Once Upon a Time on Independence Day

I didn't have any cookouts to attend today. That was fine with me, because, once again, I wasn't feeling so hot. Instead, I sought refuge at the budget movie theater for the afternoon. I drove out intending to see Mirror, Mirror, but after I purchased my ticket and walked away from the counter, I realized I'd said "The Lorax" instead. It had caught my eye on the marquee on the way in and I was distracted.

The Lorax was worth seeing, it's a good message on Independence Day, especially in light of the current tug-of-war between individual rights and the common good. Not to mention knitting! Once I left the theater, I realized I could still see a showing of Mirror, Mirror, so I stayed and did that as well. The theater has air conditioning, I do not. I loved the retelling of the story, the fact that I managed to pull the name Sean Bean out of my head appropriately, and the production number that ran during the credits. At $2.50 a movie, it was an afternoon well-spent.

In the evening I went to an outdoor concert by a local chamber orchestra. The main piece they did was Peter and the Wolf, so I ended up having a day filled with fairy tales and fables, completely unintended. I love when days work out that way.

I spent a little time thinking about independence and whether we are truly living up to the ideals set forth by our founding fathers (I don't think we are) and whether we really are, or should be, the greatest nation on earth (I don't think so, to both points. The fact that we, as a nation, feel destined by some higher power, to be better than and basically have control over, every other nation on earth feels like the height of arrogance to me). I think we need to learn to better to take care of people in need rather than pushing this economic every man for himself, dog-eat-dog, system we have in place at the moment.

As far as personal independence, there are things I'm thinking about that I hope I can work out sooner rather than later.

Right now, the neighbors are setting off fireworks and I'm the tiniest bit concerned about my house catching fire, because I live on a street of tightly-spaced row homes with tiny back yards and I can't imagine where the sparks are going, if not on our roofs, and I keep getting whiffs of sulfur.

Photo Walk in the Golden Hour

I live three blocks from Franklin & Marshall College, so this evening I decided to take my camera for a walk through campus. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, just to see what I could see. I went at around 7 pm, to see if I could take advantage of the so-called "golden hour," that time when the sunlight goes all honeyed and heavy and shadows take on so much more depth and substance. It was a bit overcast, so I didn't get as much sunlight as I would have hoped, but I got a few things I'm happy with. Doesn't he look almost human? I want to go back and spend an entire hour just on this statue, I never realized just how much was going on there until this evening.

Work was long and frustrating, but ultimately productive, and by the time I got home, my resolve to go out with my camera was beginning to flag. I am so glad I did, though, because even though there were only a few shots I was really happy with in the end, I spent a good hour losing myself in looking at things and figuring out how I wanted to try to capture them, and it felt so good. I need to find a way to reconnect with that ability more often.

I need to find a way to reconnect to it with my writing again. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and so easily could have gotten up and sat in front of a notebook or my keyboard for an hour before getting ready for work, but I didn't. Instead I futzed around of Facebook and read an article on the Fast and Furious program, and drifted back off to sleep. Why did I do all of those things instead of writing? I think I did them because I am so worried about what may come up when I sit down to write. I worry that I will be sad or upset and right now I don't feel as though I have anyone to bounce those feelings off of, so I'd rather not let them out to begin with. It's frustrating.

On the positive side, I've written here for eight days running. I know they haven't been the most scintillating posts ever, but it's been a long time since I've written on consecutive days, let alone blogged, so I'll take it. I'm hoping that I'm just rusty and that as the month (and hopefully beyond) goes on, I'll begin to be more coherent and substantive in what ends up here. So, bear with me, if you can.

Fresh Out of Big Adventures

A friend was showing Pee-Wee's Big Adventure tonight as the offering for a movie night she runs at a local cafe. I went, even though I'd already dozed off once or twice after work, because I wanted to be able to laugh out loud at something with other people (not to mention that I'd promised her I'd come). It is still funny, there are a few gags in it that I really love, but mostly what it ended up doing was remind me just how stuck I am feeling lately.

My family is planning this big trip just under a year from now, and that'll be sure to be an adventure, but in the meantime, I'll be hoarding my vacation time. I could take off and go on weekends, but I almost never do, because I'm usually so exhausted by the time they roll around that all I want to do is rest up and recuperate from my work week. I need to change this.

A few weeks ago I went to a writing retreat in the mountains a couple of hours from home, I guess that could be considered a small adventure. It got me out of town and away from most of the people I know and into an unfamiliar environment and experience. Things like that need to happen more often.

I think part of what is holding me back is that I'm getting tired of doing things by myself, but I don't really quite know how to go about asking people to go on mini-adventures with me. It sounds sort of silly at my age, doesn't it?

I need to get out of this rut. I need to change things up. Get out of my house, get out of my town, get out of my routine. If anything is going to change, I have to figure out how to make it change. I can't keep thinking about things I want to do without putting any action behind those thoughts.

Of course, I say the same thing over and over and I still can't figure out what it's going to take to make me step out and do something different enough to wake me up and energize me. Maybe this time I'll figure it out.

Returning to Reading

Thursday night I bought the Hunger Games trilogy. By mid-day today I closed the third book. It's been some time since I've lost myself in reading in quite that way. Most nights I read before I fall asleep, and a lot of the time I'll have a book in my bag to read at lunch (though I don't take it out as much as I could), but I've tended to let a lot of other things get in the way of reading time and this weekend reminded me of how much I miss spending so much time getting lost in story. It's important to do, especially if I want to keep writing, or do more writing, or whatever it is I'm looking for in terms of writing. If I'm not reading, I'm not creating those connections that get me to the pictures in my head, the transformation from words to images that our brain is so adept at.

It's not an automatic leap, perhaps, but the connection is there, The more I read, the more I write, because the more I read, the more my imagination and language centers are activated. I need to keep this in mind and spend more time with a book in my hand and less time with a movie or TV show in front of my eyes. I have an idea of suspending Netflix for a while, starting on my birthday, just to see if I can take a bit of a break from all of the exposure to other people's pre-formed images. I think it might help, and at this point I'm willing to try just about anything.

Creaky

I haven't felt well all week. I've been run down and have a deep ache in my hip and a smattering of other things. I'm usually fairly healthy, but right now things seem to be catching up with me. I'm  eating more, finally, but it's more of the wrong thing, and I'm still not cooking, or even preparing salads. I walk to and from work, and usually to and from other places on weekends, but it's not really enough exercise. My weekly swim time doesn't really do it either, because I never swim for very long, not to mention that I may have lost my swim partner. I find it much easier to stay engaged with laps if I'm not doing them solo.

I'm the type of person who only goes to the doctor if I'm feeling really lousy for more than a day or two, which means I haven't been for over a year at this point. I think I may schedule an appointment again next week, though, because this complete lack of energy plus the various aches and pains plus my usual insomnia are all beginning to take their toll. I know this is part of the aging process, especially when I'm not taking care of myself as well as I could be, but it feels like it goes beyond that. I'm beginning to think that maybe I need some sort of baseline so that I can figure out how to make myself stronger moving forward, because if I do want to make any real changes in how my life is going, I'll need adequate energy to be able to carry them out.

Social Life (Or Something Like It)

I went to a CD release party tonight for a guy I've known peripherally for several years. A few years a go I interviewed him for an article I did on farmers markets in town. I knew or recognized most of the people at the event, there were lots of interesting foods and drinks and wonderful music, and yet I still mostly felt out-of-place.

I do better in groups of ten or fewer. More than that and I get overwhelmed. I have a hard time walking up and inserting myself into conversations. I know that I am at least relatively interesting and moderately intelligent, but I clam up and get what my grandmother used to refer to as "shucksy" in a large group. I am not comfortable being the center of attention.

There were several broad categories of people at this gathering and I didn't really feel as though I fit well into any of them. I'm not a musician. I'm not a college professor. I don't belong to the Unitarian Universalist congregation. I'm not a young, hip, artist-activist. I can have a perfectly fine conversation with any individual member of any of these groups, but get more than a couple from any one of them together and I go back to feeling like I don't belong.

This is in contrast to a friend who was also there, who can and will talk to anyone any time about anything. I watched him circulate around the place, completely at ease with whomever he was talking to, and willing to insert himself into any conversation with any group of people. I sometimes envy that ability, because I think not having it probably makes people think that I am stand-offish or unfriendly rather than simply shy.

Conversing with more than one or two people at a time is obviously a skill I need to figure out how to cultivate, but I find that I'm at a loss as to how to go about acquiring it.

I have plenty of opportunities to go out and be social, and I do it a lot more than I even realize sometimes, but I still somehow manage to feel as though I exist in a vacuum, it's an odd place to be. I like solitude, I need it more than I need to be social, but if I don't get to spend time with people semi-regularly I begin to feel cut off and lonely, so it is most definitely a balancing act.

Tomorrow I will be attending a pool party at the home of a high school friend and will probably know very few other people. Seems like the perfect time to hone those conversational skills. I'll see how it goes.

Today is for Work

I miss temping. Or, at least, I miss the flexibility of temping. I didn't take time off excessively if I had a steady, long-term assignment, but I could have. And even though I didn't get paid for them, I didn't have to worry about counting up my vacation days in order to do something I wanted to do. In April 2008 I took a three-week train trip across the country and back. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I don't know that I'll ever be able to do it again.

My family and I are planning a trip to Ireland next June. My vacation time starts over next week, which means I'll have to begin rationing and hoarding immediately in order to have enough available for a trip that's a year away. It'll be fine, and I'll make it work, but I'll chafe against the thought of it.

I'm not really cut out to have a career. I don't like being in the same job for any length of time. I get bored and restless and tired of the office politics and being told what to do by people who don't really know what it is I do in the first place. I am in my current job for my second go-round, have been for just over a year-and-a-half, and it's already getting to me. I hate the idea of having to stay somewhere that makes me miserable. I guess some people would say that I lack follow-through, that I should just stick with it, because that's what we're supposed to do, stick with things. I don't buy it.

Of course, this time around, it feels harder to leave. I have a mortgage now. I have an expensive phone. I'm earning a larger income than I've earned before (though still quite modest by most standards), so I don't have to worry too much about budgeting. All of these things make it difficult to truly think about picking up and finding something else to do again, the way I have periodically over the years.

I have thought about (and have taken small, unsuccessful stabs at) trying to write for a living, but I don't seem to have what it takes to put myself out there consistently enough to earn enough to support myself. I have a small stack of clips from mostly local magazines that are bunched together every few years, but it's not really enough to hang my expenses on.

If I advertised for a housemate and split the mortgage and utilities, I could probably swing a smaller income, but I like living by myself. I like my stuff being where my stuff is and being able to walk around naked if I want to (and come summer, I want to a lot). I don't want the freedom enough yet to make that sort of compromise, though the fact that I'm even letting it pass through my mind is an indication that wheels deep down somewhere are turning.