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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear. Fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
– H.L. Mencken
So I’ve been thinking about this post lately. Not the boy – David’s got that part covered – but the end. This: “I learned, eventually, that you have to listen to everything, you can’t just pick and choose the parts that fit the story you’re telling in your head.”
And I was thinking about the story I tell in my head all the time – we all do it, we all tell a story about the life we imagine we live, about why we do things, and what we hope for. It’s the story we tell to get through the day, because the truth is so often less than we would like it to be.
My story’s about a girl who’s kind, and smart, and funny, and generous. Who’s successful, by most people’s standards, both personally and professionally. Whose life is more or less charmed in a number of important ways.
My truth, though, so often seems to fall short of that. I am often unkind, and particularly judgmental, at least in my thoughts. I regularly feel like everyone else is smarter than I am, particularly at work, and that I am a heartbeat away from people realizing I’m a fraud. I haven’t updated my weight loss photo album on Facebook in more than a year, because the truth is, I’ve gained 35 pounds in 15 months and I am terribly ashamed of that, and yet I cannot get it together to take control of my eating. My so-called charmed life has been scarred by some particularly shitty things, especially early on, and I lack the courage to truly face at least one of them. I live most of my life with some level of fear of not being good enough while setting such unbelievably high expectations of myself that it’s no wonder I fall short. I live with the man I want to marry and who I know loves me unconditionally, and yet I spend an inordinate of time and energy fighting the feeling that, sooner or later, he’s going to realize that I’m not quite what he thought. I drop out of communication with my friends and my grandma for extended periods of time because I just don’t have the energy or the attention span even to send an email, and by the time I do, so much has happened that I can’t bear having to recap it all, so I give up. That’s my truth.
Is it any wonder that the story I’m telling in my head is decidedly more upbeat? It has to be; otherwise, I’d never get out of bed.
“Go everywhere,” he said at last, in a low, kind voice; “do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy – be triumphant.”
– Osmond, in The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
Jane and Mo have both done this, as well as plenty of other people on the internets, and I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. There are lots of things I want to do that I keep putting off for one reason or another, and since I’m feeling better, I thought I might start tackling some of them. Plus, I love lists, and this is, like, the mother of all lists.
The idea, if you haven’t already figured it out, is to come up with 101 things you want to accomplish in the next 1001 days. And then do them. I’m posting this here as a regular post, but I’ll add it as a page tab across the top, so you can follow along with me, if you like. Here goes nothing:
Start date: August 1, 2009
End date: April 28, 2012
Creative
1. Find a way to sing again – in public
2. Work my way through one quarter of “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” (0/25)
3. Start keeping a personal journal again (without the pressure of feeling like I need to “recap” everything that’s happened since I last kept one, which is the reason I haven’t started doing it before now)
4. Make 5 more journals and give them away
5. Draw something suitable for framing
6. Blow up and frame a photo I took
7. Blog at least three times a week for 3 months (0/12) (0/3)
Travel
8. Go to 5 states I’ve never been to (0/5)
9. Take a train somewhere far away enough that I have to book a sleeper car
10. Visit a national landmark I’ve never seen before
11. Visit a tourist trap I’ve never seen before (like the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or something)
12. Spend a weekend in Amish country at a Bed & Breakfast
13. Visit my friend who lives in LA
14. Spend a night at the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, Arizona
15. Ice skate at Rockefeller Center
16. Finally Yelp! Fat Matt’s Rib Shack from our trip to Atlanta (short version: go there)
17. Go back to the Excellent Dumpling House in Chinatown in New York (where they really do serve excellent dumplings)
18. Go to Coney Island (when it’s open this time)
Tourism at Home
19. Take a Duck Boat tour of D.C.
20. Visit the September 11 Pentagon Memorial
21. Take a tour of Old Town with one of the colonial guides
22. Take a Segway tour of D.C. with my mom
23. Go see the dolphin show at the Baltimore Aquarium
24. Go to the National Zoo
25. Go to 5 new museums in D.C. (0/5)
26. Go to Arlington Cemetery
Home
27. Finally finish unpacking the books
28. Try 2 new recipes a month for 6 months (0/12)
29. Put loose recipes into binder
30. Go through boxes of high school and college memorabilia and toss everything that no longer holds meaning (0/2)
31. Host a dinner party
32. Bake something that requires yeast (which scares me)
33. Enter a baked good in a contest
34. Hang curtains in bedroom
35. Bake a cheesecake from scratch
36. Cook meals for lunches at work two weekends a month for 3 months (0/3)
37. Find out what, exactly, chipotle en adobo is, get some, and then make something with it
38. Find dulce de leche and re-attempt Death by Caramel Bars
39. Grow mint so I can learn to make my own mojitos
40. Get caught up on putting photos in albums and printing photos from my camera
41. Buy a scanner
42. Upload old photos
43. Go through photo files and name all photos
44. Buy an apron, maybe from Etsy
45. Find a recipe for beef burgundy and try it out; see if it compares to this
Health & Fitness
46. Lose 40 pounds, 5 pounds at a time (0/40)
47. Journal food intake (i.e., get back on track with Weight Watchers) for 30 days (0/30)
48. Run another 5k
49. Take a kickboxing class
50. Take a dance class
51. Get off my medication
52. Floss every day for 30 days (0/30)
53. Take Pico to the vet three times (more as medically necessary) (0/3)
54. Take my vitamins every day for 30 days (0/30)
55. Work out 5 days a week for one month (0/20)
56. Finally upgrade my processor or get my back-up processor fixed
Financial
57. Establish a savings account and deposit money from every paycheck
58. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 1
59. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 2
60. Create and implement plan to pay off car
61. Figure out whether and how to roll over old 401(k)
Recreation
62. Attend an NFL game
63. Go ice skating
64. See games at 3 Major League ballparks I’ve never been to (0/3)
65. Go horseback riding
66. Fly a kite
67. Go to the drive-in
68. Join a bowling league
69. Go to a monster truck show
70. Drag David into a photo booth get a photo strip of pictures of us
71. Bowl a perfect game on Wii Bowling
Enrichment
72. Read Anna Karenina
73. Learn to play Euchre, so I can play with David’s family
74. Learn all the state capitals by heart
75. Take a class at the community college
76. See half of the movies on AFI’s list of the Top 100 Films of the Last 100 Years that I haven’t seen (0/23)
77. Finish Heart of Darkness, even if it kills me
78. Learn to use 3 new features on my digital camera (0/3)
79. Watch the third Godfather film (I’ve seen the other two, and I need to know if this one’s really as bad as they say)
80. Re-read all 7 Harry Potter books
Community
81. Volunteer with the Girl Scouts
82. Do 10 nice things for strangers and don’t tell anyone about them (0/10)
83. Leave a secret in a Post Secret book at the library or bookstore
84. Write three letters to companies whose products I enjoy (0/3)
85. Write three letters to companies when I have a problem with a product or service (0/3)
86. Send a care package through AnySoldier.com
Personal
87. Ask my grandmother to write down five memories of her own mother for me
88. Have the Princess and Conductor spend an overnight with me in D.C. and take them to do fun stuff
89. Write actual letters to 10 people telling them how much they mean to me (0/10)
90. Go one weekend (from 6pm Friday to 7am Monday) without using the internet (including from my cell phone)
91. Do something special with Aimee in 2011 to celebrate 20 years of friendship
92. Take David on a picnic
93. Continue the Christmas cookie weekend tradition with Karen (0/3)
94. Get a haircut and maintain it with regular (every 6 months) trims (I haven’t had a hair cut in more than a year)
95. Write myself a letter at FutureMe.org to be delivered on the end date of this challenge
96. Find a new job
97. Finally get my diploma and bar certificates framed
98. Send someone flowers for no reason
99. Buy new running shoes
100. Buy new iPod
101. Marry David
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So there you go. What do you think? Too ambitious? Not ambitious enough? I can’t decide. A few notes:
- The things that are for 30 days at a time or the like are meant to get me into the habit of doing those things. I don’t intend to stop flossing at the end of 30 days, or quit taking my vitamins, I just wanted to challenge myself to get back into good habits.
- At the end of the challenge, I will donate $2 to a charity (TBD, probably hearing-loss related) for every goal on this list that I did not complete. (If I complete them all, I’ll donate $202 to the charity.)
In Scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed.
– Sir Robert Baden-Powell
It’s fortuitous that NaBloPoMo ends Friday. Tomorrow’s Three Things Thursday, and for Friday’s post I just have to put the finishing touches on something I’ve been working on all month and put it up that morning. Then, David and I are flying to Detroit for the weekend, so blogging probably won’t happen, but Saturday’s the 1st, so I’m home free!
David’s brother is being promoted (is that the right word?) to Eagle Scout and the ceremony is Friday night. David promised TJ that he’d be there, so off we go. I’m looking forward to it, actually. I really like David’s family and I’m excited to see them again. We’re actually going back at the end of August for several days before heading to Buffalo (with a side trip to Toronto) for my cousin’s wedding Labor Day weekend (I’m a bridesmaid yet again, and the dress is awesome – I’ve have very good luck in the bridesmaid dress department). I’m hoping we’ll get up to the Northern Penninsula on that trip; I hear it’s beautiful.
That’s all the vacationing we’re doing this summer. David has tons of vacation time saved up – so much so that he’s got to use something like 10 days before the end of the year or he loses them – but I don’t, so I’ve got to save some for the holidays. So I want to live vicariously through all of you: Where have you gone so far this summer, or where are you still planning to go?
I remembered my secular father’s only strong spiritual directive: Don’t be an asshole, and make sure everybody eats.
– from Grace (Eventually): Further Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott
Five more posts, including this one, and my NaBloPoMo experiment will be a success. Good thing, too, because I’m running out of ideas!
Here’s one thing I’ve been thinking about, though: Are there any rules you had growing up that you hated or thought were stupid, but which were so ingrained in you that you still follow them now?
This came to mind this weekend, when I set my alarm for 9AM even though I really wanted to go to bed without setting it at all and just sleep as long as I pleased on Saturday morning. Growing up, mostly when my brother and I were teenagers or home from college for the summer, my mom’s rule was that we couldn’t sleep past 10 in the morning. In her words, any later and “you’re wasting the day.”
And as much as I hated it then, I’ve come to really believe that my mother was right. You can accomplish so much before 10AM – gym, errands, laundry – and then you have the whole day free to do whatever else you want to do. Since moving in with David, I don’t get up as early as I used to on the weekends (8 or 8:30), but I do usually still get up by 10. It’s just pathological; I feel bad about wasting the day if I stay in bed any later.
So what about you?
If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.
– Luis Buñuel
What’s your favorite? Right now I’m drinking a Greyhound, which is just vodka and grapefruit juice, since that’s what I have in the house; when I’m at a wedding or somewhere else with an open bar, I usually opt for a screwdriver. But my two favorite mixed drinks are mojitos and Malibu Bay Breezes. Yum.
Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear; some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever — which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.
– from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins
Dear Young Man Beside Me on the Metro This Afternoon:
If I can hear your music, with my processor turned all the way down, over the noise of the train, and seeping out from your headphones, you may be listening to your music a tad too loud. Just sayin’.
Love,
Mel
Marriage or cohabitation is often a shift from teenage grazing or cooking for one to establishing a family identity. It brings together two independent food choice systems to be coupled as one joint system.
– Amelia Lake
This title comes from an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie movies in with her boyfriend and laments the lack of personal space and time. She says she can’t engage in her secret single behavior anymore – you know, the stuff you did at home alone when you were single and living on your own. In Carrie’s case, her SSB was eating crackers and jelly; Miranda’s was deep conditioning her hands while watching infomercials; Charlotte’s was examining her pores for an hour every night before she went to bed; Samantha claimed to have no secret single behaviors.
I sure did, though, and not all of them I’m willing to share with you, but here’s a few I’ve come up with:
- eating macaroni and cheese from a box – David loves Velveeta Shells and Cheese, but I don’t think I’ve had Kraft Mac and Cheese since we started dating, mostly because I can eat a whole box in one sitting, and no one needs to see that!
- watching marathons of whatever cheesy show is on TLC on the weekends – my favorite is Say Yes to the Dress
- watching the E! red carpet coverage – all of it, from noon to 6 – for every major awards show (except the Grammys). Now I mostly just watch a half hour before hand and then the show itself
- buying Pillsbury raw cookie dough and eating it right out of the package
What about you?
We’re horribly mundane, aggressively mundane individuals. We’re the ninjas of the mundane, you might say.
– Andy Partridge
Because I know you’re dying to “watch” me sit at home all day. Here’s what’s happened so far:
7:00 am: Alarm goes off, hit snooze, notice the mild headache I went to bed with has morphed into a full-blown migraine overnight, cover my head with pillow
7:05 am: Alarm goes off again, hit snooze, moan in pain
7:10 am: Alarm goes off, get up, fully intending to hit the shower, realize there’s no way I’m going to make it into work, pop 3 Advil, crawl back into bed, email boss to say I won’t be in
7:50 am: David leaves for work; I wish he could have stayed home with me – not that I need taking care of, but the company would be nice. Roll to his side of the bed and cover my head with the pillow, attempting to block out all light
8:30 am: Wake up, toss and turn, try to put pressure on the eye the pain is behind, can’t get comfortable
9:45 am: Wake up again, migraine still in full effect, decide sleep will not happen until it’s gone; check Facebook, announce sick status to elicit sympathy, check email
10:00 am: Decide to eat to see if that will help before turning to emergency stash of Excedrin (since I’m not supposed to have caffeine); go downstairs, make cream of wheat and grab a soda; head back upstairs intending to order a movie on demand that David would never agree to watch with me
10:23 am: Get sucked into John and Kate Plus Eight on TLC, which I have honestly never watched before (but know the details of the latest saga because, well, I can read, and they’ve been all over the news lately)
10:30: New episode of JK+E; enjoy the irony of TLC replaying their trip to Hawaii to renew their vows, which Kate tells the kids they’re doing to show them they’ll “be together forever, no matter what.” Head pounding.
11:00 am: TLC switches to What Not to Wear, and I consider watching, since the subject is a man, and I’ve only ever seen them makeover women but the episode doesn’t hold my interest; check On Demand movies, see nothing worthwhile
11:05 am: Commence channel surfing; wonder when “midday news” started at 11 instead of noon on the local channels, decide it was probably about the time the “early” evening news moved from 5 pm to 4:30); stop briefly on The View, watch the ladies recapping the Michael Jackson memorial
11:15 am: Come across Forces of Nature on TBS; I own this movie and can watch it whenever I want, but I love it, and there’s nothing else on, so here we are. Head still pounding; seriously considering taking the Excedrin.
Noon: Movie’s over; I only half-watched and tried to sleep during the commericals – no luck. Channel surfing.
12:11 pm: Came across Tour de France on Versus; nothing else on, really, might as well watch ridiculously fit men cycle through Provence (or wherever the hell they are); I don’t understand all about time trials and sprints and peletons, but apparently Lance Armstrong is essentially tied for first, just a fraction of a second behind the leader. It’s weird not to see him in the yellow jersey.
12:20 pm: G-chatting with David at work; just like any other day, really, except that I’m in bed instead of at work and I feel like I got run over by a truck. This sucks. But I’m glad David talked me into putting the extra TV in our room instead of the guest room. So convenient.
12:57 pm: Decide laying in bed trying to sleep is making it worse because I’m focusing on the pain; get up, get dressed, pop one Excedrin (hoping it’s enough to do the trick – I hate taking it because I always run the risk of getting hooked on caffeine again), gather my computer and breakfast dishes and head downstairs; just about time for lunch.
1:03 pm: Open the vertical blinds to the balcony, notice that some creature has, for the first time since we’ve been growing stuff out there, stolen a ripe tomato off the Roma tomato plant, eaten half and left the other half in the dirt. Jerk. Notice my poor petunias – which just two weeks ago were huge, overgrown, and lush – are now very small, thin, and dried out. I’m not sure what the problem is, because we water them every day, and they were totally fine before, but I notice the soil is very dry, so I water them and the other flowers (the Alyssum have also begun to die, again inexplicably, though the geraniums are still going strong) copiously, hoping it’s not too late. I wish I had taken pictures of them when they were so full and in bloom – you would have been proud of me.
1:17 pm: Realize that I can have my usual Wednesday lunch – grilled cheese and chili from the takeout place in the lobby of my office building – at home because we have canned chili (moved from David’s old place and never eaten) and American cheese (which I never buy, but did this weekend for the 4th) and am totally psyched. Pico, who never heard a can open and thought there not might not be something in it for him, rushes to the kitchen, only to be sorely disappointed. I think he was hoping for creamed corn.
1:59 pm: Just finished two excellent grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of chili, the Excedrin has started to kick in, and I’m watching Brick, which TiVo kindly recommended. Once this is over, I suspect I’ll have some energy to get up and moving, maybe even go for a walk or to the gym. Maybe. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
3:36 pm: Brick is over – good, but disturbing and sad. Channel surfing has led to Yentl, right at the scene where Barbra Streisand reveals to Mandy Patankin that she’s a woman. I saw this movie as a kid, and I didn’t understand how she ever passed for a man to begin with. Still don’t. Boobs! Well, impliedly. Mandy is PISSED. Oh! Babs confesses that she loves Mandy. His heart is melting. He’s just relieved to find out he’s not gay. He loves her, too. Make out session ensues. Ok, just a chaste kiss, because Mandy all of a sudden remembers Babs’ wife! Too bad I came in too late to see how she avoided consummating her marriage. Now Mandy wants to marry Babs, but he wants her to give up her studying because women should keep house. Babs is not having it. Babs is leaving town, and leaving a note for her wife with Mandy. This is the precursor of Berger dumping Carrie by Post-It, I think. Now the final wave as they part, and in voice over, we see Mandy has taken up with Babs’ wife, and everyone seems to think this is grand. Babs is on a boat, presumably headed for America, and wait – she’s singing! Papa, can you hear me? I don’t think so, honey, because it doesn’t even appear that the other people on the boat can hear you. Try harder.
4:14 pm: Headache is mostly gone, but I’m exhausted. I have my counseling appointment at 6, so I’m going to try to nap for 45 minutes and then get ready.
5:33 pm: Man, the nap knocked me out – it took me a while to fall asleep, and then I didn’t want to get up. That always happens to me; I’m not really a nap person anymore, not like I was in college. The shower did wonders, though, and I feel pretty good. Now I’m off for my appointment, and so I must conclude the liveblogging of my sick day! Thanks for joining me!
If I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.
–Stephen King
I was thinking today about this game Aimee and I used to have, Zobmondo. It’s basically Would You Rather in board game form. The only question I remember more or less verbatim – because it grossed me out so much – is this one:
Would you rather chew a piece of gum that’s been stuck under the seat on a city bus or suck on a band-aid found in the shower drain at the YMCA?
So? Which would YOU rather do (neither is not an option)?
Soul is the ability to manipulate adversity so that it becomes tolerable.
– Unknown
I want to apologize for not being around much lately. I spent the last two months, up until about two weeks ago, in over my head emotionally, and I just had no energy to spare for anything except getting through the day. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and encouragement throughout all of this. It really means a lot to me.
I’m pleased to report that I am finally starting to feel like myself again, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Counseling has helped a lot (and I won’t lie, there’s also a medicinal component to all of this), and I feel hopeful and happy again. The depression I experienced was clearly situational, which is not to say it was David’s fault by any means, only that moving in with him has triggered some things I clearly need to deal with from my past in order to move ahead with him. I’m working on those things and looking forward to our future together. It’s hard work, to be sure, but so worth it, and I feel like the crisis point has passed.
Anyway, I’ve been doing some updating to the various pages here, the blog roll in particular, so check it out. I also decided to bite the bullet and do National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, as you can see by the handy little badge over there on the left. That means I’m pledging to post every day for the entire month! That’s kind of daunting, but I’m going to give it a shot in an attempt to revive things around here. I don’t have any idea where to start, since I’ve been so sporadic for so long, but we’ll see what I come up with! Wish me luck!
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