Layers of years

Many moons ago, tears fell from tiny blue eyes as the world began to breathe for her anew. Those blue eyes have seen the worst of life and loved the best of life, and tears flow unbidden at the sorrows and joys seen.

Bricks get stacked, roads get paved, births are celebrated, lives are memorialized, and the world keeps turning on whatever axis it wants to. The winds blow in, the dirt drifts against the walls, seeping under the doorways and windowsills, ignoring barriers we erect against nature, reminding us that this planet will take care of itself first, no matter what we as humans attempt to do to stave it off.

Winter rolls into Spring which burns into Summer which then simmers into Fall which drifts back into Winter. Every year. We forget that rains will pour in and flood the plains of the desert we live in, filling the draws to the brim, short reminders that the edges keep shifting away.

Those tears do the same, filling to the brim, reminding us that emotions bind us loosely to the here and now not matter how we try to escape to the past or future, with anxiety and misery in tow.

~

Filter this as you will. The rip tides of life keep trying to pull me under, and I can only float for so long. Small bright objects on the horizon remind me that there might be something worth swimming to shore for...if only I knew which direction the shore was.

What if I threw a party...

... and no one came?

I'm not talking about the blog - I honestly don't pay attention anymore to the stats. Since the overhaul and re-boot, it's not the same, I know. And the lurkers can lurk all they wish, and the readers can read and comment if you wish, but many are social media friends now and we comment there instead.

I'm talking a real party. A party that already has invites sent and is being planned. And yes, there are a few people planning on coming -I should be thankful for that, right? So I should shut up and smile, right? But there are a handful of people, close family, whom I really wanted there. And they're not coming. Plenty of advance notice, plenty of people want them to come, but nope. No excuse other than they want to stay home.

I feel gut-shot. The depression fog envelopes me almost instantly upon hearing that answer. Like I've done something wrong. Like I wasn't good enough for them, and any silly little party I plan won't be either.

In another side to that very same feeling, a person I thought was a friend had an event recently, one that I would have loved to have gone to, a program I would love to support and volunteer for... but I was not invited.

What have I done? Did I say something wrong? Did I piss off someone and not know it, and thus have yet to apologized for whatever it was?

I feel like crying.

I feel alone.

I feel unworthy.

I feel like I have done something to make people not like me, and I have no idea what. And I have no idea how to make amends and get back in their good graces.

I feel like I screwed something up, or a lot of little somethings that added up, and I don't know what.

rain day

The beautiful, semi-unexpected blessing of a day off of work due to rain. A day to make hot tea and oatmeal, to curl up with my notebook and pen, to sit and write and ponder possibilities.

I say semi-unexpected because I've become a bit of a weather geek over the past few years, and often find the forums on the weather blogs a lot more pleasant and entertaining than the drama on facebook. It's fascinating to see the wind directions change because of fronts moving through, or to realize that my headache is probably due to a pressure system.

So I had been watching these patterns aiming for West Texas for several days, and knew we'd get rain. But several inches in a few hours tends to flood areas that are not used to it, and most people tend to forget this out here. We live in an area where the city planners took low-lying troughs called 'draws', essentially live-water creeks that would cut through the ranch or prairie lands when it rains, and turned them into streets and built homes on them. And they wonder why it floods?

So today, I will be a writer. I am writing here, and I have cued up lesson 2 in Story is a State of Mind, and I have my notebook and pen ready. I have my hot tea, with vanilla-scented steam curling from the top of the cup, and the lovely sound of rain waving on the roof. Today is already a better day than I had hoped.

I just want to be myself. Somewhere else.

- I resent having to do things for other people.

- Let's explore that.

- Not always. And not all people. Just right now I feel like I'm having to put up with people and their needs and whims instead of getting to take care of my own.

- Why is that?

- Several things. School - I have to turn in these tests for class, but I have no idea if they want the actual answer printed in the book or some feasible answer we're supposed to infer from the ether surrounding the book until the test gets graded. I feel tossed about because of this. Family - on weekends I feel obligated to help my family and/or do housework. I feel obligated to spend my evenings watching tv with my husband - and sometimes I truly want to, but sometimes I want to do other things. Work - They have four different systems for tracking spending and invoices for materials for these projects, but hire me to come in and try and whittle down a whole bunch of them onto a dozen spreadsheets? I feel drained and redundant there. Traffic - just driving the thirty minutes to work is enough to make me wish for a rocket launcher on my car to get the other people out of my way!

- So you're saying...?

- I want to do things for me. I'm tired of other people's needs. At least right now. I'm not usually like this, I actually feel good when I do things for people that helps, or makes them smile. But right now, I want to hole up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, far, far away from anyone else for several weeks. To just write, to paint, to sleep and dream, to ponder, to be myself and not have to fucking apologize for my attitude to anyone else.

- Is that what you really want? To be able to be yourself without apology?

- Yes.

- How can you do that now?

- Ha! Have you seen where I live and work? I'm stuck in this place and have to 'play nice' to survive here. But this 'surviving' is killing me. I don't know what to do.

- Small things? Like taking an hour for yourself?

- Sometimes I try to do that. But then things like laundry or meals need to be taken care of, or someone else needs something done. And right now I really have no room to be creative anyway. We share a space and have no separate areas to use for our own. I live in a town that has no idea what a cozy coffee shop is, or other places for people to go read and work remotely. The Starbucks is crazy, and so are most diners. I just feel stuck in a horrible catch-22 here. I can't get out till I have money, but to make the money I have to work the crappy jobs because they're the only ones who will hire me.

- Have you tried to apply for something different?

- Many times. Hundreds of applications and resumes. A company that has 14 openings in retail, and yet no call. I've applied at the local art stores for years, and I'm somehow not qualified, yet I know where everything is in those stores and have often helped customers find things when the employees don't know. It's like there's an invisible mark on my resume that says "ignore this one".

- What about working for yourself?

- I've tried, various times and various ways. The things I want to do, I don't sell enough or have enough freelance work to make ends meet, and am thus back at square one. The things I'm good at - being a 'finder', an assistant, a go-fer, a designer - well, those are not jobs that get got in roughneck country.

- So move to where you want to be.

- How? I need to have money to move anywhere, and right now I am paying credit card debt that will take me roughly 20 months to be solvent. I. am. stuck. here.

- I have no answer to that.

- Neither do I. I just have to accept it. I have to shut down my creative side and shut-up the whining and deal with the situation as best I can. I have to try and 'survive' until something happens - a miracle, a winning lottery ticket, a call for a fantastic job where I can write and travel, or until I die, I guess. And right now, my bets are on the latter.

what shall I be today - writer, artist, baker?

I stayed home from work today (shh, don't tell my boss, but staring at spreadsheets for seven hours a day and eating tuna fish out of a can at my desk for lunch is slowly draining my soul and it makes me cry.) just to get some sleep. (Husband has physical fitness test in three weeks and a 5K in November. For some reason he prefers to go running at oh-god-thirty which wakes me up and makes me cranky.)

Sleep was good - sleep was had. I feel better enough to want to work on any of the pending projects in the holding pattern.

Write - either short stories or on the novel I've been hacking away at for two years now. Or even just some writing lessons from Sarah Selecky's Story Is A State Of Mind class. All the characters are having conversations in my head and driving me nuts, I need to get them down on paper.

Bake - I am so damn drained by time I get home that meals have gone by the wayside. And since I'm not a breakfast eater and lunches are things-that-come-out-of-boxes-that-are-shelf-stable crap, my nourishment level is matching the lack-of nourishment from other areas of my life. I've got at least three recipes of things I can bake so that there will be something ready to eat during the week.

Paint - eight little match boxes, empty and waiting for a new creative life, are sitting over here by my ribbons and charms, all of which are collecting dust these days. I have a dozen or so extra onesies from my brother and sister-in-law's baby shower that no one else painted on.

To me, they are a blank canvas, just waiting to be used. I'm just as content to paint things for the niece on her way as I am to paint random things and try and sell them on etsy or something. But I hesitate at that - some of these things take several hours to paint or create, and I don't want to just turn around and sell it for $10.

I did that years ago - when I was fairly new at wood carving. I did a piece with their name and year they were married carved into it, with lots of smaller details surrounding it, then I painted, detail lined it, and sealed it. It took several weeks worth of work - and I sold it for twenty bucks.

That brings up the "what if my stuff isn't good enough and no one wants to buy it?" fears that have been riding my shoulders for years. That fear digs its claws in every time I consider attempting entering another art or craft show, or when the thought of putting my pieces up for sale again crosses my mind.

Because I still have a dozen paintings with tags on them from the art show I did in 2009, paintings that are fascinating and unique, but have yet to find a new home.

So - will today be the day I confront these fears and slap new paint down onto something in an effort to be creative... or will today be the day I start that new short story about the man in a yellow shirt and red suspenders who carries around a cigar but never lights it and never chews on it, he just uses it as a pointer when emphasizing points while talking because he thinks it makes him look more dignified... or will I trow some ingredients into the oven and see if I can make something edible come out...

No promises, but I'll try and update what happens.

standards, and where I set them

- I set my standards so high that even I can't meet them.

- There's something wrong with that, don't you think?

- Sure. Means I judge myself just as harshly, if not more so, than others.

- And?

- And it also means that I'll never actually accomplish any of my goals as long as I do that. But shouldn't that level of perfection give me something to strive for?

- Does it?

- No, not really. I mean sometimes it does, but not really. I beat myself up and consider myself a failure for not getting things just right. Especially the first time.

- Why is that?

- Because I feel like I should be better than that. I feel like I should be able to do these things I can see, I can visualize in my mind's eye. I've seen how it should be done, how it should come out and how it should look. And when that doesn't happen I get frustrated with myself.

- Who told you it has to be perfect?

- Um... Well, saying "everyone" is a justification that doesn't work here. So I guess *I* did. I set those standards, raised the bar, and I expect myself to reach it so I'll feel better about myself.

- Do you see the circle you're going in here?

- Yes. Now how do I stop it?