Journal & Musing

  • evolution

    I was deeply inspired what seems a lifetime ago by a writer who for some reason thought I was a decent read. I reread a couple of his posts tonight for old-time’s sake, loved them, said so, and then reading through the comments saw that I had already expressed my love for them when they were written and posted in 2018. I laughed when I saw my alter, alter ego–the 3rd (?) iteration of me. Why I hold on to nothing and resurface now and then like a turtle in a pond is a mystery. I try not to read too deeply into myself. Not much good comes of it.

    Writing is different for me now, mostly because I have no time for anything but an occasional blurb in response to a prompt that catches my eye. Prompts are easier for me to write a response to than for me to follow up on an original thought. I feel like I’ve run out of those. In fact, that occurrence, the one when all the ideas were used up, likely happened millennia ago and the ideas keep reincarnating and mixing around with other stuff in people’s brains to make new ideas that have also come and gone. All of everything has been written already. It’s just most of the words have been forgotten. Or they’re in books I haven’t read. There are a lot of those, some of which are in a stack on the shelf over there under the ones I’ve reread multiple times. Whatever the case, deep, existential thoughts evade me.

    My efforts have detoured the past few years, the last two in a similar direction those efforts took two decades ago when I pursued deep thoughts of a different nature. Ones that require lots of weird math. This blog has been my attempt to hold onto the writer in me. But the space has become an occasional, quick escape. Makes me sad. But time is a thief, and I have so little of the bits between later and now when all the big stuff happens, like work and life-altering events, that writing seems wasteful use of my time. I’ve reached an age when everything I do matters because the clock is ticking faster. I remind myself I have a good 40 years left provided genetics and avoidance of major disasters holds up. That’s almost a second half of life, one whole chunk of time nearly equal to what I have already lived. But less happens in the second half, which makes the clock more noticeable. The ticking is louder these days, and life is slipping by. Do I have time for the tiny details anymore? My sense of urgency to fit the expectations I have for my life in the next four decades overshadows the whimsical world I once lived in my head. Social media has replaced brain space I reserved for the reinvented original ideas I once conjured. I don’t like that word, conjured. I feel its meaning has been altered, though it hasn’t really. I have just allowed it to lean toward a more sinister meaning, the consequence of being led astray by mindless entertainment. Media has contributed to the bastardization of word-craft. Memes have replaced prose, condensing ideas to a single image. We immediately absorb what was once savored, then scroll to the next random (or not so random) tidbit that an algorithm has decided would entertain us. My attention span is not what it was once, and that has had a profound effect on how I spend my leisure time. Hence the neglected stack of unread books under the stack of read ones that, themselves, are gathering dust. It’s not really that I don’t have time for them, it’s that I choose to give in to the instant gratification of social media. Soon I’ll forget my words altogether.

    I miss my writer friend who helped me nurture them. I think he has slipped into the ether. Or is buried in a book. Not writing where I can find him, anyway. Who will inspire me now? I need to read those books. I need to reread Bluebeard.

  • You mean, like, when people went outside and stuff?

    Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

    My childhood. It was pretty great.

  • La familia

    What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

    I work too much. But I have to do a good job to earn my pay (and, let’s be honest, their respect).

    I had a dream two nights ago that I walked into the home I grew up in. The floors were torn out and the walls were stripped. Everything was concrete and dry wall. White and bare. Workers sat at a table near the door and ate their lunch. They didn’t know who I was. I looked over and saw my dad sitting in one of the chairs on the other side of the room. He was staring into space with a look of gloom and despair. He built that house. Even laid the wood floors tile by tile. And now all his work was gone. The home was gone. He was totally alone. I haven’t felt so deeply saddened in a long time. I frantically asked, “What is happening?! Dad!”

    My alarm went off in that moment, and I didn’t get to hear his response. I didn’t get to comfort him.

    He’s 90 now, and he lives in a different town. He’s sad and alone, and it makes me sad thinking about it. So I took off work Friday, and I’m going to stay with him a couple of days.

    He’s thrilled.

    And work be damned.

    I’ll do a good job another day.

  • Which part?

    What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

    My dad is into genealogy, so I know a LOT about my lineage. Interesting stories, mostly, and all the famous people that all of everyone is also related to. His work has opened my eyes to how connected we actually are. All of us. Looking up the line is overwhelming, as looking forward from the past shows an exponential spread of DNA going down and out that becomes diluted with each generation, mixing of this talent and trait with that one until maybe a spec is left of a person that history counts as legend. But I like to think that somehow certain gifts have escaped the hundreds of years of watering down that led to me. I am not a pure bred anything, but no one is. Empires conquered empires, and the influences of some reached every corner of Earth, which in turn spread to other corners and so on. I have learned a lot of history from my dad in his quest to connect the dots, one fact being that time is rife with brutality but displays evidence of hope and beauty and love. Humans are complex but predictable, as is the trail of history left in their wake. And we are all part of that history. We descend from it. We are the sum total of those who came before us.

    But none of that answers the question. What am I most proud of?

    My dad. My mom. Their parents. Who they are and were and how I inherited the things I love most about them. There’s bad in there too, which I cannot deny. But I am also proud of how we all learned to overcome the darkness.

    What fascinates me maybe even more than the past is how someday my own talents and traits will pop up down the line. Someone might look like me or share my affinity for literature and general frivolity. I imagine I will pass on the passions I got from those who came before me.

    My heritage is an amalgam of many, and I’m fascinated by each one and how they combined. My pride is of the people who formed and reformed that heritage. I might be molding it some, and I’m proud of that, too.

  • ‘Cept I don’t get to.

    What could you do more of?

    Sleep. Always sleep.

  • devour thrice; three times devour

    What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

    I have two. One that I never share (okay, once I did), and one that I don’t like that isn’t really advice but a fact. Oh, and a third that I do like.

    1) The one I never share that is golden:

    Bad teachers don’t know the rules. Good teachers know the rules and follow them. Excellent teachers know the rules don’t apply to them.

    2) The unsettling fact:

    Today’s accomplishments are tomorrow’s expectations.

    3) The one that has taught me humility and served me best:

    Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

    May they serve you well.

  • We gonna rock down to…

    What things give you energy?

    Iced green tea from Starbucks.

    Joy

    Jumping out of airplanes

    Protein

    Lifting weights

    Certain people

    A good day

    Mitochondria

    80s pop … (and JT, shhh)

  • How to deny myself

    Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

    I have to learn everything the hard way. There wasn’t room for all the stuff I wish I knew before adulthood (or 50).

  • Tread lightly while unarmed in the presence of introspection, I tell myself. Rarely do I listen.

    Tonight the darkness has found me. I feel as though my being has been dismembered, or rather compartmentalized. Something between the two, anyway.

    I thought about how each of the few people in my life are different, and that their unique qualities match the different facets of me. Joy, anxiety, stubbornness, conscience, guilt, beauty, innovativeness, etc. Some of these people look up to me more than I deserve to be looked up to. Some tolerate me. Some are disappointed. I don’t know what the others feel, I only know what I fear they might. How can I be so highly regarded by some, looked down on by others, and not good enough for my kids? I don’t feel good enough for them. They turned out so great, but I give my husband the credit for that. He is my conscience, my straight and narrow, the one that I fail over and over. My workmates judge me, and my three friends think I hung the moon. To my parents, I am a child. I think the last couple of years they haven’t thought that, though for most of my half-century of life, they have, and not in a good way. At times like this I want to escape and live in isolation. But I would miss them all (except my workmates, sadly). I hope they’d miss me too. I’d feel more myself, I think, but I’d be in great despair of losing my family. I’ve lost some people already, and I am scarred by the unimaginable situations that caused the loss. In times like this I check in with my joy. She lives on the other side of the world, but I get instant responses when I wave hello or share a giggle. I rarely make time for conversation, though. She is my medicine, like a pill to take when I need to feel better. A silly picture suffices, always delivered and unsolicited.

    So I’m un-whole tonight in a house alone, with the only thing separating me from my parts is a text I could send at any time, which brings me some comfort.

    I did nothing today, and they say that idle hands are the devil’s playground. An idle mind most certainly is. My self-loathing has made an appearance. But tomorrow, I will be better.

  • am not…are too…

    Do you see yourself as a leader?

    This is such a serious prompt, but I’m inclined to answer because I feel like writing.

    I do not, nor have I ever seen myself as a leader. I certainly never wanted to be one. I’ve always fancied myself a fly on the wall. But then I step out of my car at work and my alter ego takes over. Or maybe disappears. Whatever the case, I become an entertainer and speaker of truths. I don tiny plastic hands and greet my subjects at the door before inundating them with knowledge they never thought they wanted to know. I fill their heads with thoughts that wake them up in the night in fits of anxiety. And they come running to me —the source of their agony—for comfort.

    ¡El edificio se calló!

    So I was told once.

    Then he made a 4, and now the building stands strong.

    Growing is scary and painful, but somebody has to guide them through. I shove them through. With my tiny plastic hands.

    I guess what I am saying is that if I have to do this thing, if I have to teach, if I must lead, then I will do it with as little seriousness as possible. The subject is hard enough.