Small Steps

Add up.

I keep telling myself that as I slowly start tracking my hours for my MFT license.

I also reiterated that to myself and an old friend that I had the pleasure of catching up with today over coffee and lunch in Hayes Valley.

We hadn’t seen each other in years and it was like old times.

And yes.

We’ve gotten older.

And older is all I’m going to get.

I don’t mind.

I like myself more and more.

I feel like I am entering my prime, not exiting it.

I have so very much to live for and I am so grateful that I have carved out this life here in San Francisco.

I don’t have to think about how long it will take to get my hours, I will get my hours, it will happen, the time will pass and one day it will be a story that I tell someone else who is beginning the process.

Things take time.

Sometimes things happen quickly, they fall into place, and there is a beauty and grace to it.

I am often reminded of what a very wise woman said to me years ago, “if it’s meant to be you can’t fuck it up and if it’s not meant to be, you can’t manipulate it into happening.”

My career path is like that.

For the longest time I tried this and that and the other to make it as a creative.

A writer.

A poet.

Maybe a screen writer, I certainly had and do have some interesting ideas for movies, but nothing panned out.

Oh.

Sure.

I have this, my blog, and it’s panned out fantastically, I throw my stuff at the screen in front of me, I process my day, I get things out, I figure it out mostly by not figuring it out, but by taking the creative action of just showing the fuck up here consistently.

But.

I have never really made it as a writer.

Not that I’m not a writer.

I’m fucking writing right now.

I’m good.

I’m not great.

But I would hazard that I am better than plenty of folks that do get published.

Perhaps it’s that I don’t understand how to submit, or that I don’t submit the right stuff or that I am not as good as I believe, it’s beyond me is what I’m saying.

One day it may not be.

Today it is and suffice to say.

I don’t give a flying fuck.

I love writing.

I love poetry.

I love expressing myself.

And this is my medium.

I don’t write for an audience.

Oh.

Sure.

Sometimes I may be addressing you, sometimes things sneak in and there’s a message between the lines, I won’t say that there’s not.

But I do really do the writing for myself.

But it’s not a career.

The dividends that have paid off are vast and varied, the people who I have met because of my blog, the things I have done, the experiences I have had, especially when my blog was a little more public, were and have been astounding.

Too many to list here.

However.

Most of the time the pay off has not been cash money.

In some round about ways, though, it has paid off more than handsomely.

I expressed to my friend today that I am often a bit ridiculed, or teased, ridiculed seems a harsher word than the poking fun I get from my cohort, for how fast I can write papers for class.

It really hasn’t been too much to sit down and knock out a big paper in one sitting, in a few hours.

If I have an idea of what I am writing, if I have done my research, taken good notes and done my reading for the class, I can crank it out.

I can do that because I do this, consistently, my rate of typing is fast.

I haven’t timed it in a long time, but it does seem that my thoughts fly from my brain and to my fingers quite quickly.

I will publish, I know that.

I will publish poems.

I will publish essays.

I will publish my memoir, although it needs severe re-writing.

It may not be the book I originally wrote.

But it will have the skeleton of the manuscript, I am sure of that.

My writing goals have not been met, but they will be, I am sure of that.

When isn’t important.

And I will publish psychology papers.

In some odd sort of twist that may be where I find my first publications, I don’t know exactly, but I do think that I will find that as an avenue for my work.

I have had great reviews of my school papers and I think with some tweaking I could probably submit some of those papers to psychology publications.

Who knows.

I just know that it will happen.

And I’m fine with the process being what it is.

I don’t have to manipulate it into happening and I can’t fuck it up.

Unless I stop.

Which right now seems impossible.

I have stories and stories and stories.

All the words.

There are so many.

So beautiful, like birds on a wire, like the scattershot of sunshine sparkling from the froth of waves, like the way love endears itself further into my heart when I am least expecting it.

My friend and I parted ways and I reflected as I got on my scooter and headed over to my job, my day job, that I have it pretty motherfucking good.

I do.

I have discovered many things about myself in the dozen or so years my friend and I have known each other and they all seem to have played beautiful and rich into the hand that I have been dealt.

I am on the path and in the place I am meant to be.

“You look amazing,” he said.

And you know what?

I feel amazing.

I think that shows.

Happy.

Joyous.

Motherfucking.

Free.

 

My Internet Is So Slow

I could hand write my blog and take a photograph of it and it would get posted via my Iphone faster than the laptop I am on.

Speaking of which.

Why is the site wonky?

I mean, I just got used to the new formatting, please stop changing it up.

I wasn’t grumpy before I tried to get online.

I am now.

However, I am online and I am blogging and all that hoop la, this too shall pass, stuff, shall, well, pass.

I just have a schedule, a plan, man, a timing thing and I don’t want to spend extra time dicking around trying to get online faster.

Like it works.

Me yelling does not work.

Me wanting to throw my laptop won’t work.

Me letting go, might work.

Letting it go when I have an agenda is super difficult.

Plan was to come home and do my household stuff and roll out my back on the yoga roller and make some tea, get online and get to the blog.

I would preface the blog by going to the e-mail thread between myself and a few friends and go buy the ticket to the Opulent Temple dance party, Gratitude, for Saturday the 22nd, but I couldn’t get the e-mail to load.

Then when I did, finally, I couldn’t get the site to access the ticketing window.

I have my debit card ready, let’s spend some money!

Alas.

Nothing.

I am amazed I was able to get this site loaded.

Not that I had anything to do with it, more sitting, sipping tea, letting my nails dry.

Maybe that’s all it was, God saying, don’t destroy your manicure typing, let those pretty paws dry for a moment.

Things they tend not to go my way and usually I am alright with that, my way is usually pretty narrow-minded and I never give myself the benefit of the doubt or the wide view, I wear some pretty heavy blinders.

I don’t see what’s good for me, nor do I often believe that the best is going to happen.

And that usually changes pretty quick, that perspective, because I do have faith and I have walked through a load of things.

I don’t have to be the perfect blogger with perfect internet connection or the perfect body or the perfect job, I’m doing pretty damn ok, despite my best efforts at undermining myself.

Life really is lovely.

And I am really grateful.

I am.

I think I am just a tiny bit tired.

The job is such full-time high energy I have to remember to pace myself.

It’s Wednesday, I have two more days to go, don’t throw it all at the wall.   Fortunately, the mom and I have a pretty good system worked out and I did have a nice sit down lunch today and some time to relax, but it’s still a push, by the end of the day I am tired.

I even had a coffee in the afternoon, which is unlike me.

The coffee-house stops before noon usually during the work week, I don’t want to be up with a brain going 80 mph before I go to bed.

But I have noticed, this week and last week, grabbing a cup of coffee at three, even four in the afternoon to give me a boost to finish the day out.

Tomorrow happens to be a favorite day, a busy day, granted, but it’s market day, Bartlett Street Farmer’s Market, and that’s a nice time with the boys and usually a sit down at the music area while they dance and a friend may join me for a coffee and that would be pretty great.

And today is done.

I’m pretty burnt toast, it’s coming across in my blog, I know, I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of juice in me, but the habit is so hard to break, that being write a blog that is 1,000 or more words.

So.

Kicking it out.

Not obsessing over dating.

Just doing the waiting for the next opportune time to get out there.

I will fess up, I tried to do Tinder last night, but my account information wasn’t syncing with the site and I couldn’t get it to process.

Rejection.

God’s protection.

Rejected from Tinder.

That’s some sad news.

Not really.

Probably just saved myself a month of hideous dates.

Who can say.

I do have some hope, the internet has not crashed, the ibuprofen is kicking in, my blog is getting written, I will go dancing soon, life isn’t all so bad.

I amuse myself.

Life, as I said earlier, really is good.

I have a good, steady, secure job.

I met a nanny today at the park with no health insurance, angling to get on her boyfriends, who works for four different families in and around the Mission.

No thank you.

Super glad, so glad, over the moon glad, that I have a job with one family that pays my bills and I like them.

It’s a relief to know where I am going and when the money will be deposited to my account and what days I work and what hours and what I am expected to do.

And.

I take a great deal of satisfaction from doing my job well, I am doing a great job and I know it.

That is a good feeling, to do a job well.

I don’t even need feedback, I know that I am living up to and beyond expectations.

This pleases me, even when I do get tired and feel like I need to regroup and rejuvenate.

I have a way to do that, too, go to bed a little early tonight.

I got up a little early to take a shower before (and her hair was perfect) work.  That is probably why I am a little more tired than normal too, I forgot I got up early.

I wanted to write before I went to work and take a shower.

That takes time.

And time, well, it all takes time.

Sometimes quickly.

Sometimes slowly.

I seem to get there slowly.

But me oh my.

The view is fine along the way.