"Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart."

Methinks things are going to get pretty transparent here, today.

It's been a strange summer. I think earlier, I wrote that I predict that this was going to be a great one. And undoubtedly it has been. I don't regret a minute of it. In fact there are a lot of minutes that I keep going back to and rewind and replay in my brains when I'm falling asleep at night. Most usually the times when I felt particularly brave or happy or even, if complete honesty is permitted in this space and I think it is because this is my space, sexy. Feelings have been in bounty and in plenty. I've felt thrill and loneliness and wholeness and complete disconnect. I've felt self-crushing gratitude and genuine fear. But the important thing. The exciting thing. The good thing is that I've been feeling them.

I think for the past few weeks, though, I've been in a terribly weird place. To my closest friends I've been referring to it as "my funk". I gave it a silly name and referenced it as though it was something absurd that was hanging around. Like when someone from your past visits from out of town and stays way to long and follows you every where you go. But despite the cheerfullness with which I attempted to deal with it, I'd be lying if I told you that there wasn't a little part of me that was genuinely afraid of what was happening to me. Maybe my Funk was causing permanent damage. Maybe my spirit's been overwhelmed. A big group of us went out the other night for dinner and it should have been fun and exciting and relieving to have so many friends around me after/during a particularly frustrating time in my life. And it was--it was. That was the fact. But I wasn't feeling any of it. I wasn't feeling happy to be surrounded by people who have known me so well for a long time and other people who want to get to know me--hopefully for a long time. I knew I was lucky. I knew that these people like me. I knew that I like them. I knew that I was enjoying my cheese pizza. But I felt kind of... nothing? That's when I knew something was wrong with me. I monitored myself for the next several days and realized that my feelings had been, in fact, broken. Exhausted. Like I blew a fuse. In my brain or something.

I kept thinking so many things that I couldn't make words for and then when I did have words for them, they were surely not anything that I could say out loud. So I wrote it down. Because I have to outlet. That's the only way to process it. And even though these are things that you don't say to other people lest they worry for your mental state, I'm going to share them with you:

All of the anger and stress and disappointment is sitting inside of me.
Taking up residence on my shoulders. The middle of my back. My belly.
Making me ache and creak and break and moan.
I think I used to feel somewhat graceful. Like I could move in a solidly fluid motion.
I'm jittery and jagged and jumpy, now.
It used to be my spirit and my body working together to make things happen.
Now it's just my body.
Shuffling. Lumbering.
Being awake in the morning and laying down at night. Staying afloat in between.
Occasionally entertained and distracted.
How did it start and how does it keep going like this?
What's scarier than the fact that it's happening is the way that I don't even care.

Once I put it into words. Once I looked at my truth, I decided that I needed to fix it. My body hurt. My spirit was dry. My friendships were lacking. My creativity was non-existent. I am a firm believer in the unpopular idea that I'm in charge of my heart. Sometimes, though, you have to get pretty manual about digging it out. I didn't like that I didn't care that I was operating like a robot person. I knew that I was going to need to start being very intentional about being good to myself and my relationships or else I would be in serious trouble in no time and not even know how or when I got there. And I've already wasted too much time--I'm not going to wait for everything to sort itself out. It's time to get diligent.

I went to my bathroom mirror (I honestly just spelled it "meerer" and looked at it for a long time wondering what was wrong with that word. The correct answer is, of course, all of the vowels.) and I wrote:

What have I done for:
My body...
My spirit...
My relationships...
My creativity...

I don't have a different answer for all of those questions every single day. But this week I've done things for my body. I've been intentional about drinking tons and tons of water. Also I get two 15 minute breaks at work every day and I'm making a point to take little walk/jogs around the store for at least one of those breaks. Simply moving helps the time to go by so much faster and it's also nice to get some new scenery every now and again.
For my spirit I've been trying to pray. There's so much to say about this subject and maybe one day I'll be able to put it into words but for now there's too much confusion and maybe some heartache and probably even a little anger to be able to pin it all down and define it. But suffice it to say that even taking on an attitude of prayerfulness and peace is such a tiny victory that I can't help but celebrate it and count it as a huge win.

The most surprising thing, I've noticed, was the effect that exercising creativity has had on my mood. I bought this bulletin board a few months ago and had grand ideas for it but I hung it on my wall and started using it and never really did anything with it aside from tack recipes onto it. It's large and hangs across a large blank space in my kitchen and I wanted to make it very graphic and colorful and cheerful. I didn't feel in the mood or inspired or excited when I pulled it down and started drawing a grid onto it or even when I started applying the paint, but in hardly any time I was in another dimension. There is something so deeply satisfying about taking something in your brain and translating it into something tangible. Something tactile. Something that you can see. It's not perfect. Up close it's not really even pretty. But it's mine and it does exactly what I wanted it to do. Here it is:


The day after that, I bought a $6 box of hair dye and went to town. I'm now back to being a brilliant brunette with pale skin and bright blue eyeballs.
This post doesn't flow at all. It doesn't wrap up into something nice or anything like that. It's not even funny... But that's alright. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling so good, now.

I think what it is, is seeing change happen. When I started drawing lines on my bulletin board, I didn't know what I was going for--just that I didn't want to keep it the way that it was. Just that I wanted to make an effort and make a change and we'll see how it turned out. Just so happened it turned out well.
Just so happens that I like my hair.
Just so happens that your choices (even impulse ones) can be trusted after all.

The Past Minute and a Half

It's Saturday. It's morning time. I was, of course and just like you know you'd love to be doing, sitting here in front of my computer in the clothes that I slept in (read underpants and a tank top--don't picture it but just know what I'm talking about) and listening to an embarrassing mix that I listen to when no one else is around. In short, this is Me Time.

I'm sitting here reading all the articles that I've been meaning to read all week and listening to "Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie and Clyde (feat Rhianna)" when I hear a knock at my door. My mind, as I'm sure everyone's does when someone knocks on their door, goes to imagining a plan of attack. But then I remember that it's okay because if someone's going to break in, then they're probably not going to knock first. So I stand up to answer the door and remember the unders. So I sprint--the long way around so that I don't pass the front door--to my bedroom and grab the first pair of jeans that I can find, and a bathrobe. So, essentially, I look like a psycho path with crazy hair and crazy eyes by the time I make it to the front door. They're wearing purple. Who wears purple? Jehovah's Witnesses, I guess. I don't know if that was planned or if one guy showed up at the other guy's house and said, "Purple? You're wearing purple too? You know white people can't wear that color. No, I don't have time to change. Let's just go."

So they introduce themselves and say something like, "you look like you just woke up." To which my brain responds with, "You can not be serious with me right now, right? It's Saturday morning! And also I've been up since 7:00 thankyouvermuch. I'm just lazy--which I have a right to be. As an American."
But my mouth said, "Oh, I'm... getting ready for work..."

As they hand me several copies of The Watchtower, I'm noticing that my music (which is turned up way too loud for company) has switched to a song by The Bird and The Bee entitled Fucking Boyfriend. Which is sweet but the chorus says, "tell me would you be my would you be my fucking boyfriend?" And it repeats it kind of a lot. It's a delightful tune. Really it is.

Quickly they dismissed themselves. Walking down my steps saying things like, "We're just doing this to bring glory to Jehovah!" To which I respond, for reasons that I can not fathom, "Yeah, me too. Have a good... day?"

Walking to the next house I'm sure they were discussing my drug problem.

So Much Questions

Hi boys and girls. The other day, my IRL friend, Katie from (Insert Witty Title Here), came over to my side of town and together we answered questions. I don't know what the deal is, but any time you solicit questions on Facebook no one ever says anything like, "how do you spend a typical Saturday?" Or, "if you were given a million dollars..." No, for some reason people are like, "should I get this mole looked at?" Eh. It's whatever. So here's what Katie and I came up with:



And then the questions, they just kept coming! So I went forth and answered them in a video by myself in my squishy chair. Wearing a sweater and drinking coffee because it's finally raining outside and it's not 115 degrees for the first day in three weeks. Take advantage, brothers and sisters, wear a soft cardigan.



Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Concerns?

An Unintentionally Motivational Post

When I was little, we used to have some sort of family time most nights before bed. Not every night but, you know, consistency is difficult with so many people in one house. But we'd read from this book that was supposed to teach us life-lessons and then we'd talk about it and that was fine but I always wanted to skip past it because after that we'd talk about our "blessings" from the day. It was nice because not only did it force you to admit, even at the end of a terrible and disappointing day (like the worst day in history the history of the 90's, when Bill Clinton was elected president and the democrats were going to take over the world and then force us to do shameful democratty things) that something not-awful probably did happen. And not only that, but you got to hear about the lives of the other people living in your home. You got to hear about it from the perspective of what they liked about it, too.

It seems like so often, by the end of the day (okay, more realistically, by 10:00 am) everyone's Facebook statuses are about the awful things that have happened. Like, there was road construction on my way to work so I thought I was going to be late and that stressed me out. Or how I left to go get breakfast but then I realized that I left my debit card at home so I had to drive back home and get out of my car and then get back into it. Ugh! Or someone wanted me to straighten their glasses because they fell on them, and I was grossed out because of all of the goo gunked up in the nose pieces and I wanted to throw up (seriously, folks, here's a happy tip from your neighborhood optician: wear your glasses into the shower every once in a while and let the steam clean them just a little bitty bit).

When you're not enjoying yourself, it seems to take so much longer to go through a day. I don't know why it's so easy to just give up on the day so early and then count the hours for the day to end. And why do we want the day to even end? We'll go to bed and tomorrow will be the same that today was unless we make a point to make a change. You know what I mean? And also no one else has any fun.

I certainly don't mean to sound all motivational, here. I don't want to be the guy who's like, "You're in charge of your attitude!!" (even though I truly believe that we are) "Never, ever be discouraged!" But, you know, maybe let's try extra hard to not see all of the worst possible versions of our own reality, sometimes.

In her book, Intimations of Mortality (which was written during the course of her terminal illness and published posthumously), Violet Weingarten said "Problem stated at its most succinct--is life too short to be taking shit or is life too short to mind it?" Maybe let's take think on that a little bit, today.

Some mornings I have to pep-talk myself out of bed. Some days, I press "snooze" and lay in bed dreading getting out of it until the very last moment. This morning was easy for me, though, because I ran out of coffee creamer yesterday. I can't take my coffee with just milk and sugar. That stuff is terrible. And powdered creamer is flammable and so I don't really feel like drinking it. So I need that stuff. The ultra-sugary stuff in the milk section of the grocery store. But it's so expensive. So I took to the interwebs to find a recipe to make it myself. Of course I found it.
So getting out of bed was easy, today. In fact, the fact that my coffee pot has a self-timer is what gets me out of bed most every day. It's nice to have a treat first thing in the day.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?
If you thought about the relief-points of the day before you went to sleep, what would they be?

This Is How My Brain Works Every Sunday Morning

When I'm extra tired, my body seems to soak up all of the sleeps that it needs really quickly and then it wakes up in a better mood than it's had in weeks. So this morning I woke up, went to the bathroom, made a pot of coffee, and washed the few dishes in the sink before I came back to my bed and saw that it was only 6:30. But I'm not going to go back to sleep because I'm so lucky to live in the uppermost part of this house with a bedroom window that faces the rising sun and the light in here looks like honey and it's sweet.

In Looking For Alaska, John Green writes:
Like the way the sun is right now, with the long shadows and that kind of bright, soft light you get when the sun isn't quite setting? That's the light that makes everything better, everything prettier, and today, everything just seemed to be in that light.

And I can hear whatever bird that is that says, "who. whooooooo who. who." I don't hear that bird very often but it always reminds me of younger days when I lived in less populated areas. It reminds me of when we lived in Zenith and could run around all day long in nothing but our underwear. It was the life. I think my whole life I'll be trying to get back to that sort of place. Back to a place that you have to drive a ways to get to. Back to the place where you can leave your curtains open in the night time because there's no one to see into your home. Not for miles. Back to the place where you don't realize that there are things to complain about. We'd go out into the yard and dig holes and fill them with water and make little lego boats to try to float. But the holes always drained. Looking back, I love that this confused us. I never considered that the earth was as thirsty as we were in the summertime and kept drinking our entertainment. I remember that mom would let us stay outside until the sun began to set and we'd come into the house with dirt in so many surprising places. We'd eat dinner and watch the Cosby show. I remember crying and crying and crying the day that The Cosby show ended. I was going to miss The Huxtables. I thought they were my friends and I'd never see them again. I didn't know about reruns. I didn't know that the very next week they would play an old episode and that I would feel emotionally jipped (but also relieved).

Our dad worked at the local Co-op. There was a big tank-thing that was intended to be home to, probably, billions of gallons (keep in mind the disconnect between childhood perspective of size and realistic perspective) of chemicals or pesticides or something else that children should never be near. Before it could be filled, though, the tank (which was made of terribly thick plastic) fell off of the truck and cracked. Rendering it useless to its intended purpose. My dad brought it home, measured about 5 feet from the bottom and cut the top off. And that's how we got a swimming pool for free. Mom split a garden hose down the middle and ran it around the top so that we wouldn't cut our little arms and legs when we got in. We positioned it beneath our tree house so that we could, at times, jump from a dangerous height into not enough water. That shit would not pass inspection in any town where there were neighbors. But it was incredible.

But it wasn't a real pool and it didn't have an ordinary filtration system or, you know, chlorine or anything. It was really just a gigantic tub of water in the back yard with a spout at the bottom that we used to drain it. And unlike a real pool the fight against algae was a physical one that we loved to fight. Mom would strip us down and make us wear socks in the pool. And it was our job to scrub all of the slime off of the bottom using only our feet. She said it was part of owning your own pool. She said all the kids with pools in their back yard had to do this. We'd scrub and then drain all of the water out and then my mom would do her best to get in there and clean the mildew. From my adult perspective--that's truly disgusting and probably fifteen kinds of dangerous. As a little kid, it was a dream come true. We had dreams of keeping the water filled throughout the winter time, letting it freeze solid and then turning it into our own, personal ice rink. Oddly, that swimming pool only lasted for one summer. We thought mom was so mean for not letting us keep it for another year. From my grown up place, though, at an age that is not that far off from where my mother was when she was sending her kids out into a vat of green goo (which she probably hated to do--but are there other options that will preserve the single greatest aspect of their childhoods?)--I don't blame her one bit. She was a saint to put up with it for so many months.

Happy Sunday Morning.

I wish I had a picture of us when we were little to put here at the end of this post.

Ten on Tuesday on Time

From Roots and Rings as per usual (only this time I'm really doing it on a Tuesday because I'm working on a bigger post but it's taking time and because I've been up since about 5:00 am on account of my anxious brains and I feel like doing something that doesn't require all too much mind-power).

1. What colour are your toenails painted?
Get. This. It's a color by Pure Ice called (oh this is embarrassing), "No Means No." Which not only doesn't give you any idea of what color it is but it's pretty much called, "Good luck, try not to get raped!"

2. What colour are your fingernails painted?
OPI's Bogota Blackberry. Sounds exotic doesn't it? Yeah, it's not. (I don't care if my fingers match my toes... I haven't the energy to keep up with my toes on the regular.)

3. What is your favourite brand of nail polish?
I, honestly, buy the cheapest stuff that I can find. Usually that's Pure Ice or Petites from Walmart. I change my color often enough that I'm not interested in spending $7 on color (I don't even like spending $7 on a bag of frozen chicken breasts). Especially when it'll keep from chipping and staining if you apply base and top coat anyway and keep up with it.

4. As the norm, do you DIY your nails or get mani/pedis?
I would love a pedicure. I usually get one at the beginning of every summah but I didn't this year because there are much more important things on which to spend $30.

5. Have you ever had a gel mani? Do you recommend it?
I don't know what that is and I'm not interested enough to Google it as I've never had a manicure. So the answer is decidedly "no."

6. What is the last movie you watched on television? (TV, Netflix, Redbox, etc.)
Um... let me think about it. Oh yeah! Biutiful. It was lovely and honest and raw and it messed with my brains for days.

7. What is the last movie you watched in the cinema?
Bridesmaids. And before that it was Bridesmaids. First time I'd ever seen a movie twice in the theater.

8. Is there a movie that everyone talks about as if it is a classic but you haven’t seen?
I've been pretty active about getting a bunch of old classics in. Obviously I haven't seen them but I feel like Brokeback Mountain is one of those cultural classics that I should have seen but I haven't because I'm mostly uninterested in cowboys in general. Also American Pie--I should have seen it a million years ago as a passage into my late teens but I never did.

9. What is your favourite movie soundtrack?
And, of course, the answer is Elizabethtown.

10. Have you ever seen a movie and thought it was better than the book it was based on?
Yeah, that's actually a myth.

Maybe I'm a Goose

I went to Lakeside Park today. I sat on a bench facing the water just opposite of a group of waterfowl. There were little ducks perched all in a cluster facing the geese who were not sitting but kind of walking back and forth as though leading some sort of time-share seminar or Sunday School Class. When I sat down, they all sort of turned to look at me like I wasn't invited to the meeting but I sipped my coffee and watched as they ignored me and went about their business.

My brain has been scrambled for the past several weeks and it's all catching up to me. The second I woke up, I knew that I just needed to get out of my house. I needed to be out of my house and breathing some fresh air and soaking in sunshine and generally just being alone--somewhere else. I needed some sort of church. So I got a coffee and I sat cross-legged on a picnic table and breathed deeply and watched the ducks watch the geese and I listened to wind and I tried to evaluate my life. But I couldn't because I don't know what I want. I don't know what I don't want. I don't know what I need. So mostly I just sat there not thinking of anything.

I feel like I'm scared of a lot of things that other people fall into without any effort whatsoever. But I have been actively choosing to do things that are intimidating or relatively dangerous (nothing life-threatening) because I don't want to look back and say, "I never went swimming in a public pool because I'm grossed out by the thought of my own thighs even when I'm alone in my apartment." Or, "I never sang karaoke because what if I accidentally sang off key." Or, "I never let anybody hold my heart because I was scared they would drop it because it's getting heavy." So I have been actively going against my natural impulses. Sometimes it's the hardest thing for my body to do but exactly what my brain requires and so I go against my impulses. Every single ounce of instinct is saying, "get the fuck out of here" but the brain is saying "you can't go, this is good for us." And it is. But the thing about jumping is that you land every time. And sometimes you break something.

Two little kids and their grandma were walking up the path at the park. The ducks turned around to look at them only they didn't return to their business because the kids started throwing bread into the water. Without even a second's hesitation they all got in the water. The ducks with their vibrant colors and slim bodies flew and glided in with grace and started snacking on the bread pieces. The geese, though, waddled to the edge of the water and plopped themselves in like dumplings into soup. They swam over to the children and had their fill of bread as well.

And in the end, everyone got to eat.
And today, I'm going to the pool.