The Wonder Woman Pose

I started my day by watching a TED talk about the merits of the role body language plays in your perception of yourself.  It was quite enlightening.  Tonight, immediately before I sat down to write this, I struck the wonder woman pose for a minute or so and felt immediately better about my predicaments.

My life feels out of order and out of my control which might be why I found myself in a throw stuff out and find order, control and balance in my home mood today.  And though my home feels harmonious, getting used to other people playing a role in my future is not a feeling I have found myself accustomed to enjoying.  I want the things I'm waiting for to happen now, dammit.  I want to know where I'm going to be living in the next few months.  I want to know if I will have the will power to save enough to quit my job in August.  I want to know what grades I'm going to get in my classes.  I want to know that I survive and maybe even thrive in the next year.  I'm seeing most of the hurdles that will likely challenge me in the coming months and I'm making game plans to conquer them but all this focus on my challenges has me feeling a bit defeated.

Maybe I feel the way I do because my chest cold is preventing me from moving faster than a geriatric turtle lest I find myself in a coughing fit that squeezes my lungs of every breathable drop of air.  So long fitness challenge prize...  I'd rather have healthy lungs more quickly than have the cash prize but the drop in productivity between last month and this month has me a bit bummed.

Hearing from DLR, who is expressing wanting to be friends and hang out makes me feel very lucky to have someone who I know is serious about me.  I also know that because I'm not willing to sacrifice the trust and peace I have with this someone, I feel very good about telling him that this is not a possibility. He's incredibly pushy about getting movies back to me that were borrowed about a year ago and insistent that this is his only motivation but is also telling me that he misses my insight and opinions and then threw in that he is single again.  I don't buy it.  It reeks of bullshit.  And I've had about as much bullshit as I can stand.

Sit and wait.  Patience is the word of the year.

Vapo Rub Kind of Evening

There is not a single person whom I'm keeping this secret from anymore and it feels like a breath of fresh air.  It is excruciatingly painful to say goodbye and yet I'm emotionally conflicted because every time we have to say goodbye again, it is one day closer to not having to say goodbye anymore.  Just a few more months.  In the grand scheme of it all, a few months is really nothing.

I'm exhausted.  My plane was delayed an hour, I had to take a different bus route, I barely made it back in enough time to drop my bags, make a cup of tea, eat a handful of pretzels and get back on a bus downtown to attend class.  However, I am really very excited about my class.

Losing patience with the bus

What. A. Night.

The bus.  It was a nightmare today.  The district decided (for very good reasons) to implement an electronic card system for its college pass and will be rolling it out for many other uses later.  But the shit hole bus that serves my underserved route, which is rarely on time, always overcrowded, driven by a consistently cranky and or rude driver, and most definitely always dirty has not had a working card reader all week.  NBD, the drivers are either incompetent or uncaring because they always just let me on anyway.  This evening, I got on the bus to go downtown.  Everything was normal.  The bus got there on time (according to Google maps, RTD's site listed that it was scheduled 10 minutes later than Google said it would be) I boarded, the card reader worked, it was not overcrowded and relatively quiet.  Then.  All hell breaks loose when the driver is directed to take a detour.  Some lady freaks out about it and starts pacing the aisle, talking to the driver and calling someone on the phone.  Consequently, at the same time, the drunk, cracked out couple behind me started singing at the top of their lungs.  This prompts phone lady to shush them which prompts female drunk cracked out lady to get out of her seat and threaten to kick phone lady's ass.  I happen to be sitting in front of crack seat and across the aisle from phone lady so I'm thoroughly uncomfortable with the whole mess.  It calms down, I move to the front I exclaim (under my breath) "what the fuck" the driver hears me, chastises me for my language, crack lady gets in phone lady's face 1 or 2 more times within the seemingly endless detour.  I decide I'll get off earlier than planned but crack couple decides they're getting off there too so I decide I'll wait and then they don't get off there and then I get downtown.  I have 15 minutes to walk 5 blocks, pickup and pay for a prescription and walk 2 more blocks to catch my bus home. I all but sprint to make it and my bus home is consequently 10 minutes late.  FML

The good news is I was so worn out by the whole thing I decided not to cook for myself and go to the opening night of the highly anticipated opening restaurant across the street and that was, by far, the best decision I have made all night.

Alls well that ends well.

Revealed For What It Is

The cold weather is very isolating.  The matter of my cold weather cuddle buddy being so far away and my texting/drinking/good time buddies being otherwise occupied with their own lives only compounds the loneliness of the cold weather isolation.  So here I sit, trying to warm my bones under layers of blankets deciding whether to aid my heater with my oven because the North Pole has moved to Denver and it's less than freezing by double digit degrees.  And I do so by myself, healing from the emotional drain of an afternoon in the company of the Nebraskans.

I had some thoughts this morning about the purpose of the next few months of my life.  To take my life one thing, one small win, one day at a time would be something I could stand to learn to take full advantage of and appreciate more.  2013 is hereby dedicated to the small things.  It is dedicated to hitting the pavement and building strength, emotional  and physical  It is dedicated to doing all those small things I've always wanted to do.  It is dedicated to spending on experiences and not on things.  It is dedicated to spending the time I can with the people I have in my life before I don't have the luxury to do so anymore.  And it is dedicated to taking the small measures to prepare myself for the big changes.

It is likely that I will experience some deep loss in the next 12 months.  It is likely that there will be grand moments of happiness.  It is likely that there will be small moments of bliss and frustrations and inconvenience and peace.  But they will be mine, for better or worse and to be thankful for the moments that are mine is all that I seek for the year ahead of me.

A System of Near-Infinite Complexity

Watching this woman die is by far the most powerfully painful experience I can say I've ever and may ever experience.  This disease, this degeneration of a person; the extended, prolonged goodbye to the shell that was once a vibrant strong grandmother, it's not as though you have a funeral and say goodbye and find peace.  There is no peace to be found, just nothing you can do to ease the pain.  The pain for me, for my mother watching her mother die, for my grandmother who can't even dress herself or clean up after herself or be trusted to shower without injuring herself or wandering off.  The fear that this is how I will watch my own mother die, the anticipation that I too will have this to look forward to when my time comes.  Nothing scares me more than not having the chance to do wonderful things with my life before those memories are all that I have left because I do not know anything of my present. Nothing marks the inequality and horribleness of life quite like watching someone die of dementia.

The Obviously a Bit Bitter Post

Weddings are irritating me right now.  They are causing me to spiral into childish feelings of the little girl who isn't invited to the birthday party or whose little brother is somehow beyond all things imaginable getting married before her.  Why the hell do I feel so angry about these things?  They are weddings!  I don't even know if I want a wedding for myself!  I need to have a child, a little girl to be exact, and teach her to be awesome at math and not daydream about her future wedding but do daydream about the day she cures cancer because her mother socialized her to engage in science and encouraged her to get her PhD before settling on some socially acceptable form of what a woman's life is suppose to be like.

On that note, I wish someone would have encouraged me to be better at math as a kid.  I'm smart enough.  I always have been.  I just needed for someone to take an interest in pushing me harder.  Then maybe I wouldn't be so intimidated by math now.

The good news is it looks like I should be getting a $1000 reimbursement from the government for school.  That is effing fantastic news.

2013 is shaping up to be a complete and total test of my patience and my sanity and my determination to not let it get to me.

So cheers to taking a year to grow thicker skin and to preparing for a lifetime of achievement beyond that of the girl whose biggest day is simply devoting her life to a man.  This girl has bigger dreams then that.

One Very Long Paragraph Rant on Life Plans

As much as it pains me to say this.  I think it is best if I don't apply for more internships before December of this year.  It seems like my absolute best course of action is to cool my heels at my current suck the life out of me customer service gig through the end of summer, save enough so that I don't have to work through the fall semester, bolster my credit hours for fall and be completely ready to take on an internship in the Spring next year.  This way I'll have time to focus 100% on my school work, get my grades up high enough for an honors thesis and have time to work on said honors thesis.  Clearly I'm a great candidate, both people who interviewed told me so.  After next fall not only will I have GIS classes, but I'll also have some graduate level coursework, explicitly transportation planning coursework.  I will be a dynamite candidate in a year.  A year is nothing, really, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.  And though I really passionately dislike my soul-sucking customer service gig, I chose banking so at least I'd have bank holidays.  If I have to work customer service, I want my effing bank holidays and vacation time.  I've already requested time off in January, March, May and July.  I can always call in a mental health day in the months I couldn't request time off in.  I'll get through it.  I just have to be diligent about sticking to my budget and not spending money not accounted for ahead of time.  My goal is to quit early August.  So the countdown begins, 7 more months of soul-sucking customer service potentially for the rest of time.  When I add in the rest of time bit I can handle the 7 months part.  And each month goes by so quickly.  This will give me a reason to start looking forward to paying rent.  Each rent check I cut is another month closer to reaching my goals and starting on a new journey.  If I have to pick up another customer service gig in January I can but I anticipate taking 18 credit hours in the fall and work will not work with that.  A break from work will be good anyway.

At any rate, I'll stop publicly musing about my possible life plans at this point.  It seems reasonable that I maybe just ranted for a very long paragraph...

Feeling Like Gold

In the two years following my move, I spent a great deal of time simply saying yes to all things, people, experiences, etc.  It was my way of healing, of experiencing.  My motto has been, in that time, if it will make for a good story, there is no reason not to do it.  This has served me well for the time but it came to a tipping point over the summer where I felt out of control.  Things that seemed as though they would be a fantastic story turned out to be heartbreaking stories in the end.  The second half of the year gave me a great chance to pick up the pieces of a life I had over extended and fallen apart and put them in place.  Not just in a haphazard "store them for now" type place but in a true introspection of what I really want for my life kind of way.  The fourth quarter of my year has been my strongest, most confident and sure time of my life thus far.  I had to fall down and fall hard to find a stronghold in my life's footing.  I suppose this is the story of life.

26 came up on me in a hurry.  I see a future; a realistic future for myself like never before and it is one that makes me very happy to look forward to.  Making less reckless, more well thought out decisions suddenly seems less boring than it did not so long ago.  I want to see this one through.  The opportunity costs of not pursing my current life courses outweighs the spent costs of the stumbles and failures along the way.

I can hardly wait to start school again in a few weeks.  I will have a planning class that will focus on Denver and the course content is thrilling to me.  And after this semester I will be doing nothing but planning classes and internships and graduate school applications and planning for the possibility of another big life adventure in another wonderful city.  My next five years hold a lot of hope and promise for me and I intend to make the best of what is left of my youth.

So from the recklessness of pursuit of crazy stories I transition into making sure to chase the dreams that scare me, to find a truce with my own inner wars and battles, to never leaving words unsaid, to being so good they can't ignore me, and to living out the life that I have imagined.

For the next year my focus is on making good decisions, taking care of my health (mental and physical), continuing my quest into radical honesty, learning to trust my own instinct and making sure to love and appreciate all the friends and family who have stuck by me through good decisions and bad.

Cheers!