Exhausted

Although, I’m sure, as it so frequently happens, that once I am done writing I will feel not so tired at all, but today, was sure as shit, one hell of a tiring day.

The foggy grey morning was hard to get up to.

Feeling blue.

But up I did and out I went and oh snap.

Forgot the field trip adventure that the mom had planned for today.

The Ice Cream Museum.

Fuck.

Sugar overload.

So much sugar.

And so many photo opportunities for Instagram.

It was not a fun experience.

Well, the kids had fun.

I was rather appalled.

For the cost of the ticket and what was actually gotten it was a tourist trap for sure.

The kids had Pop Rocks, miniature ice cream cones, cotton candy, and mint chocolate chip mochi, and Ghiradelli chocolate squares.

It was a lot of crap for them.

And really when I thought about it we could have gone to the corner store-bought the same amount of candy and ice cream and saved about $75.

But, it wasn’t my money, and the kids were over the moon.

High as kites too.

We took them to the park that’s down town by the Children’s Creativity Museum afterward and let them run it out for a while.

But I have to say, by the time we got them back on BART and back to Glen Park, they were frazzled and peaked.

Fortunately for me.

Both of my clients cancelled.

Both!

That is super rare.

I do get a lot of cancellations, sliding scale sessions for $10 are easy to cancel on, the repercussion for not showing up is not really that bad.

Which is what happened today.

I took the opportunity to get myself to a church basement and get grounded and then do some needed grocery shopping before coming home and making myself a hot meal.

I will also say that the continued sadness around my break up and holding myself to the no contact boundary with my ex is emotionally exhausting.

When we were at the park something I saw deeply reminded me of him and I suddenly found myself crying.

No one saw it, but I was upset for losing it at work.

I just got off a phone call with my person and had it reiterated to me that I’m doing the hard work right now and that the sadness will pass and at some point there will be a stopping point.

It was also pointed out that the crying goes faster.

Meaning, I’m not losing it for as long as I was.

I noticed that last night when we met at Firewood and I was doing my check in.

I cried, I was sad, but it wasn’t head on the table sobbing like it was last week or the inability to stop crying at all the week before.

There is a lessening of it.

I miss him like crazy, I still am in it, but the horrifying sadness is leveling out a little bit.

I also had it pointed out that I will be soon leaving for my PhD intensive and that will distract me too.

Yes, yes it will, I am sure.

I have had some moments of anxiety about having taken on the further study, but over all I do have a very firm belief in myself that I will get through the program and before you know it I will have a doctoral degree.

There will be a lot of work.

But I am not incapable of doing it.

I also have more things to do to get ready for my upcoming transition to the private practice internship, but I am leaving that just slightly on the back burner.

I just need to focus on getting through these next days at work and since there probably will not be another outing, ever, to the Ice Cream Museum, it shouldn’t be as manic as it was today.

I’ll be in Pacifica before you know it and immersed in my program, getting to know my professors and the rest of the cohort.

Or any of the cohort, I haven’t met anyone yet.

I’m sure it will be a good distraction to from my feelings as I will have a room-mate at the intensive.

Fingers crossed she doesn’t snore.

Plus, it will be good to be out of the house for a little while.

The passive aggressiveness of the landlady is wearing.

I’m still very actively looking at places, but I’m not freaking out about not having found anything yet.

I even turned down a room-mate situation that ended up being a hilarious small world sort of joke.

I got word from a friend that someone she knew was looking for a long-term sublet for his room and it turns out that the person is the room-mate to a guy I dated briefly years ago.

Yeah.

Not going to live there.

But it was funny and gave me another opportunity to say no to a situation that would not work, despite the rent being really cheap.

Still holding firm that the perfect place is out there, that I can afford.

With parking, utilities included, hard wood floors, 1/4 of my monthly income, laundry on site, high ceilings, lots of light and windows, a full size kitchen, a bathtub.

It will happen.

It will.

 

To Write

Or not to write.

That is the question.

Which I have obviously already answered for myself as I am typing now.

I just hemmed and hawed a little, I have an early start, amongst the many early starts I have had for the last week and a half, and I was tempted to skip the blog and just hunker down with a hot cup of tea and a quick snippet of a video.

But.

I did not write last night and I missed it.

The irony being, too, that I had more time last night and there wouldn’t have really even been a question.

Except.

Power outage.

I got home to find out that a mylar balloon had gotten caught on a transformer on the block and it exploded, leading to two blocks in my neighborhood being completely without power.

It was a romantic candle light night in.

Let me tell you.

Fortunately my stove is gas and I was able to light it to heat up some dinner, but aside from that everything else in the house is pretty much electrically run.

So no lights.

And.

No internet.

After I had dinner I read a little by candlelight than decided to call it a night.

I sort of figured that this was the Universe saying go to bed.

I did.

It was nice.

I got a little extra sleep and I felt pretty refreshed.

I was still up early.

I had another early start at work today.

I worked 5.5 hours of overtime this week, coming off a full (emotionally full it feels like) weekend of classes, preceded by a full week of work, preceded by a full weekend of doing homework and writing papers preceded by a full, overtime again, week of work, preceded by a weekend of writing papers and doing homework, preceded by, yes, you guessed it, a full, with overtime, week of work.

I think it’s been a month since I have had a proper day off.

A friend of mine Wednesday night asked me about my schedule after I had shared that the whole being done with my Master’s program hasn’t landed and each day he asked I had work and clients.

Then supervision and prepping for graduation, then meeting with the ladies I normally meet with and my person and covering my commitments.

He shook his head and said I should take all day off on Sunday.

Maybe have a good cry.

Maybe just sit with the accomplishment.

I haven’t yet had a chance to sit with the accomplishment.

I tear up whenever I say that, I don’t want to be sad about it, but I do want to have some time to feel it.

I have just been so, so, so busy.

Grateful for the bits of down time I had today and yesterday at work.

Both days the baby slept on me.

Even though I started him out in the stroller for naps and he did a bunch of sleeping in the stroller on the back deck, such pretty weather today, but both times he woke up fussy and unhappy and insisted on falling back asleep on me.

Which is fine.

Baby nap equals a sitting meditation for me.

And sometimes.

A little snooze too.

I got that yesterday and it was lovely.

Especially since it gave me a little reprieve from the reflux.

It goes down when I sleep.

I don’t know why that is, but it is and I’m grateful for it.

Anyway.

There are moments of reprieve.

Today I got one in the park.

It was beautiful.

The baby was tired, the mom was working out with a personal trainer and we were at Douglas Playground which is really small and sweet and surrounded by great towering trees and blackberry brambles and it has a big green meadow.

Oh.

So nice.

I walked the meadow with the baby until he was asleep, watched the red tail hawk hunting for its morning meal, stared at the clouds, smelled the clover, breathed in and out and sat down at a picnic table rocking gently back and forth while the baby slept nestled against me.

I didn’t fall asleep.

But I was still and surrounded by beauty and in the sun and that was so nice.

So nice.

Yeah.

Grateful for my job.

I also got to pick up the oldest boy today from school, he requested a “date” with me.

How freaking cute.

We went to Bi-Rite Creamery for ice cream.

He got a vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles and the reverence with which he ate it was so sweet to behold.

Then a friend from school passed by and asked if we could come to Dolores Park and of course we could.

So this afternoon I got to be outside again, at a different park, in the sun, watching the sky and breathing and listening to the kids run around and chase each other and laugh.

Good for my soul.

I also didn’t have to cook tonight, Friday’s are often order pizza night, and it was nice to take my time getting back to the house and hanging out with the oldest boy, telling stories and making plans for the summer.

After work.

Clients.

I forgot to mention that.

I have had lots happening on the client front.

Including a difficult termination this week.

Which added in a little extra stress as I maneuvered through it.

Grateful it’s done, but it was challenging to do.

And ah.

Breathing easier.

Feeling good that I took the time to make the time to write.

It means a lot to me.

And it’s not that late.

Ok.

It’s late enough and I should probably go straight to bed, but I won’t.

I still need a little more wind down time.

A cup of tea will help.

A few minutes of a video.

Then off to dream land.

Good night y’all.

Happy Friday.

 

Life Is A Beach

And a vale of tears.

But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Day two of the six-day staycation.

I did not get out so much today.

Rather I stayed in the hood.

I relaxed in the bed a little longer.

Awakening at 8a.m. I thought, nah, I am allowed a few more minutes, and I just drifted off in the warm soft sheets and dozed for another twenty minutes.

It could have been two hours, it felt so good when I woke back up.

I got up without even consulting the clock.

I was shocked to see that I had only slept another twenty minutes, I really was prepared for it to be noon and not 8:21 a.m.

Up was up, however, and up I stayed.

A text from the housemate upstairs and a confirmation that she was around and was I around and that and we should go get into some Trouble.

Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club, that is.

Trouble Coffee

I had some breakfast, made my bed, did some writing and when that was complete I opened the door to my studio and met her and her daughter in the entryway and off we went.

Trouble was delicious, I had an Americano and it was dreamy.

After some coffee and catching up with her we went over to The General Store where her daughter explored the back yard and the succulents in the green house.

General Store

I had no intentions of buying anything and happily wandered around the back yard with her.

Then I had to, well, you have a bunch of coffee and you would too.

The bathroom was by the clothes rack.

And on the clothes rack there they were.

My bib overalls.

I have been looking for a pair of bib overalls for the last year and a half.

I actually found some at a Brocante in Paris, but the woman would not barter with me and was more than exceptionally French, Parisian, and rude (I actually only had one other interaction with a French person that was the cliché, in all the six months of being there really, two nasty “French” people.), she was also enjoying a cocktail brunch at the cafe with her girlfriends and had no intent on selling anything from her stall.

It was like a front to sit in the sun and get schnockered on a Sunday.

Which is cool, but I did not succeed in trying on or purchasing the vintage coveralls.

I did, however, today.

Man, oh man, they are cute.

I will be wearing them to all my holiday parties.

Why?

Because they make me happy.

Some clothes just do that.

They made me happy when I tried them on and I almost wore them out the store.

Holidays should be dressed in happy clothes.

And for me that is a pair of bibs.

Doesn’t matter that it is not traditional holiday garb, holidays are already a challenge for me, what ever I can do to make them less so is something I am going to embrace.

As I found myself crying over a pint of ice cream this afternoon.

No.

I did not eat a pint of ice cream.

But I did lose it over a text requesting that I pick some up.

I mean I lost my shit.

I went from being a fairly calm, rational, just went down to the beach and watched the surfers and listened to the waves boom on the shore, and hula hooped and eaten a kale and spinach salad and, what!

Napped.

Oh yeah, did that too, twenty-minute knock out in the full sun after my salad and banana.

Did any of that matter when my friend sent a text asking me to be a dear and grab some ice cream to accompany the pies he was bringing to the event?

No.

I, as I said, lost it.

I sat down.

I cried.

Then I got angry.

Fuck you God.

Fuck you.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, it’s Thanksgiving and I ain’t gonna eat get to eat any fucking pumpkin pie or whipped cream or strudel or gravy or cranberry sauce.

I hopped the self-pity train and rode it the fuck out-of-town.

I knew better than to respond to my friends message as the response was way out of proportion to the event.

So far out of proportion that I knew it had nothing to do with the request and was just the sign pointing the way to a deeper disturbance in the force, Luke.

The restraint of pen and tongue and text paid off.

I had to make some phone calls and follow through with meeting up some of the ladies this evening and I did both.

When that was finished, when I had a modicum of perspective I made the phone call and joked to my friend that it was sort of like asking me to bring a couple of grams of coke to the party.

I asked if there was anything else I could bring.

He was such a sweetheart I felt bad for even making a deal about it.

Asking for what I need is still so damn hard and it’s not the big stuff that gets me, I can handle the big stuff.

Births.

Deaths.

Accidents.

Evictions.

Getting fired from a job.

No problem.

Bring a pint of ice cream to an event and my entire world falls apart.

“Honey, it’s always the mouse in the room,” John Ater said to me, “it’s never the big things, the elephants are easy, it’s the mice.”

No kidding.

Holidays are challenging and feeling out of my league is standard for me.

What is not is saying yes to a new experience and going somewhere new to be with new people.

And an old friend.

A friend that I don’t get to see for long stretches of time and who will be away for a lot of time for the holidays, kind of gift, you know, to actually get to meet his friends and be invited to his high holy holiday.

He’s getting all my pie.

And the ice cream.

Knowing myself too, it’s the being vulnerable part, I want to be perfect and be capable and be on top of things, but sometimes I have a hard enough time just getting to the point where I know what it is that is troubling me.

Having open time to spend with people and develop intimacy is one of the things that I want the most, yet shy from when it’s presented.

I have been gifted with some perspective around this and when I can sit still and allow the feelings to come and go, I am better for it.

Much better.

Here’s to not sabotaging my abstinence or my holiday.

Here’s to showing up with my authentic self.

Shy, scared, a little anxious, but happy to be included and grateful to have a place to be this holiday.

Grateful to have friends who want me to spend time with them.

Thankful beyond words.

And happy I get to do it dressed in bib overalls.

Not the bottom of an empty ice cream container.

 

 

Do NOT Go Softly

Into that good night.

These were the words that reverberated in my head as I looked up into the darkening gloom which advertised better than my watch how I have spent the entire, well, almost entire, day on the couch watching the West Wing.

I have not gotten dressed.

Albeit I have also not spent the day sprawled about naked.

I have been in my pajamas all day long.

This activity, or lack there of, was broken up by a few phone calls to my bestest girlfriend, and a few tears.

Sometimes you just got to take a mental health day.

Fortunate for me that day was today and it is Sunday and there was not much work to be done.

I did do some work, I was not a complete sloth.

I put in an hour on a proposal for a new client at the design firm and I made some phone calls.  I took out the recycling and the compost.

I made my bed.

And today I did not drink, smoke crack, cigarettes, tar heroin, snort cocaine, eat ice cream or have sex with strangers.

I ate a lot of popcorn, watched quite a few episodes from the first season of the West Wing and did my best to let myself have a down day.

I am not the kindest to myself and I knew this was coming.

I sort of courted it in a manner of speaking.

I think, no, I believe, I needed to let myself have a day to process the fear and let it dissipate out.  This had not been easy, these five weeks back.  I have made distinct progress getting back into the flow and the lay of the land, but that does not make it easy.

I have this tendency to not acknowledge my hard work.

I have both a super-heated and super-expanded ego and a martyr complex.

Neither thing are helpful.

That I can see them, that this happens in my life, that I will most likely continue to forget, relearn and excoriated myself will also continue to happen.

Of that I can be assured.

There is something though to all of this that I am hyper aware of, I am seeing it all.

I am seeing it.

I am talking about it.

I am acknowledging it.

Now, what I would like, and it’s a work in progress, so who the hell knows, is to take this information, I mean I have to treat it like it’s information and not get judgemental about it, to factor it in and not let it rule my life.

To be kind to myself, compassionate, and see that yeah, I have been holding on tight to those reigns and that it does not serve me to go pell mell like this about my life.

I will be up tomorrow and I will go to the city and do some work then I will come back to the East Bay and I will do some work and then I will go do some more work.

Now, that sounds like going off pell mell.

I know it, I can see it, and I am going to rectify it.

The first thing I must do is be aware.

Awareness, acceptance, action.

I cannot take action, which is generally the first reaction to anything that causes me discomfort, without acceptance of the situation and I cannot accept without awareness.

It used to be that it would take months, even years, for me to become aware of something.

It happens faster and faster now that I see things coming, that I intuit situations, that I have self-awareness and actualization around my own inner issues.

So, I let myself off, I shared with my dear friend and confidant and I watched a lot of television.

So be it.

I wrote too, I wrote this morning and I am writing now and I started writing the edits that my boss wants me to make around the new proposal.  I enjoyed researching and sitting with my notebook open jotting down notes and synonyms and antonyms and looking up adjectives.

I am a writer, this stuff is fun for me.

Really, it is.

I have a preponderancy to want to use original language, to get across an idea and to use succulent words to do so.  I know that I need clean, concise phrasing when doing this work and I know that I will make some mistakes, but the excitement that pelted around in my brain when I was looking over the document was not to be denied.

I have not felt this excited to do work in a long time.

To use my skills and craft and way-wordedness.

I think, no, I believe, that I will continue to quite enjoy doing this.

I am aware that I have been not so nice to myself and I am aware that there is no one else to blame for this.  Aware too that I have no desire to continue, I accept that this is a product of how I was brought into the world and I do not judge nor make judgements around my parents, my peers, myself, or my life.

Judgement does me not an iota of good.

But learning?

Learning is good.

Forgiveness is better.

Shedding some tears is just another way for pain to leave the body.

Shed a few tears, slide down on the couch, let my heart-break open in the twilight rooms of Graceland and spend some time recuperating and resting.

These things needed doing and I did them.

Now for the rest of tonight, I still don’t get to beat myself up.

I get to take the information gathered herein, yup, my old archaic word friend, and use it to strike a balance, in my heart, in my head, in my body.

See, and look with out dispute or despair and see that I am powerless and that is alright.

Surrender to it.

In the surrender I let go the idea that I am wrong or this is wrong, or that change is not a changing.

It is.

It’s all good.

And so am I.

Little jagged out around the West Wing, but you know, who wouldn’t be?