It seemed like a good idea at the time

I'm supposed to be going out to sing karaoke with a bunch of girls I've never met in about 15 minutes. I know I need to get off my duff and meet people and conquer silly fears like singing karaoke. Who better to do it with than people I've never met, right? But I'm not feeling it. I can wear cute shoes and walk seven blocks in pain but arrive looking more like I care or I can wear good shoes and look like I'm chaperoning the group I'm with. I hope someone else in the group is as pragmatic as me...big sigh, deep breath. Wish me luck.

Pieces

My friend Rock Star used to have a little wooden box full of Mensa puzzles at his desk. Most were squiggly pieces of steel that you had to get back together or take apart in ways that weren't obvious, at least to me, until the puzzle was solved. I would come to his desk for breaks sometimes and try to work the pieces together or apart. Very often I would put the squiggly puzzles back in the box and wish I was smarter or that my parents had made me play more chess growing up so I would have had a more agile, spatially oriented mind to tackle the puzzles with.

This writing I've been churning out over the last year has been like those recalcitrant pieces of steel. I feel like I'm moving toward something but it is unclear what that is. If I were a singer, I'd be trying out for American Idol, unsure if I'm as good as I want to be but finally willing to give someone an opportunity to pass on me. And, just to fully commit to the analogy, I'm one of those contestants during audition week that doesn't make the initial cut. Something about me doesn't fit--you don't want to hold your hands over your ears when I sing, but you wouldn't line up to buy my CD. Maybe it was the outfit, maybe it was the song, maybe I looked too old, but something didn't click. Something is not clicking in part because I don't know what I want from this. Not unlike my approach to dating, I'm hoping that someone will discover me and then tell me what I am. Am I an advice columnist? An author of modern-day parables? A diarist? An author of those really long greeting cards?

It seemed when I solved one of the puzzles at Rock Star's desk, it either came by a serendipitous positioning or with deliberate study and care paired with serendipity. Either way, the puzzle never resolved in the way that I thought it might and luck was always involved. I got a response from a local publisher today who wished me luck even though my "project" wasn't one they were interested in. It didn't upset me because not knowing what I wanted, I didn't really give them anything to accept or reject. I need to think on this. I love writing. I love words. That will be true no matter what. If this never goes anywhere or gets any wider a readership than my friends and the random people the world over looking for pictures of fire (most disquieting worldwide search term-ever), it was everything it needed to be. I'll just be me; a mid-level bureaucrat that loves words who will write pieces for her friend's special occasions and for their general amusement at her wacky adventures.

The Father's house

I'm sitting at my father's desk, hoping I'm up early enough that he won't come downstairs to see me at his computer. It seemed like later, but it was in fact 4 am when we(the dog and I) woke this morning and I, badly in need of an updated prescription saw the time as 7am. I've been trying all morning to keep the dog quiet and move stealthily through the house and while that's simply the right thing to do if you find yourself awake at 4am in shared quarters, skulking around this morning brought back some of the familiar anxieties and guilts of home. I'm sure part of it is the normal chafing at returning to a context where you are a child first. Part of it is knowing that my father is making a huge accomodation in hosting both me and the dog and the eggshells I feel I am walking on in having any inconvenience he experiences in hosting me being related to the dog. If I were to whip out my armchair pyschology degree, I would say that how I feel right now is precisely the same discomfort I have at being hosted by anyone. If I know I'm putting family out to spend the night, how much more am I inconveniencing someone who isn't even obligated to love me? I'm sure I'm just scratching around what could prove to be a very profitable topic for the mental healthcare industry but I'll let it rest for now.

I was at my old place yesterday, making repairs before my renter moved in and learned something new about the innards of washing machines when I had to replace the clutch, or more specifically, the agits that provide resistance in the clutch and allow the agitator to work properly. No one reading this needed to know that much about it but I was so proud to have made that repair myself. Talking with a neighbor later that evening she essentially told me that being too self sufficient and squared away is probably contributing significantly to my marital/social status, that men are probably intimidated, etc, etc... I don't buy that for a minute. Plenty of squared away women have their pick of men and if anything, they find the selection lacking, not the other way around. I'm just weird and have cosmically bad timing and taste in men. But it is interesting to consider what makes a person counsel someone in that way; that I need to pretend to be something else just to hook the guy in. There is enough facade involved in dating and both parties end up with surprises about the other after some time without going the extra mile to confuse a man about my fundamental nature. I'm not helpless but that doesn't mean I don't want help.

On comments

I'm still blogging here and have not figured out a way to push the content to this site so folks don't have to shuffle back and forth. Work in progress... I did want to highlight the link above as a shout out to the silent readers (all 5 of you) of the blogs. You'll find the same in the link but for ease, here's what I had to say on the topic of comments:

"I know my readership is small and a couple of folks have talked about not quite knowing what to say or feeling self-conscious about putting it out for others to see. To them I say, not enough people read this for you to worry that a lot of people are going to be available to judge your reaction to a post. It absolutely makes my day to see that someone has reacted to something that I wrote so please, if you have something on your mind, share-even if you want to tell me to pull my head out and get some fresh air."

Great Sabbath Story

Monks getting into a fight at a Christian Holy Site. Unrepentant about it to boot.

What I'm doing

I've bothered several people today and have still others I plan to bother. I have spent almost every evening after 7 pm in the bed writing and messing around on the computer until the wee hours of the morning. I should be in Virginia right now jettisoning stress by attending to important things but opted instead to bring weird energy into the yoga studio and hang out in my underwear writing a two paragraph e-mail to a local publisher for most of the rest of the evening. No one has time or inclination to lead me through the maze of figuring out how to do something more with this writing but I hope to learn something from the rejection which is why I bothered at all. Hopefully, I will get some sort of feedback with the rejection rather than a vacuum of silence. I hope also that I won't be as dense as I was earlier this week. I was waiting for someone I had never met and went up to a guy who bore a slight resemblance to pictures I had seen of the person I was going to meet. I asked him if he was Mr. Smith and he laughed and said 'No, but he's a handsome guy!' and slapped my shoulder. I looked at him and just walked away. I was embarrassed to have gone up to the wrong guy and even more puzzled that this random other guy thought the guy I was meeting was handsome. I was concerned that he knew this other guy and was going to laugh at me even more when he did show up. 12 hours later, I got the joke and felt like a total jerk.

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