About that inside my head thing…

I read a lot of what others write and I voice small comments here and there; dispensing little crumbs and bits of opinion and rumination here and there, but I don’t give voice or life to the words of my own. I see lives being lived and expanding into new horizons and I feel mine becoming smaller, the borders of it closing in on me. I’m beginning to feel suffocated.

This is not what I imagined my life to be but I somehow feel helpless to do anything about it; I’ve been rendered immobile. Still I find myself unable to move from the sidelines and onto the playing field. Every new week I make small new resolutions to myself…Eat better, exercise more, get up earlier, leave the house but I am so busy getting in my own way stubbornly, like a reflex, I turn away or push back against the very thing I want to run toward. I’ve been working on how not to behave this way but instead of pushing through I feel as if I am receding further into a small prison of my own making. 

I’m not going to wax much anymore about this, for now. I’m putting it out there, for myself, to remind myself not to double back and backpedal but to slowly inch forward. Keep pushing. Put the words down, put it down there and dare to dream out loud.

What is 500 words

I remember having to write essays of this length. Those tedious report-like stream of words we churned out for the interpretation and acceptance of someone else. Someone whose world view might not match your own, probably skews far away from you. I want to try to write something every day, perhaps even babbling drivel like this just to get something down. As much as essays are subjective discourses, they are also injected with some opinion on the part of the writer. I does, afterall, have something to do with perspective.

 Is that proper form however? I’d have to look that up but I’d probably forget it. I have spent some painstaking hours trying to remember people and situations; fleeting flashes of an idea that I lose within a few footsteps. I used to dismiss these lapses and carry on, but now I wrestle with my grey matter in an effort to recall. This only affects what is happening here and now or within the very near future. I guess that’s the long way of saying short term memory. Stored in my memory banks I discover memories so vivid it is almost like experiencing it all over; the good and the bad. I went to an event and an infuriating man I knew arrived on the scene. He is still the same person, not bad, but definitely on his own planet orbiting his own sun. Later, when I got home I tried to remember the short relationship 

Ponderances

I got the urge to sit down and write and it’s just because. Nothing is going on. I feel good, for the moment. I just want to set some words down, however meaningless. Perhaps it is because of this Mindful app I downloaded. It asked me to choose 3 items from a list of goals or life changes that I wanted to accomplish and one that immediately leapt at me was commitment, which I have not been keeping. It’s not easy, I’m a chronically ill procrastinating dreamer who hasn’t been able to stay committed to a lot of resolutions and positive life changes I’ve tried to instill into my life. Maybe I am tired of the constant struggle. It’s all work. Sometimes I would just like things to happen if I do what I am meant to do, run smoothly, but they don’t.

I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about my future and what it holds.  I’ve done it often and it held different forms. I alternate between hopeful and catastrophic. I know what it won’t be the OK I used to envision. It has always been in the form of simplicity and humble which is fine by me because I am realistic about the provisions I have made for it and what I want out of life. Satisfaction imbued with a feeling of worthiness. A small home that is mine. I hope that it will be on wheels so I can go wherever I want. That is reaching I know, but it is certainly more likely than brick and mortar. Then, of course there are the medical considerations. I beginning to think my GP regards me as a hypochondriac. They seem to present as mysteries to neurologists, internists and some other “ists”.I’m beginning to think that these professionals may think I enjoy the rarity and mystery as if they make me special. I never wanted to be special like this!

I think about what I can do in this forum. I want to create a niche for myself, but my thoughts are scattered, everywhere and nowhere at once. I continue to ponder but first, the words. They are in the box. That’s a beginning.

begin again again again…

 

OK. Let’s try this for the thousandth billionth time. The last time I sat down to write a post I ended up doing some writing alright, but I merely acquired another post for the drafts folder. I looked at the number of posts I had and was shocked to find I didn’t have 35 but 106!  What to do with this confluence of writing? Should I just delete it all since it seems I have no intention of posting them? It would seem they won’t live up to their intended purpose and that they’ll merely languish in the drafts folder, tormenting me when I do stop in to write something.

I’ve been doing some mulling about the sort of blog I want to continue writing. I don’t want a blog that merely chronicles my experiences or serves as a forum for my occasional rant. The way I understand it, one should have a niche. I suppose you could say there is nothing more niche a subject than oneself, but in someway this just doesn’t satisfy. I’m stricken with an extreme case of “Seinfeldism” and I’m not sure how to shake it off. Questions abound. Is it necessary? To whom am I speaking anyway? I look at my life, of late, judging it through a critical lens and finding myself feel insubstantial somehow. (I’m working on this). As a commentator of sorts I do wonder about the value of this. Is it helping me or encouraging this perpetual navel gazing?

Here’s a thought: let’s worry about that less and just get ‘er done. There. Success. Tomorrow is another day, I’ll deal with this ongoing writing dilemma then.

this thing

drip drop

I haven’t found the voice that will allow me to craft a story in a way that I would feel compelling. Maybe it’s not really in my wheelhouse. Right now I scribble down this and that from the place that I know best. It’s not that I’m not interested in the world around me, on the contrary. I want to know everything, but what I’ve discovered about myself is that I’m not wired that way. I’m a generalist. I am knowledgeable around many subjects and continually seek to know more about any variety of topics that cross my path and pique my interest; constantly curious. You could view my assertion as a self serving excuse or something more but I am an intensely private person and engaging in this bloodletting is uncomfortable, as much as it is cathartic for me to set it down.  I apologize for this if you don’t really give a crap, but just pass it by if that is the case because I don’t give a crap either. This is my process, and yes this is a public forum, but I’m working on something here.

Getting on with it

This morning I decided to go clear out my yahoo mailbox. Since i don’t use it at all I tend to find a lot of mail piled up in there, most of it duplicated in my primary mailboxes. What I do find are notifications about visits to my blogs (I have two of them), which gives me a pang of guilt because I don’t really post that much anymore though I often resolve to be a more faithful contributor to them. Really, the only reason I keep that mailbox at all is because of my flickr account. The big beast Yahoo swallowed up flickr and insists on members using their login. So there you have it.

I often think that I should merge them and that would make it a little easier for me to maintain them, but that just seems like a cop out.  You see, I want to write more and take more photos worthy of space in those blogs, but I just….don’t. My photoblog has the nifty title of a photo most everyday, which has become a complete misnomer because of my recent sloth. I do have a partial excuse, sometimes I just can’t because I am down for the count. Dizziness, nausea or the inability to see actually the screen very well completely preclude me from being able to sit in front of my computer. I thought having an ipad and not having to sit on an uncomfortable (but beautiful vintage) chair would help, but then my excuse is that I don’t like having to tap out my spinning thoughts two or three fingers at a time. Truth is, when my body allows and the inertia lifts I run around like a maniac, making busy doing other things.

There’s a pang between my shoulder blades right now. When I first opened up this window (because RaynaLele liked a picture on the other blog) I was attempting to sit on a ball to write, but then I discovered what I already knew, that the ball was too low for me too do that. I should have gotten the largest size but then it would have been too big for its intended purpose, which, well, completely defeats the purpose.

So thank you to those people who remind me of these pastimes that are important to me however much I neglect them. I am both inspired and prodded by your praise.

i wonder wonder wonder

 

 

i’ve got, count ’em, 10 drafts sitting and gathering dust, haunting me. i see them every time i launch my dashboard. 10 posts i stopped writing for whatever reason. 10 posts i didn’t have the guts to post. 10 posts where i just ran out of words or just didn’t have the heart to finish and post out in the world at large. some are very personal, but i’ve tread into sensitive territory before, letting my ass hang out there without proclivity. for some reason with a couple of these posts i simply just didn’t. now, after some time has passed i feel like i can’t, even though they aren’t time sensitive. and now what to do? do i put my nose to it, finish them and put them up or give up on them entirely and delete them?

the last of those posts i started today and i think i just won’t get to the end of that one either, but i am not inclined to do anything about it just yet. i’ll make up excuses. i’ll say to myself that it’s silly or pointless, that my to-do list tells me i’ve got a million other things to do, that my shoulder is beginning to ache (which is absolutely true) and i need to get off of this chair for a spell, or i’ll just not do anything about it until a morning like today where i will open it read it and ponder it some more.  the great canadian novel isn’t going to get written this way, but then how would i beat myself up for being such a procrastinator or gutless wonder?

i suppose i should i feel accomplished that i did write this contribution and post it, a whining, driveling addition. it’s something, even if it’s not very much. i did, however, take this picture recently. this counts as something, right? it’s completely unrelated and irrelevant insofar as this post is concerned, but it’s kinda pretty.

creating habit

this morning i was up before light, which isn’t saying much because my apartment is made artificially dark by black out drapes, but when I rolled over, my cat greeted me with a gentle meow, her sleepy morning voice, and I decided to rouse myself and see what the day might potentially hold. i peeked my head through the curtains and found that it really was light out.

fingers of early morning sun, suffused a smattering of morning cloud, were beginning to stream through the buildings beyond my neighbourhood, and my computer glowed, awake from its scheduled sleep, so i drew back the curtains and stumbled to my coffee maker. i’m up almost as early as i am to go to a job that i dislike. but enough about that.

over an hour later i am still at my computer. i’ve been reading saved posts on pocket and my email, fussing at flickr; tending to twitter and facebook and and even this could use some tweaking. oh, and don’t forget instagram. i have just logged into tumblr, though for the life of me i don’t know why. sometimes i feel weak at the thought of keeping it all current, crushed under the weight of it. i’m not in pursuit of any particular goal nor do i have an enterprise that i need to promote, so i’m not sure why i chase after all of this, only that i do. the impetus for this blog is the discovery in my gmail inbox that a bunch of people follow me. they are all strangers to me, but for the most part, they are all compelling and interesting, so here i am, blathering on about nothing in particular. what truly caused me to launch this window open was one of the pages i landed on to do with habit and I suppose that was good enough reason as any.

i’ve been searching for away to create habit (good ones, that is) in the pursuits that truly give me pleasure and that i can get lost in for the longest time. i see friends of mine excelling and expanding on the skills they have through habit, perseverance and dedication, a few things i seem to lack and it gives me pause about how i am leading my life. i could spin it and say i am inspired, which i truly am, so i’ve signed up to get reminded and prodded until i do.

Even though the day has clouded over, I’ll be taking to the streets for a walk. Besides, someone somewhere above my head has started vacuuming and it’s not even 9am.

Gathering dust

I noticed when I finally ventured back onto my blog i got caught up in relearning how to navigate it, instead of diving in and out after posting a picture, which was my intention. I saw that I had 4 ancient drafts just sitting there. I didn’t read them to see if they were compelling to me months later, I  just noticed that they exist. I’ve also got at the least the same amount of illegible scribblings in a notebook I carry with me and a couple letters sitting on my mac’s desktop. There’s also the flashes I carry in my head that fire off at all hours of the day. I used to beat myself up for not writing, which I claim to hold as a passion of mine. Clearly a passion of mine I ignore.

I see now that it’s not that I don’t write, it’s just that I suffer from a paralyzing procrastination. I am like a dragster, taking off from the starting line, but the problem is I don’t get to the finish line. I ruminate and contemplate the words to an inch of their existence and then I just……stop. As if the impetus for the writing has passed and I am simply out of writing gas. One day I’ll gather up all these words and see what they amount to, but for the moment I just let them collect where I leave them and gather dust while I decide what to do anything with them if anything.

diving in

i choose a word from a list that has two meanings and write until i get to the bottom of the page. it doesn’t have to make sense says the book if i get stuck repeat what i have written….for the purposes of this exercise i’ll go until i’ve hit a couple chunky paragraphs. if i was writing by hand i would probably hit the bottom of page in that amount of time easily. those are my rules. from this strange and odd list i choose desert. it struck me first so that’s what i choose. here goes:

desert from the heart away from everything that i know stranded and i stand there anyway unable to move or say anything. i turn and view the world around me taste the sand in my mouth, feel it on my skin and wonder about the people who have stood before me in this same predicament with thought similar to mine. or were they similar? did they fret and worry about how to get home? did they care at all about the lack of food water and people in this place they found themselves or did they just enjoy the sensation of it all like i was?

i could only wonder as i stood there with the heat of the sun on my face abandoned and deserted angry and sad all at once but it had been my doing to begin with and so i filled with a joy that transcended me beyond the heat the grit the discomfort and everything that bound me to the earth as i knew it. i felt free. as if i were the only person left on earth and i could move forward with a world of my own making on my own terms in my own world in my desert and oasis an orinoco flow. happiness. a new beginning. it was an eden not a sunbaked, desolate place. filled with joy and wonder i ran and ran until i couldn’t catch my breath and sun filled my nostrils. i was alone at last, something i had never wanted had feared and reviled had railed against in my youth. that abandonment that desertion and now i embraced it and ran forward into my future.

it was a future i couldn’t see and for the first time i was filled with elation and not worry as i always had before in the desert of the heart and mind and desert it was for me and all that i could be forever. does ths sound like a romance novel or something i dont care i was never the heroine with her bodice ripped on the cover and i was ok with that afterall now i have my desert and it is my own for me and only me i didn’t have to play to the hand and the supposed power of someone who would swoop in and save me from a predicament that was probably of his making i could just be as fast or as slow as i wish without a care in the world or at least for the time being until the obvious situations came into play. where would i get water or food for surely at some point in the future soon i would find myself needing both and a place to lay my head and i know from stories i’ve read and things i’ve watched on tv that it gets cold at night and all i had was the thin clothes i had when i found myself here and shelter what would i do for that after all i was all alone and what i had to get i had to do it on my own without the aid of anyone else. i was in the desert in the middle of nowhere in the desert deserted left to my own devices. and now i had to consider the possibilities of the realities but i let them go anyway i refused to return to that just yet i was in my desert alone and left to my own to be my own and that was ok i could live with that for now for now in the desert.

ok. that’s the end of my page. a few paragraphs disappearing out of view.  how do i score this against tomorrow? leave that until tomorrow comes….i reread the blurb and the one thing i did and it’s a bad habit of mine is that i hold my breath, sometimes for a incredibly long time. i don’t feel the strain of it, i simply note it and take a breath when i do notice. i think it goes back to my swimming days when we would play games of who could hold their breath the longest. i almost never won, but i still do it, as if breathing is a voluntary action and i can control whether i take my next breath or not. that definitely does go back to my childhood days when i yearned to exit planet earth. a strange fallacy of thought but it does occur to me anyway.

 

p.s. nice pic huh? took it with my phone, not the best quality. perhaps i will aim for something a little more photogenic to go with the blog. i want to add an image that is as spontaneous as the writing is meant to be during this exercise.