A Walk in the Rain

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See you there!

So here’s the truth:
I’d like to delete every one of my previous blog posts, to start fresh.

But I can’t. I’m one of those incredible pack-rats, the person who holds on to every single scrap of something because it might be somehow sentimental and I might need it sometime in the future, to remember or to remind myself. So, I just can’t bring myself to delete them, even though they are part of my totally old life and not at all relating to much of anything that is currently happening in my existence.

This being said, watch for some new and exciting innovations coming soon!

I know, it’s been forever.

With so much happening, so many changes, my world spinning and stopping, only to spin again, I am not sure where to begin — how does one transition from then to now in the span of just a few words?

I guess I don’t have to it in only a few, though Goddess knows how long I can go on. First things first, I want to say that the last time I posted here was fairly melodramatic and though I was disconcerted and feeling desperate, it was a phase and has passed (like so many others in the last swift months).

Today I am working, which isn’t really so bad, and it is snowing but the sun has finally come out and the mailman is whistling as he makes his delivery. My hair is in two french braids and I feel secretly elegant, artistic, fantastic.

See, earlier this week, I found the courage to write something (ANYTHING! PLEASE!) and called myself a “word anorexic.” Seriously. I’ve become afraid of writing, afraid of the power of words, of their strength and subtle beauty. So I have written anything since the day I last posted here, and in reality, in even longer. Like maybe since Valentine’s Day.

I know. It’s really, really sad.

I like to think that I’ve been settling into my new life, figuring out how all the pieces fit together: leaving with my partner, having a five-year-old part-time, starting a new job and learning all that is involved, thinking about saving for a house and expanding our family …

When in reality, I’m just a chicken-shit. No offense to chickens.

So I’ve vowed to make a change. After watching Jessie’s progress, I’ve decided to clear off my desk, file all my weird miscellaneous crap away, and create a creating space.

I’ll let you know how it goes …

I’m in the middle of the biggest crisis I have ever experienced. Greater than my partner threatening my life, greater than being totally broke and not able to pay my rent in December in the Midwest (can we say COLD?). It is literally the biggest crisis of my life.

I don’t know the next step on my path.

I know. Maybe I’m making this a bigger deal than it should be, but this IS a really big deal. I am sitting in this dead-end job, totally unhappy and coming home crying every day. I feel like I’m too big for my skin, too big for my apartment, too big for my life as it is right now. See, I have this incredible girlfriend, I’m making all these great friends, and I just don’t fit in my old life, my old way of being. I mean, I REALLY don’t fit anymore.

And so I spend my free time looking at job postings, thinking about what I am qualified for, what I can fake my way into, and wondering how rigid rules at particular business might be (I don’t have a master’s in English yet, but I’m planning on it, does that count?) so that I can do meaningful work that makes a difference in the world and feeds my soul.

If you know me at all (personally), you know that my personal passion and dream is to teach English and Writing, primarily at the college level, with opportunities to work at writing conferences and community centers. I live in a big city, so there should be plenty of opportunities for this. Here’s my dilemma:

I don’t have an advanced degree, and I’m not independently wealthy, so I’m scared to go into even further debt going to graduate school when there is no guarantee that I can pay off my loans working as an academic and writer in this shifting economy.

So I’m (once again) considering applying to the MFA program here at UW, but I have such a struggling attitude toward this, as I’m not sure I want to spend thousands of dollars on an education here, but I’m not moving anytime soon (the family ties are too strong, and love too deep). I just wish I could sit and talk it all out with someone with a caring heart and loving ear so that I could figure all this crap out. My girlfriend is great, don’t get me wrong, but she has a lot of her own stuff to figure out right now (how to get full possession of her house from her ex, a legitimate and amicable parenting agreement, etc). I don’t want to be an extra burden.

I mean, I can’t even afford to buy food, and all my previous loans are in forebearance, and I’m thinking about spending more money.

But I just haven’t found a way to be teaching writing without an advanced degree.

So I’m having a crisis. A complete, breakdown, life-altering, existential crisis. And I don’t know where to turn, and I don’t know who to ask for help (or how), and I keep it all locked inside and I try not to hyperventilate and I spend my afternoons and weekends looking for work and looking for a new job and looking, looking, looking for myself and my life.

Sometimes, I lay awake tossing and turning, wishing that there was a magic button I could push, to make it all fall into place, wishing that all those nights I spend figure out exactly what I want and how my ideal life, my dreams, look in my life would make it all materialize as physical life and then I could have all the extra weight off my chest, my lungs, my heart, and just breathe.

That’s my life. This is my existence right now, struggling, treading water, seeking clarity, seeking wisdom, sitting in the turmoil, the change, and just asking: Please, let me get through this and find peace.

Yesterday, my girlfriend, her daughter, and a friend (with her daughter) and I all went for a picnic/bike ride around the far East side. I hadn’t been on a bike in two years, and it was such a great feeling, wind in my hair, sweaty under my helmet, watching for cars and other riders. It was GREAT. I haven’t had a bike since I sold mine when I left college, so it was really, really nice to be on one. When we got to our second park (a huge play area complete with castles and dragons and lots of things to play on), I found out that the bike I was borrowing was possibly for sale, as it was someone’s former bike (she got a new one). Sounds great, but it was such a nice bike, I was sure it would be at least $100 or more. And I just don’t have that spare right now.

But no worries. We played and played and played, and then we rode back to the house. My girlfriend asked if the bike really was for sale, and how much. I was really shy, nervous, didn’t want to get my hopes way up and then have them dashed. She said “$40.”

WHAT?

Yeah, this really nice Trek bike for $40. It fits me perfectly, is this great burgundy color, and I love it. And then, I got the helmet for $5. So now, after talking about wanting a bike for, oh, months, I have a new bike, a new helmet, and a wonderful summer of biking ahead of me.

And I don’t even mind that I scraped my shin on the teeth of the pedal. It only hurt mildly, and I’m over it now.

I have reached a place in my life where I am able to manifest the things I want and need at an alarmingly rapid rate. And I am grateful to the Universe for all it is, and continues to provide.

I love my life!

Well, it’s officially Spring weather here: it’s sunny one minute and pouring rain the next. Makes it fun to walk about town, but I’ve taking to stowing my rainjacket on my pack, so I’m always prepared. At least, that’s the illusion I’m telling myself.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about illusion. See, I am reading these books by Cheri Huber, an American Zen monk, and so my mind is rapidly expanding, which also means I’m often confused. It’s that whole the idea is freedom and everything you know is not really what you know, and so then I’m constantly questioning my reality and my existence, which I guess is the idea, but it gets exhausting sometimes to constantly question and not ever be certain of the answer. The quest for universal truth, or just personal truth, or just Truth, whatever it might be.

These days I’m surviving. Times are tough, working in retail, and I haven’t quite figured out how to freelance myself out (if you need an editor/copyeditor, email me!), so I’m surviving. Last week, I lost my bus pass, a monthly fare, the day after I got it. I know it has to be somewhere in my apartment, I just don’t know where. And so that makes me very sad, because my budget doesn’t currently have wiggle-room for an extra $50 for a new one. So, surviving is key.

I guess the important thing is to be grateful for what I do have: a loving relationship, food on the table (most days), deep friendships which are complex and enriching, and a voracious hunger for learning, for growth, for something more than my own meager existence. And that must count for something.

To all my friends and comrades, I love you. Thank you for keeping me strong.

So, I’ve been doing some thinking.

See, I am a woman who has all these grand plans, and is easily sidetracked and discouraged from them. It’s a terrible bind, to want such wonderful gifts, and never follow-through or succeed. So, I’ve been thinking.

I was wondering what it might be like to fulfill my dreams. What would feel like to succeed at something I want with my whole heart? Could I even do it? Could I stand to have that much good feeling?

It’s actually a mostly terrifying thought.

I’m watching this whole tribe of ants coming in through a hole in the window frame of the cafe, carrying little bits of someone’s pastry up a vertical bench to their colony. It’s actually an interesting (albeit unfortunately appropriate) visual metaphor. Because it takes one ant five minutes to carry a crumb, and yet he never gives up. Trudging and sniffing and sliding it’s way up the steep face, it reminds me that I have been living my life trying to carry the whole pastry, instead of realizing that it might be easier one crumb at a time.

I know, counter-intuitive. But really, look at it. I could be doing one thing a day toward my dreams, instead of trying to do them all at once and panicking and then not doing anything. No dreams come true when you’re freaking out about success.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. It’s a good thing to ponder. Now, if only I can remember it when I’m really scared … That’s the key.

Today, I am trying to breath.

I mean, I am breathing, but I am trying to breathe mindfully. That’s what is a challenge for me.

It’s hard to be in a situation where one person is so available, and the other is less available (though she wants to be), and things, plans, ideas keep changing. It’s hard for me.

I spent the morning hiking on two miles of land, learning about all kinds of wild native plants (motherwort! burdock! yarrow! yellowdock! wild parsnip!) and meandering the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin. It was a wonderful way to enjoy my day, and now I’m a bit exhausted, but enthusiastic. I’d like a garden now, in which to grow my own herbs, to make potions and brews and oils and incenses from. I think I need some window boxes.

I guess I’m not much for writing this afternoon. I did, however, decide that I’m going to negotiate a $45,000 contract as an editor with a publishing house. Not sure where or how, but I’d like it in the next three months. May it be so!

There’s a woman meeting with her sponsor next to me at the Cafe, and it’s interesting to me, never being part of the alcoholism world, because I’m not listening to them, but I keep catching snippets of sentences. “Summertime is a trigger, I need to be honest with my friends, I need to be honest with my husband.” It’s curious because I’m having a mental response to the things I’m hearing, like the Universe has put these women next to me for a reason. And the one who is not the sponsor is named Sarah, so it’s even more of a difficulty to not hear because the sponsor says “Sarah, that is so …” and I then I can’t remember she’s not talking to me.

I came here to check my email, to do some work on web design and figure out this phase of my life. I got some good books from the library yesterday, most of which came recommended by Jessie. I’m excited to be reading again, devouring book after book and absorbing everything I can about everything I am interested in and not holding myself back on my interests and my voracity to learn. The Universe’s infinite possibilities are opening on my path, and so I am almost glassy-eyed in wonder at all that is before me.

My lover and I watched the beginning of “The Secret” last night. I’ll admit, some parts of it are extremely hokey and over-dramatic. Some of the interviews are curious, and it totally echoes (or rips off) “What the Bleep!” on multiple levels, but the idea is genuine, and it’s something I’m living in right now. All the possibility before me …

So, perhaps I’m on a threshold, my life in a pause as I look at all the things I have behind me, all the things I’m ready to shed, to leave behind me because it does not serve me. I think I’m actually ready to let them go, the past habits and mechanisms which no longer work in my benefit, and create a new possibility, a new life for myself, complete with magick and wonder and mystery and joy. I want to paint, and write, and draw and create and be full of the love and joy which surrounds me.

I woke up this morning to receive a massage from my lover (who is professionally trained) before she left to spend the day with her daughter. It was very deep for me, because I spent the night dreaming about possibility and about leaving behind the things that weren’t working for me. I was leaving garbage bags of old leaves and sticks and twigs on the path as I was walking, and each pile of bags was a habit or mechanism that no longer serves me. It was curious to notice how big some of the piles were, and how long I lingered at them, not wanting to move, not sure if I could really let them go.

I am ready to release:

• My fear that I am imperfect
• My belief that I am imperfect
• My fear that I am unworthy of love
• My belief that I will not have enough
• My belief that I am not strong enough
• My belief that fear keeps me safe
• My belief that I deserve pain
• My belief that I do not deserve love

With the Spring comes new leaves, and new opportunities for me to become healthy. I am ready for the green.