lemon. Except for the exercise and size 4 jeans. And the hilarity. I've been thinking that I should find a mentor, I need a Jack. I suppose there might already be a person or two who could fill that roll. I could take my neighbor lady's advice or perhaps start aping her behaviors. I half believe that she does what she does because it's fun and not to fill some empty chasm in her soul. I could take on a co-worker mentor. But then I think how drunk I have to get in order to be around the majority of them. Certainly it could not be a family member. Is there a mentor program out there for single & kinda lonely, teetering on the precipice of middle-aged women?

we aren’t the world

We Aren’t the World

shower power

At some point, the life I had lauded on this very blog lost its charm...probably about two years ago. I starting mentally calling bullshit on the community I had wrapped myself in like a warm and fuzzy sweater. Things just started feeling like this vaguely pretentious, privileged, almost entirely white, middle class, self-involved, passive-aggressive dystopia. And within that group, I had become this court jester; invited along to shuck and jive, be funny & crazy & outlandish & over the top enough that it probably made people feel better about their choices...that brilliant moment of "damn, at least I didn't take it that far." I really started to feel like the lone little boy who noticed the nakedness of the emperor, despite everybody else's conviction that he was in the finest garments EVER. So I bowed out. I think I did it as gracefully as I am personally capable of, most likely not... In the process I lost a few people who I didn't think I would lose. And that makes me sad. Friendships ended. Feelings hurt. Opportunities lost. Bridges burned, without even the memory of tossing the Molotov to have made it so. Probably the most deleterious side effect of all of this is that I also lost a great deal of my ability to relate to people. And to keep my mouth shut. Although, frankly, that one has always been a problem. I just spent a week doing a work thing, and by the end of it I didn't really like myself very much. I don't feel like a good person; I spend a fair amount of time in the douche-zone.

bleeding heart

Some days, when I feel particularly empty inside, I imagine cutting a hole in my chest to see if there is still a beating heart in there. The logical part of me knows that there is, I'm still living after all; but the part of me that doesn't feel very alive wonders. If this momentary lapse into psychotic fantasizing comes with a visual fantasy, I often find myself giddy from the picture in my head. I don't think this makes me particularly crazy. I bet if I googled this, a lot of people have these very same thoughts.

affirmative

After the quick departure of my live-in, pseudo-spouse (apparently, fake divorce is not fake-frustrating), I'm in the need of a dog-sitter and the replacement of the extra income from having rented out a spare room would be beneficial. So far I am all goose-eggs. I thought I would try to rent out the spare room again, temporarily, and went the craigslist route. I said no to somebody because I thought I had a more promising lead. The more promising person fell through, and another person stopped responding. Both of the last two opted out after I sent pictures of my place. I guess it's not nearly as cool as I think it is. Not everybody is into hoarder-sized vintage apron collections and a color palette that resembles the aftermath of a Holi Festival? Weird. Mostly though, I am concerned about the dog. I have to find a good situation for him. I wonder how other work-travelers deal with this. Do they board their dogs? Do they pay dog-walkers? Neither seems like the better choice for le dog, and definitely not for my pocketbook. All of my previous dog-sitters, before the pseudo-spouse, are gone or no longer available. My family is willing to help, but that involves the trek down south. A few friends have offered on a limited basis, but I have to find something consistent. Blargh. I keep telling myself that if these are the worst of my problems, I don't have it so bad. But, dang, my stomach is in knots.

new year, same story

I really do not know why I expect anything different. I guess the upside is that I don't feel disappointed.

further into the void

Here again? The point when everything I have feels like nothing. And the nothingness of my life feels like everything. It's a seemingly endless shitty cycle that I put myself through. Perhaps this is a destiny I cannot escape.

new year

It's happened, there's no looking back. I am firmly entrenched in my thirties, I am mid-way to my forties. I am thirty five. It was a pretty phenomenal birthday. I gave myself my very first trip to San Francisco and had a great time. Most of the bases of a San Francisco expedition were covered: beautiful sunset from the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown with Chinese food, Haight Ashbury with a quick trip to hippie hill and a head shop, Castro and drunken revelry with young gayboys, BurningMan type gathering in the middle of nowhere, Mission District and secondhand shopping, outdoor concert in Berkley, drug deal in the Tenderloin (okay, so that one didn't actually happen), Farmer's Market on the pier with a clam chowder & wharf stop, sourdough bread consumption, trolley ride,

whoops

Over 1/4th of the way through 2010 and I haven't updated this thing once. I've often thought that I should. I've even thought of things that I would write about, but then I get lazy and forget. I am a lifetime of things left undone.

hanging up on hanging on

I've been feeling a little out of control lately. Emotional control. My buttons are being pushed in big ways and I'm just not handling it very well. And despite my being able to intellectually know where it's coming from and why I'm feeling a little over the top upset about some things, I feel like I get sucked into this vortex of responding intensely to things and being upset far too often. Most of what's going on has a lot to do with the way in which I grew up and was raised. And it drives me to distraction knowing that my shitty childhood, where I had no choice and no voice, has a hold on me as an adult where I do have a voice and some choices. I want some calm, but a true calm, not the calm that follows intense battles.

kinetic

Since I haven't managed to compel myself to move far far away as is my customary four year habit, I have moved into yet another place. This makes my fourth apartment in almost five years. I actually stayed in my last place for almost two years. This place is pretty great. It's HUGE, particularly compared to my Lilliputian last place. And it has its own washer and dryer...finally, I can collect quarters to spend on things other than laundry. The neighbors and the property are pretty quirky. It's neat.
Though I am enamored with my new place, I've decided that Seattle and the universe are basically forcing me to admit that no, I can never escape my past. My new apartment is EXACTLY across the street from the apartment the ex-boyfriend lived in when we started dating years ago. In a city of this size, with so many places to live, how that happens I just don't know...but it did.
I've decided to give the roommate thing another try as well. Having a roommate certainly helps with getting a bigger place, while reducing costs. And I thought that it would force me away from isolating myself like I have been the last year. I moved in with one of my friends. I have suspected for a while that my optimal roommate situation might be with a gay man. We'll see how it pans out. E. is pretty easy going and seems like he will put up with my idiosyncrasies (aka crazy bullshit). And Iniki just LOVES him to pieces. I think he was missing having a regular male presence in his life (not that his mama ain't missin' it a little bit too).
So here we are again, making changes in my life in the hopes that it will help make space for bigger and better changes. Bigger and better apartment = bigger and better things? Guess we'll see.

happy happy joy joy

I went down to Oregon this past weekend to meet up with some family members and to scatter my grandfather's ashes. We scattered his ashes in Florence, Oregon; the same beach where my aunt's ashes were scattered a few years ago after her battle with cancer ended. It was a powerful trip, dealing with the finality of performing the last physical act of saying goodbye. From start to finish, I can't think of many ways in which it could have been more perfect. I got to see a couple of cousins I hadn't seen since I was a teenager and they were kids. The weather was great. It was nice spending time with my family again. In particular, my grandmother was quite the sassmastress during the trip. She was pumping out the one-liners like nobody's business. But I think the best story my aunt relayed to me later when my grandmother started asking about my friend P. who drove down with me to keep me company (because my friends are amazing like that):

Grandmother: Is that her boyfriend?
Aunt: No mom, P. is gay.
Grandmother: Oh. (Pause) Does that mean he likes to laugh a lot?

death becomes her

(Note: I started this post on Sep 25 at about 7am, I am finishing it today, Oct 1)

I am up really early because I was having dreams about my grandfather. He died exactly a week ago today...to the minute actually. Death hasn't touched my life very many times, I've been lucky in that way I suppose. I've known people who have died but nobody I was particularly close to, this is my first "real" death. Not that I was particularly close to my grandfather, but he was consistently present in my life in a way that most people other than my immediate family have not been because of the circumstances in which I grew up.
Not to be terribly morbid or descriptive but I was present for the entire process of my grandfather's death, from hospital bed to casket.* I think that I'm handling it pretty well. It was not a huge surprise that grandpa wasn't going to be around much longer, he was 96. What's funny about the timing is that before he broke his hip, the cataclysmic event that started the whole process, he started to tell my grandmother than he wasn't going to be around for much longer. He told her he had a week left and a week later he fell. Various family members have told me that they began to dream about my grandfather. One of my uncles had a dream in which my grandfather came to him as his 35 year old self. My uncle said that he didn't recognize my grandfather but grandpa told him he was going home. My sister had a dream of my grandmother at almost the exact moment my grandfather passed on. In her dream she was looking around while she comforted my sobbing grandmother but she couldn't find our grandfather and when she woke up she knew he was gone. And I had my dream this morning, where my grandfather was in his death bed, but this time he recognized me (which I'm not sure he was able to do in the hospital) and told me he was going to be fine, that he was okay.
It's pretty amazing how connected we are in life and in death. But not necessarily in grieving. At least not in my family. Everybody grieved alone, throughout the entire thing. Family members went for long walks when they became overwhelmed. I don't think anybody really cried together, my family of stoics. It reminded me that I have chosen and am working on a life for myself where that needn't be the case, that solitary confinement of our emotional selves.
In the end, my grandfather will be remembered for being a great man. He loved his family, particularly his wife of almost 61 years. He loved his god. He loved people and people loved him right back. He understood concepts like hard work and integrity and sacrifice. But he knew how to have fun and could make almost anybody smile. I will always be sad that I didn't get to know him better, that I don't have more memories of him and with him, but I'm happy for the ones I do have.

*This weekend I am driving down to Oregon to help scatter his ashes, the final step in the physical process of my grandfather's death.

resurgence

I think blogging is making a comeback. The world of technological advancement moves so quickly that blogging is already considered retro. I have found old blogs that have been post-less for years with a random recent post about how long it's been since they've blogged. Maybe twittering gave us itch again, though I don't twitter...I haven't upgraded my phone to have such capabilities. There's just so much space in the world of the intertubes to express yourself. Maybe too much space? I have read that sociological theorists have concluded that people of this technological age are more self-involved than previous generations. And I read a few days ago that high school girls are very likely to post nudie pictures of themselves!!! Wow.
I for one am glad to see blogging make a comeback! I am trying to recommit myself to blogging more, but currently that's about as successful as recommiting myself to exercising again. I am still only partially through with my project of re-publishing my old blog, that is quite the undertaking. I am also excited to see other people blogging more. It's a nicer way to keep up to date with people I think.

pretty girls make graves

On Friday night, I hung out with a good friend and her friend, somebody I don't know particularly well but like. We had one of those exceedingly heavy nights where light-hearted conversation was nowhere to be found. At some point during the night, Z. says something along the lines of, "You're attractive. I bet that's made things easy for you." Whoah. I replied that, in actuality, the window of time with which I've been considered an "attractive" person has been relatively small and I often feel uncomfortable with comments about my appearance. Which then went into a whole different conversation about self-worth and accepting compliments an so on.
But I've actually been thinking quite a bit about the original comment, the perception that if you are attractive, life might be easier. I won't deny that there have been times where I have capitalized on my appearance. I've gotten a free drink or two in my time. I got to use the riding lawn mower during military days because the person in charge thought I was attractive while the rest of the guys had to lug around weed whackers. But again, I have never been "ideal" or fit into social models of attractiveness. And frankly have suffered because of that, fatness is probably the last totally acceptable form of discrimination.
I wish none of this mattered. I wish I didn't know that yes, in fact, being pretty is a benefit. I wish I didn't know how much my social standing is directly related, though inversely proportional, to my weight and pant size. I wish that I didn't have to worry about losing fifteen to twenty pounds to get a date. I wish that I have often thought that if I lost an arm or leg, I could go on with my life but if my face were disfigured I would want it to end.
So what to do about it?

there can only be one

I am a tactical observer of life. I know this to be true. I am always watching and evaluating, trying to piece together seemingly random occurences into my own postulations and eventually arriving at some pseudo-science sociological theory of behavior patterns. And I've come to one theory recently that I believe to be fairly accurate. And that is this; that girls at parties predominantly attended by gay men do not like to interact with one another. Now, one would assume that these girls WOULD hang out with one another because people often search out those that they often immediately identify with, in order to faciliate a modicum of comfortability. But I have noticed that this isn't the case, girls at such parties seem more like competing carnivores circling a herd of prey than a band of brethern (sisteren?). They mostly ignore one another while marking their territory, claiming rights to their friend groups. It's fierce and competitive this staking of hag-domain. I would almost daresay that it's even more competitive than girls seeking a lover. Because, well let's face it, in the world of relationships in the city, a gay man-straight girl combo has way more staying power.