enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Yeah. I can't even think of a title.

The truth of the matter is that I spent most of today building towards a sort of anger. The anger has gradually dissipated as I've been sitting here, but it's worth examining.

I was at work until nearly 7:30 p.m., before I gave up on a stupid problem that my boss had mentioned at 5:15. That didn't help.

And then I got home to find an envelope in the mail from my mother, with only a grade 10 history textbook!? and the instruction manual for my sewing machine in it. I haven't heard from my mother in two months, there was no note in the envelope, yadda yadda. It looks like she found these things in a pile and thought it a gesture of goodwill to send them to me, but really, who does things like this? I really do give up on her. I can't believe that she gave birth to me.

But enough about my mother. I *hate* talking about my mother. Probably because most of my interactions with her in my life have been all about talking about *her* problems. I suppose I should be grateful that these days I simply get barely-labeled envelopes.

No matter.

So I started feeling a general level of annoyance with people in the world. I'm thinking of people who walked by a guy on the street with a broken leg on Friday night. I'm talking about people who are petty enough to always need attention first before they pay attention back. (In that last one it sounds like I'm back to my mother again. If I think of one memory from my childhood of my mother, it was that you'd only get her to listen to you for a minute if you spoke really quickly and had done something for her first. It's surprising though how many people out there are like that.)

Yeah. Anger.

But then when I feel angry - angry that I'm in a career that I hate, that I feel lonely and yet can't move forward on that front - I realize that I've come a long way. When I was walking home, slowly, considering things, I realized that I'm now able to stop and centre myself in the knowledge that where I've arrived to is the place in life in which I'm no longer the youthful optimist. I'm a nearly middle-aged optimist, but for sure I no longer possess the feeling that I can change everything in my life and get everything that I want. No - these days I appreciate that I won't get everything. I'm even starting to believe it.

So I was thinking about who would be the person who would rank way above me in terms of how I'd view my life. That would be a person who is doing a career that they find really inspiring and fulfilling - maybe someone researching something that they find truly interesting - and who probably has a happy home with nice parents and a nice husband and possibly even a kid or two.

So someone who has all of those things I would wish I could be like. Thinking of a person like that could make me feel very disappointed in my life.

But the thing that I'm able to do now -and this is good - is reframe the thinking to appreciate that although that first life might be the one that I would most like to have and yet can't have, the life that I have is much better than the one that I could have, that any number of people whom I pass every day on the street have, and that I therefore need to take a deep breath.

So I stop worrying about all of those people out there who have what I perceive to be my version of perfect lives, and just feel glad that I'm healthy and educated and warm and paid every two weeks. That's good.

And let's be honest, anyhow: life is difficult for pretty much everyone. Even people for whom things seem perfectly rosy have their hidden anger, their hidden fears. Most people walking around have a battery of skills that they'll never develop, books they'll never experience, places they'll never see, hopes that are pretty much extinguished.

So just get on with it, I tell myself. Just get on with it.

Every now and then I have the miraculous surprise of stumbling upon a diary of someone happily married and a mother or a student or a career woman whose diary reveals that five years earlier she was completely fucked up!! It's true! :)

It's not that I enjoy other people being fucked up. It's just nice to know that people turn things around. They do it every day. The only thing that I don't enjoy is people pretending that they're not fucked up, that they're perfectly in control, when they're obviously not. The most suspicious man I've ever been on a date with is the one who told me that he'd "worked out all of his issues and was looking for someone equally 'finished'." Is it any surprised that said gentleman was the one who asked for the stubs to the symphony tickets I had paid for so that he could write them off as a business expense, and who ran out of GAS on the way home?

Uh huh. I think not.

I've been thinking a lot about control lately. People who try to control everything about their lives also make me very suspicious. This is probably partly why I am a bit suspicious of myself sometimes.

I've never been interested in drugs, for example. I just can't see myself doing drugs. I've had people doing drugs around me. I know lots of people who smoke pot quite regularly. And yet, I am unmoved. When I was younger I always wondered why I was so sturdily and stubbornly uncool. It must be a control thing. It's the same control thing that helped me to be a fanatical marathon runner in my day. I find I don't like to think of those days or talk about them much at the moment because I hate the idea that I felt I had to measure everything in my life (ten miles a.m., six miles p.m.). Even now, when I run as I did on the weekend, I know without even measuring that it's 5.8 miles, or 6.2 miles or whatever, and I hate that. Do you know that if you asked me to go out right now and run a kilometer in 3 minutes and 12 seconds I could go out and do that without measuring anything beforehand? I would just know from the cadence of my stride that I was doing it. I used to amaze C. by running with him on a measured loop. He'd be looking at his watch and then he'd glance at me as we'd pass a mile marker and I'd say "6:13." "How'd you do that!? Rain woman. Not pretty. The counselor last week very perceptively asked me if I check the stove or the lock on my door many times before I leave the house. I do, only not so many times as to make it a clinical problem. The lock I don't care about. The stove I usually check twice or three times, as I'm deathly afraid of fire. But you know, as I think of it, the fact that I can limit the number of checks is scary: I'm in control of the control. Hmm...

That measure of control certainly didn't make me feel happy. It always made me think of Prufrock measuring out his life with coffee spoons. I suppose I had to go through that running stage, so why beat myself up about that now? We always have to go through certain stages to get to new stages. But I was conscious then that I was wasting my life day by day in strides on a track. And I'm conscious now that I'm wasting my life in strokes on a keyboard and excel worksheets of nonsense. It's driving me NUTS! (The fact that I'm consciously disciplining myself to be something that I'm not, that is.)

But no matter. This WAS a meandering note. I find that these notes are often a bit of a curative, as I already feel better for having written this. The point of it was to recognize I suppose that I'm enjoying the process of becoming conscious of my thinking and then rerouting it, like a steam train sliding through the dark and then clicking off on a completely different track than the one on which course it had been. I'm glad that I still have that tiny belief that there is another track out there. I just wish that the details weren't so tricky to work out and the trees not so dark and thick.

Well, this is going nowhere.

The lemon loaf and cookies were a hit today, fortunately, though I almost killed msyelf on the ice bringing them to work today. Which reminds me...should remove the knife from my backpack... There were lots of other baked goods as well today and they pretty much all sold out and we made enough money to pay for Christmas baskests for four families.

I hate the idea of Christmas baskets, really, as I hate the idea of the shame that many families must feel in going to charity. I wish there were a way to silently slip money into people's bank accounts.

When I was a little girl I always wanted to be a fairy. I know that that sounds ridiculous, but how much I wished that I could figure out what people wanted and/or needed and then give it to them anonymously, while they were sleeping, without them having to parade their need publicly. I think it's because I'm such a private person myself, which makes it very weird that I'm writing this in a public diary, I realize. The biggest rift between my mother and I occurred when I realized that she would never stop reading my mail, going through my drawers, reading my diaries. I never wanted to share anything with her ever again. I hate it when a person's privacy, their dignity is violated. It makes me more angry than almost anything else.

SO what will I do with this tired mind and body. I suppose plunk myself in a chair with a drink. It will have to be tea. I don't even have any plonk in the house. I'm so in control of my life that I have only budgeted for one bottle of wine per month. I haven't yet bought December's bottle. ;)

Yeah, I know. Live a little!

9:36 p.m. - 2008-12-01

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