Thursday, July 20, 2006

I was just reading a friend's website who challenged himself to blog everyday for a 100 days. For the record, I don't think he did, but I'm inspired nonetheless. Not to blog for a 100 days straight, but to blog tonight. What? Exactly.
See I don't have anything funny to say. I don't feel funny. I probably look funny. Naturally I'd rather have humor in my side pocket to whip out because it makes for a more engaging blog.
But since humor has been on the longest smoke break in the history of Humor, I'm left feeling a little ummm, exposed. Did I mention it makes for a great cape? (Hey capes were so "in" last year.)
Anyway, after reading Matt's challenge I realized that I was avoiding blogging tonight b/c nobody likes a whiney blog and my readership IS in the tens.
I taught tonight. This isn't about the teaching, it just culminated in the teaching, which of course is perfect since it has the ability to bring out everything you'd rather avoid. This morning I noticed that I've felt lonely here and I didn't expect to. I thought that I felt it in Cambridge because I didn't know very many people and I had left Austin, my friends, and teaching behind. Someone once told me that I seemed like I was in a bubble in Austin. Well, I suspect I'm the bubble. Here, I have friends and even a lot of my family (though you wouldn't know it by the frequency w/ which I call) and still the feeling persists. I then thought I could dust it under the rug and call it symptomatic of moving / leaving a job I had for a long time / whatever, but I knew that wasn't true. Sure change is a challenge, but change itself isn't what's difficult. It's that it creates a sort of vacuum in which things are bound to bubble to the surface. Must...stuff...down...
I have had about a week and a half off of work as we were waiting for my project to begin. (In the consulting world it has a cute little sports label --"on the bench".) Apparently I like to work - or at very least - appear like I'm working because this has been the longest 10 days evuh. Colleagues told me to enjoy it and I tried that for about 30 minutes, but it was too much pressure. Where am I going with this? Oh yeah so the no-working and my roommate on vacation for a week, made it painfully quiet in these parts enough for me to notice that holy cow I can't keep blaming it on what's outside of me.

Is this a good time to say that my upstairs neighbors smoke on their balcony and it wafts down to my place and it's annoying because I don't want my sheets to smell like smoke and I shouldn't have to close my window?

So the common denominator in my environments is me. It actually feels good to identify it b/c at least I'm no longer pretending it's something else. I know from experience that fighting it (trying to talk myself in a direction) is futile. All I need to do is notice it. I suppose I just wish that I could notice it ONE time instead of the 300 or so that is more likely.

That was what came up this morning and then I taught tonight and got the same feedback that I got in Cambridge like ten months ago and yeah I feel like I'm riding the slow bus. Hello??? WHO doesn't grow in TEN months? How is it possible that I could be in the same spot I was in ten-frickin-months ago? I feel disappointed in myself, and then as soon as I'm conscious of feeling disappointed, I'm like No! Don't do that either!

Mostly though sometimes I don't get it. How can I feel so connected, so effortless and then it slips away? Why don't I remember ALL the time? It's not for absence of willingness. I know that I block my own ability to receive, but I don't know why or more importantly when I will finally stop.

So that's it. I eeked it out. Next week we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.

2 comments:

peewee said...

you wrote "How is it possible that I could be in the same spot I was in ten-frickin-months ago?"

Uhhh...you're NOT. Cuz I know for a FACT ten-frickin-months ago (frickin? really?) that you were NOT in LA! HA! You're wrong! Isn't nice that you can be so wrong...and it's a GOOD thing!

Unknown said...

"How can I feel so connected, so effortless and then it slips away? Why don't I remember ALL the time?"

is another way of saying

"why can't reality conform to my unsupported fantasies of reaching some mythical state or 'place' that magically defies the fundamental transitory nature of the existence."