Remember this?
“I wonder. What will my life be like in one more year?”
One year from that post I was in Toccoa, Georgia, chopping my way through BG’s land with a machete and a heavy head, thinking as I chopped. This is abnormal work. And there is nothing here but us, machetes and thorns everywhere… for 50 acres.
The air was crisp and the sun was warm, and at night all we could hear was everything nature-made. I want to say it was a tough few days because we had the bare minimum equipment and camping gear, and the fire ants got to the food (and to me), we sweat a lot because it was still quite warm out and we had long sleeves and pants on… and no showers for four days. The chopping was tough, for hours on end, and when we would turn around to see our work there we saw just fifty feet of a trail that took us three hours to work on.
I mean, it started out that tough, for me anyway. I was afraid, actually. Afraid that this was too much labor and that I might just be a little bit lazy and a little too weak. Am I committed enough to this person and these ideas to see it through and keep a level head?
What we are essentially doing is saying a big “fuck that” to what the majority of our society is doing and inevitably we have endless questions: How much money do we need to build this house? Can we actually build this ourselves? Is it ok if we don’t work for a year to do this full-time? How long before we can start the farm? How are we going to be affected if the stock market crashes? What happens if we need to go to the hospital? We will have no insurance… Where can we place the house for maximum solar exposure (for the panels), and how can we find that place when the land is such a mess? How sustainable are we if we hire someone to come in with a machine to clear some of this brush? Have we thought of everything?
Endless.
So there’s me, chopping my way through, over analyzing everything. And along comes the BG, curing my pain, silencing my thoughts and clarifying everything… by asking me to marry him.
Yeh. ;)
Two weekends ago I took Amtrak to PA to visit friends. YAY. I spent the weekend with
m and we went to j’s party together where we… played beer pong (???) and sat by the fire until 3am. It was awesome. Really, the entire weekend was pretty great.
I went to visit my parents for the day on Sunday and things were kind of rocky between my mother and I. It seems clearer to me now more than ever that there are some traits I’ve carried from her that I really dislike. But now that I see where it comes from it’s easier to identify what needs to be changed. That sounds really cryptic. Let’s just say I had a *major* revelation that Sunday and since then I’ve had an entirely new perspective on my life.
Lots of exciting things happening lately: Work is going well, my freelance business is picking up, BG and I are hitting a one-year-since-I-moved-here anniversary, yoga is kicking my ass (lovingly), and I’ve been seeing my boys more often. I think I can honestly say that I don’t hate Raleigh any longer. Yea. I said it.
Eeeeeeeeee! :)
I love how I can totally lose it at the drop of a hat for something so fucking meaningless. And then once I lose it I can’t get back easily. I loom there, time stops, nothing else matters. And even though my brain is telling my heart that I have nothing in the world to worry about and EVERYTHING in the world to be excited about I remain, sitting, staring…
worrying.
BG told me something last night that I kind of already knew but now that someone else articulated it to me it seems a reality… and I need to change it. Or at least, if I am aware that that is how I am, I can prevent myself from falling into the “worry pit”.
Here’s to self-change, self-therapy. Fuck spending money on that shit.
/me reaches for a PBR.
On an unrelated note, how the hell can anyone STAND to listen to Sarah Palin talk? Never mind the stupid shit that falls out of her mouth, it’s her VOICE… it is so GODDAMN ANNOYING.
I just realized that over the next few days this is what I have going on:
- Newly loved yoga practice
- Four new freelance projects (three new clients!)
- Two current freelance projects
- Must install and learn CMS system for one of the clients
- Yoga
- Obama cookout tonight
- Rollergirls tomorrow
- Yoga
- Party tomorrow night
- Gym and more yoga
- French class Monday nights
- White dog cafe lady speaking at the History Museum next Tuesday
- Yoga
- NCBC meeting next Thursday
All THIS before I leave to visit friends and family in PA next Friday for a week. HOLY HELL. Remember like six weeks ago when I was miserable and bored with life in Raleigh… WELL I WENT AND NIPPED THAT IN THE ASS DIDN’T I?
I talked to my friend Kris from Portland while the BG and I visited and she was telling me how her yoga practice had taken off… she was practicing and going to class like 8 times per week. Insane! I was kind of jealous when she was telling me because she loved her classes and her instructor and she could think about nothing else besides yoga. At the time I hadn’t been doing ANY exercising because I suck, but after our trip the BG and I made more of an effort to work out. Now I think we’ve got it (finally). And my new friend Julianne who incidentally also practices yoga at my YMCA has started motivating me to go to intermediate level classes, where I’m doing surprisingly well I think. (At least I did last night.)
Anyway, it’s all I can think about now. And I’ve been practicing at home more too. While I’m in PA I’m going to bum a class or two off m’s YMCA because we rock like that.
Thank god I have coffee fueling my brain today. CAN’T YOU TELL.
I spent the last week and a half in Portland with the BG and progressed through a series of unexpected emotions, ranging from please-don’t-make-me-go-home to hmmm-I-think-I’m-ready-to-move-on. My ass has been sittin’ here in Raleigh pretty much miserable, waiting around for something to show me that I am, indeed, in the right place. Going back to PDX was not exactly what I expected that something to be, but apparently it may have been that simple.
Without getting into every detail let’s just say that nothing there has changed. The house was the same, the roommates were the same, my friends were the same. The city is still full a pachouli and dreadlocks and the feeling of do-these-people-have-jobs? It was awesome to see my friends and I miss them already, but I feel much better about leaving them than I did one year ago.
The BG and I also moved through what seemed to be new phases in our relationship, putting some things on the table and talking through some shit that neither of us was being up front about prior to the trip. A lot of it revolved around me not exactly being excited about the prospect of moving to Toccoa and all that might mean for us. The idea of building the house is a non-issue. It’s Toccoa, the weather there, the nothingness there, that I have uneasiness about. We talked a lot about our options and agreed to remain open-minded.
I am exhausted. The last few days there my afternoons were filled with every cell in my body FIGHTING to keep my eyes open. We took a red eye flight home and even after ten hours of sleep last night I’m still feeling sluggish.
Sluggish, but good.
I’m so on the verge of something all the time. Like if I keep thinking thinking thinking then something one day is going to POP!… And then I’ll get it and be right with the world and myself and my surroundings. I’m starting to believe this might be the wrong way to live.
On some days there are minutes where I feel relaxed. On other days there are hours where I feel too complex and can’t complete even the most simple of tasks. There are yet other days where I know I’m fighting something bigger. Huge. I am fighting the universe. And the more I fight it the more miserable I become. Things cannot always be *my* way.
The days I fight are the days I remember most because they’re the ones where I feel the most awful. They’re the ones I deal out blame. I blame the city of Raleigh for making me feel enclosed, I blame myself for losing my independence, I blame my friends for not taking our relationships more seriously, I blame this apartment for my claustrophobia, I blame the BG for being too good, I blame the media for not enlightening us, I blame my family for not trying harder to see things the way I do, I blame the US for most of the world’s collective misery, I blame soccer moms for driving poorly, I blame breeders for perpetuating the problem. The list never ends. All of this blame and judgement, all because I cannot control the way things are and cannot accept that I do not have the control.
During moments of relaxation I feel completely integrated into my surroundings. I don’t think about them, they just are. Nothing can go wrong because nothing is touching me. It is because these moments happen so rarely for me, or that they’re mostly induced when certain conditions apply, that I am making a vow today. My perceptions of life are skewed and I recognize that as an issue.
