Buzzing
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I should be sleeping, but I couldn't stop buzzing long enough to really even close my eyes, so I'm out of bed again. I talked to Mike for the first time in more than a decade tonight and I'm feeling jazzed-yet-peaceful all at the same time. It feels like some little piece of the world shifted back into its rightful place, and I am a happy girl. It was a bizarre conversation--fourteen years apart has certainly changed our topics of conversation (jobs, spouses, houses, kids) and our vocabularies--but it felt relaxed and like we were connecting well. He's centered and mature and easy to talk to. Afterward, of course, there is that little voice in my head that wonders if he thought I was a total loser but was too nice to let on, to which I hear Scott answering that that's just my low self-esteem talking and Tad saying that I am one of his favorite people in the world, and I realize that I have a ton of questions about what Mike thinks and believes and builds his world on that we never even got to. Next time....

I was thinking earlier today about the strange place I'm in in my life. On some level, I feel like I'm returning to an earlier time and trying to recapture who I was or who I was on the way to becoming (yes, I know, I'm repeating myself here). This feels like an unburying. Like I'm physically unburying my body from the layers of fat I piled on it in order to hide my true self, and like I'm emotionally excavating to try to unearth the things that are truly "me" and not just things I took on (that other people told me were mine or that I wanted to be mine) that aren't organic to my life at all.

On another level, I feel like maybe I'm not going backward but just beginning to emerge from some kind of cocoon that I've been in for years. I think my therapist would prefer this way of looking at it because she was trying to encourage me to see my life as a continual process and not as the series of starts and stops I first presented it to her as.

But what I think it might really be is a punctuation period in my life's equilibrium, a sudden transformative burst of evolution disrupting a long period of little change. I'm not in control of it and I have only a slight sense of where it's going. All I know is that it is necessary and good and inescapable, so I just have to ride out the wave and see where I end up. So I'm a butterfly-mutant-surfer.... I really have to talk to Tad soon!

I'm working on an overarching intention to help me live my life according to priorities rather than goals or to-do lists. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Every choice I make today will support my ability to live my fullest life." I need to check on my verb there to make sure it's in the correct tense for an intention (an affirmation says something already is, an intention I think then says something will be?) and something still feels funky about "my ability to".... It's not ability I'm talking about here. I have tons of that! That's potential energy, and I want to be talking about kinetic energy. So maybe "Every choice I make today will enable me to stay awake, connected, and true." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Buzzed out...off to sleep for real this time.

Grateful, happy, hopeful!

Notes I've Been Too Busy to Post
Mood:  happy
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I feel like I've been gone from this space for ages!! I've been blogging non-stop in my head for days, but haven't been here to actually type up the posts. I don't know how many of the mental notes I'll get through now because I'm on my lunch break and I'm only going to spend 30 minutes here, but here goes:

Continuing on the feeling loved & circling back theme - I finally checked back in on the Classmates.com site on Saturday (you can't check there very often because it is all too easy to feel like the unpopular kid all over again) and was pleased and amazed to find a message from Mike! It had been sent the same day that James sent me his first email, and it sounded like he was truly glad to have found me again.

Mike and I haven't spoken since the day in June of 2001 when I told him I was taking the job at U. S. PIRG. He had called me a few weeks earlier, drunk I think, to tell me he'd received his first posting following his graduation from the academy, and to ask me if I would go with him. First of all, he was assigned to a ship in Hawaii - what girl doesn't drop everything to follow a cute guy to Hawaii (especially a cute guy who has given her butterflies in her stomach every time he's touched her since she was twelve years old)? Second, in his phone invitation he used the most amazing line and delivered it so sincerely, I am absolutely amazed even today that I didn't go with him. (No, I won't tell you what he said, just that it would make any girl's knees go weak. There has been a play bouncing around in my head ever since the night Marc broke up with me in Houston (now there's a good story), and when I finally write it, the line will be there. Don't worry, you won't miss it. Any sooner than that and some other writer will recognize the beauty of those eight little words arranged in exactly that order and steal the line away from me ;) ) Apparently I felt the call to save the world very strongly that summer! Anyway, our last meeting didn't go well and Mike felt that I, working for what was, in part, a government watchdog organization, was a threat to his chances of getting security clearances for his government job. Sound of door slamming shut. Immediate end to a friendship and flirtation that had started in seventh grade and survived ten years.

But, here he is now, married with kids, sorry for the way things ended, and wanting to know if we can get to know each other again all of these years later. Cool!!

I've been thinking more about who I still might need to reconnect with, and if I'm being honest, I need to reconnect with Ron from the Big Ride - maybe for legal reasons if I publish the manuscript since he plays such a large part, and definitely for my own peace of mind. The last time we talked he had called to ask if I was going to a writer's conference in Seattle and I had had to admit that I wasn't going because Hans and I were having our wedding that weekend in the San Juans. He was upset - because I hadn't told him sooner? because I couldn't invite him? because it broke me loose one more time from whatever box he'd try to put me in? -and ended the conversation quickly. When I tried to find him the following fall, he had changed jobs and moved and I have no idea where he's gone. He's got one of those names that a million other men have, and as far as I can tell, has not left a distinguishable Internet footprint yet. I asked Randy to let him know I wanted to get in touch, but I heard nothing back, which means either Randy forgot, Randy has lost track of him, too, or Ron doesn't want me to find him. In that last call he said he felt like the Big Ride hadn't happened because he didn't have me around to reminisce with. I'm feeling that, too, and would like to rebuild that bridge.

Also, on a less painful, more wistful note, I'm missing Owen. He met me in the middle of my post-Big Ride depression and, somehow, still managed to see through to me. He was definitely a fellow adventurer! We exchanged writing for awhile after I left the Beach Rangers and he worked very hard to convince me that I am an Artist and need to live in a way that respects that. I regret that I haven't read more of his work because he's got amazing stories about Africa and Alaska that I hope he's still writing down. Thankfully, we did not have one of those awful, conclusive ends to our friendship. He simply got married and started getting busy with children about the time I moved unexpectedly to North Carolina. We're friends-who-exchange-holiday-cards at this point, but I will need to call him and demand to be brought up to date on his life. Soon.

Okay. Long post. Still much more to say. Later....

Loved
Mood:  special
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I'm feeling particularly blissed out tonight. I received a very sweet email from James yesterday, to which I still owe a reply, followed by a phone conversation with Scott (which was really a continuation of a conversation we had started the night before) followed soon after by a phone call from Chad. The universe showered me with love and I'm still feeling the glow! Sudie had a party last Sunday in part to prove to herself that she has a large contingent of friends. I can't do that--at least not without several months of advance planning so travel arrangements can be made or without the aid of satellite video feeds from multiple locations--but, then, I've always been better in a more intimate setting and I really enjoy the little moments of connection I get with the people who really get me. I have to check in with Tad pretty soon, though. I promised him a handwritten letter, which I started when I was in Orlando but haven't gotten back to, and now it's just getting to the point where I need to call him and have an actual conversation.

One of the main themes in my conversations with both Scott and Chad was marriage. I have been wondering lately if anyone has done a survey research paper on what characteristics, aside from age of maturation of offspring, various species who pair-bond for life have in common. What determines whether a species is monogamous for life or for a season? I think I'm looking for an animal model on which to build some justification for marriage in humans in the 21st Century. (Chad thinks I'm looking for a scientific answer to an emotional question, and laughed openly at me when I suggested this information might be useful.) Some part of me has come to the conclusion that the only good reason to get and stay married is to have children. (And that doesn't seem to be in the cards for this marriage and my biological clock is ticking so damn loudly these days....) But, when I come to that conclusion, I hear Tad (probably fed in part by Richard Bach and Robert Heinlein and certainly Rilke) reminding me that love is the real work of this life and that marriage and the commitment you make to a single individual enable you to best do that work. This is followed fairly quickly by a whining voice from me saying, "yeah, but I do serial monogamy pretty well--can't I just go back to my schedule of three-year relationships and get most of the work done, anyway?" Perhaps unfortunately, Scott has also come to the conclusion that marriage is pretty much for people who want to have kids.

Then there's Chad who is moving very quickly toward engagement and marriage. He calls me for reassurance that he's doing the right thing, which I mostly think he is. He has been my closest friend for sixteen years now and we've helped each other over some major hurdles and been each other's number one cheerleader through good times and bad. I am so proud of how far he's come in every area of his life, and I really want him to be happy. But in the marriage area, I'm handicapped two ways: one, there is a selfish little part of me that wants him to be in love with me forever and never quite find a woman who matches up to the high standards I set (it appears, however, that he has found a woman who surpasses me in every way and who loves him completely), and two, it's difficult to encourage marriage when you're questioning the health and rationale of your own. I feel more like the best man the night before the wedding trying to talk the groom out of making the biggest mistake of his life than like the romantic, idealistic woman I have been most of my life. I don't like feeling this way. I have no indication how long the feeling will last, however, and am just trying to make peace with it. [And for anyone who might be worried that I am warning Chad away from his soul mate and the one true love of his life, I assure you that I am not warning Chad away at all. I have been honest about my own situation, which is what Chad expects, but nothing but encouraging and supportive about the path his relationship is taking. I only feel like the jaded best man, I'm not acting like him.]

And in the meantime, Hans and I are still on pretty good footing although there was talk this week about changes to his job that might not bode well for his being able to remain present in our relationship as we head toward the end of the year and into the next. When we were in grad school, I knew that he wasn't really with me even when he was a foot away if he was working on a screenplay or a story, because he was always writing even when he wasn't physically writing. I wish I had understood that this absence would carry over to any large project he was engaged in. He understands that I feel he just came back to me after being absent for the last four months and has said he's going to work on sticking around even with the changes coming up, so I'm hoping for the best. Scott says that if we've managed to climb up out of the rut, even for the past two weeks, that is reason to hope we won't fall back in when things get tough in the future. Let's hope he's right.

Happy Halloween!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Mindfulness
I feel great today!

Hans and I rounded out our lazy weekend, which wasn't really all that lazy because I did more housework than I've done since I returned from vacation, by watching Birth, a very stylized film starring Nicole Kidman as a woman whose husband dies and who meets a little boy ten years later who is convinced he is the reincarnation of her dead husband. I loved it. Rent it or catch it on cable.

And the change back to standard time made it easier to get out of bed this morning. We have cloudless blue skies and a brilliant sun today that is giving me tons of energy, and, somehow, tons of hope! I'm actually looking forward to the fall and winter, which is a rarity for me, because I feel like the turning inward that will accompany the darker, colder weather will have a positive impact on my life. I'm feeling excitement to write, to submit to journals and magazines, to get the house decorated, to immerse myself in regular workouts and a writing and reading schedule.

I read an article last night in the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, titled "Are Your Goals Holding You Back?" and with the teaser on the cover reading, "What the Happiest People Know for Sure." It talked about exactly the realization that I came to in therapy last month, but the article didn't use any of the psychological terms for it. Basically, it discussed a new book, Goal-Free Living, by Stephen Shapiro that will be released next month. Shapiro believes that making SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, Time based)--the kind that you are taught to make in time management and personal change classes everywhere--keep you from seeing opportunities at the periphery that might be exciting and fulfilling if you were willing to change directions and pursue them. He also argues that most people's goals aren't really their own, anyway, but come from societal or family expectations and pressures.

When I arrived in college I figured out pretty quickly that the goals I had for my future weren't necessarily my own, and I've been trying to define what my own goals are ever since. I have been pretty good at seeing the opportunities at the periphery, and taking them--my resume is a testament to this--and following what Shapiro describes as a circuitous path. But, I haven't been able to fully rid myself of the need to make SMART "goals," either. I feel compelled to make them, but as soon as they are made, I begin sabotaging my efforts to achieve them.

So this is the big discovery I made last month: I choose to do something for good, personal reasons, meaning I have high intrinsic motivations. This is desirable. Once I have chosen, however, I somehow move the action outside of myself where it can be viewed, judged, and rewarded or punished by others. At this point, all of my motivation to continue has become extrinsic, coming from external factors. What I think and feel about it is suddenly not important. This is undesirable. As my therapist reminded me, most people choose to do something due to extrinsic motivation, then continue doing it because they find intrinsic motivations they hadn't seen before. For example, your doctor tells you you have to start walking to get some weight off. You do it because you are afraid of the consequences if you don't. Along the way, you realize that you enjoy being outdoors, that you enjoy the time to think or to socialize with your walking partner, that you enjoy feeling fit, that you enjoy being thinner. So, by then, usually around week 6 or 8, you are carried along in your walking routine by habit and by pleasure and motivations of your own. I do it backwards. I know how I learned this and it goes way back to elementary school. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out.

So, the plan now, and for the next six months, is to make no SMART goals. I am allowed to make intentions that I use each day, but no goals. (This is hard because even in my writing class that finished last week the facilitator asked us to make goals and to figure out how to meet those goals by breaking the required actions down into smaller daily, weekly, and monthly goals. I didn't feel comfortable writing intentions, and instead fell into making specific, measurable, time-oriented goals that were extremely lofty.) For example, the intention my therapist suggested I use for writing is "I will spend quiet time with my thoughts each day and if I feel the desire to write, I will follow that desire." At the same time, I am to engage in physical activity three times a week because I am making that commitment to take care of myself, and not because I expect it to help me lose weight or change the shape of my body. So I guess what I'm really trying to avoid is measuring behavior in any kind of results oriented way, and instead, to engage in activities for the pure joy they bring. This is very difficult to learn. The irony is that, at least from other sources such as Kabat-Zinn and Shapiro, immersing yourself in the present and experiencing the excitement and passion in each moment without worrying about the future is the best way to achieve the results and the change you desire. Like I said, very difficult for this over-achiever-turned-massive-underachiever to grasp. But I'm trying.

R & R
Topic: Movies
Hans and I have been spoiling ourselves a little this weekend. He finished "season" at his job on Friday because Halloween is his company's primary focus, and I'm taking a three day weekend with Monday off to spend time with Candy's kids on Halloween. (I'm even going to dress up!) So things were more relaxed around here, which has been really nice.

We went to see Everything is Illuminated last night and I was blown away. All I knew about it going in was that it was Liev Schreiber's directorial debut and that he had edited the movie while doing six shows a week on broadway, and that Elijah Wood was the star. It was truly one of a kind. Powerful on a level that makes me want to own it on DVD, which is saying a lot because Hans and I own only about a dozen films and each one is storytelling of a quality we aspire to achieve one day. I really need to see the movie again. Then, I need to read the book. Then, I need to get as much back story as I can on the book and the making of the movie.

This afternoon we went to see In Her Shoes, which was also good, but a completely different kind of movie. Some of the reviews have said that it is a movie for everyone, but I have to say I think it is mostly a chick flick. Hans enjoyed it, but I still think the audience is primarily female. (Hans was the only man in the audience today with me and four other women, and the women talked through the whole movie.... Is this a Burlington/Greensboro thing, or are audiences truly getting ruder as Hans and I have suspected for quite awhile?) I enjoyed watching how this screenplay captured or condensed various aspects of the novel. Sometimes on-screen dialogue said what the narrator in the book had thought, a whole section of the book was rewritten into an encounter with a retired professor who did not appear in the book at all, and some things that seemed important in the novel show up only as small asides that you may or may not notice in the movie. The screenplay expertly captured the feeling and intent of the novel and streamlined it into a story that flowed along so nicely I wondered briefly if Jennifer Weiner, the author, had learned anything from the screenwriter that would affect the cinematic quality of her future novels. But thinking back on the novel now, it was quite visual and none of the pieces felt extraneous or self-indulgent when I was reading it. It held my interest from start to finish, and, as some of you may remember, kept me glued to the couch several nights in a row reading when I should have been unpacking. So I'm hoping that Jennifer's style doesn't change, and I will just say that both the novel and the screenplay used techniques to expertly tell a genuinely good story.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Circling Back
Now Playing: Colinda by Zachary Richard on The Big Easy soundtrack
Topic: Daily Eruptions
This has been my year for reconnecting with people from my past. Actually, I'm in my second year of that. Marc kicked it off by taking me to lunch in the spring of 2004 after about five years of rebuilding our friendship via email. Then I was lucky enough to get back into more regular contact, after a ten year hiatus, with Scott and Rich after last summer's get together at Matt's. I've been back in contact with John recently, too. In part because of his surgery, in part because I've been in need of his perspective and advice.

And on Thursday night, completely out of the blue, I received an email from James who had found me on the Internet and had read this blog. We haven't spoken since the night we broke up once and for all, which was more than ten years ago. Luckily, he wasn't writing to say that he still hates me--although I wouldn't blame him if he did. Instead, he was very kind and worried about my response and said he hoped we could catch up and perhaps become friends again. Wow. Amazing!! I had closed that door pretty tightly and it's odd to have it reopened now. It's not that I never thought about him or about our time together, just that I've been careful about which things I've let myself remember. In truth, I feel pretty cut off from that time in life and from myself in that time--which is unfortunate because the two years we were together were some of the most defining in my life. We shared several firsts, and I can't really think about my time at PIRG or in Washington, D. C. without thinking about him. I wrote him back, but haven't heard from him again, so I can't say how smoothly this transition will go. I am hopeful, though, and grateful. I have never liked being cut off from people whom I have loved and shared significant experiences with. This is a gift.

That leaves just one person with whom I haven't reconnected on a personal level, but even that relationship has some form now. He has left a footprint on the Internet that I found just before I drove to Michigan for my grandmother's funeral in 2003, and when I was in Michigan in the summer of 2004, a little voice told me very clearly to pick up a newspaper at the gas station because he would be in it. The next morning, at my campsite in Mackinaw City, I paged through the paper until I found his picture. The smile and the eyes have not changed, which is comforting to know. This year on my birthday I received just the slightest indication that I am, or was, in his thoughts. Since then he has shown me his children in a dream, although he didn't speak to me. I have a feeling that's the extent of the contact I will be allowed to have with him, and given our last round of conversation and the chaos I'm sure it created in his life, I'm glad to have even that. At some point, I would like to have an opportunity to apologize for the extreme selfishness to which I subjected him and for my complete lack of understanding of the choices he had made and what they meant, but maybe I don't deserve that opportunity. And maybe an apology from me wouldn't mean anything to him at this point. In any event, I am glad to know, after many years of uncertainty, where he is and that he is well.

Each of these men have given me back a piece of my past, and therefore, of my self. They are helping me to move forward in my journey toward wholeness, and for that--and for their friendship--I will always be grateful.

In Big Trouble Now!
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Writing
Today is the last day of my nonfiction writing class, which in some ways is good because now I have new tools and new energy to be able to go off and play on my own.

In the shower this morning, however, the title for my next book came to me. Yes, that's right. I said book. I just spent the last two months saying I wanted to work only in short form for awhile and I get hit with the title of a book. Then I get hit with the book's hook. And then I see the entire book and it is so intimately tied into everything else that is going on in my life that I absolutely must write it, and it can't wait. In fact I think the exploration I just did in the nonfiction magazine writing class was my first attempt at writing the book. So, now I am in BIG trouble.

The book is a sequel to Your Mileage May Vary, which is where the trouble comes in. I haven't published the first book, or even looked at it in three years. And here I go writing even more about this stupid bike trip I took at the end of the last decade?? It is very, very sad and pathetic. It is also exciting and irresistable--this is me having to do the work that's in front of me because this story demands to be written. (The story didn't march into the room and slam me against the wall the way Richard Bach describes--it's more like Patrick Swayze in Ghost singing the same song over and over until you do what he wants.)

The book's title: Bringing Me Home

The book's hook: It took seven weeks to cross the country on a bicycle. It took seven years to finally bring myself home.

In addition to a title and a hook, there is a plan. It's all set. It didn't come from me, it just is. Toward the end of the poem that I wrote for my fellow Big Riders while we were in Pennsylvania were the words (sorry, I can't remember the line breaks):

so I'm
still breathing,
still climbing
into this blind curve.

This morning, as the sun rose over ground hugging fog, the curving, climbing road suddenly went straight and flat. The journey continues and this time, I don't need a map. I can see where I'm going and it is inescapable and right. The only other option is to get off the bike, and it's fairly obvious that I can't do that.

So, here I go again!! Amazing and wonderful and scary and happy, happy, happy....

Relapse, Or Is It All in My Head?
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I have been worried for the last three days or so that my depression is returning. I let myself get totally stressed out last week at work and the camping trip did not start out with me at my best. By Saturday morning Dad was completely worn out, so we called it quits and headed home. Depression set in immediately, to the point that I actually found myself crying to my mother on the phone while I was driving home. Sunday was a little better, mostly because Hans is slowly coming back to me from wherever he went. He's taking an interest in my life and trying to find little ways to make me feel loved. He's apparently worried about me, too. We talked last night, after a really unhappy day for me at work where it became obvious that the stress is having a big impact on my health, and he wants me to get back into therapy. I think what he really wants is for me to get on medication, but I'm not there yet.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I got up and read the Nonfiction Writing homework for the week. That was the perfect thing. I am getting a lot of energy out of this class, despite the fact that I am behind and will stay that way. When I finally went to bed, I fell right to sleep. I woke up feeling rested and relaxed and excited about writing. I was dreaming that I was submitting queries to magazines, but each time I mailed a submission, a dark haired man I did not know would stand between me and the editor and give me a kiss that my made me feel as though my toes were sinking into the earth. I think he was there to keep me "grounded," and to make sure I felt comfort and joy in the submission process rather than fear. Not a bad way to wake up.

Today is very cold, but the sun is out, and my planning meeting with Sudie went well this morning. Overall, I'm still feeling good.

And, yes, I know. The point of mindfulness is to stay in the moment and within myself. Whether or not the sun is shining should not really affect my well-being, but today it does.

Violence and Viggo
Topic: Movies
Hans and I saw History of Violence yesterday with the after-church crowd. There was one other couple who might have been close to our ages, and about four couples who were definitely older. They all tittered and talked through the entire thing! The men were made particularly uncomfortable by the graphic sex scenes--I think this may have been the first time I've seen 69 used in a movie in a movie theater--but none of them seemed upset by the graphic violence. In fact, several men and women cheered and clapped when one character was shot. It wasn't a cheering and clapping kind of movie, by the way. Nor was it particularly shocking. It was simply an honest depiction of what "happened" in this particular story and it didn't look away when the bedroom door was closed, nor did it romanticize the blood and guts. In my estimate, a fine film that will stay with me quite awhile. It kind of reminds me, in retrospect, of the movie In the Bedroom.

We had taped an episode of Charlie Rose interviewing Viggo Mortensen about his role in the movie and watched it last night. Viggo is so soft spoken it's kind of a shock, especially when he starts speaking out against the war in Iraq and the present administration's policies. Charlie mentioned a website that supports a small press that Viggo started called Perceval Press. The site is about much more than books. Check it out!

Personal Health, Public Ignorance
Read this article on High-Fructose Corn Syrup on SPROL! I usually check out this site for its environmental health stories, but this story, that talks both about personal and public health, hit so close to home, I just had to share it.