Monthly Archive for May, 2008

sometimes i just need a breather

Last week was tough. My emotions dipped to a new low and although I’m feeling MUCH better now through a process of rationalizing with myself and yoga, I think I should give some credit to the beach trip the BG and I took last weekend.

Normally traveling on holiday weekends turns me off because everyone knows someone headed to the beach and the LAST thing I want is to be around people. But I had this feeling we’d be clear of both traffic and retards, and it turns out we were. We left Sunday morning and headed east on US 64 until we came into Cape Hatteras National Seashore and then headed south to Pea Island. It probably took us about ten minutes to find a suitable camping area. By “suitable” I mean no one else around, even if it meant we did it under the radar. After passing the “Day Use Only” sign we found this little road and some construction equipment. We hid the car behind the equipment and set up camp in a little nook in the dunes.

Home

It ruled. After laying around on the beach and eating chips we sat on our hill overlooking the ocean, ate our homemade burritos and spied on people with the binoculars.

My BG Spy

Then later after the sun went down we ran around naked and watched the stars. [No picture available.]

A little removal of the pants and staring at the stars with binoculars is all I needed. ALL.

Published
by
frekur
on May 29, 2008
in happiness and travel
. 2 Comments

oh internet, how you inspire

A few days ago the BG received a request from someone on Couchsurfing to stay at our place. The particular night this person requested was actually one where we were planning to be at the beach, but as usual we checked out his profile and then his blog. Incredibly inspired I told BG to see if Amtrekker was going to be in Raleigh after we got back. *Then* I started following him on Twitter. (Heheheheeeee.) After some phone calls we actually met him last night at Napper Tandy’s for some weekly trivia (and Strongbow). He had some amazing stories and when all was said and done, he actually needed a place to stay so we gladly hosted him. Score.

BG, Me, Amtrekker!

This kid has been traveling around the country achieving goals and making videos about it for nearly a year. He said his family all had wagers on how long he’d be gone, and none of them bet into 2008… here it is nearly June. What’s really interesting, though, is that some of the goals on his list seem totally insane and to achieve them he had to have pretty heavy traffic to his site. We played twenty questions with him asking how he manages to keep the stats up on his site, how often he writes and how the HELL did he get on Good Morning America?! (Through a wild chain of events Diane Sawyer found his friggen blog. CRAZY.)

Anyway, the BG and I are now motivated. We are going to make a list of things to accomplish on our year-long road trip. In addition, the BG has some fantastic ideas about mounting a camera in the Prius and taking pictures at equal intervals throughout. We’re looking into purchasing a GPS data tracker that we will sync with the EXIF data on our photos so that each evening when we’re uploading to Flickr, they will automatically be geotagged and put on the map. We’ll be able to see exactly where we’ve been (and our families will see that we’re not dead). Eeeeee technology!

Right now Amtrekker is still asleep on my floor. And although I feel oddly famous right about now, I realize that he’s simply a shining example of how the internet serves to teach and inspire. Sometimes when I’m nerding out on the interwebs I become overwhelmed by just how much information exists out there. It amazes me that it’s possible to weed through all of it to find something (or someone) that can brighten your day, motivate you, or teach you something you never knew you were interested in.

(That was filmed eight months ago. I’m happy to say that I drove him to the Amtrak station this morning and he commented on how easy it was for us to get there. Glad I could help improve his idea of Raleigh… He somehow did the same for me!)

Check out the other Amtrekker videos here and tell me you don’t just want to eat him alive he’s so damn awesome.

Published
by
frekur
on May 28, 2008
in goals, tech and travel
. 2 Comments

oh my little consumer

So we’re thinking of buying a car, (and selling the hand-me-down Passat). At first we thought it’d be SWEET if we could find another Honda Insight but yea, they’re a little tough to locate now that gas prices are soaring. I found this weird thing that crawls multiple Craigslist city sites based on your preferences and used it to try to find an Insight even remotely near us. The closest I could find was in Texas and it was very overpriced.

We’ve talked about a few other options but then yesterday I came home from being out and Ben suggested we just hunker down and get a new Prius. And… yea. I think it makes sense.

I’m kind of excited… in a CONSUMER KIND OF WAY. (The shame.)

Published
by
frekur
on May 21, 2008
in guilty pleasures and shopping
. 2 Comments

after all that, where is my star?

I’ve mentioned before that the BG and I have this dream of traveling together and then building the house in Toccoa. I am very excited about all of it because it is a dream we created together. Traveling is a priority for me and it is for him as well, so planning the year-trip in 2010 (and subsequent trips after that) will be easy. And as far as the house is concerned I’ve wanted to live off the grid, he wanted to build a house out of sustainable materials. It’s like we’re merging personal goals into one big collaborative dream we now hold really dear.

But what happens after all that? For me, personally? What will carry me through my life happily and individually? I put a lot of time into finding an answer and the void I imagine in that answer’s place frightens me.

Let’s back up.

Right now, in Raleigh, I am in a holding pattern. I lost sleep last night with the realization that this is something I need to accept and be patient with. I have made a lot of rationalizations in this blog about why I’m “happy” and how I see my life but I’m going to be blatantly honest in this post and explain why lately I’ve not been so content. Some of this might seem like I’ve backtracked but I actually believe the courage to write this is progress. You be the judge.

This morning I had a long conversation with the only other person up that early, my mother. Although she and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, we both have very similar emotional patterns and her relationship with my father has striking resemblances to the one I share with the BG. Growing up, and even into the recent years, I’ve recognized that a large part of me doesn’t want to end up following in some of her footsteps. My mother has let go of some of her personal dreams and although it’s not a terrible (or unsolvable) situation, it’s one I can see myself headed toward. By that I mean: I haven’t made the commitment to any one activity that will suit me as a personal outlet (a dream) that I can rely on, lose myself in, look forward to, and enjoy. This is where my mother is.

Because I’ve chosen to surround myself in long-term relationships most of my adult life, I’ve come into patterns of following instead of leading. You could argue that if I hadn’t “followed” for this long that I wouldn’t have led myself to Portland and had the best times of my life last year. I would not fight you on it. My only regret is not taking the time to find a dream for myself in all those instances of following.

This pattern is one reason moving to Raleigh last October scared the living shit out of me. I knew that I was entering a situation that would enable this pattern and that it would take a lot of work on my part to keep myself above water. I’ve been here for over seven months, nearly the amount of time I lived in Portland. I have a few friends but not yet connected with anyone on the level I’d prefer. I sold off a lot of things that offered me ways of distracting myself, like DJ equipment and my vehicles… but anyway, I am here now. And admittedly, I’ve had a shitty attitude. I don’t have interest in this city, or meeting people, really, or anything. The only thing that makes me happy is spending time with the BG, making plans and doing all the fun things we get into.

I can’t allow this to be the only thing that gets me through the day. And yet, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’m ashamed at how immature I’ve been, and how lost I’ve felt, even in the midst of the greatest relationship I could have ever asked for. Didn’t I promise myself two years ago that I wouldn’t do this again? That this doesn’t work for me? That the only way I’m going to overcome obsessive manic depressive thoughts is to live for *me*?

I so did. And I haven’t honored that. All the little choices I make on a day-to-day basis about “skipping yoga tonight because I’d rather cook food and hang out with Ben” and “nah, I’ll call my friends another day” (because Ben’s home now), or “who needs to meet people when my favorite person ever is always here?”… They all add up to a dependent, sad, pathetic existence when my other half isn’t around.

I’ll destroy myself if I continue this way. It’s why I’ve lost sleep, it’s probably why I’ve had severe heart palpitations over the past few weeks and it’s why I have a friggen panic attack every time the BG tells me he’s leaving Raleigh for x amount of time.

Right now I just need a little encouragement and support, and maybe suggestions on what kind of trouble I can get my little independent ass into. I think this behavioral pattern of mine has been with me for so long that it’s sometimes hard to find stuff I take interest in (especially in a city that is a lot less obvious about things of interest).

***

I didn’t mention at all in this post that the BG is the GREATEST thing ever to happen to me, did I? Well, he is. Because he listens to my endless ramblings and loves me anyway. I could just die right now.

Published
by
frekur
on May 20, 2008
in complaining, relationships, sadness, self-awareness and the_other_move
. 3 Comments

new blog design, aka what i did with my weekend

After updating my WordPress and K2 last week, I found that the K2 developers changed some things in the CSS/layout that made it impossible for me to use my old stylesheet without changing things. The BG wrestled with this several weeks ago when he upgraded his version and I vaguely remember thinking, “I’m so putting off upgrading because I don’t have the patience to deal with that on my weekend.” So I put it off.

Yesterday and Saturday I spent some time “designing” the new theme for this site. (By that I mean, I didn’t do it from the ground up, I sort of broke it down from the top, dismantling some of the default K2 theme to suit my needs.) At first I wanted to integrate it seamlessly with my portfolio site but later I thought, not only is that going to be very difficult because of how K2 is set up, but I really don’t write much in my blog that has anything to do with my design or the CSS/webdev community in a way that warrants it being integrated into my portfolio site. I write personal stuff, so it made more sense to keep it separate. So, I took the opportunity to create a new little logo for the header and play around with a more unique design.

So far, here it is. I’m not 100% satisfied yet, but that’s my nature as a designer, right? The added benefit of it looking more spiffy, besides the fact that it doesn’t look like crap any longer, is that I’m now more inclined to keep it updated. :)

Published
by
frekur
on May 19, 2008
in design, tech and work
. 2 Comments

blogging is cheaper than therapy

I haven’t blogged in weeks, probably because when I’m not depressed or heart-wrenched in some way, I don’t have anything to say. I either write about how it feels to be me, all twisted and thinking, or boring entries about what I did last weekend. Everyone loves those.

I’ve thought a million times about getting the hell out of here and quitting this blog. Then, the other day when I was upgrading my version of WordPress and K2 I panicked for a second, completely forgetting that all of my entries are stored in the database. I was like, SHIT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO SOMETHING? WHERE ARE MY ENTRIES… as I watched my FTP app overwrite all those little files… I’m seriously so retarded sometimes it’s painful. REALLY.

The experience taught me two things, one) that I really need to make backups before I upgrade (I know, shut the hell up) and two) that I would DIE if I lost this blog, even though some days I think it’s a compilation of worthless crap.

Some of my entries, however, really remind me of who I am better than any therapist or list-writing or talking to friends could do, which is the reason I started writing here in the first place. It’s totally cliche to say “I have a horrible memory”, but seriously people, I am the worst. This blog was always meant to be one big HEY, REMEMBER THIS SHIT? telling me I’m not a giant poo with overgrown eyebrows. (More on that later.)

I don’t know what my point is. Maybe today since I’m feeling like shit I’m just trying to remind myself that I’m so much more than poo.

Published
by
frekur
on May 14, 2008
in self-awareness and wtf
. 4 Comments