plot points

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” -Rumi

Yesterday, I watched the #SOTU. I considered doing laundry, considered taking a nap, but ended up at pilates instead. Earnest efforts are to be rewarded with gyros the next day.

Today, I re-read this Rumi quote and acknowledged that I did in fact - for most of my 20s - try to change the world in the exuberant way only pre-jaded adulthood can drive. I wasn't as keen on watering the other seeds in my metaphorical life's garden.

While busy attempting to find my super hero role, I somehow forgot to tend to the shoots cultivated by relationships, interests, and just basic down-time. I can write a mean petition, I can promote the hell out of a campaign, I can advocate for political prisoners, but I struggle to make it through a 60 minute yoga class.

Does this sound hopeless? I don't mean it to. In fact, I'm feeling more hopeful than I have in months. Talk therapy, biofeedback, and some new age-y methods have all culminated in this new, hopeful reality.

I'm heeding Rumi's advice now. To impact the world, especially my own world, I need to change myself. I will quiet my thoughts when they swirl, whirl, and twirl, like dervishes in the wind. I will embrace time when there's nothing to do but cast yarn. I will water those seedlings that have long thirsted for my care in hopes of offering the world more than just a one-off rose plucked from a single plot. Next time I decide to change the world, I'm going armed with an entire bouquet.

back to the digital realm

When I deactivated my Facebook account six months ago, I never thought I'd go through an actual withdrawal. Like a real, honest-to-goodness, what do I do, OMG I'm panicking withdrawal.

Anytime I had something to say, I'd automatically move my cursor to the blank space in my bookmarks bar where the Facebook shortcut used to live. If I found a spare 30 seconds, my automatic instinct was to navigate to the biggest time suck I've ever encountered.

And I KNOW time sucks. LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, MySpace, Bored.com... I've been intimately acquainted with the concept of the time suck since the age of 12. It doesn't matter if it was reading bad fan fiction, writing bad fan fiction, or creating fan pages using Geocities' WYSIWYG, I found that I could make the long, boring summer hours of my pre-teen (ok, admittedly and part of my teen) years move a little (read: a lot) faster than I intended. Really, I don't blame my dad for putting a hard time limit on my computer time. 

Someone asked me recently "what do you like to do that when you look up, you realize hours have passed?" It gave me pause. The only answer I could think of was sleep. Because I love sleep. And naps. If I could make it a hobby, if I could list "napper" as my occupation, I think I'd fare better -- but as it is... I don't know anymore.

These days, I struggle to find things that I enjoy AND that involve sucking up time. Knitting is interrupted by completed rows. Binge watching TV is only fun for so long when your attention span has been ruined by the Internet. The gym eats up an hour. Maybe another hour doing errands. But ultimately, when you've spent the last 5+ years of your life working on the Internet (and intensely career-focused), you tend to lose the bits and pieces of yourself that you used to enjoy.

I did reactivate my Facebook account last night on a whim, curious as to what six months away from the platform would show me. My time away showed me that any addiction, when removed wholly, can be overcome. (That is a total crock of shit, I don't know if crystal meth works the same way). But the Facebook-less time got easier and easier, and soon I reconnected with friends I cared about... offline, on the phone, in person, at cafes, over dinner, whatever. 

Unfortunately, old habits die hard, as they (who??) say. Within minutes of reactivating my Facebook, I was updating profile information, adding new friends, deleting old ones, browsing pictures and status updates, making faces at dumb cat pictures, and abusing the F5 key. What can I say? I'm a social media, Internet, web platform junkie. I can admit it. 

But I can also admit that it just may be time to join that knitting group down the street. Maybe I can finish a scarf one day. Who knows. I'll buckle down and see. I might just find some pearls.

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to an awesome 2014. 

excuses ahoy

It's been well over a year and a half since I've written here. Granted, anyone with a basic grasp of counting months could have deduced this. Why?

Laziness.
Busy-ness.
Burned-outness.

That sums up about a year worth of why I haven't written

The last six months, I blame change-ness. New home, new city, new career, new friendships and relationships, and an end to old ones.

Change sucks. But it's ok. Because it's temporary, in theory. Things can't be influx forever -- that's what my shrink says anyway. There's a whole entry in here about co-pays, but I'll save that for another entry.

The thing is, change involves plopping barefoot over an unpaved road, tip-toeing around the particularly shop rocks marking the path, hopping from shaded-spot to shaded-spot in hopes of avoiding burns and blisters.

And no matter how uncomfortable it is, when you stop to look back you notice that
1) you don't turn into salt and
2) you can't imagine trekking back

In fact, you can't imagine how you stayed so long. Or why. Who stays loyally in a burning city because the thought of change just seems too uncomfortable? Apparently me.

But now - barefoot, uncomfortable, schlepping, prickled, and blistered - it doesn't matter. Because I got out, long before I was burned beyond healing.

As it stands, I'll liken staying to irresponsibly trying to remove a pan of brownies from the oven without mitts.

But that's ok too. Lucky for me, Neosporin is a plenty.

Ok, but why afternoon naps?

It's been quite a while since I bothered even logging into blogger -- namely because I've been alternating between work, life, and naps. And reading blogs. And more naps. Lots and lots of naps.

I'm not nearly as cute as the panda when I nap, just FYI.

So I like naps, as if you've probably figured out by now.

1. Naps are much less scary than committing yourself to 8 hours of unconsciousness
   
2. They usually happen in the middle of the day
   
3. ...usually in the middle of days that I'm avoiding something

QED: Naps are the human equivalent of "pulling the plug" (not in the vegetative state sense, but in the "OMG my computer froze I'm going to yank the cord!" sense).