Worrying

Certain experiences and ideas are so deep seated (deep seeded?) that no amount of reprogramming can correct them.

Hmmm.  I write that and it sounds true-ish but unconvincing.

I don't have anything new to report, and suddenly that feels like my fault entirely - have I tried hard enough?  Have I made any real attempt to get the things I actually want since last I whined or complained? Have I even taken the time to see outside of my little bubble recently?

And how am I planning to earn $600 to pay for these tickets I just bought to go visit my family?

But I also feel a deep failure of creativity - I feel like if I truly had anything to offer the world, I have given it the old college try and the world has said, repeatedly and clearly, no thank you, we've had better.

Oh, right....

I managed to walk right into the sharp oven door today (sharp because it's missing its cover, ow) and I was cursing and making arghy noises and my husband rushed in (the way he does when I make these noises, because as he confessed to me today, I sound as if I have chopped off my finger).  He put his arms around me and made kind soothing sounds and as I stood there, feeling pissy and in pain and pitiful, I actually said out loud....

"I know, I know.  I need to be in a play."

Because none of this raging bear in the woods act goes down when I feel actualized.  When I feel my soul is being used.  When I have worth because my energy is going into something I care about.

It sounds as if I am saying I wouldn't have walked into the oven door if I were in a play.  Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.  I wouldn't have.  Sound crazy?  Yes.  Held up by historical fact?  Yup.

You watch - all this self-pity and whining...it may not evaporate, but it will lighten considerably come June 6.  Well, I think.  I might not be quite excited enough for that project, but I think even a bit part in something will flip my switch to the "on" position.

I certainly hope so.  It's like having to wait for weeks between fixes.  One gets the DTs.

Adventure

I had an adventure!  I went somewhere new!  I talked to fun and intriguing people, saw beautiful and crazy things, ate way too much fantastic food, and got no sleep.

I also found a new drink of choice - the Moscow Mule.  I like it.  Give me another!

But now I have that back-from-a-magical-land-with-no-hope-of-return feeling (which feeling is trademarked and reserved for a friend's project).  Hopeless end-of-second-act, dark-night-of-the-soul music plays as I type.

And the ants, my mortal enemies, are back.  Argh.  It will be a long summer.

Funny story quickly becoming legend:

While I was in line for coffee one morning, a woman interuppted the ordering process to complain to the barista - she had an accent, French maybe?  Perhaps Austrian or Swiss?  "This sandwich," she was brandishing a plastic container full of sandwich, "it has come on a crossaint.  I don't eat crossaints.  I asked for bread." 

The barista replies, apologectically, "We don't have bread.  That's the way it comes ma'am.  That's normal."

Her reply, said with utter scorn, "For you.  I do not eat crossaints."

There was more to the conversation, but the plain, flat-out statement that such a thing was clearly not normal was so outrageously fantastic, so "It's the pictures that got small..." that we've begun to adopt the phrase elsewhere.  Try it - it's enormously satisfying.

Overshare

I have always been an oversharer.  I come from a family that keeps a lot of useless secrets, in an extremely self-editing fashion, and it's exhausting, so I try as much as possible to keep information truthful and consistent.  It seems easier.

For instance, when my parents bought a BMW, my mother initially didn't want to drive it home to her family's house.  She didn't want anyone to think they had so much money they were buying BMWs. 

There are plenty of other, smaller instances - I find them baffling and obfuscating in the extreme.  I try to avoid them.

Yet, I find myself in a situation...well, technically a trio of situations...in which I must keep certain things to myself.  Partly to keep from offending or hurting others, but mostly out of sheer self-preservation.  It's odd. I found myself saying about one of these, "If there was anything to say, we would have said it."  And now that I think about it, this is a complete and utter lie.  Precisely because there is something to say, I have left it alone. 

Now, granted, what there is to say is not USEFUL.  It's being left unsaid for several reasons, one of which is because it would sound insane if it got said aloud.  And another - it (and by "it" I refer to several different unrelated things at once) would damage assumptions I have about my life that I need to keep in place.  Or it would disturb the precarious balance I've developed.

I know this must sound impenetrable.  The reason I'm writing about it is in an effort to examine whether I'm turning into my mother yet. 

You want an example?  Sure.  Here's a completely true instance:

My amazing husband is the bees knees.  Given the choice, however, he would never ever move again - we would stay in this admittedly lovely apartment forever.  Now, me, I have never lived anywhere as long as I have lived in Chicago...and I am getting antsy. 

I keep this to myself, because right now there's nothing to head to instead.  Unlike some folks I know, my husband is never going to roll the dice and decide to pull up stakes and wander off to the west coast or even further.  Ironically, that's one of the things I love about him - he gives me roots, gives me a home. 

So I keep my wanderlust under wraps.  I don't discuss it, I rarely mention it, it's just one of those things that gets tabled because there's no use taking about it.

But it doesn't go away.  I just keep not choosing it.

In all fairness, if I did sit down with my husband and talk to him about wanderlust or moving, he would try to make someting happen.  He'd let me go traveling or he'd move to Iowa or he'd find a way to make me happy.  But he'd be miserable doing it, and making him miserable would take most of the fun out of it.  I don't want to ask for things like that.  I don't want him to change his nature.

Not to make it all about my husband - I have similar problems with myself and my own assumptions.  I decided a long time ago not to become an academic so I could pursue being an actor.  So far my success has been limited, and I wonder if I'd have been happier being an academic who acts for fun.  But mostly I choose not to think about that, because thinking about it jangles the compromises I have made and leaves me upset and disappointed.

Now, none of the above are the things I really shouldn't talk about, though the above are true.  But there are such things, and I am trying to figure out if I am being a coward or a genius by keeping them to myself. 

Or am I just turning into my mother?  Her side of the family, I've said time and time again, have an inexhaustible capacity for selective self-awareness. 

I am not immune.