I have observed before how quickly I can go from zero to sniffly. To wit, this morning Spangles and I got coffee and a croissant and strolled down to Clark Park, which on Saturday mornings is a quintessential West Philly scene and one of the main reasons I'm planning to move there. Every Saturday there's a big farmer's market, people, children, picnic blankets, dogs, and when the sun is out and the people are spring feverish there's not a more festive place on the planet. Today there was a large choir of Mennonites in the square, singing some gorgeous hymns - practicing, perhaps, for Palm Sunday tomorrow.
I looked forward to the time when Spangles and I will live close by together, able to roll out of bed and ramble down there as frequently as we like. If we get the apartment we applied for, we will live but two blocks away.
As I chewed a big buttery mouthful of croissant, I was overwhelmed with one of those "isn't life grand" feelings, and looked up at Spangles, and up at the trees, goofy with pleasure.
Less than an hour later, as I headed back to my apartment while Spangles headed off on a bike ride with his dad, the morning's glow had evaporated. I felt kind of anxious and off, some rocks in the stomach, un-pin-point-able dread. Was it just self-flagellation about my messy, gloomy apartment and the plants I've been neglecting? Have I been spending so much time in the company of Spangles that, pathetically, I can no longer enjoy the company of just myself?
When I got in, I found that MamaBear had sent me an article she thought I would like. It's a woman describing her struggle with losing her job and deciding to move and trying to slow down to appreciate the little things - except much more eloquent. And as MamaBear rightly assumed, there's nothing I love more than a good story about a sleepless, heart-wrenched woman whose pain slowly gives way to hope and gratitude, and I read it greedily.
One part in particular struck a gong, as she was describing her decision to move, and I found that I had burst into tears. But at the same time, the clouds suddenly parted, and I had the realization "Oh, you're sad about moving away!"
Not sad about leaving the tiny galley kitchen or or the lady who yells her conversations in the laundromat below at 8am on Saturday mornings, or about the awkard backwards-hung front doors or the occasional rodent roommate or the dropped ceiling that collapsed on us last summer. And most definitely not sad about moving to an apartment (I hope I hope) with hardwood floors and a little grassy patch outside and an actual dishwasher that is an actual machine and not Spangles in rubber gloves.
But it will be the end of an era. This is and will be "my first apartment." This is where I grew from a bewildered, wide-eyed recent college graduate into a bewildered but increasingly cynical cosmopolitan city girl. This is where I had friends over, sometimes, where my sisters slept over on the couch, but more often where I was alone. This is where I first encountered that "real world" they so often talked about, with its electric bills and errands to run and groceries to buy.
This is where I learned all of my most painful lessons of adulthood - where I learned about loneliness, unemployment, increases in insurance premiums. This is where I first felt the strange floatiness when friends announced they were engaged and I realized that we were now at that age where we do that kind of thing. This is where I learned that people you know can die in tragic, unfair ways. This is where I learned that there can be times when bad news just keeps washing in from all sides and it feels like the only option is to crawl into a bomb shelter with some canned goods and wait for Armageddon. This is where I sat curled in pain before I knew the name for what I had. And this is where I cried about it, logging long hours of tears.
There were good times, too. Bottles of wine and rambling conversations, nights we climbed out the window on the the roof, hours I spent talking on the the phone with The Twin, gabbing and wandering in circles through the apartment. The time Steph and I melted a patch of carpet while conducting an ad-hoc ceremony to release negative vibes and boys who didn't love us. I remember painting the walls with T-bone when I first moved in, the care he took in teaching me how to do it right, like passing down a family tradition, the way he bought me all the paint but didn't say a word, even about the bright tangerine orange color. I remember the first time Spangles came over, for spaghetti, when we were both kinda realizing that we both kinda liked each other.
This is the apartment that got me where I am today. Who was it that said, praise the bridge that carried you over?
And even though I'm ready for greener pastures, preferably pastures to which I have exclusive access through a back door, I'm realizing that old truth about how beginnings and ends are hopelessly intertwined. I'm realizing that I do keep getting older, and even though I'm still young, I'm not that young, I'm not the child that I once was. I can rent a car without the extra fee, I can apply for an apartment without a co-signer, I can roast a chicken and serve it to guests. I'm remembering that this, right here, is my life, in which I'm in the process of writing the story of my twenties. The stories which, when my elders told me theirs, seemed so set in stone, so final, as if they had simply been the decree of the Fates from the very beginning, not an uncertain present with an uncertain outcome.
It's just the passage of time, the most dependable thing on the block, and yet it's always finding new ways to sneak up on you. Surprise!!! You are older. Surprise!!! You are moving in. Surprise!!! You are moving out.
What can you do but shake your head, after the shock wears off, and say "You again. You get me every time." And try to smile, and try to be grateful that you will be allowed to move again, move anywhere at all.
Here is my send-off, from Dominique Brown's article:
I settle into my new home; its healing balm has been there all along, nestled in a sofa that beckons me to pick up a book, hovering outside the window inviting me to take a walk. I find room in my life again for love of the world, let the quiet of solitary moments steal over me, give myself over to joy. What a surprise! That I can cook a meal for my children, or take a long walk on the beach, or watch an osprey wheel through the sky, or set down a page of thoughts — these are moments of grace. Old Testament loving-kindness, the stuff of everyday life.
One adventure is over; it is time for another. I have a different kind of work to do now.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Examined Life
MamaBear said she never thinks about whether or not she's happy - so she guesses this must mean she is. This was food for thought for me, who thinks about that kind of thing all the time. I can't help myself.
Now, this isn't to say that MamaBear isn't a reliable source of great wisdom, because some of my most fundamentally comforting beliefs come straight from her - mainly, the conviction that eventually things work out and that if there's something you want to do you can find a way to make it work.
But still, I found myself wondering, what accounts for this difference in the way we think about the world? Why do I spend so much time pondering, and Mamabear comparatively little?
For one thing, Mamabear has had many decades to find her groove. She has a lifelong partner to whom she's been married for more years than she hasn't been married to him, several lifelong friendships, was and is a peerless Mommy, has a meaningful career about which she is passionate. And she is also a force of nature. I don't know how much contemplation the winds need to do, because they just are.
Still, for whatever reason, this gust of prairie wind spawned a sensitive, emotional little creature who wept over Little Women at age 10 and still does at 25. Just this morning I got tearful reading an article in the Kenmare News about how the Berthold Bombers high school basketball team got warm-up suits that said "4 Hope," to show support for one of their teammate's mom, whose name is Hope and is undergoing cancer treatment but never misses a game.
But sensitivity is a strength, too (after all the more sensitive an instrument is, the more it costs). I am good at understanding people's motivations and feelings and I am empathetic (sometimes painfully so.) I have accepted the fact that I am someone with a lot Feelings. My waters are often choppy, my mental space unpredictable and requiring a good deal of verbiage to get me to where I feel peaceful and like I know which end is up.
It's true, that at times when I have done a lot of temperature-taking regarding my mood, it's generally been because my mood has been unsatisfactory. Generally, I think it's good to hope that you would be so caught up in living your life that you don't have much time to think about it.
But I think what I mean when I say happiness - or happyishness - is a shortcut for something bigger. It's not necessarily that I am looking to walk around at all times like a big yellow happy face at a parade.
His Holiness Martin Seligman writes that it is perhaps more useful to think about happiness, which is so unspecific and can mean so many different things to so many different people, in terms of "the good life."
And I think pursuing a good life is what I mean by pursuing happiness. A life with good stuff in it, stuff I care about and find important. And figuring out what those things are. Things like helping and being there for people, reading, writing, walking in the woods, eating great food around a big table. Laughing, music, re-discovering forsythia every spring. Having time to rest and think and nap.
For me happiness isn't so much about the way I'm feeling (although, obviously feeling crappy is not helpful), it's about the way I'm living. It's about trying to get my life to be in line with my values.
MamaBear is someone whose values are clear. You can see what they are by looking at her life: hard work, family, participating in democracy, being informed about world events, practicality, efficiency, advocating for what's right even when it's not what people want to hear. I think if she had one of those "your days are numbered" type encounters that you hear about, there's not all that much she would do differently. Overall, it seems that she's doing what she wants to be doing. One thing I love about Mamabear (in addition to her unparalleled cuddliness) is that her money is where her mouth is.
And here in early adulthood, I am in the process of a) figuring out where my mouth is and b) attempting to put my money there. Which is kind of what keeping this blog is about.
So although MamaBear would probably never write paragraphs upon paragraphs dissecting the meaning of happiness, the fact that I do do that makes me more like her, not less. By putting all my Deep Thoughts into words, I am trying to clarify for myself what's important to me, so that I can live a life in which that stuff comes first. It's so that I can live a life that I believe in - just like she does.
Now, this isn't to say that MamaBear isn't a reliable source of great wisdom, because some of my most fundamentally comforting beliefs come straight from her - mainly, the conviction that eventually things work out and that if there's something you want to do you can find a way to make it work.
But still, I found myself wondering, what accounts for this difference in the way we think about the world? Why do I spend so much time pondering, and Mamabear comparatively little?
For one thing, Mamabear has had many decades to find her groove. She has a lifelong partner to whom she's been married for more years than she hasn't been married to him, several lifelong friendships, was and is a peerless Mommy, has a meaningful career about which she is passionate. And she is also a force of nature. I don't know how much contemplation the winds need to do, because they just are.
Still, for whatever reason, this gust of prairie wind spawned a sensitive, emotional little creature who wept over Little Women at age 10 and still does at 25. Just this morning I got tearful reading an article in the Kenmare News about how the Berthold Bombers high school basketball team got warm-up suits that said "4 Hope," to show support for one of their teammate's mom, whose name is Hope and is undergoing cancer treatment but never misses a game.
But sensitivity is a strength, too (after all the more sensitive an instrument is, the more it costs). I am good at understanding people's motivations and feelings and I am empathetic (sometimes painfully so.) I have accepted the fact that I am someone with a lot Feelings. My waters are often choppy, my mental space unpredictable and requiring a good deal of verbiage to get me to where I feel peaceful and like I know which end is up.
It's true, that at times when I have done a lot of temperature-taking regarding my mood, it's generally been because my mood has been unsatisfactory. Generally, I think it's good to hope that you would be so caught up in living your life that you don't have much time to think about it.
But I think what I mean when I say happiness - or happyishness - is a shortcut for something bigger. It's not necessarily that I am looking to walk around at all times like a big yellow happy face at a parade.
His Holiness Martin Seligman writes that it is perhaps more useful to think about happiness, which is so unspecific and can mean so many different things to so many different people, in terms of "the good life."
And I think pursuing a good life is what I mean by pursuing happiness. A life with good stuff in it, stuff I care about and find important. And figuring out what those things are. Things like helping and being there for people, reading, writing, walking in the woods, eating great food around a big table. Laughing, music, re-discovering forsythia every spring. Having time to rest and think and nap.
For me happiness isn't so much about the way I'm feeling (although, obviously feeling crappy is not helpful), it's about the way I'm living. It's about trying to get my life to be in line with my values.
MamaBear is someone whose values are clear. You can see what they are by looking at her life: hard work, family, participating in democracy, being informed about world events, practicality, efficiency, advocating for what's right even when it's not what people want to hear. I think if she had one of those "your days are numbered" type encounters that you hear about, there's not all that much she would do differently. Overall, it seems that she's doing what she wants to be doing. One thing I love about Mamabear (in addition to her unparalleled cuddliness) is that her money is where her mouth is.
And here in early adulthood, I am in the process of a) figuring out where my mouth is and b) attempting to put my money there. Which is kind of what keeping this blog is about.
So although MamaBear would probably never write paragraphs upon paragraphs dissecting the meaning of happiness, the fact that I do do that makes me more like her, not less. By putting all my Deep Thoughts into words, I am trying to clarify for myself what's important to me, so that I can live a life in which that stuff comes first. It's so that I can live a life that I believe in - just like she does.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Treatise on Happyish
Here is an eloquent summing up of the nature of happyish by a brilliant teacher and soul with whom I also happen to share genetic material:
And the other thing that helps me keep my chin up at times like this is the concept of "happy-ish," coined by a very brilliant soul-searcher/philosopher I know.(Ed. note: Aw shucks.) The idea is that, okay, maybe there's a pothole or a rough patch, maybe sometimes you're sucking in exhaust on the Jersey Turnpike of life... but overall, all things considered is the trend of your life looking good? Do you like where you are and where you are going? Are you headed vaguely in the right direction? Are there little things each day that make you smile, and bigger things to look forward to on the horizon? Maybe today you feel irked or unhappy, but in general, in life, are you happyish?
And here is another inspirational excerpt from her oeuvre:
Maybe it ain't so pretty at times, but a certain level of craziness is also part of my me-ness. It makes me think of of the hilarious, whimsical series Walter the Farting Dog. Walter's greatest weakness - his potent farts - also turn out to be his greatest strength. Somehow, in bizarre and unorthodox ways, his farts always end up saving the day.
So I guess I'm kind of like Walter the Farting Dog. I might be inconsistent and distractable and punctually-challenged... but I'm also spontaneous and adaptable and creative and can think on my feet. I don't know that I could be some of those things without being the others.
Let us all think warm thoughts toward Ms. D, who is working hard to help the youths of today embrace the promise of tomorrow, using only some masking tape, a Smartboard, and her potent farts.
And the other thing that helps me keep my chin up at times like this is the concept of "happy-ish," coined by a very brilliant soul-searcher/philosopher I know.(Ed. note: Aw shucks.) The idea is that, okay, maybe there's a pothole or a rough patch, maybe sometimes you're sucking in exhaust on the Jersey Turnpike of life... but overall, all things considered is the trend of your life looking good? Do you like where you are and where you are going? Are you headed vaguely in the right direction? Are there little things each day that make you smile, and bigger things to look forward to on the horizon? Maybe today you feel irked or unhappy, but in general, in life, are you happyish?
And here is another inspirational excerpt from her oeuvre:
Maybe it ain't so pretty at times, but a certain level of craziness is also part of my me-ness. It makes me think of of the hilarious, whimsical series Walter the Farting Dog. Walter's greatest weakness - his potent farts - also turn out to be his greatest strength. Somehow, in bizarre and unorthodox ways, his farts always end up saving the day.
So I guess I'm kind of like Walter the Farting Dog. I might be inconsistent and distractable and punctually-challenged... but I'm also spontaneous and adaptable and creative and can think on my feet. I don't know that I could be some of those things without being the others.
Let us all think warm thoughts toward Ms. D, who is working hard to help the youths of today embrace the promise of tomorrow, using only some masking tape, a Smartboard, and her potent farts.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Recipe for Happiness: Harbor Style
1.Make plans to go visit a beloved friend.
2. Drive down in warm spring sunlight with the windows open and the music loud.
3.Once you arrive, flap your jaws for hours the way you only can with someone with whom you go way back.
4. Go out for sushi, drink some wine, continue to flap jaws.
5. Go back, keep flapping. Drink some more wine. Start listening to songs you love until it devolves into karaoke using spice bottles as microphones. Before you fall asleep, have her tell you a silly bedtime story.
Serve warm. Enjoy.
2. Drive down in warm spring sunlight with the windows open and the music loud.
3.Once you arrive, flap your jaws for hours the way you only can with someone with whom you go way back.
4. Go out for sushi, drink some wine, continue to flap jaws.
5. Go back, keep flapping. Drink some more wine. Start listening to songs you love until it devolves into karaoke using spice bottles as microphones. Before you fall asleep, have her tell you a silly bedtime story.
Serve warm. Enjoy.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Perspective
Yesterday I experienced the the benefit of aiming for happyish. As alluded to, I had a deadline and I was in that horrible college mid-terms 50% done and I've been working for days phase, greasy hair, empty pretzel bags strewn about, desperation in my eyes. Nevertheless, Spangles was in the neighborhood so I was taking a break to meet him for a cup of tea.
As I drove to meet him, I was full of panic and self-loathing about my project, my deadlines, my ignorance, my inability to just buckle down and work ceaselessly for eleven hours straight - I mean what's wrong with me? I had put on Whitney Houston's "I Didn't Know My Own Strength", so you know things were dire.
But are you happy-ISH?, I asked myself. I found my response to be, "Well...sure."
I mean on the other side of things, it's a gorgeous day, finally spring, I'm going to see my steady, I got paid, and I'll probably survive this project. Beyond today, life is pretty broad and unencumbered and free... so, sure, if I don't have to be weeping tears of joy like I just won an academy award, I mean if you take the long view...sure, I'm happyish.
Et voila. The miracle of lowered expectations.
As I drove to meet him, I was full of panic and self-loathing about my project, my deadlines, my ignorance, my inability to just buckle down and work ceaselessly for eleven hours straight - I mean what's wrong with me? I had put on Whitney Houston's "I Didn't Know My Own Strength", so you know things were dire.
But are you happy-ISH?, I asked myself. I found my response to be, "Well...sure."
I mean on the other side of things, it's a gorgeous day, finally spring, I'm going to see my steady, I got paid, and I'll probably survive this project. Beyond today, life is pretty broad and unencumbered and free... so, sure, if I don't have to be weeping tears of joy like I just won an academy award, I mean if you take the long view...sure, I'm happyish.
Et voila. The miracle of lowered expectations.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Secret of My Success: 30% Perspiration, 70% Procrastination
Well, I am on two tight deadlines that are kinda of own making today, so naturally it was a great time to surf blogs and make exorbitantly lengthy comments on blogs I'd never heard of until an hour ago. Still, rather than letting all that hot air go to waste, I thought I would reprint my comments here. This was in response to a question from this guy's reader, who had a job that was not-so-slowly destroying his soul and wanted advice. Now this is a topic I know a thing or two about. Below, my response.
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Sacrament of Sunlight
I almost don't want to mention it, for fear of jinxing anything but... I think spring approacheth!
The sweet, sweet, sun is shining; green shoots are poking up out of the dirt; the flower shop is selling tulips and daffodils; there are actual BUDS on actual TREES!; and the surest harbinger, pre-schoolers are out in their lines on the sidewalks, holding hands, being ushered around by grown-ups.
The first arrival of spring always makes me feel Scarlett O'Hara, dragging myself over muddy ground in a torn dress, all "God as my witness, I'll never be shriveled and pasty again!!!"
At least until next winter.
The sweet, sweet, sun is shining; green shoots are poking up out of the dirt; the flower shop is selling tulips and daffodils; there are actual BUDS on actual TREES!; and the surest harbinger, pre-schoolers are out in their lines on the sidewalks, holding hands, being ushered around by grown-ups.
The first arrival of spring always makes me feel Scarlett O'Hara, dragging myself over muddy ground in a torn dress, all "God as my witness, I'll never be shriveled and pasty again!!!"
At least until next winter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)