neurotica_redux

Blog as Oracle

In a haze of writing last night I think I figured it all out. Why I’ve had this all-consuming fire to travel in the last three years, why I need to go back to Maine for a bit, why San Francisco thinks I’m ready to be kicked out of the nest, why it’s terrifying, and most important of all, why Glen Beck hasn’t yet been taken away by the men with the butterfly nets. But, of course, now I can only vaguely remember what all those revelations were, only that they made me feel marginally better about all these unknowns floating around my poor little universe.

Generally speaking, when people take a next step, they like to have some idea what they are stepping toward -- dog shit or paradise? A new professional chapter, or a new romantic one? Growing up, or embracing youth? I can’t lay claim to any such knowledge of what’s ahead of me. In a couple months I’m pulling an Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, putting my hand over my heart, and stepping over what looks like a yawning black chasm, (but hopefully is something a little sturdier). Not to be dramatic, but hey. I know leaving is the right thing to do, it’s forward movement, and I just have to have faith in that first step, even if I can’t see the second. But, for a planner like me, this is not so easy. I can really only think of two other occasions like this when I felt no pull toward any one place, had no plan in place, or a goal, or a new job, or school. I feel ambivalent toward it all and so I’m standing still in San Francisco, and it doesn’t feel right. It’s not the good kind of standing still, the kind where you grow nice, homey, steady-like roots. No, it’s not like that. I’ve tried in the last year to dig in my scrawny shoots, but they haven’t taken hold. And so I’m standing here like one of those saplings wrapped in a burlap sap, waiting for a stiff wind to blow me one way or the next. And yet, not so much as a breeze.  (This is where I stop this terrible metaphor. Your welcome.)

So, off I go, home again, home again jiggity jig. Which, being all, you know, home-like, brings with it its own panoply of emotional landmines, which I’ll have to be very patient with myself about dealing with. Even for someone who loves their family as much as I do, one thing doesn’t change when I go home, I’m still me, which means things are inevitably more complicated than they ever really need to be. I like to think that’s endearing.

Well, you know once you say it on a blog that means it’s really happening, right? So now, two months in Maine and if I’m lucky, plenty of strong wind.

 

 

 

 

Get Your Helmet

I get so worked up when I haven’t written a blog post in a while. I get performance anxiety to the point where I start several that I never finish. (Speaking of performance anxiety, that is not a problem with my roommate as I can hear him and his pseudo-girlfriend riiiiigggght now. Awesome. Cue me cranking Deadmau5.) Anyway, I am sitting here on the verge of buying a ticket to Spain even though Luisa and I haven’t totally nailed down the dates. I’m probably driving her nuts because I’m so anxious to just do it (don’t you love all this subtext? are you even seeing this?) and be on to the next savings & travel project. Nothing gets me more excited than travel (okay, okay, I’m done now.)

So Aaron’s getting married and I have skillfully shoehorned in side trips to Seville, Granada and Morocco as a bonus for making it across the pond for the blessed event. The only weddings I approve of are ones that involve me “having” to travel internationally. I know people who bitch about their friends’ destination weddings but no-sirree-bob, not this guy. I’ll bitch about your platinum wedding in the Hamptons instead. Zzzzzzzzzz.

Despite the lovefest there are sacrifices that will have to be made. I pointed out to Luisa tonight that I’m finally coming around to the realization that if I want to make this happen I have to trim back my extraneous expenses; one-off trips to LA, a new nano, a meditation retreat, shit that normally, I would throw down for without thinking. It seems an obvious point, but I’ve never been one to acquiesce to the idea that ‘you can’t have it all’. The Universe and I have been battling this one out for a couple of decades now. Me insisting that I can, if only I can think it through, and occasionally winning a prizefight. The Universe insisting that it’s a losing battle and that sometime very soon I will be on several prescription drugs that tell me so.

The truth is, there’s a lot going on. I just don’t think I have the mental/emotional wherewithal to blog about it. Lord knows I’m doing enough talking and thinking about it. I think the years of 29,30, 31 are pretty much a shit show for everyone and I’m no different. Tonight, I was talking with L about how everyone seems to be going through the ringer right now and why and all that. The best I (we) can come up with is that despite all the growth of the twenties people are still dealing with the notions and expectations of what their lives were supposed to be, or what they think they want, or what they hope they can get. Sometimes none of those things have very much to do with the place we happen to be standing in at the moment. So the options are to keep beating your head against the same wall that has been standing there forever (that one that just gets you every time), find a way around it, or open your eyes and realize that it’s no longer there. Different walls, different people. I think at this time in our lives, it still feels (for some of us) that there are a lot of things still hanging around to beat your head against, but at the same time we’re tiring of it, we know that it’s change now or suffer some serious brain damage. Maybe that’s macabre, but I think it’s true. No one wants to be the 45 year old with the same daddy/mommy/control/body/etc. issues that they’ve had since they were in high school. No, that’s sad. And if you’re a relatively emotionally in-touch person that can feel panicky, and anxiety provoking. There are major decisions to be made, and are we ready to make them? Have we been emotionally triaged enough to take that step? What can we do to fix ourselves once and for all? But maybe that’s the silly part. Maybe all that anxiety is a little overblown because you’re always changing, you’re always moving further away from the person you used to be and closer to them at the same time. Defining one age in our life when we have to rectify or fix our panoply of emotional ills is probably extreme. But, that’s what it feels like to me. It feels like okay, it’s time. It’s time to fix this, to figure it out, to be happy, to say yes, to say no, to jump over the wall or barge through it. It’s time. Even if it’s not, it feels like it. So what do you do with that feeling? Deep breathing? Maybe. Meth? Could be. Alcohol? Wow, that’s new. Who knows. (Maybe I should just ask my roommate). I think this urge I have to fix everything and to figure it out can be toxic. I clearly have an ego problem because I think that’s realistic. On the one hand it has gotten me far in a lot of life’s categories, but there are some that aren’t so easily handled. Those intangible things like acceptance and intimacy and contentment, there is no clear path to them. You can’t intellectualize it or self-help it, or therapize it. I am really starting to believe that. Accepting that they take a lifetime maybe be the only way to find yourself living in a wide open space, with nary a wall to be seen.

But, you know, easier said than done.