writing

10/21/2025. A Deja Vu Of Sorts

I haven’t been here for almost a year. The need to spew my guts has returned. Maybe I’ll explore what causes that compulsion later.

Or not. I mean, “now you see me, now you don’t” has been the modus operandi with my writing, whether in analog journal form since my youth, to today’s current digital form in my …dare I say, “old age”?…. I am pushing 60 after all. Don’t necessarily feel old, despite the aches in my healing broken patella. (Oh, yeah…that happened while I was out…)

Anyway, I was intending to do something of an update on the State of Our Union (micro and macro) but I got distracted for a moment scrolling back on this blog, curious about where I’d left off. I have to admit some of it made me tear up as it brought back memories of how I was feeling back then about stuff going on.

Then, I ran across an entry entitled “10/22/20”, which I actually wrote on 10/10/23….

And wow. I don’t know the right word to describe running across it just moments ago. I chose Deja Vu for today’s title because of the timing – the really weird timing.

Basically, 2 years ago, at roughly the same time of year as now, I was writing about something that happened 3 years previously at roughly the same time of year; and here I am 5 years out, at almost the exact same date as what I was referencing in 2023. And this was not what I had intended to ramble on about when logging in today. But, it’s….kinda weird.

Let me explain, if I even can be remotely coherent right now.

My father died of mesothelioma in November of 2020 after a long, rough, hospice at home. It was slow and painful and, therefore, pretty traumatic for him, my mom, and me. 5 years later, I don’t think we’ve really processed everything about it. It kind of remains a room behind a door that we rarely take a peek into. We know what’s there. We just can’t bring ourselves to look at the details for too long.

Anyway, I recall a book that I read and that I gave to my mom while we were dealing with taking care of my dad as his health slipped away. It was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s book, “On Life After Death”. A book I highly recommend to everyone – even if you and your loved ones are in perfect health. I found it to be a big comfort and I think it was a comfort for my mom as well, because, you see, the author explores the common threads in dying and near-death experiences that she researched and witnessed throughout her career all over the world. And though it doesn’t necessarily come to some concrete, absolute declaration about what happens after we die, it most definitely offers hope. Especially for people who worry about things like religion and faith. Because while my dad was for the majority of his life firmly anti-religion, my mom had been steadily growing firmer and firmer in her religious beliefs. And when I did what they’d always encouraged, i.e. to choose what I believed, I chose Judaism. Which, I was dismayed to find out, didn’t exactly make them too happy. Anyhoo, you can well imagine that my mother, being very Lutheran, was worried (maybe even still IS, I don’t know) about her husband and daughter’s souls. But the thing about Kübler-Ross’s book was that she found that no matter what religion, belief, non-belief, race, country, age of a patient, etc., the experiences they had as they were dying, or returning from a state of dying, were remarkably very similar. The vast majority were experiences of comfort, joy, painlessness, fearlessness, acceptance, illumination. And that book kicked off a small fascination in me with near death experiences (NDEs), which leads to what I watched this morning on YouTube…..

So, my latest habit is YouTube. I watch it for news, information, entertainment. You name the subject, you will find it there. I’ll start my day with drinking my coffee, while maybe working on a project, maybe while cleaning up the kitchen, and I’ll have it going. And one channel I regularly check in on is, yep, one with testimonies from people with NDEs. I’ll admit, some stories seem a bit convoluted, maybe even a bit wacky, but I don’t dispute the experiences people attest to. Some of them even make me wonder if I myself may have died briefly in my sleep back in my late twenties, because several NDEs describe what I distinctly remember dreaming about once (my husband can’t understand how I can remember so much from my childhood or how I can remember dreams I’ve had in the past…but I do) And, I digress….

The NDE video I watched this morning was from a journalist who was raised without religion, and her experience and what she described gave me chills for a second. It made SO much sense to me. It resonated with thoughts I’d often had when contemplating the intersection of religion, belief and dying; it sort of aligned with Kübler-Ross’s book. And it was such a comfort. Because I also worried about my dad when he died. Not about his soul. Because his soul was – IS – a good one, through and through. But I could sense that he was maybe a little afraid in those last days. That he was apprehensive about what was going to happen next. I didn’t want that for him. Looking back I wish that I had told him about that book. I don’t know why I didn’t discuss it with him, because we always discussed things we’d read, news and documentaries and films we’d watched. In those last days, strangely enough, we danced around talking about what was going to happen, even though he, for maybe the first time in a long time, maybe ever, agreed to pray traditional end-of-life type prayers with me and mom as a family one afternoon.

I should have mentioned to him what was in that book! I wanted his anxiety to dissipate, to be relieved in his last moments…It’s the fact that we weren’t in the room with him when it happened that has tortured me ever since. That we weren’t by his bedside, holding his hands, but down the hall, when he passed over. So, we don’t know if he was able to relax and be pleasantly surprised in that moment. This is one of the details of his death that I have so diligently avoided voicing, deliberately avoided opening the door on for more than a second.

So this morning, I was watching a NDE video from a stranger on YouTube about dying and what they saw. Then, about an hour ago, I got onto this blog to deal with other unrelated stuff, and instead found myself looking at the posts about my dad and losing him. Each entry with coincidental October dates.

I’ll just say this: That video was a comfort. That video is what I needed to see before diving back into this blog and before diving into processing what’s happening in the world on a micro and macro level in my life.

Now that video feels like a distinct, personal, message.

And the message is this: Don’t worry. It’s all good.

Coincidence? Maybe.

But….

My dad worked in intelligence for a short time, before leaving the military and marrying my mom. People in intelligence tend to question convenient coincidences…a favorite joke is the classic “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they AREN’T out to get you!”. They learn about codes in communications. They pick up on patterns. I’m still very much my father’s daughter, I guess. And I’m definitely good with that.

Day 11 Of My So-Called Retreat

Yeah…..It’s more like I’ve been retreat-ish; still have my toes in the water…

The damn news. News of what’s going on “out there”. It’s an itch I can’t quit scratching.

I’ve been good about not getting on FaceBook or Instagram. But I’m still in the habit of scrolling through my news feed on my phone and of pulling up YouTube on my computer. It’s a terrible habit. It’s a time stealing, sleep-delaying habit. At least I’m just reading the headlines (for the most part, though some articles will draw me in…argh); I’ll hit “save” to read later…I can tell just from the headlines whether or not it’s gonna stress me out and that’s really the thing that I’ve been trying to retreat from: the stress. I’m specifically retreating from the anger and frustration and dismay and anxiety that inevitably results from that stress. The stress that humanity gives me.

I’m happy to report that my stress actually is down though – just from the little bit of retreat I’ve managed so far.

I think one big factor in reducing it has been getting outdoors. What they say is true, people! Touch that grass!! Get out into Nature!!! Even if that nature is your tiny, oddly shaped backyard in a city neighborhood which needs a lot of work. But only if it isn’t swelteringly hot and humid…because that situation will just wilt your psyche and make you cranky as hell. I’m not so sure, now that I think on it, that the zombies in “The Walking Dead” became zombified because of a virus or more because of the god-awful climate of the South. Anyway, I’ve been taking advantage of the cooler temperatures of Spring and trying to “make hay while the sun shines” as the old saying goes. Trying to work towards creating a little backyard oasis in which to…yes…retreat when needed … not just for me, but for my family. It’s something positive to do.

My psychologist observed something about me in my last visit, that I don’t think I’d ever realized fully about myself. She said, while encouraging me on this path to cocoon myself in order to repair my mental health, “I know, you want to save the world…” She called me an “activist”, because I care about social issues.

A couple of friends of mine and I have joked in the past about us getting together at our little klatsches in order to fix the world’s problems, but it’s funny that I’ve never actually thought of myself as someone who wants to do that. And I know that I’ve never thought of myself as an “activist”. But my psychologist is onto something about me. In my mind, and in the words of other people throughout my life, it’s more like I’ve always just been overly sensitive, a “goody-goody”, taken things too seriously, just cared too much. But, the way she put it…”wanting to save the world”. She distilled it out of my well of distress. That has been my “problem” for a long, long, long time, I think. And maybe I’m starting to feel a bit lighter because it’s finally sinking in that I can’t do that. There’s no way I can do that. There’s no way any one human being can do that.

“But I can do something about the one in front of me…” My dad’s favorite line from a story about someone who was told they couldn’t save all the lost and distressed creatures they ran across…

Yup. It is true. You can do something about the life that crosses your path. And the life that is most immediately in front of me is mine.

Car Thoughts

My husband is one of those people who cannot drive anywhere without music playing. Before he pulls out of any parking space, he has to make sure he has his playlist synced with the bluetooth in the car; and if he can’t have his own music going for whatever reason, he has to have a radio station on. It can’t be talk radio though – it has to be music. He needs a soundtrack.

I used to be one of those people. But as I got older, I got sick of the music stations and all of their schticks – commercials, banter, suckier music, etc. – and sometimes found myself wanting to listen to the news instead. Even after I joined Spotify, figured out the car bluetooth thing and had my song playlists, I felt pulled more toward things like NPR, Podcasts, and Audio books. Why the talk and not the music?? After all, I love music and just about all genres of music, in almost any language and culture, with only a few exceptions (really heavy metal and most country…but even then, I can find a few songs I like…) Music is one of the wonderful, enjoyable, beautiful things about human life. Music has been a comfort throughout my existence. But more and more, I don’t necessarily need it playing in the background, whether in the car or even at home. And more and more, I find myself not even listening to anything at all…not even the talk.

I drive my teenage son back and forth to school. He still doesn’t have his driver’s license for a couple of reasons right now (nothing criminal, no). He usually wears his headphones so he can listen to his own playlists, and more importantly: not have to interact with me. But even with his headphones, he used to turn the car radio on, and he can’t understand why more and more, I drive with silence. He finds it weird. Though he prefers it to when I attempt conversation with him. And my husband as well can’t understand not having anything playing at all. And one reason occurred to me this morning: my brain is like a radio when I’m driving. Well, also anywhere else, but mostly when I’m driving. Whether I’ve got some song on repeat in my head, or I’m having some sort of dialogue with myself, musing about one thing or another, it’s constant chatter, constant noise. So, no, I don’t need the extra…I’m just chasing thoughts around and those thoughts are loud and distracting enough already.

Anyway, one thing that has always bothered me about my thoughts while driving is that I can’t stop to write them down. And I don’t know why I have had this need to write down my thoughts, get them out of my head, discuss them with others, even way before I ever learned to drive…I only know that I have. And the thoughts I have while driving always seem to be the thoughts I want to explore further…the epiphanies, the connections, the curiously odd ones, the philosophical ones…. and by the time I get home, it feels like I’ve been down so many rabbit holes already, through all the connecting tunnels, that I’m already forgetting what I wanted to hold onto.

So, here I am, grabbing a coffee, after returning home from dropping him off at school…and documenting the fragments to maybe explore at a later date: God as Consciousness, Consciousness beginning with Language, or is it the other way around? The Word manifesting (as they say), Humans need to constantly communicate, Why do we do it, Misinterpretation of language, The problems of conveying feelings through words, back to God as consciousness – How our brains process everything, The universe looking like a network of neurons, God as Universe, The impossibility of humans being Godly or God-like, though we keep striving because our religions say we need to, but the impossibility of that because…Human, Why do we regard some people as more intelligent than other people? Why do we think of some people’s opinions more important than other people’s? The constant human need to Understand Things, to Connect…Communication being a process of sharing and judging thoughts, Thoughts leading to actions or to inactions, The physical world vs. the intellectual world and the interplay between the two, back to the Intellectual being part of Consciousness, back to God as consciousness, reason….The Macro and the Micro, and what lies in between….Life is everything being connected and yet everything being separate experiences at THE SAME TIME….Time and Consciousness being related…Parenthood…(Yup. Mind jumps around like that…but it IS related)…Creation…Universal creation…What effects what? What do we really know? Why do we keep wanting to know? Everything matters and nothing matters…Human beings as Thought Sifters…..Thought Sifters, hmmm….God as Thought….back to that….Energy….Where Energy fits in…My father’s theory of God being Gravity….Humans are weird, Human experience is weird, (as opposed to what other living organisms’ experience, right?…or as opposed to God’s experience?) and we’re all just trying to get each other through it….

Everything Everywhere All At Once. There’s more than one reason that I loved that movie. The title alone describes my mental state.

But why does it always get activated most while I’m in the car, when I should be paying more attention to the road?

Anyone need a ride?

Retreating more…

At the beginning of this month (so, 3 days ago), I set myself the challenge of ghosting social media, as well as mainstream media, and seeing if it would help my state of mind at all.

How it’s going so far:

1)Been waking up pretty crabbily. (Not that I’ve been a person who ever, ever, cheerfully wakes up). Can’t say that my mood has improved much. It might actually be getting a bit worse.

2) In terms of dedication to this challenge, it has been slightly difficult. Not so much with the FaceBook or Instagram: I manage to catch myself whenever, out of sheer habit, I click the apps on my phone, and I quickly back out. But with my news feed, or on my computer, it’s been far harder. Getting out of the habit of seeing what’s happening in the greater world is so ingrained in me that the anxiety of not knowing what is happening lately is just as great as the anxiety of knowing . I’ve been peeking.

3) I’m wondering if my irritability is a side-effect, like withdrawal from any addiction.

Now, there were many mitigating factors to my state of mind that have been in play for several months (hell, who am I kidding? Years!)…that I don’t have the energy right now to get into….which made me embark on this effort. It’s all been feeding into this current mood swing of wanting to isolate and retreat. And I know that I’ve had a tendency to do that anyway whenever I’m depressed. But this time feels very different. I’m not really depressed, per se. I don’t want to end my life. I don’t hate life. I still see many things to appreciate and enjoy, and do. But I’m just not so sure anymore that I care to be as involved with anything outside of my immediate environs, i.e., my family and my home and wherever I happen to physically find myself. If it isn’t within 20 feet of me, or if it doesn’t involve someone I am personally acquainted with, (and, even then, if that thing does not involve me at all…) do I really care to know anymore?? That’s how I’m feeling. Unlike my lifelong feelings of depression, I know precisely from where this sentiment has developed….Namely, Disappointment and Disillusionment…and possibly Disgust. (More about that another time).

Anyhow, many people, especially those in my immediate vicinity, keep advising to step away from social media and the news of the world. They say that it will reduce the stress and anxiety. So, that is a piece of advice I have decided to put to the test.
And in addition to seeing how it affects me, we will see if those who advised me to let go will be relieved or appreciative of the fact that I did….

Retreating

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, The Internet in general….Those are the main ways that I’ve been engaging with the world ever since I became pregnant, “quit working”, and chose to stay home to take care of my kids.

I’m of the generation that still remembers the main way of getting news of the world: in print, on radio, on TV. I grew up seeing my parents reading the morning paper, listening to news stations on the radio, getting magazine subscriptions in the mail, watching the nightly news broadcasts on television. And, more often than not, I was right there with them, reading and listening and watching.

I’m an only child. I find that a lot of us tend to be rather “bookish”. Without siblings to distract or annoy us or to follow around, our parents are often our main companions and role models. Who else are you going to argue with, discuss things with, learn from? (Well…for those of us only children who are not complete extroverts, anyway). So, being informed about what was happening around the world was obviously, based upon the behavior and talk of my parents, very important. It was simply a part of being educated. And education was of the utmost importance. How did one stay educated? Well, reading was a huge part.

One would read, and yes, listen and watch, and then one would discuss the things that you read and heard and saw with actual live people you knew and encountered in your life: friends, family, teachers, fellow students, co-workers; sometimes with strangers on buses, in waiting rooms, in lines, at the park, wherever…Oftentimes, on the phone. Because that’s where people were. And human communication involved such social things as voice intonation, facial expression, body language, etc…Manners, in general. Sometimes this communication was civil and sometimes it was not. I think we really tried to be civil though, because when you’re face to face with someone, or ear to ear, there is an immediate feedback, an immediate, physically felt, response.

It wasn’t just the news of the world you would share with each other either. It was news of what was going on with you personally. That’s the stuff we really enjoyed talking with each other about, more than anything probably.

And all of the above communication involved time. It took us a lot more effort back then. We had to fact-check, with multiple sources, often involving print-based media, which took more than just a few minutes or seconds, and sometimes involved miles of travel to arrive at its destination for distribution. We had to pick up a phone, engage in conversation that could meander off-topic and back. We had to edit, and re-edit. Question and re-question.

With the advent of the Internet and “social media”, obviously, things have rapidly changed. I haven’t been sure for a long while now how I feel about it. I know I’m not the only one. I know I certainly can’t speak for kids who have grown up with it and who don’t know anything about the “before” times… All I can speak to is what the experience is for those of us who can remember and how this strange new world of communication has affected us. The thing is: how it affects us has been affecting them. They see us, they watch us, they imitate us, they note what seems important to us, how we get our information, how much time we spend on it….

I’ve digressed…as I am wont to do….because I really started out thinking about how I’m embarking on a month-long quest to completely ignore Facebook and Instagram (luckily I never got mired down in Twitter or SnapChat or other platforms – FaceBook and Instagram were enough trouble in themselves) and also to try ignoring the news of the world. Yes, I am going to attempt to do something that used to feel like heresy, like anathema, to me – retreat, somewhat, into ignorance. I’m going to retreat into my own immediate world. Why? Because with the advent of all this new technology and means of communication, the personal has merged with the political (world events) to an extent that I feel has never existed before. Yes, as my dad and others have always said, “the personal is political and vice versa”…But, also, as my mom has always believed, “it’s all in God’s hands”…

In other words, I’m realizing that in this era when the Internet has brought all the info, all the communication, all the things, at full throttle directly into our faces at all times, from everywhere and everyone, because I am someone who cares maybe a bit more than the average, and because I am not God-like in being able to actually do anything about any of it, and because this caring about what happens and this caring about information feels so damn overwhelming that it has essentially paralyzed me for years and years now… I need to face the things I can actually take action on…my own little piece of this world…and only this piece: my physical life, the physical lives of my family and small circle of friends. The world is too much of a distraction….an extremely scary distraction right now.

April 1st

Yep. April Fool’s Day. And I will be the first to admit to being a fool. As all humans are, without exception.

Therefore, I will take my place alongside all the other fools of the world in expressing my opinions on and experiences of the world we live in. We humans have a tendency to want to do that for some odd reason. I’m no exception.

And the world contains a lot to have opinions about, and experiences of, and essentially it’s all a infinite, perpetual, long-ass, questionably never-ending story.

So what’s mine? What’s yours? What’s your neighbor’s? What’s the guy’s who’s sleeping on the bench at the bus stop? None of us can seem to help asking ourselves that question on the regular. What’s our story? One thing for sure – it’s convoluted and messy and complicated and paradoxical and confusing. (Okay, so five things for sure).

And I’m not sure where I’m going with this, as usual, but go I will. I’m beginning to feel like it’s the only thing I should do…in order to cope, in order to figure things out – as if things can actually ever be “figured out”…So, yeah, a fool’s errand for sure.

Introspective Lesson No. 1

I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I was going to write about everything. I  was going to write about everything I experienced and noticed about the world and its’ occupants. I was going to create compelling stories and powerful essays!
But mostly I was going to write about THEM. I was going to write about all of THEM who thought I wasn’t smart or smart enough. All of THEM who thought I was weird. All of THEM with whom I did not fit in. All of THEM who couldn’t understand me because I was, actually, smarter than them, better than them! They were shallow and cookie-cutter. They were such sheep. Nay, lemmings!  Conformists all. They didn’t realize how incredibly simple minded and crass, ignorant and, yes, shamefully mean, they were. And I was going to reveal it to them. I was going to SHOW THEM ALL.

I was going to shame everyone who made fun of my love of reading, everyone who teased me for being quiet, everyone who called me a bookworm, as if that was somehow a degrading thing, everyone who said I had my head too much in the clouds. I didn’t consider at the time that since they were not avid readers themselves, that this particular form of revenge would be essentially ineffective.  All the stupid, random, bigoted and boorish utterances that fell from their mouths I would document. I had a special fondness for Harriet the Spy.

They would get “theirs” – oh, ho, ho, yes, they would!!! And in doing so, I guess that I was also searching for those who would, in fact, “get” me. Who would understand and appreciate me. I think I wanted to entertain people too, which was strangely contradictory to my mostly shy nature. I also had a special fondness for Carol Burnett and Erma Bombeck.

And, somehow, this writer’s life was going to be an inherently exciting life. Full of travel balanced with hours of fascinating research in really cool libraries. I was, of course!, going to live in a book lined apartment in New York or Paris or anywhere in Germany. I wanted to “make something of myself’ – on my own terms. In other words, with something that I, myself, held in high regard; something creative and interesting and not the same as everyone else around me.

I was different from THEM.

I was therefore BETTER than THEM.

This has always stuck in a nook in my brain, from one of my favorite books:

“But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam ‘unskilled laughter’ coming from the fifth row. And that’s right – that’s right – God knows it’s depressing….But that’s none of your business, really. …An artist’s concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you.
…

But I’ll tell you a terrible secret – Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know – listen to me, now – don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is?…Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ himself, buddy.”

Zooey. Franny and Zooey , J.D. Salinger

I was a snob.

Madness

This is madness. The idea that I’m going to keep a blog.  Who am I kidding?

It’s happening to me again. I get this surge of ambition and hope and resolution and then trip over myself and land face down. And it always happens when I declare my intentions out loud. I automatically doom them that way.

Time. Time is my enemy and always has been. I don’t manage it well. Deadlines wage holy terror in my head and slay me in my tracks. I know that no one has put any deadlines upon me here, except maybe myself. I know that there isn’t any impatient, pointer wielding, red-marker carrying, instructor around to shame me about lack of productivity or poor phrasing or grammatical errors or “lack of originality” or “lack of a thesis statement”. I don’t really have any particular goals or ambitions with this thing I’m learning how to navigate. I’m not doing this for a grade. 

I should insert a short, general, disclosure here: I am seeing a psychologist and have been for a few years now. We discuss lots of things. I had a moment about a month ago in which she enabled me to see that what I choose to do doesn’t necessarily have to have any purpose other than making me happy. If I’ve always wanted to write – well, then – write! That was such a freeing revelation for me. The thought of writing – just for me. Not for a certificate, not for an assignment, not for money, not for a profession, and now that I’m remembering that, I’m starting to feel better….

This morning I was starting to feel remorse about telling a few people, with tipsy camaraderie, that I’d started this blog. Why? Well, because now I feel the obligation to keep it updated. 

(Okay. It just struck me between the eyes that I’m not being entirely truthful. I’m feeling remorse because I feel the obligation to myself to keep it updated.) 

And here is where I circle back to my idea that it’s madness. 

I want to write well. And, maybe, okay, I’d like someone else in the world to say “well done!” (again, I realize I wasn’t being entirely truthful before). But to write well, to do anything creative, really well, you have to devote the time to it. A LOT of time. You have to dedicate yourself to it. Commit TIME to it. Every day.

There’s more:  I also love to paint, to knit, to sew, to craft, to just make stuff! Be it with words or colors or cardboard or metal or marker or you name it.  I could spend every waking hour happily doing those things, every day, all day, and into the night. As long as there isn’t a deadline. Or someone looking over my shoulder. 

Then, of course, there are people and animals who depend on me to clean up after them, and feed them, and play with them, and chauffeur them, and supervise them, and teach them, and exercise them, and just BE with them….and the guilt comes back and stares me down.  

“What do you think you are doing spending hours in front of the computer? What do you think you are doing getting lost in knitting that project?  What do you think you are doing, sitting at that table playing with beads and wire for so long?”

And I’m back to madness. Mad at Time, mad at my past, mad at my surroundings, mostly mad at myself. Just generally mad.

Second Thoughts

The drudgery of a new day. Gray, cold, wet, muddy, mucky day. Facing the knowledge that I’ve set myself up again with my wine-fueled, manic, grand, intentions to write everyday. One more lurking thing to hang over my head, ready to vomit guilt all over me the minute it goes unattended.
I woke up to the blather of the television set, checked in on the blather of the internet, and asked myself if I really thought any good would come of adding more blather to it all. The answer was an ego-deflating “Absolutely not”. (Not that my ego was huge enough to emit much air as it decreased, mind you…)
And yet, here I am.
Right.
Waiting for the other unattended, too long neglected, things I have hanging over my head to spew their bile over me for ignoring them to do this.
And what, exactly, IS this that I’m doing?
Just thinking out loud at the moment. Listening to one of my cats snore contentedly behind the computer screen and becoming envious of him. Wishing (my sincere apologies!) that I had not drunkenly mentioned to a few dear friends of mine that I’d started this thing that will, most likely, go absolutely nowhere and provide absolutely nothing interesting or enlightening to anyone’s day.
And yet, here I still sit.
Right.
Snippets are all I can handle right now.
I’m off in an attempt to wash away some of the spewage (that’s right, auto-correct; it’s my blog and I’ll make up words if I want to) that’s dripping down on me.

Grand Intentions

I’ve always been full of them. Great plans. Resolutions. Grand intentions.

I sit here wondering where I am going to go with this blog. What I intend to do with it. Do I even need to have a plan??

Last night, when I was full of my nicely rounded, masterfully blended, dark red liquid courage (with “just a hint of vanilla and mocha”), I resolved to write everyday. To creak open the rusty hinges of a wish to put words together.

After I had a chance today to wash away the remaining fuzzy film of late night recklessness with a cup of bracing, dark brown, full bodied (“with a hint of caramel undertones”) reality, I look around and wonder how the hell I am going to do that.

How the hell am I going to do that with kitchen counters full of dirty dishes (because I was on the computer) and bits of chewed up dog bed scattered everywhere (because I was going to get to that as soon as I was off the computer) and piles of mail to go through, and loads of laundry, and a bedroom that I need to finish painting, and fur balls that need to be vacuumed, and….and the list goes on.

I used to think when I was much younger that writers sat down and the words poured forth onto the page. In High School, I realized that this was not true. Writing was more effort than that. Writing involved so much more than that. You see, to me, writing was all-encompassing. It had to be true, and it had to be genuine, and it had to be original, and it had to be unique, and it had to be special, and it had to be perfect. It had to be your soul, Your Self, on that page. And the realization of what writing was to me, how much effort and time – oh how much time!! – that it would take to accomplish that, roared up, fangs bared, and like Medusa herself, turned my mind to stone.

I was vanquished.

Here I am now. Facing her again.