Category — Self Renovation| Renewal

Before my day begins, just blogging a few lines to say hey, I’m alive and things are going well. Really well actually.

I still have a job (despite my longstanding nightmare of coming back to work the day after the holiday break and being let go. I have no reason for this fear… it is irrational and unfounded but there all the time. OY. ), I still have a home and a car and a heat and water and food. Most of all, it’s January and I’m not depressed.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal, except it is. As a long time sufferer of Seasonal Affective Disorder, I have dreaded January of every year. It is long and cold and depressing, no matter where I am. My lowest point always hits in January– I recall January 2006, standing in the middle of the pain reliever aisle at Kroger wondering how many pills it would take…. and being bothered that I felt relief thinking it. Or driving down the road over the Chattahoochee River and thinking I could just drive right off. And then later freaking out because the thought made me happy.

S.A.D. is so much more than ‘it’s winter and I’m sad’. It’s a cloud, a heavy blanket, a dark mood. It is unlift-able. One cannot ‘snap out of it’. You don’t ‘just feel better’. And it isn’t over me, this year.  A friend asked me how I was doing it… how I was able to keep the doldrums away. I don’t know. No, really. I don’t know.

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Courtesy Getty Images

There’s something about the image of a champagne bottle popping that makes me….nevermind.

So, it’s that time, again. December 31st. End of the year. That time when I look up at at the calendar and go ‘whaaaa? December 31st! Yesterday it was spring!? I’m not ready!’ But time goes on anyway, and I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll be a new day of a new month of the first year of a new decade.

Blogs galore are galavanting through the last decade, remembering and celebrating and commisterating, noting how much different they were back then, or maybe how much they’re exactly the same, whether that’s good or bad. I’ve done my fair share of that in my head, and in conversation, but I haven’t felt led to do much of it here on the blog.

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Lefou, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking. A dangerous pasttime, I know.

I’m one of those people that likes new, shiny things. New? I want it. I don’t even know what Google Wave is but I wanted an account with one and now I have it and I have not one clue what I am supposed to do with. But I have it and I love it. Whatever it is.

When Twitter and Facebook popped up, I decided I wanted to be one of the cool kids and jumped all on the bandwagon. Then jumped off. Then jumped back on and I’m pretty much hanging on, for now. Twitter is pretty darn fun– I don’t use it to proselytize or to sell or to spam or to preach or wax political. Basically, twitter exists for me to have real time chat with the silly people in my life I call my friends. And some celebrities.  I figure, if you don’t want to be talked to, lock your account so I can’t talk to you, or get off of twitter. *shrugs* Sometimes I can’t control my mouth, and I “talk “to whoever is around to “listen”. It’s also allowed me to meet some great people and chat about things I’d never find people to talk with me about in real life. It’s a big giant check mark in the WIN column for me.

Facebook, for me, is an entirely different animal. A lot of people use Facebook to network and collect friends. Or play games.  I keep a tight group of people on my Facebook list o’ friends. I don’t add everyone I’ve ever known. I don’t add anyone I work with. I don’t add anyone who might feel the need to ask my parents ‘what’s up with your daughter’s Facebook statuses?’ because frankly my parents can just barely check email. They have no idea what Facebook is.  I like to keep it that way. My mom went through a brief obsession with Instant Messaging. I curse the person who taught her how to use IM.

So, no my Facebook is not a hodgepodge of people I barely know and don’t talk to. Most of the people there are old friends  from back home in Spokane. Some are in LA. Some are in Florida, and Colorado and New York and Seattle. And some are in Atlanta. Mostly people I wouldn’t even have a connection with anymore, had it not been for Facebook.

Something weird is happening, with Facebook, though. People are starting to come out of the woodwork. People I haven’t talked to in years, for reasons we both know. About issues we’re both aware of– wanting to rekindle friendships and relationships and uhm……… I’m not into it.

It’s not that I’m not a forgiving person. There’s nothing to forgive. At some point in my life, though I developed an attitude where I put the past behind me, because the past was toxic. It clung to me like sewer waste. It was dark and depressing and I hated the old me and her life and the people she chose to be around. It wasn’t anyone particular or specific, it was… a time and a place.  I had to get away from it and start over and create a whole new ‘me’. And for the most part, the new me is awesome and I like her and her new positive not toxic time and place and influences.

I believe I have discovered the downside to Social Media. The people you want to hide from, the people you don’t want to find you, the friendships you don’t want to rekindle, the noses you don’t want in your business creep back into your life, nearly imperceptibly. One by one. Little by little. Until one day you wake up and you’re surrounded by something that looks and smells familiar. And you can’t remember how it got there.

It’s a terrible feeling. Even more terrible, when you’re the only one in control of what happens, and you’re the one that’s been happily approving and smiling and laughing and approving and being joyful and changed and approving and approving and approving and then you stop and slap yourself and say WHOA. What are YOUUUUUUUU doing??????

You know what all of this reminds me, though? About how I haven’t let go of the past. I haven’t put it behind me, and healed and become a new person. I’m the same old me, who put some stuff out of sight (because for me, out of sight, out of mind. And even if you’re in sight, I’m probably not paying attention unless I want to). I still feel the same amount of heavy heart and pain and misunderstanding and dejectedness that I felt before I let people go. That was the REASON I let them go. Why in the stuff did I let them back in?

I’m reminding myself of something I preach all the time– I control my own life and its course. Yeah yeah destiny and fate and stuff, but who I keep around me is in my complete control. I can’t complain about things I’m not willing to change, right?

Well. I want my right to complain. The choice becomes do I a) try to mend broken fences? Fences I don’t want mended, in particular, but just do it, cause I should? or b) put it out of sight again and move on.

*SIGH*

Call me a coward but ‘B’ sounds like a great option. I just don’t have the energy… or really the will or desire for ‘A’, right now.  There are people I just don’t want back in my life, right now. Maybe not ever.

Is that bad? Is it evil to not want to mend things? To want to just walk away and leave the past in the past? Or is that evidence of some baggage I don’t want to deal with and should?

I don’t honestly know. I wish I did. For now, I’m just leaving things where they sit.

I don’t have much time to blog tonight, because i’m halfway dolled up and getting ready to go out with two wonderful, beautiful, hilarious women. Friends are great to have… if ever a person is in a place where they feel they don’t need friends…evaluate yourself! They are a gift.. I know mine are, every last one of them.

So today we went shopping for some cute duds to wear out, tonight. I got a lot of food for thought, and mentioned to one friend that sometimes I look at people, like their body shape, and try to determine what I;m going to look like when I’m thinner. When I’m thinner. Not IF I hit my goal, but when I’m thinner. [Read more →]

Life is good, blog. Really good. The sun is shining. I’m in a great mood. Got a good job, a nice place to live, food in the fridge (figuratively speaking), clothes on my back (unstylish though I may be, I’m wearing clothes). I have all these material things that society has decided I should be happy about. I might be inclined to agree– I can’t really complain, and for October, that’s good for me.

But sometimes, blog, life isn’t good. Or at least it isn’t as good as it should be. It’s at those times, those low times, those bored out of my mind times, those times when I lay in bed and cry for no reason, that I start to think about the things I wish I had, or things I’m working to get and don’t yet have, or just….things. When life isn’t good is when I wish for change, lots of it, and NOW. [Read more →]

It’s been an emotional week at Chez Jones. Not really drama filled, but lots of introspection and trying to figure out what makes me tick. What do other people see, when they see me? What do others think about me? Am I a good friend? Am I a good person? Do people feel like they can count on me?

And if the answer is no, do I care enough to change? [Read more →]