sarahski

Today is a chilly, dreary day. It’s been chilly and dreary since Monday, and like a plant that needs direct light, I feel sluggish and withered. There’s something in particular about Fall dreary that is more draining than Summer dreary. Maybe because if Summer gets dreary, it’s a reprieve. It’s a good excuse for warm, lazy day. Fall dreary is ominous. “Get used to it, sister,” it says, “it’s all downhill from here!”

Now, I actually like fall. I get heat sick easily, so summer doesn’t suit me. Fall is cozy, and I can break out the blankets and the warm drinks again. But this first ungraceful transition, where it goes from 90 on Friday, to 50 and dreary on Monday, always gives me a whiplash. Particularly when it sticks around for multiple days, as it has this week.

And the Kryptonite-like weather has bookends of things going on. (Cue flailing arms)
I’ve had projects I’ve been working on, and then these periodic and inconvenience episodes of water spurting from our ceiling. (The long story short on that is that the upstairs neighbors keep overflowing their toilet, maintenance can’t find anything wrong with said toilet, and neighbors are being highly uncooperative.) It’s been frustrating, to have the flow of projects and creativity and getting stuff done so jarringly interrupted. I mean, technically I could keep working on the days when my ceiling starts leaking, but I’ll be honest – I can’t. We had that nasty flooding almost four years ago that got us switched out of our first apartment; ever since then, unsolicited water in my apartment feels like a big deal.

I hear the weekend is supposed to be better, and it’s supposed to be nicer through at least the beginning of next week. I hope to catch up on things again then. Dreary days are unavoidable, but I’m just not ready for this much of it. (You know what I really want? One of those lamps that mimic sunlight.)

So on a less-than-usual productive note, I’ve started trying to read like a fiend again, since the book mess has gotten unwieldy. I’m trying to see if I can read a book a week for a while. This week’s offering has been Queen of the Damned. I love stories about ancient mythology, so in that regard, I’m enjoying the story. The story just doesn’t flow. It’s really jarring as it goes back and forth from character to character, introducing new things, then going back thousands of years to explain another relevant thing. It’s all very interesting, but I’m not engrossed in it the way I would like to be. I haven’t enjoyed it the way I enjoyed the first two Vampire Chronicles books. So I think it might be quite a while before I seek out another one. I do want to read more eventually, but I don’t think I’ll be sad that I have to continue down the unwieldy stack.

I’ve struggled falling and staying asleep lately. Some nights, I take melatonin, but the result is usually that I can’t function well until 10 or 11 am. Tonight I chose not to, and the result is starting this post at 1 am, next to a sleeping husband, with some hoarding show on.

The last 12 months have brought what I feel is a great deal of maturity and perspective. For so long, I’ve taken a very submissive approach to life. I’ve let everyone else take the lead, because to some degree, I haven’t felt like I could make decisions or stand behind them. I didn’t really think about this choice, I just thought that I was being an agreeable, respectful person and that in the end, this would be more beneficial. As a result, I haven’t alienated many people, but I haven’t been very remarkable, either. The adjective most commonly used to describe me is “nice”, and I appreciate that, but it should also be followed with “forgettable” to be accurate. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with being nice. But nice, in this instance, doesn’t mean helpful, compassionate, wise, loving – it just indicates a lack of negative traits. That’s also not to say that I’ve been a fake or that life has stunk. I just feel like I’ve put myself on “mute” more than necessary.

Then came this choice. I could choose to throw all of my self respect on the fire, apologize for things I hadn’t done, and make things good. Or, I could refuse to take blame that wasn’t due, stand up for myself and walk away with dignity. I chose the latter of my own volition, and I paid for it.

But that event caused me to examine everything else, to figure out where my own ethical line in the sand really is. I’m learning the consequences of my inaction, how they affect not only myself, but others in my life, too. I’m learning that I am capable of making decisions and that the act does not mean that I will alienate others.  I’m realizing that my intuition is pretty good. I’m learning that I can do the things I want to do, that I have more to offer than I give myself credit for, and I feel like I’m finding my voice.

I want to inspire people, I want to encourage and help them. I want to be the best friend I can to others. I’ve always wanted these things, but I have a much better perspective now. Really, I feel that I have a better understanding of what friendship is and isn’t. More than anything, I’m convinced that it’s not possible to tell someone that you love them, and then throw them to the wolves without a second thought. This revelation has, oddly enough, been very healing. It’s one thing to mourn something you lost, but it’s another to realize that you never had it to begin with.

I have some very good, consistent, outstanding friends. I have friends that I know, and have proven, that they’re there for me in a pinch. I realize that I’ve written about this whole thing before, and by now it’s more than a dead horse. But this is something that has brought a lot of reflection and ultimately great changes for me. It takes time to process stuff like that, and some things have had to go through the processing more than once. I have a richer life because of this, and so I’m actually okay with it. I can honestly say that I see beauty from the pain, and that’s where I hoped I’d be.

I’ve been thinking lately about how I choose my friends, and what kind of girls I end up with that way. I don’t want to be seen as clingy, and I play mental games involving when it’s socially acceptable to invite people to do things, and don’t want to alienate by making the wrong decision, so I end up taking a very passive role in friendships. That means, I end up befriending people who are more aggressive, more dramatic … have more of a ‘firecracker’ personality. I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’s just that, I’ve had a pattern with these types of friends, and it works out extremely well for a while, but in the long run, the personality type and mine don’t work. It’s not that I would ever exclude someone with this personality type from being  a friend, but I think I’d be very cautious before investing much in that friendship.  

However, I’ve also had plenty of friendships that time and life just slowly creeped away. Sort of like when you play the Sims, if you don’t maintain a friendship, it will downgrade after a while. This isn’t a bad thing, but it happens.

There is someone who I’ve known for almost two years now, and I’ve gotten to spend more time with her this last year. I think her personality and mine are quite similar, and for me, that’s made it a lot easier. I wish I’d put more points into building that friendship sooner, because as it turns out, she’s intelligent and wise, funny and caring. More than any friendship I can remember, I feel like this one goes back and forth, smoothly, like pong. I feel like things are easy and uncomplicated with her, and yet she, like me, wants to improve herself and struggles with some of the same things I do. It works. I’ve wanted to tell her how incredibly much I like her for a while now, but dog gone it, I feel so awkward doing so. (Mostly because, as I think she’d understand, I’m still afraid that she doesn’t reciprocate and :wheeeeeeze: now I just look creepy.)

I don’t know if we’ll be sitting on a porch when we’re 80, cackling over novels and tea together. But I very much enjoy her friendship now, and that’s important, isn’t it? I hope that in the long run, I am as good of a friend to her, as she has been to me.

My friend Kate makes some great recommendations. I picked up this book called “Generation WTF” this past week. It’s aimed at 18-25 year olds, those in college and just entering the workforce. It’s with great snickering that I squeak into the proclaimed scope of this book, and husband does not.

This book is a response to the fact that this recession has hit young people hard. Now, more than in the past, employers are holding catch 22 over our heads: They want the experience in order to give us the job, but won’t give us a job in order to gain experience. This book is supposed to serve as a guide to becoming wise, tenacious and fearless, and I like all of those adjectives.

Unlike some books I’ve read/seen, this book does not start out by asking “what do you want in life?” – it starts out by saying (paraphrase) ”The year is 2021 and you are now dead. What do you want people to say about you? What do you want to have accomplished?”

My knee jerk reaction was that I might as well not accomplish anything if I’m just going to be dead in ten years. (I did realize that this was not the point)

This was my eventual response:

1. I will have publihed at least one book that has been, or will be made into a movie.

2. I will have traveled to the parts of the world that I’m interested in, like Europe and Australia.

3. I will have been an active, healthy person. If I’m dead, it’s not a preventable health issue.

4. I will have impacted lives for the better through the giving of my time and resources. This will be true even if I’m not directly aware of the impact I had.

I didn’t try to over think it, or to write down things that aren’t true to me. Curing cancer or another disease would be nice, but it’s also not remotely realistic. I would, however, be annoyed if I didn’t eventually finish at least one well-written novel, if I never went anywhere, if I just gave up on life, and if in the end, my life didn’t do anything for anyone.

Next exercise:

These are the phrases I’d hope to hear as thoe closest to me described my personality and core values:

1. She was a great listener and fun to be around.

2. She was always there for me when I needed her. If it weren’t for her, I’d have never …

3. I always knew that she loved me. I was so proud of her when she started reaching her goals.

4. She was so smart and talented. She worked so hard for what she had, but was always grateful and happy.

This exercise was a struggle, because as I was picturing it, people say a lot of strange things at funerals. Especially when they die young, people always overlook faults and only say ridiculously nice stuff. Also, I’m terrible at complimenting myself. So I guess, if I made some people happy, touched some lives, and they didn’t think I was a miserable failure – well, that’s pretty good.

So, hey, this doesn’t have to be just about me – if you died in ten years, what would you want people to say about you, what would you have want to have accomplished?

So sorry about the lack of writing here – there have been some other projects that I’ve been paying attention to, and so writing related tasks have taken a back seat.

- My friend A asked me to make a hat for her soon-to-be one year old son. Now, I’ve enjoyed dabbling with crocheting, but I’m pretty wretched at reading patterns. Nevertheless, I gave it a go, and I’m happy with how it turned out. A little nervous that it won’t fit, but if it doesn’t, I’ve got time to fix it. Plus side is that it’s been a confidence booster, and I might just look into patterns for other things now, too.

- A friend is getting married next week, and I decided to do something unique for her wedding. (An oil painting)

- I’ve really needed to get that etsy site for geeky wives up and running. So I did that. I like how they’ve made the upload process more streamlined. Also, I made a facebook fan page for geekywives, and I’m starting to work on a re-design for the proper site.

- Been on a crazy reading jog, lately. I still manage to be in the middle of books that need finishing, though, so there’s nothing to pat myself on the back about there.

But as far as the writing goes, I got to sit down and take a look at some pages over coffee with Kate. My current observations are these:

I obviously really wanted to find the chemistry between my main characters. So, I strung together scenes with them together to try and find their chemistry, at the expense of the actual story. I feel like I was aware of this on some level and meant to remedy it anyway, but it’s hilarious how blatantly obvious it is. Without the story as a foundation, though, there can be no chemistry between my characters. It makes no sense.

My other thoughts are a bit long winded, so I think I’ll make it a separate post.  Suffice to say, I wrote *headdesk* in my note margins.