*Knocks on wood*

Every night as I lay in bed, I go though a mental list of all the things I want/need to accomplish the next day. A credit card payment to make, laundry, repot a fern, lose fifty pounds, become the next David Sedaris, ya know, the usual. I pump myself up and repeat “I WILL BE PRODUCTIVE TOMORROW!!!” enough to fall asleep with a BRAVEHEART-battle cry enthusiasm and motivation to tackle the world! The next morning, however, after I have lingered in bed long enough to not have thirty minutes on the treadmill and time enough just for a shower and cram a handful of cookies into my mouth for ‘breakfast’, my day is already ruined. It’s usually not even nine o’clock and I’ve called it quits.

My annoyance grows as the week goes on, yet my motivation wanes until finally sputtering out on Thursday morning when I realize Friday is always a ‘free day’ and no one should ever have to make any sort of effort on the last day of the work week; the fact that I have accomplished none of the things I have set out to do Sunday is irrelevant. Fridays are Jesus’ reward for a job well done for everything we’ve done all week and a reminder to treat ourselves in the midst of the all the credit card bill-paying, laundry, plant repotting and best selling novels written that week.

Pressure to accomplish everything and have it ‘all’ is intense in our society and I admittedly am harder on myself than seems healthy; the fact that I’m better off now than my ten years-ag0 self isn’t the point. I haven’t written a whole novel yet, let alone become a world famous artist, I have no marathons under my belt and I’ve made it as far as Canada and no further. I’m as married as I’m going to get, my son is twenty one years old and not a doctor and the two dogs we have smell like dirty blanket creatures.

But, I can vegetables quite regularly, preserving lots of what we grow ourselves, I’ve lost sixty five pounds and still battling weight daily, I’m a tireless advocate for the GLBTQ community, I work at a job that I completely love and am surrounded by people that think I’m pretty swell. I might not be a Kardashian or Hilary Clinton, but the ME of right now is actually someone the ME of twenty years ago would have been pretty jealous of. And I ain’t dead yet.

*knock on wood*

50 Shades of Meh

This is about the best ME I have ever been in my entire 42 years. So what is the fucking problem? I have an actual bigpeople job with amazing benefits and vacation, all of my bills are covered, I have mad money left over for rampant spending, a bunch of new tattoos and lost 65 pounds. I am in an even-keeled, loving relationship and finally got that hysterectomy I had been hankering since I started menstruating 25  years ago.. I KNOW that I am happy, but, I’m just not feeling that way right now.

I suppose this comes from decades of tremendous mood swings, just one extreme to the other, years of continuous bouts of mindnumbing depression and bouncing to an ABSENCE of emotions; feeling sort of in the dark about everything. This state of just constant fucking shitty sadness meant that I’d be bouncing off the walls anticipating anything good or exciting that was coming up.

But now? I seriously have just about everything I want and I barely can crack a smile. I truly have everything that I had been working on for the last decade and more and I’m just sitting here in a state of shock. I am in disbelief that things are working out/have worked out for me. It’s just not usual and definitely not what I am used to. My life had been about constant suffering and waiting for the other shoe to drop and now? I’m so ‘good’ that it would require a concerted effort to fall back into the shit of how it all used to be. It’s so not what I am used to. I am in no way upset about how my life is, but at the same time, I am not used to not being excited for Pride and I’m just kind of ‘whatever’ about going to camp this year. The most joy I get these days is from my son and he is underwhelmed at hanging out with me as he is OVERwhelmed with work.

I am not complaining, I truly am not and if this is how my life continues, I’ll have absolutely no problem with it. But I still feel like something is missing; a key part to me is just not here.

I worry mostly that maybe this happiness is just the quiet wind down to my ‘happily ever after’ which really isnt the worst thing to happen, I just wasnt expecting it so soon. There are surely worse things than to be like Charlie Bucket at the end where he ‘suddenly gets everything he ever wished for’ and gets to live at his very own chocolate factory, but again, I just wasnt really ready. This isnt to say ‘my best years are behind me’ or that ‘it’s all downhill from here’ because I truly dont feel that way. And for what it’s worth,  roughing it up a fucking mountain for the past four decades, I really cant and wont complain to be where I am right now. I think I’m mostly in shock that things arent in total chaos and it actually has taken awhile for me to even notice that it’s been months since I’ve cried. And it’s been years since one of my world famous tantrums. But at the same time, I cant remember my last giggle fit that erupted into painful belly laughter either. My mother once told me that for every HIGH there is an equal LOW and this definitely has always been the case for my moods, so I suppose the trade off for every day of constant ‘good’ is that I wont have to suffer through the extreme LOWS to get those dizzying HIGHS.

It is not my intention to seem ungrateful for having a ‘happy’ life, because I’m gonna be honest, I fucking deserve all of the good things that I have. I’m just not used to it. I suppose that’s not a bad thing though, since I’m always going to remember the shit I’ve been through which will keep me humble, hopefully for the rest of my days.

 

 

Well, it IS Monday.

It’s monday and that only means one thing- trying to get my life back on track, again, cause, well, it IS monday.  time to play catch up. time to clean the house up from weekend destruction, write, errands, work on getting my son a new job, restart that diet, recommit to getting back to the gym (“for serious this time”), going into the week with a fresh and positive outlook, you know how you do, cause it IS monday.

and here it is.  almost 4pm, and i’ve done little more than some virtual farming, set up and Etsy shop finally, go with my boyfriend to get fingerprinted for his name change, and lots of dicking around.  a whole lotta nothing.

i did shower and get dressed, which, at this moment in time, seems like a miracle.  but i accomplished exactly NOTHING, and now that i’ve been sitting with a heating pad on my back, any sort of motivation  that i MIGHT have had- is floating out the door.  it looks less and less likely that i’ll be doing too much of value now.  we can only hope, BUT, i aint holding my damn breath.

gotta get out of my pajamas (i threw them BACK on the second i walked back in the door, nearly clotheslining the dogs with my bra in the process), go scrape the snow off my car, fill the car up with gas, hit the library, meet a friend for coffee and see what that does for my day.  right now- all i want to do is stare at the cobwebs on my ceiling.  guess i have to add that to my list too. great.