a post!

No update yesterday. A friend needed cheering up and I thought that was more important than a blog. More later today!

NaBloPoMo and more

So I just found out about NaBloPoMo!!! (National Blog Posting Month), and while I don't know if I have a whole novel in my head, I know that I can commit to posting every day this month. Unfortunately, I found out about this AFTER I had already skipped a day of posting for the month so I can't win any of the "fabulous prizes" given out because it is November, but that's okay. I didn't want to win anything, I just wanted the challenge of writing every day. So here I am, posting daily for the month - and hopefully beyond.

I've got a lot going through my head today.

I am dealing with a bit of sub drop. Okay, maybe more than a bit. It's not been debilitating because I was ready for it and set myself up with letting friends who would understand know about it and leaned on them (am leaning) for support. It's been a long time since I've played so much in so short a time. It felt so good!!! But afterwards I know I go inward to process, and without that support net beneath me I can go too far in and get depressed.

A lot of the processing I have been doing during this round of introspective sub drop is about relationships. I know for sure that I am not ready to be in anything serious right now. Any time anyone tries to attach ties to me, or corrall me in some way I am as skittish as an antelope on the back end of the herd. To me, Ms. Relationship Builder, this is telling. I need time. I am forming more and more a picture of what I want out of a serious partner as this time goes on. As much as I want someone in my life, I am glad I can recognize that taking time with myself will only make things better in the end.



"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say."
~Sharon O'Brien

“You can't stop loving or wanting to love because when its right, it's the best thing in the world. When you're in a relationship and it's good, even if nothing else in your life is right, you feel like your whole world is complete.”
-Keith Sweat

Things I've learned while living on my own, in no particular order:

1. I now say "One, please" instead of "Just one" when going out to eat by myself. "JUST one" sounds so...sad. While "One please" sounds a bit more together and less pathetic.

2. I own a shit ton of books. Really. Good lord. Where the hell do they all come from? And how do they keep multiplying!!?? I could open my own lending library folks. And yet, I still love holding them all in my hands and rereading them all. Its like revisiting old friends. I've considered a Kindle but I might have to get TWO in order to fit in all the books I currently own plus new ones I want (j/k....kinda....)

3. I still can't finish a drink to save my life. Ever. I leave a trail of half full glasses behind me. No matter how hard I try I am constantly picking them up and bringing them back to the kitchen to dump them out. I am ONE person in this house and I go through almost ALL the glasses in the house every five days or so. Crazy!! I hope whomever I live with next can deal with this, because it is a lifelong trait that ain't going away! LOL!

4. I hate doing dishes.

4a. But I can get them done in fifteen minutes if I set a timer and race. So, not bad in the grand scheme of things.

5. I like my bed but making a king size bed on your own kinda sucks. I have a knack for it now though. :)

6. I do a lot of laundry, but I am doing better at not having piles of it this way.

7. I like my closet organized by color.

8. I own a lot of shoes. And this is a good thing. *squee*

9. I both love and hate that I have no one else to bitch at about housework. It's all me, baby!!! I gotta train the cats to vacuum and dust.

10. Despite rumors to the contrary, I am actually doing really well living on my own. I like it. I'm not scared at night. I don't have to sleep with a light on or the tv on anymore. I have my own safe space to be in that is all mine. It's rather nice coming home at night to that. Sure, life's not perfect, but then again, who's is??


"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with"
-Wayne Dyer

Clubbing the Inspiration Fairy

(Alrighty, I'm attempting the MWF thing again here folks. Bear with me while I see if I can do it...)

It's November...which, to me, heralds not only the onset of holidays but also the onset of many of my friends hunkering down over their keyboards and participating in NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month). They try to complete a novel in one month's time.

I hear a lot about word count goals missed, achieved or surpassed. I hear a lot about coffee fueled nights near the end of the month trying to catch up and finish before the last day comes and goes. I have to say, I'm a bit jealous of all this.

It's an open thing, I could totally participate if I chose to do so. But...butbutbut....the cold hard truth is that I have no idea what in the WORLD I would write about. I have no muse pressing down upon me with enough ideas for a whole novel. I have NO plot, no character that compels me to write about them THAT much.

I've been told many times that I need to keep writing, that it's in me to be an author, that I have something to give to the world in print. Meanwhile, I keep waiting for inspiration to strike or at least sidle up to me and give me a nudge.

I love writing, I love expressing myself through words. It makes me feel happy to sit and play with vocabulary to get the exact meaning I want to convey out of a sentence. I just don't know if I have a novel in me yet.

To that effect, I am going to do my own version of NaNoWriMo. I just want to write every day. I am not terribly concerned with what I'm writing, just that stuff is getting put down on the page. Maybe, if its coherent stuff I'll post it here and share it with you, my three regular readers. LOL!

Who knows, maybe I'll write myself INTO inspiration for a novel.....

"You can't wait for inspiration> You have to go after it with a club."
-Jack London

Bittersweet Sentimentality

It never fails to amaze me, the things that retain meaning to some folks and not to others. I guess that just means that some people are more sentimental than others. I count myself in that first group - although not to a fault. I do, however, like to press a flower from any bouquet I might receive or put aside a keepsake from important occasions. Heck, I have recently started the "tradition" of buying a Christmas ornament from each new place I travel to so I can have a bit of a travelogue on my tree every year. (The goal being to eventually have a tree of only these ornaments because I will have traveled so many places!)

Being the sentimental sort, the date of my former wedding anniversary has been bittersweet for me. It is on a holiday, so its difficult to forget. Last year, for the first one as a single person again, I took the day off from work and spent it with friends. It was good. I reclaimed it a bit. This year, I decided that I was going to be adventurous and go to a party with a fetish theme all on my own. A bit of declaration of being my own personage and a bit of staring the bittersweet in the face and saying "NYAH!" Still though, I don't think I'll ever be able to completely disassociate the date with my first wedding. (Isn't that optimistic of me? FIRST wedding! Hee!)

I imagined that my Ex would be doing similar things. The holiday was his favorite and he was the one who requested it be our wedding date. I am positive it is a bittersweet time of year for him too.

You can imagine, then, the shock this sentimental girl felt when the Ex called and announced that he and his gf would be getting married....on the same holiday.

I guess his method of saying "Nyah!" is a bit more.....loud....than mine.




"Sentimentality-- That's what we call the sentiment we don't share."
-Graham Greene


"I feel extremely lucky, extremely grateful, and a little bittersweet too"
-Wentworth Miller

Universal Whammo

There are days I am so very much amused at the things the Universe throws my way. Especially after I have made statements about my life and how I wish to live it, then WHAMMO something regarding that gets flung at me.

Example: I have come to a realization that I do not wish to live my life without my current relationships; far flung though some of them may be. This means that I wish to continue living as a polyamorous person and do all the work and communication that goes along with this. I waffled for a while, but truly, this makes me happy and so I do not wish to change this.

WHAMMO - I am called up by someone out of the blue who has questions about this very topic. The whole how/what/why/where/when of it all. In essence they say "Look, you are doing this and you seem to have a clue. What can you tell me? Advise me? Which direction can you point me?"

Often I feel totally under prepared to answer things like this - who am I to speak on this subject (and trust me, its more than just poly that gets flung at me)? But, speak I do. Mostly, I lead with my heart and what I'm hearing in the other person's voice or reading in their face/body. Many times, people don't want the nitty gritty, they just really want to know that they are going to be okay. Many times they want advice but I try very hard to lead them to what they already know. Many times I miss the mark and get preachy and advice-giving. Mostly, I try to just listen.

All of this falls under the category of "Priestessing" for me. My spiritual path is a pagan one, and a very eclectic pagan one at that. What I have felt drawn towards in the last year is the idea of not being some kind of leader but being a person who can facilitate and perhaps light a path for others - you know...listening to and maybe giving advice to people who ask....

I feel inadequate at times for the things that are placed in my path, for these opportunities to priestess, but when the same things are placed there again and again in a positive manner, I kind of feel there's a reason I'm put in the situation. Maybe I do have something good to say on the topic or maybe I'm just really easy to talk to. Whatever the case, I guess I just want to say this to the Universe and those that have asked questions of me: Thanks for trusting me.




"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved"
-George MacDonald

Small Gifts

I continue to knit. To knit and knit and knit and KNIT.

You see, I have wanted to make something for everyone in my family for Christmas this year, so I have a veritable shit-ton (yes, that is a technical term) of things to finish in the increasingly SHORT time left before the holidays. Eeee!

Even among the panic though, I am comforted by the run of yarn through my fingers. The easy snick-snick the needles make when I'm purling or knitting a stitch. The softness of the finished product as it drops down onto my lap, growing ever longer and longer until I cast off and fold up the giftie into its wee box. :)

It's really not that much of a gift when you look at it. It's a small item. And you could actually buy one at a store without even thinking. This is the attitude I got from my Mom when I told her of my plan. To be exact she said "Oh, that's IT? You aren't getting them anything else?"

Um.

No.

We don't really NEED a darn thing in my family. We are all well off enough to have all the geegaws we could ever want. What I want to give my family this year is tiny bits of me - of my gratitude for them. I want them to remember that I sat and ran my hands over every inch of fiber that went into their item, that I picked it out just for them when I got the yarn, that I put love and warmth and joy and happy into every stitch for them.

Sometimes, this life makes it so easy to forget that love doesn't always come with a high price tag and an opulent presentation. Sometimes it comes in the form of a small box filled with wool that has been knotted in a precise fashion to form a small object that someone made just for you and you alone.



“Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection”

-Pindar