Today I woke up thinking about my parents. I don't know if they read my blog or not--I'd assume they don't, because my generation's parents don't really care to know about things like blogs. The concept of an online journal where you write feelings and things about your personal life is something that most folks from my parents' age don't understand. See, back then, a diary was a diary, and if you went around showing your diary to everyone you knew, you'd get made fun of, or looked at like you were a mutant. And if you happened to be a male doing these things, well, you might as well be homeschooled or homosexual.

My sister is getting married in October, and I've been toying around with the idea of writing a toast-type speech to make everyone cry when we're all boozed up. I think it'd be a wonderful bonding experience. But, seeing as how everyone started loudly sobbing before my dad even said a word at the engagement party, I'm worried I can't pull it off because he did it so well.

I've mulled it over since his speech. What made that lump happen in everyone's throat, even people who had just met my father that night? Since my father doesn't say those things very often, and I am his daughter, I held on to every single word like I'd never hear it again. And probably for good reason: he might never have the forum to say something like that to me, because I don't really want to get married. Man, I'm losing my cool just thinking about it.

I'd like to say I am skilled with words, and that I don't know where it came from, it was born of internal struggles, intense self-loathing, the roller coaster of life, whatever. But hearing my father pull something like that off the top of his head erased all doubt where my favorite knack came from. He had absolutely no idea he was supposed to make a toast. And the bastard NAILED IT.

How did he nail it, though? How did he pull that off with less than 5 minutes preparation? The most my dad writes is lists of things to do for the day. It kind of got me thinking about the era of no public forum, no blogosphere, no... outlets. My dad is still living in that era for all intents and purposes. All my life, he's said things like "I'd rather be fishing," and "Kids are holes in wallets". But still, all my life, I've wanted to be successful--half for myself, and half so I could buy my dad a camp on Grand Isle. I told him that once. He didn't believe me.

But he, more so than anyone I know, has things to write about. He works in a paper mill that he abhors with all of his existence. He is trapped in his life, his mortgage. Gave up a career playing music and doing drugs to have a family. My father is depressed. My father is so depressed, and has been so for so long, that everyone in that room could see it, even if they had only known him for an hour. All of that builds up in a person with no outlet.

And I guess, just to hear him say that he loved his daughter was enough to bring the room crashing. This toast had the atmosphere of 26 years of build-up. Everyone felt it.

Let me explain that better: I've wanted to buy my dad out of his life for as long as I can remember, to show him that it can be happy, and that he doesn't have to suffer every day to be alive, like he's taught me. And then he pulls that rug out from under my sisters and I. We can't do that anymore, because all this time, we've done that without money, and without knowing it.

"I hope someday, these two can be as happy as I am right now." The bastard made me weep.

Words

A forewarning: I don't know where I'm going with this post. I merely woke up at 8:30am and told myself I'd do something while I had my coffee, other than hit the stumble button 1500 times.

My project-a-day..project... has been a good thing for me, I think. I wanna recap all the things I've done, if I can remember them all:

LED lights, making my living room/kitchen look like a Miami nightclub at all hours

Quit smoking

Became a runner (still a novice with bad shoes, mind you)

Almost completely removed the resentment I had towards my job. Almost.

Made a habit of reading books with either a notebook or a highlighter

Grow garlic (still working on this one, it's in a mason jar with water and has rooted)

Spend less money, on everything

Eat better

Still working on writing more. Hello blog.

That's not all of them. Sometimes, running is my project. I still have a lot of things I want to do, and some of them take time and planning. Like visiting Macchu Pichu, for instance. Anyway, the point is that while I haven't yet gotten discouraged, things are slowing down, but in that graceful, paced kind of way. You know, the way these things are supposed to feel, without that manic breath down your neck shoving you every which way.

If anything, the lack of mania has made my resolve stronger and more focused. I am finally getting it through my thick skull that I can pull it off, what ever "it" may be, and I don't have to bend or slow down for anything. Belief was the project every day, from day one. It sounds so simple, but I guess years of sedentary sediment has done it's work. I have strata to dissolve now. Kind of like dissolving your stomach fat to reveal the ab muscles that have been there the whole time.

Oh, but once it starts, it goes down like acid down a mountain. I'm fucking up all sorts of shit.

The one, sort of bad but not really, thing is that I (sort of, not with all my heart or anything) wanted this to stop my escapist fantasies. I thought that if I systematically do the things I want to do and make every day useful, that I'd stop mind-wandering and wishing I was travelling all the time. It seemed like the source for a lot of my discontent, wanting those things. And truly, I have a pretty nice life here, about which I shouldn't complain.

I should have known better.

Instead, what it did was make the tedious more nerve-wrecking. Made mopping the worst chore in the world. Laundry does not excite me. Staying home all day is the worst torture I could possibly inflict on myself. It makes me angry when I have to do all the dishes and pick up after more than just me. In fact, when I have to do these things, I have to turn on autopilot or I'll blow my top. I told my boyfriend in a very calm voice the other day that if he couldn't pick up his living space, I didn't want him in mine. In short, I'm very aware of every minute I waste my potential.

It's turned my escapist fantasies into plans. Something has jarred loose in my brain, and reattached somewhere else. And I cannot seem to convince myself that this is a bad thing anymore. If I want to go, that's it then. I go. I sell all my shit and I go.

Words, they're just words until I do it.

A Post Brought To You By Real Paper, From A Real Notebook.

I need to reacquaint myself with the habit of writing on paper.

Writing used to be my escape tunnel, dug with a single stainless spoon over a period of time--decades, maybe--through a brick and mortar prison wall. On the other side, I could see things impossible in my dingy cell. I could run around in that beautiful world, creating something from nothing, seeing pure greens and blues unaffected by reality's shadowy presence.

I always had to come back. My cell was unguarded, but a prison nonetheless. What kept me there? The fact that long periods of time spent "outside" had a tendency to stretch my sanity thin when I returned. What's missing here is the explanation of why I had to return at all--I don't have an answer for that yet. I'd come back and continue to act as if I were still free, and nothing I said or did made any sense to anyone but me. I started to wonder if my field trips were excursions into the realm of lost minds. I had days when that idea scared all the imagination out of me, but I also had days where I was perfectly all right with it.

How many writers go crazy? Stark-raving mad magicians of words, creating something out of nothing, who delight in making readers feel deep emotion, using only 26 characters that only mean something because they said it did. Are writers insane? Are they hypnotists? Are they as weak as anyone else, or have they tamed insanity--put it on a leash and named it eccentricity?

As a general rule, they are all required to be slightly egotistic at the very least, even if it only stems from living inside themselves for too long. Am I thinking of eccentricity? Probably. But that requires being egotistic to an extent, so I'm sort of right. They're all--as far as I can tell--very particular about their pens and paper. Or their typewriters, or word processors. Line spacing, how the page looks when it's full, is very important. They'll rip a masterpiece to shreds if it's not aesthetically pleasing.

I know I do. I have done so. But they probably weren't masterpieces.

What is my problem, then? Why can I not identify with that group who calls themselves writers? Out of fear that the moment I do, it will become false? This is true, it's what I think--but it's false. I am afraid of what that label will mean when I stick it to myself. Afraid I won't live up to it if I call myself a writer before I really am. Afraid of disappointing everyone who heard me say it. Because outside of scheduling writing courses, it's always been my little secret. Because if I know it's going to be read before I write it, those poisonous thoughts will fill my head and smother my ideas. That is a fact.

So it's safe to say my problem lies in not being eccentric enough, because I give more than a shit if what I write is liked or impressive.

What's upsetting about that is that it goes against every bit of advice I've ever given to anybody. It goes against my mantra, if I have one: "love yourself, or no one will." I've preached this since... the birth of my self-awareness. That summer day in the daycare pool when I realized I wasn't exactly stunning in a bikini. It snowballed from there.

I guess I figured if I said it to enough people, they would believe it, and I would, in turn, come to know it as a fact about myself. This thought has been my crusade, to a point of absurdity, to a point where it has come between me and significant others.

What convoluted logic! It merely points a gaudy, blinking arrow back to my insecurity; that it would take others' opinions for me to love myself, and that can't happen. It can't hinge on others. So awful it is, that for most of my life, I've known that the louder someone shouts "I AM THIS", the more likely it is that they're not.

Deep down, I wonder, am I just a pre-pubescent chubby little girl in a swimming pool full of judgement and self-loathing? Are the things I write all just metaphors for what I wish was my psychic condition? What happens now that I know this? Is it possible to change, to accept myself untethered, without losing my mind? Or is that just the way psyches are built--interconnected, reliant, dependent on each other; and anyone who says theirs is otherwise is preaching doublespeak?

Do I change?

Or do I just stop preaching my own contradictions?

I get all the news I need from the weather report

I need to weed the garden, prune the bonsai, fertilize the petunias. Or perhaps I should just uproot the entire plant.

Certain things in my life have fallen into stagnation. Not because they are dead, or aren't being used, but because they remain still. They're thinking, they are alive, but like a tree, they're growing algae and moss, and parasites threaten to drive a chisel through their bodies slowly, until one day, they crack and the rot is exposed. And passers-by peer through the crack, and think, wow, it's been dying for years, I thought that old tree would be there forever, it looked so strong, and it was so stable...

As humans with language, song and thought, we don't like to think we can fall victim to things so easily wiped away as lichens or fungus. We're active creatures. We clean ourselves, our food, our living spaces. We run from being in one place for too long, with our jobs, our kids, our schools, our restaurants. But when you come home from all that at the end of the day, you sit.

See, that's when it happens.

When you're sitting there with your beer, your significant other and your television, you're letting things outside of you think for you. You're letting your television, your couch, your computer, your significant other, become parasites to your thought.

In farming, that's when the plant is cut and burned--after it's produced fruit, and probably won't any longer. Farmers know when to terminate life. Plus, it's good for the soil, all that decaying matter, mulch for the next crop.

If I terminate it now, it will decay. But when it's done, I'll be better for it. Spread the compost around so the soil can gather experience.

My life looks too much like this right now. I'm trying to find a compromise, to make this situation as painless as possible, but that's probably because I've been sitting still for too long. No real change happens painlessly. Compromising with what ails you is a silly thought.

My neighbor popped her head in my place the other day when we were getting ready to grill some steaks outside. She looked in and said, "Man, it's cozy in here. I love our little apartments. But they're so cozy, they make it hard to leave, and change, and grow." Then she turned around and left me with that.

This just isn't getting better with time.