I’m coming back to writing as my foam star screaming bag. Even my best friend Laura did not have the patience for my videos, so it makes more sense for me to just make voice memos of my car ride yap sessions. I can mine them for essay ideas later on. There was some use in the practice of vulnerability – showing my face, and using my voice. But if I am talking to no one, I don’t need to invite the rare chance of a creeper spawning in the quiet darkness.
I was thinking I would let this blog be done, but it didn’t feel right. It seems tedious and wasteful to start from scratch, and also, I still feel stuck in this difficult and dark era of my life. I have shed so, so much. I try to hold open the void instead of collapsing in on myself, hoping my search for connection and meaning will bear fruit.
I went to a public park today named “Optimist’s Park”. The intent was similar to repeating dishonest affirmations at your own reflection, hoping it will shift you into that aspirational parallel dimension. I’ve been using pokemon go and pokemon sleep to motivate my healthy habits. The sleep one is particularly embarrassing. I have been unable to maintain a sane sleep schedule for 20 years, and as soon as I leveraged the neurotic gamer version of me, I’ve gotten to sleep in the same 2 hour time window for 8 days in a row. It made me recall when my father asked 8-year-old me, “you can memorize 150 pokimans, what’s so hard about the times tables?” Is pokemon the solution to every millenials’ problems? Did they do the same satanic ritual as Taylor Swift to inherit the monoculture? At this point, the version of me that’s on a week of 8 hour sleeps and daily walks is not complaining.
[Kayla is 7 now and starting to have white on the tips of her ears ToT]
Career wise, it’s a different story. I’m trying to give myself this holiday time to decompress and reset, but I feel the weight of almost a decade without formal employment bearing down on me. Any time I feel like I’ve made strides in my mental health, that ghost comes up to remind me, “How sane can you actually be? Who doesn’t at least have a job? You’re happier, more social? Woopty friggin do. Why don’t you stop being such a leech if you’re so ‘healed’”.
I look down at my bee tattoo. Is it really ok to just “bee”? To do this – help my dad and kayla, draw, write, do tarot, read…I feel like Rapunzel from Tangled, although I think many people would rightly say, “There is no tower, your mother is in a home. Just walk out the door. This is the real world, no one is coming to save you. Victimization is your choice.”
I guess that’s true. I need to slay the dragon of my own executive dysfunction, and make my own opportunities. Perhaps I should remind myself that if you are climbing out of a hole, you will be starting at zero when you get out. Your consolation prize is getting really buff from all that climbing, and having the ability and foresight to punch anyone or anything that wants to put you back in another hole.
Still, I wonder sometimes if it’s valid to feel stuck in an invisible prison, stuck stranded in a space ship, sending out a distress call to you-don’t-know-who. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to save you. Make your own luck. But…no one doubts Princess Leia was a strong woman – it was her moral courage that put her in an Imperial prison she needed help out of. (That’s a hubristic comparison, and only true in feeling and hope.) I want to respect my intuition but the critical voices are an oppressive dirge. It feels like something is coming, it feels like puzzle pieces will click into place. I just need enough power for the distress beacon and the engine to keep me going somewhere, anywhere but here. Some days we are spread pretty thin.
In my walk at Optimist’s Park I did see a bird that I swear, SWEAR, could only have been a Flame Robin (which is native to Australia) the particular color of red, and how it extended up its neck but not onto the head, his overall shape…and ultimately I can’t not believe it was a badass sounding bird with my name, from the country my best friend is from. I was listening to The Evolution of a Snake Podcast, and right as I saw the bird Madeline said “So on Chicago night one….” Obviously my ears perked up, but it was especially coincidental because just last night I posted the art I brought to danny to the subreddit – for his “first show in Rosemont” !!! My counselor has suggested I look into residencies out of state, because I looked so 180 refreshed after my trip (which, considering that was the day after driving three 11-14 hour days, I think says something.) At tarot my friend who hosts it said she was starting to look into astrocartograohy, which is supposed to show you what places in the world vibe with you based on your astrology. Perhaps I should investigate if I need to adjust my rocket’s heading towards the Midwest. 🤔🌽
>>robyns_ramblings 