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Realizations
Dec. 9th, 2008 08:16 amAfter so many years of resisting, I've finally broken down and started using tags in my journal here. Part of the reason I fought this so long was the fact that I've got many years of backlogged posts that will likely take me not-quite-forever to slog through and add tags, but life is a little slow right now, and I've got a little bit of time on my hands, so it made as much sense as anything to start now.
And going back and reading through my first posts here, I've realized something. When I first started writing here, I wasn't afraid to say anything, or nothing, and I didn't live nearly as wrapped up inside my head. Somehow, over the past half-dozen years or so inside my head, I've fallen prey to a couple of... not misconceptions, but ideas that I'm not sure I like.
I'm afraid to write about everyday stuff in here. When I started this journal, everything was new. My career was new, working full-time instead of being a student was new, being back in the SCA and among my friends and with my boyfriend, all of it was a change, something to be explored, and there was something to learn and something new to experience every day. And now.... somehow it just seems kind of dull and the same and uneventful, and I can't think of anything worth exploring or writing about in my day-to-day life.
And, as an offshoot of that, I'm living inside my head instead of in the world outside me. Part of that is deliberate - there's a mess inside there that I'm trying to tidy up, and I can't do that without conscious attention. But I wonder, a little, whether that's kind of become a trap in and of itself, leaving me so wrapped up inside my thoughts and concerns and worries and Self Development Projects that I don't really recognize what's going on outside me.
I don't want to turn this into another project or challenge - that way lies just more guilt and goals, and it kind of defeats the purpose of trying to slow down, stop worrying, and just experience life instead of trying to exploit or analyze it. But I hope, at least in recognizing this, I can maybe move past it, back to something like where I was before.
Right now, it seems easy enough to start. I've lived in this house for a year, and looking around, I'm still filled with wonder at how beautiful it is, and how lucky I am to have found it. It's gray outside - the sky is a kind of streaky off-white, like a chalkboard that's been written on and erased so many times that black is just a hazy memory, but a few shards of sunlight seem to have escaped the cloud barrier and are reflecting off the bright wooden living room floor, keeping the room from seeming bleak or cold in spite of the fact that the heat hasn't quite kicked in yet.
I'm curled up here on the sofa, which has, in the few years that we've owned it, become rather shapeless and squashy and much more comfortable because of it. There's a permanent divot in the cushion behind my head from the cats sleeping there whenever I sit down; right now, my orange kitty is curled up into a tiny ball in that exact place, his tail stretched out just to touch my shoulder, purring the most tiny, quiet, whispery purr I've ever heard.
My toes are cold, since I'd need to disrupt said kitty to get at the living-room afghan - a terra-cotta brown lacy network of thick, fluffy yarn that my mother crocheted for me as a Christmas gift last year that was immediately pressed into service, since the old blue afghan I made over a decade ago when I was learning how to crochet has been usurped by the other cat in the house as his private napping space. I don't mind, though; if I get too warm and comfortable I'll never find the motivation to get up and start working on today's list of chores.
Soon I'll need to do just that - there's laundry to wash, paychecks to deposit, groceries that need to be bought, and my knee is feeling better enough that I'd like to at least take a stab at starting yoga again. Right now, though, I'm going to just take a few minutes and remember what Here and Now feels like.....
And going back and reading through my first posts here, I've realized something. When I first started writing here, I wasn't afraid to say anything, or nothing, and I didn't live nearly as wrapped up inside my head. Somehow, over the past half-dozen years or so inside my head, I've fallen prey to a couple of... not misconceptions, but ideas that I'm not sure I like.
I'm afraid to write about everyday stuff in here. When I started this journal, everything was new. My career was new, working full-time instead of being a student was new, being back in the SCA and among my friends and with my boyfriend, all of it was a change, something to be explored, and there was something to learn and something new to experience every day. And now.... somehow it just seems kind of dull and the same and uneventful, and I can't think of anything worth exploring or writing about in my day-to-day life.
And, as an offshoot of that, I'm living inside my head instead of in the world outside me. Part of that is deliberate - there's a mess inside there that I'm trying to tidy up, and I can't do that without conscious attention. But I wonder, a little, whether that's kind of become a trap in and of itself, leaving me so wrapped up inside my thoughts and concerns and worries and Self Development Projects that I don't really recognize what's going on outside me.
I don't want to turn this into another project or challenge - that way lies just more guilt and goals, and it kind of defeats the purpose of trying to slow down, stop worrying, and just experience life instead of trying to exploit or analyze it. But I hope, at least in recognizing this, I can maybe move past it, back to something like where I was before.
Right now, it seems easy enough to start. I've lived in this house for a year, and looking around, I'm still filled with wonder at how beautiful it is, and how lucky I am to have found it. It's gray outside - the sky is a kind of streaky off-white, like a chalkboard that's been written on and erased so many times that black is just a hazy memory, but a few shards of sunlight seem to have escaped the cloud barrier and are reflecting off the bright wooden living room floor, keeping the room from seeming bleak or cold in spite of the fact that the heat hasn't quite kicked in yet.
I'm curled up here on the sofa, which has, in the few years that we've owned it, become rather shapeless and squashy and much more comfortable because of it. There's a permanent divot in the cushion behind my head from the cats sleeping there whenever I sit down; right now, my orange kitty is curled up into a tiny ball in that exact place, his tail stretched out just to touch my shoulder, purring the most tiny, quiet, whispery purr I've ever heard.
My toes are cold, since I'd need to disrupt said kitty to get at the living-room afghan - a terra-cotta brown lacy network of thick, fluffy yarn that my mother crocheted for me as a Christmas gift last year that was immediately pressed into service, since the old blue afghan I made over a decade ago when I was learning how to crochet has been usurped by the other cat in the house as his private napping space. I don't mind, though; if I get too warm and comfortable I'll never find the motivation to get up and start working on today's list of chores.
Soon I'll need to do just that - there's laundry to wash, paychecks to deposit, groceries that need to be bought, and my knee is feeling better enough that I'd like to at least take a stab at starting yoga again. Right now, though, I'm going to just take a few minutes and remember what Here and Now feels like.....
