Just Another Day With Me

Inside

I went to see Sting in concert this week in Dallas. It was the sixth show that I've been to.  Three Police shows and three Sting concerts.  He's by far my favorite. An influence in my life since childhood.  His music, lyrics and sophistication have fueled my desire for knowledge.  I love the strength and soothing tones of his voice.   He performed this song "Inside" which I thought was great...

Inside by Sting

I have always loved this song. I never understood it until he explained it.... he said this song is about how love can heal you, or it can destroy you.  I can see how love can destroy a person.  I can see its power, its fury, its force... the thought of not having someone you love or being hurt by those your love or its healing power.....  

This song...has been a favorite for nearly a decade... and I could feel its strength..but I could never quite understand its meaning.... 

Love is annihilation

Radiate me, subjugate me, incubate me, recreate me, demarcate me, educate me, punctuate me, evaluate me, conjugate me, impregnate me, designate me, humiliate me, segregate me, opiate me, calibrate me, replicate me

 

Still Procrastinating...

I am struggling with this assignment for Monday. Its boring.  I can see why high school kids disconnect from learning something that doesn't interest them at all. I'm there. I can't focus.  I am disconnected.   

I like to disconnect sometimes.......   to not let you into my head. You reading this. I haven't let you into this blog in months.  

I could sit and write profound things about the knowledge I am gleaning from Graduate school.  From the wisdom the academy is imparting upon my receptive little neurons... but, here I am sitting about thinking about soaking in a hot bath and reading a very dry article.  Very dry.  

Boring...  but maybe with a hot bath it will lose its boredom.  Maybe...  Nothing can cure what ills you like a hot bath.   And maybe.....   just maybe... the ability to focus, that would help me.  Its midnight already...  

 

Why Do I?

Procrastinate, instead of just DOING something like I'm supposed to I sit around and THINK about doing it.  I don't do it. I worry.  Why can't I just motivate myself to GET THINGS DONE. What is WRONG with me, when I role over in bed and think "I'll just do it tomorrow"  - and then finally the deadline arrives and I panic and not put 100% into it.  WHY... ME.   

I have major projects due in three weeks. Not to mention smaller assignments. I promised myself I will get some o fthem done today.  I will... I must. I can't let the deadlines arrive...  

There is only one way to success and that is to DO the work that I am procrastinating at....

 

So

I'm going to write here for me.  I'm not writing here "for readers" I want viewers for my photography, because that strokes my ego.  I'm not a blogger out looking for recognition. I'm not writing to go to a Blogger Convention to meet other people who write. I don't understand that mentality that because you write on a webpage you have to meet with other people who write.   

I want to write more about my Marriage issues and problems and things that lead up to such trauma as filing for divorce.  Maybe about what it is like to be in your 30s struggling to identify yourself.   I think, identity goes into so many of my issues.   While I know we're all insignificant in the end, some of us desire that recognition more than others.  I am one of them.  Maybe its because I had an awful time in Junior High and High School was tolerable but not comfortable.  Maybe its because sometimes I still feel like the most awkward, ugly person in the room when I walk into a group of people.   Sometimes...I feel like I've defined myself by being married since I was 18, and it was that fear that I was missing something that could be better.  SO many fears.   

This fall has been terrifying.   It began a week after school started.   I over-reacted to something that happened but I was already overwhelmed... I am surprised I've kept up in my classes with everything that has happened.  

I want to be trusted

Its Been Awhile...

I haven't written on this blog since June. I used to write on it everyday.  I seem to be tweeting.  But, I think I lose out on that.  I can't go back and see how I was feeling a year later or two years later by tweeting.  I can't look back and see if I was in the same place or a diffeerent place.  Yes, I blog. I have my Expedition page where I put plenty of photos all the time, but that isn't really me.  Twitter is me, but probably a more outgoing form of myself that I wish I was like all the time.   

So its been a while.  I am in my first Semester of Graduate school and I enjoy it. I like the pressure and the expectations although it terrifies me because I want this degree so bad and sometimes I think I'm too ADHD to complete it.  

I'm now trying to start to get more photography work, because I am a photographer now.  I can say it -  with a little more confidence.   I haven't been running this fall. I am slipping into the guilt from not running - weight gain that I notice and exhaustion due to asthma.  But, I'm driving 120 miles a day four days a week andits exhausting in itself.   I dont' "feel" good about myself physically.  I keep thinking I need to diet.   I can't stay on top of the house or laundry and I'm so tired.  

My husband and I filed for Divorce this fall.   But, we're going to counseling now.  And are going to make it work. I was so skeptical that counseling would be anything BUT crap. I didn't believe that anything could help but I was desperate to see what could help... and I am surpised that not only is it helping but after last week I feel like it is really helping. 

Its hard when you love someone...and you know you do.  But you don't think they are happy. Its harder when you love someone and your heart and emotions can get messed up and you desire something you've never experienced...  even if you know that most of the time what you have is good...  but those passionate crazy moments....   make you crave peace at all costs.   Sometimes to the cost of not expressing yourself.   

I'm writing this.  Because that I actually feel  hope for my marriage and its been a while since I felt that.  

But I also realize that last November I felt content for once....  and I want to feel that way again.  I had a peaceful Saturday. I need more.  

Bad Day

Had a bad day.  I am moody and my asthma is always worse with bad air quality days. Which is something very real, I used to wonder why the newscasters made a big deal about them, but then I began experiencing how horrible I felt on days where the air is horrible...  I am also not running this summer with temps nearing 110 every day it has been one miserable summer. Not running affects my attitude and my anxiety. Unless you get anxiety you don't understand it.  Sometimes this song... is the one I relate to.  Look at me I'm made of wonderful..

"Wait I think I feel like hell...though I can't be myself........." To live in a life where you are torn between never feeling good enough no matter what you can do or accomplish and to always have self doubt even if you can accomplish goals or do wonderful things in your life is to forever be in doubt.   Doubt that I can't always escape.  I'm going to graduate school this fall.  I am hoping that I do a good job, but I've been out of school so long, its a risk and a gamble.   I'm also stepping away from History and English and studying something different..so more worries whether I will be able to do it.   

 

In some ways I really miss my teaching paycheck right now, I dont' feel like I do my part, I dont' feel independent anymore. I feel needy and dependent yet I don't want to be a housewife, because I'm not good at it, its affecting how I feel about myself. And I'm going back to school. To accomplish a huge goal I wanted to accomplish since my kids were babies... I want my Master's degree. I want my PhD, I want to prove myself academically- I really need to focus on my writing skills.  Whether it be through blogging.  I certainly need to "social network" way less - but it is also getting me photography contacts.   

I've shot some photography recently - a wedding and engagements and next weekend family photos! How can I go from nothing to booked in a week! Its INSANE.  It kind of blows my mind that people actually want to pay ME to take their pictures its, a HUGE compliment, especially when they hand you the money for doing something you LOVE.... its very nice. 

I'm emotional today... tears,  I can't help how I am sometimes I dont' want to be. I can't express my emotions when I talk, all I can do is write about them....   Some things I cant say at all.  I hate saying anything that might hurt someones feelings- but I also hate feeling like I can't say anything when it affects me. 

Sometimes I don't feel wanted.   My husband has called Rob Thomas my "depressed music" maybe he's right, but the songs are comforting, and not always depressing, they are just filled with emotion, sometimes stated the right way for me.   

I know not eating right affects my moods, I also know not having a schedule set probably isn't good and not knowing enough people... I think I'm lonely not online! I have tons of connections online but for real friends, real "girl friends" to go out with sometimes... I think I need to be more aware of my body and asthma.

Sometimes I dont' even realize when my asthma is so bad I want to sleep all day. I got to walmart today and felt disoriented and dizzy and couldn't remember why I was there,  and then had a real asthma attack, where I really needed my medicine.  And I didn't have it and had to drive home in the heat...I really need to think about it. I know I need to keep it.  When I hurt my leg last month I had a panic attack and couldn't breathe...   I need to keep my inhalers close by.  I think its important.   

Enrolled..

Today I enrolled in OU, I'm a "Sooner" I'm no longer a teacher, I am a graduate student again. I am not going to be a "stay at home Mom" next year. I appreciate this year greatly, I think I needed it, I just feel like I'm still busy but I'm still tired, I feel like I have a decade worth of tired.   

Ugly

I don't feel good about myself..I feel old... used up. Older... tired. Not attractive.  Today I feel especially ugly. I spent my life battling these feelings about myself... I'm 34 years old. I'm not getting younger.  I'm in the prime years of insecurity.   I still feel ugly...  I don't feel as bad about myself as I used to... but... its still a struggle... everyday...  to look in the mirror. I can pick apart 1000 imperfections in this photo... or things I do not like about myself. 

I was tormented as a kid about my looks.  Being called ugly everyday for two years of your life takes its toll.. I didn't look like everyone else. I didn't have the big poofy hair, the round eyes, the small lips... I felt like a freak.  I was too skinny... I was an ugly kid...

see I was about 9 here..when I was a kid my deepest wish was that all the pretty girls would grow up and get fat and ugly and all the ugly girls would be pretty...  yeah I was in 4H this is my show cow Heifer..even when she was a cow she still hated me.  She was a mean ole' Heifer.  

I don't think I'm "pretty" in the traditional sense...I do not believe I'm ugly, ugly...but sometimes I feel like I'll never fit in....   

Sometimes I think I look nice.... I don't hate how I look anymore, I've come a long way in accepting myself...  I used to believe people stared at me constantly because I was so ugly..they couldn't look away from me because I was ugly. I hated talking to people, because all I felt is that they were thinking about how ugly I was.... 

Sometimes I wish that I could get up in the morning and not care..not care how I looked, not care if I felt confident enough to walk outside.  Now I can go outside and go run without makeup, I can leavce the house without it....that has taken some confidence....  Yeah I have issues, but you do too. I'm not blaming feminism...I blame bullies for my sense of self...I don't blame society for making women evolve how they are... I blame those girls who sat aroundand picked at me until they crushed me.. I blame the moment I don't feel attractive enough in my marriage... it is still a struggle.   

In the Trunk

Mom has a hope chest, where she keeps her photos and mementos from her early life and childhood. She has her Grandmother's trunk, and her other Grandmother's trunk. I have my Grandmother's trunk (she left it to me), it is still in my Mom's house. In order to prepare for my parents' anniversary we (my sister and I) raided the hope chest for memorabilia from the wedding.  We found it.  

Right on top of her (and my) wedding dress was the Kennedy Assassination paper....  which I longed to unwrap from the plastic and take out and read... I didn't .  We were under time constraints with many things to do to prepare for Saturday's get together... and much house to clean as I am no domestic goddess.  And its a cedar chest, so it just smells of old cedar, its a beautiful chest.  

Here is the Kennedy assassination paper.  My Mom was working at the Police Department in Amarillo that year and they got the news on the wire before it broke on the radio or TV.  We didn't find the wedding photo in the trunk...  so we went to Granny's trunk, which was even trickier to uncover and make it look untouched...

We did find the topper for their wedding cake... 50 year old.. last used in 1961. 

I've always been fascinated with the old trunks and the little bits of history stored inside... some news papers some personal history, but all of it is fascinating.  Perhaps a blog is a little bit of that history, storing memories digitally... instead of in a trunk. Photography holds the same purpose.  I love the musty old photo albums, the sunbonnets, the old toys, the memories,  not my memories but someones...

This photo is of my Great Grandfather..it was in my Granny's trunk.  Willie Willis, he was a full blood Choctaw living in McCurtain County.  He died in 1904, while my Grandmother was Pregnant with my Grandfather.  He was hit in the head with a baseball. I love these old photos of ancestors I did not know.  They fascinate me.  

Exhaustion.... 

We are having a 50th Anniversary party for my parents Saturday... doubtful many guests will come, but deep cleaning is exhausting.  

I'm not great at housekeeping, in fact I downright hate it.   Nothing makes me cringe more than steam cleaning a carpet or wiping down the walls.  In fact thats why I value my education.  I started out this year with intentions to prove myself as a housewife.  I think I've failed, besides being able to prove we can live on one income, the house will never be perfect.  Right now my little sister is steam cleaning the rug while I'm taking  my very late night break for a fourth or fifth wind... we went shopping today for party supplies and cookout goodies... of course we would be cooking out this weekend anyways as it is Memorial Day.  

But a 50th Anniversary is special. I don't know if its special because I'm lucky enough to see both my parents' alive for it.  They love each other, I know this, but they never say it.  I've never seen them hug or kiss (God Forbid) or any sign of physical affection (that might mean they <gasp> like each other!)... SO, it will be interesting.  Why is it at my house; knowing how much having people over tears at my insecurities... well, its next door and my Dad doesn't do celebrations, funerals, graduations or any sort of events.....  so yes....  he won't be going anywhere unless its next door.   

My Sister and I say we should have a 'Thanks for Tolerating Each other for 50 years" party.  I found some 50th Anniversary gifts, but most seemed to ooze sappiness and 50 years of adoring love, well that just isnt' the case. 

 

Oh and insecurities is knowing some of the guests are the ones who have the obsessive compulsive house keeping and home decor bug,  who undoubtedly can look down their noses at myself...  

Of course I can remind myself that academically my explorations have been incredible these last few years -  things that not everyone will ever experience... so, I'm good. 

I wish I was more devoted to my house... but I'm always distracted...something draws my attention away.....  In my head, in my world, outside in the trees, in the pasture, in a book, in my photography, but not on the boring, repetitive mundane tasks to create this spotless environment... 

No, Martha Stewart...I am not.  Food Network cooking diva, I am not.   Would I like to be better at this, yes...do I take the time and effort, on a consistent basis...well, I don't.  Those goals don't drive me....  spotless... it will never be.    

 

Pig Pen comes to mind sometimes... I guess I just can't care enough to focus on this....