Carpe diem.

Wow, it has been way too long!

Life has been good. No, strike that. Life has been, in a word, stellar. I feel like I've recently ascended in happiness like a phoenix, flying above all the stress and sadness that used to bring me down. It sounds sappy and dramatic but, if you've seen me in the last few weeks, you'll know from my face how true it is.

It's amazing how easy it is to let someone or something bring you down for so long. You sit back and let them question your motives, your self worth, your drive... and smile and nod while they're doing it! Your love for that person or that situation/job seeps somehow into your ability to feel complete, feel whole and, once you're on the other side of it, you see just how much importance you put on someone or something that didn't deserve it.

I am so happy now and, the best part is, I feel like I earned it. Like I deserve it. I refuse to base my self worth on any external forces and have become so cheesy silly happy that I can't imagine living any other way.

If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do. As I have recently been reminded, life is too short to be unhappy or not live your most genuine life RIGHT NOW.

Carpe diem, bitches. It might be the last one you have.

"All the poems you read
And what you really sought
Was the one poem.

And when you found it
... Weren’t you lifted up?
Didn’t you become lighter?

Transparent even, so that
someone looking at you
Could see the world,
Could see the world inside you?"

— Gregory Orr

Sunday Morning Coming Down...

Sitting on the couch this morning, wearing my girlfriend's grey Aero hoodie, I had one of those beautiful, rare moments of clarity.

It surprised me, for a moment, to realize how difficult a time I have had balancing everything recently. I used to put a lot of stock in horoscopes and astrology, although that practice has faded some with time, but I am a Libra. According to all the literature, I am a pretty typical Libra. The symbol of Libra are the scales, the ultimate balancing act. So, naturally, I should have a propensity for balance. 

Normally, I do. Thanks to my natural attention deficit disorder, I often flit around like a hummingbird, going from one task to another and back again, with little effect on my pschye.

But recently, I've felt myself worn down. It shocked me to see a defeatist attitude taking over, a "daily grind" sort of mentality. Drifting around with less joy than I have ever had, going from job to job and home without giving anything more than 25% (on a good day) of my time. My relationships suffered, my home suffered and I suffered.

It all came to a head when my shifts were cut at the place I had given my heart for 6 years. I felt angry, worthless, scared. But, thanks to my amazing girlfriend and a little therapy, I've come to understand that I have the world's best support system and I now have weekends. Weekends. I'm going to say that again because it feels foreign to me, like trying to suddenly speak Italian. 

So it's my first Sunday. As I told my girlfriend this morning, I'm going to carpe di-motherfucking-em. I'm writing, making pancakes, cleaning. I have my first roller derby practice in a month tonight. I start a new schedule this week that includes getting off early enough to pick my daughter up twice a week and late enough to drop her off at school once a week. My life seems to have somehow clicked together, as I realized this morning.

I can do it. I don't know why I ever thought I couldn't. 

Spring.

"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."

-Victor Hugo

Do you ever have those days when things just feel different somehow? More hopeful, like you're on the cusp of something big?

I walked out to my car this morning, running my obligatory 5 - 10 minutes late and still needing to stop to get coffee, only to discover it was iced over. As I reached for my ice scraper, I realized that I had recently stepped on it as it resided on my driver's side floor board and snapped the scraper from its handle. Instead of causing my grief and unleashing a string of Sunday morning expletives, I calmly picked it up from the floor and scraped my car off with my bare hand and the small piece of plastic.

After debating my diet for the day, I splurged on a delicious caramel macchiato for breakfast and actually got to work on time. I noticed the birds chirping outside and, although the temperature outside read 26 degrees on my car's dashboard, I could almost feel a hint of spring in the air.

It has been a weird winter. We've had very little snow, very few cold days, and my body feels out of whack somehow. It almost feels like winter never really came and now we're almost into spring. But, suddenly, I'm ready for it.

All those projects I've been dying to finish, like cleaning the basement, I want to take on. Weight loss is going great (lost 6# so far!) and I'm motivated to continue on that path. My family is going in a positive direction - we're this beautiful, well-greased unit of awesome. I'm finally standing up for myself in ways I should have a long time ago.

Spring is in the air and in my heart.

Knock knock knock...

Sometimes, when you least expect it, the universe has a way of pointing lessons out to you. If you're lucky, you notice as it gently taps you on the shoulder. If you're not, it knocks harder and harder until you are unable to ignore it.

Yesterday, a patient looked directly at me during an intake exam and told me that I shouldn't let money decide my happiness. When I got home, I talked to one of my boss's who informed me that there were no hours left for me until at least May. Today, a coworker's daughter was involved in a horrible car accident.

Ok. I get it. Money is less important than family and happiness! I would prefer not to have any more of these lessons.

Take it from me, lovely readers, and go home and hug your family. Look at those bills, pay them, and put them out of your mind. Enjoy the weather and your life and what you love to do while you can.

Trust me. The universe WILL knock harder.

Writing.

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

- Anne Lamott

If forced to describe myself categorically, I would use all the usual labels... mother, daughter, partner, etc. But, sometimes above all that, I am a writer.

Writing muscles are similar to the muscles I've developed in roller derby. The muscle memory remains the same but, without practice, they atrophy.

But I don't set aside time like I used to, don't jot random, scattered notes on shreds of receipts with ideas for future short stories or blog posts. I sometimes worry that my gift is being squandered. I don't want to waste my talent but I also have an almost paralyzing fear of writer's block. It's cyclical - I stress about writer's block and don't write which makes me worry that I have writer's block even more.

But I've always felt there was so much good inside me, so many things waiting to come out and change the world. That may sound conceited but writing is the one talent I'm sure of, the one thing that I know I'm good at.

So why the fear? Why the self-judgement?

If I let you know I'll figure it out. Maybe that's just something that comes with being a crazy writer, the type of person who always has weird, random thoughts bouncing around in her brain.

They say all writers are a little crazy.

Women.

What a whirlwind of a finale to January! I promised to write about Miss Representation and ended up just abandoning most social networking entirely to make it through the rest of the month!

Now, as I wipe the sweat off my brow, I decided to take a moment, pause, and reflect on the events of the last week or so.

Miss Representation, for one, was mind boggling. Caitlin and I arrived a little late (due to my ADD thinking the tickets said 7:30p and not 7:00p!), but were immediately immersed and entranced as soon as we sat down. It really made me think, a lot, about feminism and women's rights and role in the culture.

I used to be a pretty militant feminist. While I don't regard myself quite that seriously anymore, the majority of my beliefs are still the same. After this documentary, though, I think they've amped back up to a level that I had forgotten they could exist at.

The world we live in, the world my daughter is growing up in, hasn't really changed that much. For the most part, women are still looked upon as lesser somehow, as a creature entirely created for baby making, cooking and men's pleasure. I've gotten used to this world, although I absolutely hate it, but thinking of my daughter growing up to be seen as an object makes me nauseated.

So, what do we do? Really! I want to know. I find it so disconcerting sometimes to even thinking of taking on the system, the "man," that I get flustered and lost before I even start?

What I do know is that all of the popular culture, the media - television, radio, movies, books, etc. - are, if not anti-woman, then certainly not pro-women. Just pay attention the next time a commercial is on. A rap song. A movie. Women are in the home, women are "hos," women are being fought for. We're never the protagonist, we're never the hero.

Just think about it. Is that the world you would want your daughter growing up in?

I know my answer.

January 18th.

It's funny, when you really look back, to see just how interconnected things are. Small, minute decisions (deciding to go someplace when you didn't really want to, waking up a half an hour late, etc) can make a huge impact on the course of your life. Some people call it the Butterfly Effect, the idea that a seemingly small thing can create a large reaction (a butterfly fluttering its wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other). I just tend to call it fate; the universe.

When I first moved back to Bloomington and started embracing my sexuality, I started by reaching out on the Internet. It was a safe haven for me, a place I could really be myself and be saved from a lot of the more obvious judgements on my life. One of the sites I stumbled across (after seeing a sign in the bathroom of the Bistro) was for a bisexual group in Central IL. After perusing, and eventually joining, I met a multitude of interesting, fascinating people. Many of those people I still talk to now and, although I won't "out" them, are still an important part of my life in a variety of different ways.

One of the people I met through my Internet travels was one Miss Amy Lambert. She remains to this day (although we rarely get the chance to interact) a creative powerhouse and one of the people who continues to inspire me so so much to keep writing and getting my voice out there. A few years later, she wrote me an email that would change my life.

That, my friends, is how I met one Jenny Mandel.

It turns out, because of this email, Jenny and I were friends on Facebook for nearly a year without any communication. We saw a year's worth of each other's status messages, of each other's innermost thoughts and feelings, without any back and forth conversation.

Then, one day, the stars lined up in exact perfect formation for that to change. My relationship had just gone down in explicit, flaming fashion and I was reaching out for someone. The person that reached back for me, that fateful day in November, would be the person who would change my life in every possible way.

I am so lucky to be in love with a person who loves me, despite all the hell we went through to get to where we are now. She drove to see me at my first bout as a derby girl, two hours away from where she lived, just to support me (at her own personal emotional cost). She's stuck by me, helped me up when I stumbled, held me when I've cried, dealt with a wealth of emotional bullshit that she didn't deserve... all with grace and tact and dignity.

I am so proud to have been able to love her for a year today. A sometimes tough year, a year of laughter and tears and hugs and a love that I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams.

I am even more lucky that she loves me back.

I've never been one to plan the future. But, looking at her, I see so much. I see marriage, kids, a house with a big backyard. I see laughter and conversation, I see support and strength and unconditional love. I see my soul reflected back in her eyes.

Happy anniversary, Jenny. One down, many more to go.