Dust Motes

photo from psychologytoday.com

Wow. A lot has changed around here since I wrote last. I need to investigate all the changes Blogger has made.

Another year has gone by. I am a year older, and maybe not so much wiser. I lost my job, but then got hired with a new company that does the same kind of work I was doing. I now work harder than I ever have worked in my life. LOL

DD will be in sixth grade this year. How can she be in sixth grade already? My own sixth grade days seem not that long ago.

The best part about time is that it heals all wounds, but lately I have found that I've been missing my grandmas, both of them. I don't know why they've been on my mind so much. I guess I just see DD with her grandmothers, and remember my own happy summer days.

DD and I went swimming at the local pool a weekend ago. It was so fun. She is old enough now to doggie paddle, so she was fearlessly jumping off the diving board. I was shocked that she wanted to try, but she saw other kids doing it--little bitty kids with lifejackets--and she must have decided that she could be brave and do it too.

How she has grown...

I feel like I've regressed in some ways. I haven't written for ages. I get so tired during the day, and when I come home, I just want to brain-rot with Facebook or the tv. Ugh. Same old story. Maybe my heart wasn't in it anymore, either. I have felt creative stirrings recently, and decided to dust the corners of this old haven and see where the path leads me.

The door is open...

all I have to do is step across the threshold.

Revisited

I looked back through some previous paper journals of mine this weekend.

I don't recognize any of those selves who wrote those entries. I see that I mostly try, try again to start fresh, with a clean slate, but then fall directly into my tirades of self-pity and then proceed to jump back onto the Emotional Express. I must have three whole years' worth of the same same sameness.

Something's gotta give.

Musing on Life

Woke up feeling totally crappy today. Had a long day at work. Listened to my cassette tape of Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits album on the drive home, sang out loud, and started to feel better.

It was amazing how listening to my favorite artist made me feel so much better. I probably haven't listened to the Boss since 2003 or so. I used to sometimes play a CD when I was online, but the CD drive is jammed now, for some reason. As far as that tape is concerned, I probably haven't listened to it since around 2000. Yeah, that long ago. The tape is kind of warped, so it just sat in my car all this time. In fact, I was surprised that it still played at all, because it hasn't even been in its protective case.

As I listened to the music, I remembered all the words to all the songs. I was immediately transported back to all those nights I sat in my bedroom at home as a teenager, listening to the same songs over and over, believing that I'd be saved by a white knight in a muscle car.

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? I've asked myself this question many times over the years. Dreams are not lies if they don't come true. Dreams evolve. Dreams change. People change, finding new priorities. Perhpas the narrator of that song, "The River," was unhappy that he got his girlfriend pregnant and had to get married, so he spent his life with the obligations of family holding him back. But, yet he still had those summers down at the river, when life seemed endless and perfect. Maybe he's living in those memories instead of counting his blessings. Maybe to his way of thinking--living in the past--his old dreams ARE lies because they didn't come true.

I also always wondered what happened to Mary and the narrator of "Thunder Road." She gets in the car and they drive off to find their place in the sun. But, where is that place? What do they do when they get there? Because wherever you go, there you are. So he's got wheels and the ability to leave the old life behind, but what kind of life replaces it?

I guess, at least in the song, it doesn't matter. The car is hope.

They have hope, together. Anything is possible.

Anything...

...I sometimes forget that.

Baby Steps to Fight the Crazies—The Beginning

Wow. November first already. Where has the time gone? The weather sure does reflect November. It feels like about 27 degrees out there tonight. I let the dogs out earlier, and the sky was clear; the moon is nearly full. They rambled around the yard, while I stood at the door and froze my butt off. :)

If only that were really possible! Hehe.

This month is the start of a new phase in my life. Last month, I had the Crazies to an insane extent. Like the subtitle of this blog, it's time to get busy living or get busy dying. I feel like I've been dying for far too long. I have a whole series of goals that I hope to accomplish this month. But I am trying not to get overwhelmed. I am taking baby steps. First up, positive progress in NaNoWriMo. I have two different ideas outlined, so wish me luck. I plan to go week by week. This week, the little steps include paying some bills (instead of ignoring them until they're late), record my daily moods so I can keep track of how they fluctuate over the month, blog daily, reduce the amount of tv I watch weekly (9 hours on Sundays is so totally draining me!), and reduce the amount of sugar I've been eating lately (hard to do since we just got a ton of candy trick-or-treating last night).

So far so good, but it's only Wednesday. :) I also want to integrate at least three times per week exercising, but I have to find my walking videotape. It's somewhere around here. I always get these motivations close to the beginning of the month, but then my resolve falls away. I can't let the monkey mind break my resolve this time, because the Crazies are driving me nuts, and my family too.

Today I'm feeling pretty good, since it's the start of NaNoWriMo and I've been looking forward to NaNo for like two months. I put it on my calendar every year, and at long last, it's time to begin. So with that, I will sign off here and get to the "real" work. After I've gotten something written, I may post an excerpt.