First of all, I’m sore as hell and I’m having a hot flash. Second, I found out last night that Monty is a complete freak for Icy Hot and need to strategize on this, because I’m sure there’s a black ops DFAKS somewhere out there and I can’t have him getting cross-eyed-high on me every time I’m sore. Third, I need to put that boy on a diet, The Mc said he was barely making it through their kitty door (to their litter box, not the outside world, what kind of monster do you think I am??) and it doesn’t help that a visitor to my home over the holidays mentioned how tiny his head was…see also: call vet item on to-do list. Crap. Fourth, I still contend there should be a “Littlest Looser”. Who’s to say that my 20lbs is going to be easy while I fixate at the box of See’s and two boxes of Frango’s that I got for Christmas from my awesome step-mother out west? Don’t Americans who are heading down the “fat path” need to see that we’re empathetic to their struggle, too? That it’s definitely not to late for them, and that bingo-bango we can knock that off and keep it off? What % of Americans are morbidly obese vs 15-40lbs heavier than they should be?

Just sayin’.

Sunday morning when The Mc went to the rubbish bin he found a bird trapped in a skylight in our mailroom, and we spent the next 45 minutes (with the help of a neighbor with a ladder) helping the little guy back to the real world.

He didn’t mean to get himself trapped, but he was curious and wound up somewhere he shouldn’t have been. Sticking to his instincts, he flew up and kept flapping his wings against the plastic bubble thinking there had to be a way through it and to the light – if he just flew harder and faster and with more resolve.

We laid bread crumbs down in hopes he was hungry and would come down to eat. He didn’t. We threw them up, in hopes he would embrace the Hansel and Gretel-ness of it all. He didn’t. So we did what we had to with a long pole broom and a ladder, shepherding him out by way of what may have felt like violent means.

I need the universe to come after me with a broom.

For the past three weekends, I’ve been in hiding. I’ve been a little worn out and burned out and used up and feeling generally deflated and selfish and a lot like that bird in the skylight.

Flashing back to a 5 year old me who hid in a round rack in the middle of Sears while my mother picked out clothes for my brother and the upcoming school year. You can guess what happened.

I feel like that.

While I didn’t exactly want to be found, I didn’t exactly want to stay lost, either. I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know how to get home, and in retrospect – I doubt I knew where home was.

There used to be a piece of paper tacked to a corkboard in my kitchen with a list of goals. It was weathered by sunlight and the heat and humidity of a kitchen, with faded print declaring short term, mid term, long term goals spanning finances, health and spirit. Some have been met, some have been replaced, and many have been abandoned in light of life changes…like moving to Ireland by 40.

I’m trying to find my way out of the skylight, out of the rack and back to a path that feels intentional and purposeful, that feels like I’m contributing and moving in the right direction. I’ve written about this and mused about this and bored all of you as well as myself nearly to tears but the fact remains that I. Am. Lost.

This naturally presents an entirely different series of emotions into the mix: guilt (“don’t be so effing selfish, you’re ALIVE”) and annoyance (“would you stop WHINING already”) and confusion (“ummmm where was I supposed to be?”) and that doesn’t help a smidge.

Earlier this week I had a hold of my mojo for about an hour, and I lost it again…squirrely little bitch.

So during this in-between time of loosing and finding again, I’ll stay in the safety of my jammies and the condo with the kitties and the TV and poor Mc trying to be as supportive as he can with me in a funk and cleaning compulsively as though a pristine home where there’s a place for everything and everything in it’s place (my mothers ghost) will provide just the right environment for the mojo to find me again when it’s ready.

Maybe this is supposed to be teaching me patience?

I wrote those last two posts in a total woe-is me voice, which is not the one I intended. “Oh, poor me, we got land to build our little cabin in the woods on. Oh, my life sucks, I have more people I love than I know what to do with. Ohhhhhh the horror, I have a great job in an air conditioned building with a chair and a phone and everything. Oh someone deliver me from my misery, I have a reliable car, two adorable cats, an knitting habit and an amazing camera I get to capture life with. It’s wretched!”

One post is only an hour or so old and I already need to apologize for it. Deep seeded Catholic guilt trapped in my DNA? Mayhaps. Realizing what a shallow, whiny brat I sounded like? Definitely.

I’m a lucky, blessed, and thankful girl. I’ve worked damn hard more than half of my life. I’ve collected a lot of great friends who understand me (even when they don’t) and I have an amazing man to share my life with that understands me too (even when he can’t stand me).

I am thankful for APE and that they allow me to stick around and lend my ::snicker:: talents to their cause in my free time. I’m thankful that I get to take pictures of people and places I care about. I’m thankful that my body still works given that I’ve neglected and abused it over the years. I’m thankful that my brain still works and that I can afford hosting and a domain name to purge my thoughts.

And right now, having spent the last 30 minutes working in a damn spreadsheet, I’m thankful that I can say in approximately 9 months (provided I maintain the current trajectory, which I may increase/improve) I will be completely debt free.

Effe yeah, that feels gooooood.

Towards the end of 2009 I was burned out. Burned. Out. Work was kicking my butt and I had too many social irons in the fire. There was no one to blame but myself, which sucks because it’s so much more simple when you can blame others for your own problems. I’ve seen plenty of people do it (myself included) and we all make it look pretty easy.

I started backing out of things and trying to explain to friends that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not sure they understood. If I was them, I’d have thought I was being dramatic.

In baby steps, I stopped writing for Atlanta MetBlogs and stepped down as city captain. After a year of successful Atlanta TweetUps, I stepped away from hosting them. I stopped making as many dinner play-dates during the week. I regained focus on my finances, my relationship and myself.

Last weekend the weather in Atlanta was perfect for errands and spring cleaning, it was one of those prefect early non-winter days that have everyone in the city out playing in parks and holding hands down the street. I did both and then some. I ran errands with The Mc which included us picking out new glasses frames for each other (be afraid) along with seventy other things and actually made for quality time. I paid off an old lingering debt with thanks to a nice tax refund and a baby bonus from [redacted]: LIBERATION! I cleaned the loft and consolidated my to-do lists. Even after a day of errands and chores, the list still a mile long…how is that possible?

What’s left that’s still filling my yellow sheet? Does it matter? There’s more, there’s always more.

I tell friends there will be crap in their inbox when they die, and there won’t be anything on their tombstone about how much they got done, or with what efficiency – what’s my problem?

Meh. I’m not trying to be a selfish a-hole, it’s just working out that way. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss you or I’m not thinking about you, because I am. You can probably feel it.

I’m working diligently to make it so that one day very very soon my to-do list will be shorter, and that I’ll be a better friend and blogger. Truth is: I miss you. I also miss me.

I wonder if you’ve ever been where I am, and how you got out of it. Backing out of commitments clearly isn’t enough, and not loving as many people as I do isn’t an option…and OMG can someone get me to stop COMPLAINING about this boring, boring crap?!

51.

51 posts. In 2009, I watched this blog crash and burn.

I started this damn thing nearly ten years ago. TEN YEARS. Back then I was writing up posts in Notepad (light coding, mind you) and FTPing up static files. I converted to Blogger. I later converted to WordPress, and spent hours in a bar with Dave and Paulie helping me fix things that broke during the move.

Somewhere in there I met The Mc, continued to heal in grueling, Kleenex abusing weekly therapy sessions, and subsequently found myself with less time to write and less things I needed to purge.

I counted a few weeks ago and found I’d only written/posted 51 times last year, as opposed to an average of 300+ in the years prior.

Unsure of what 2010 holds, I’m still thinking about the blog. I’m thinking about and missing writing, I’m thinking about and missing the things that used to make me write. I’m also thinking about all the effing self-censoring I’ve been doing that has stood in the way of writing. Oh, but the list of excuses goes on and on: the cats won’t let me sit without wanting to be petted, that I’d rather be with The Mc than write/run/walk/justaboutanythingconstructive. Twitter and Facebook which mean a shift in thinking complete coherent thoughts to thinking in 140 character summarizations. Then there’s the other mostly secret blog I’m keeping about the big thing in our life I’m still not allowed to talk about. There’s watering the plants. Doing laundry. Running errands.

Meh.

This year, despite being off to a contradictory start, I’m going to try to do better.

For me.

Note: this post is not a solicitation for advice. It’s rambling, cleansing and only very lightly considered/edited musing…what blogging was once upon a time intended to be.

I’d like to blame my restlessness on something. Anything would do, but just now I’m focused on the mythical perfect plot of land we’ve been hunting hungrily for over the past two years in North Carolina.

It’s not that though. I know it’s not. At least, not entirely.

Hell, my old boss/surrogate father wrote in a birthday card he gave me three years ago “To my favorite restless soul…” which really, says it all.

I know this scares the crap out of The Mc – knowing no matter what he does/we do I *might* not be happy. I am, I’ll continue to be…it’s just compartmentalized and I think there might always be something “missing” with me. I’m broken.

We were visiting our storage unit(s) a month or so ago – pulling out one big item to give to a friend – jostling remaining items around ala Tetris in hopes of consolidating from 2 units to 1. In hopes of making us feel less disorganized, I suppose; and less greedy for hanging on to so much crap we’ll probably never need.

Moving, stacking, shuffling, cursing, sweating. I grabbed one of my see-through plastic file totes to stack it on one of its brethren and noticed something pressing up against its wall trying to claw its way out.

Immediately I knew (my heart knew) it was a list I’d made many, many, MANY moons ago – before the gray, the love, the children. I popped the top of the bin open, snatched up the sheet and hastily folded it before shoving it into my pocket.

We kept playing Tetris.

Was the list what I’ve been looking for? Was the empty space in me the sum of the items I’d listed years before that I couldn’t remember to recreate and hadn’t checked off my life “to-do” list yet?

I snuck a look at the list a few days later.

Did that. Did that. Didn’t do that but don’t want to anymore. Did that.

Damn. The list wasn’t going to fix me after all.

It’s months later, and I’m breaking bread with my old friend Paulie – who is also (and I don’t think he’ll mind me saying so) also infinitely restless and terminally lost.

It occurs to me there are only a handful of things that are different now than they were during that pocket of time I look back on now and think I was “happy”:

- I was not blissfully happy in a loving relationship, and didn’t have kids I adore
- I’m not volunteering nearly as much
- I’m not running (see also: bad knees, inertia)
- I’m not up to my blue-green-gray (depending on the day) eyeballs in debt, struggling to get by but insisting on “treating” myself, regardless
- I’m sans my close knit group of girlfriends
- I’m not seeing Melinda (my therapist) once a week

Is that it? Am I only happy when I’m in a state of chaos?

If you’re the child of alcoholics, you already know the answer: please turn to page 23 to continue your adventure.

Busy busy busy.

I can hear my friend Harry mocking me and I picture him with a goblet of red wine in his hand, smirking after he over pronounces the “s” as a “z” and rolls his eyes. Mocking me with love.

It seems like I’m always going. Somewhere, something. Appearances, I call them (also mocking, also Harry’s voice). It’s not that any of these things are void of substance, per se (as I tread carefully, trying not to offend) or that I don’t enjoy them. Rather, it’s that I do enjoy them but they leave me drained, tired, and behind on things I like to think I’d rather be doing. Things that in reality, given the time, I probably wouldn’t be doing anyway. I’d be twittering and naval gazing and eating German Chocolate cake for dinner and wondering why according to the BMI I’m 2lbs away from being grossly overweight (Srsly. No joke.).

It’s easy enough to correct, everyone says. You know what? Everyone can suck it.

I don’t want to change…exactly. I want it all. Even if I know I’ll still be lost.

Was I happier when I was “poor”? Was it because I spent less time on the run, and more time running? Was it because I spent more time being alone because I couldn’t afford to go out and play? Was it because I spent more time in my head and less time being over stimulated? Was it because I was writing more and purging demons regularly? Was it because I was closer to my mourning and my grief? Was it because I was physically healthier? Was it because I had a deeper, more aching and desperate appreciation for what little I had?

“What would you do if all your dreams suddenly came true?”

Me? I’d probably be miserable.

(To be continued. There’s more, but this is already too long…so I’ll break the rest of my thoughts into another post.)

In the last few weeks we’ve said good-bye to a family member, looked at half a dozen houses and had a fight (we never fight).

I’ve been allowing myself to be pulled like taffy from event to event, obligation to obligation.

Last night I watched the sky light up over downtown and made a vow to myself to take it back: my time misses me. My legs miss stretching and hitting the pavement, my mind misses long nights of physically (not mentally) exhausted sleep. My fingers miss typing and spilling out my cares, worries, observations and frustrations.

Like doing the right thing, it’s really that simple – but rarely that easy.