Random

I've had quite a few thoughts in the past couple of days. Not sure if any of them will get fleshed out, but this is a journal, right?

It's high time I wrote a book, published it and all. Question is, which one? I have two novels in the works, a novella, a couple of short stories, more ideas for short stories. I have a number of guidebooks and e-books to write for "passive revenue streams!" Rock on. I have a couple of workbooks and a non-fiction book about creativity in draft somewhere.

I have a coloring book idea to develop, and a couple of patterns to write up (mostly embroidery and little felt figures for sewing).

I really should do something with my father's sketches - I have hundreds of them.

If I win the lottery, I want to get this house fixed up, buy another house with a pool, and a vacation home somewhere. Then I'll have enough wall space to hang all the art I own and want to make.

The car and garage need cleaning out. Working at home is very difficult for me, as I'm completely isolated and barely productive. But working FT in an office is hard because I get so tired, there's all that OFFICE nonsense and I despise wasting my day indoors.

I am filled with contradictory beliefs about life. "The Secret" for me is to reconcile them, not simply to (buy a book and then) imagine how it will be.

I believe chocolate is part of a balanced diet.

Incompetence and mediocrity (mine and esp. that of others) are the bane of my existence.

Sometimes even junk mail triggers my anxiety.

I would like a week's paid vacation, complete with maid service and a personal chef. Someone to do the morning school run would be heavenly too. Massage 4X that week, a hair and pedicure appointment, and perhaps a nice lunch in the sunshine with my erstwhile main squeeze.

The other night, when I wasn't sleeping, I had a complete and total epiphany about how Photoshop and Illustrator work, and the difference between them. It was rather profound, and everything has been easy since I figured that out. Now, THAT'S a Secret that works!

And here it is: Illustrator works as vector art, using points on the X/Y axes. Single points, and you tell those points what to do with each other. That's it.

Photoshop works like a grid, using ALL the points (72, 150, 300 dpi, or higher) in a square, along with "millions" of colors. Each pixel has be one of 256/1028/millions of colors, and they combine to make images. (When you think about inks, overlays and separations, it gets more complicated.)

But the simple explanation: Illustrator is a small collection of points in 2D, along the X or Y axis. Photoshop is a grid and each box in it must have a color value, even if it is black or white. And this stuff matters to the machines that are used to reproduce the images. It matters a LOT.

Neat, huh?

I dreamed the other night of asking for my old job and salary back. I think that's because I'm stressing about money, and also about moving forward. Going backwards in time is psychologically safer because it's a known.

My mind is a dark and scary neighborhood where no one should have to go alone.

Inconsolable

One thing my shrink did help me with (though I still have issues with how he left things with no closure, like stale bread)... my moods do seem to dictate how I'm doing re: grief. When I'm rested and well-fed, exercised and satisfied, I am in a pretty good mood and therefore, I can handle the grief and loss. (or is it the other way around? when I'm coping ok with the grief, my mood is good?)

but a critical mass of sleepy/tired, hungry, angry and lonely, and watch out - everything is hell in a henbasket (ha ha). I'm bordering on that for a couple of reasons.

One, I started a new teaching job and it's demanding a big amount of energy. Sustained energy for prep and for actual teaching. It's a long class so there's no way I can just skate. However, I am learning about pacing, and giving them time to talk. And they are a good group. Not a bunch of entitled snobbish teenagers, which was the "gene pool" I used to teach.

But still, that's a lot of human contact, responsibility and focus, and there is no ramp-up. Come classtime, it is ON, and I'm in charge. Not sure exactly how I feel about that anymore.

Secondly, tomorrow is the anniversary of my brother's death. His ashes are still not completely dealt with, and the family is having trouble coming to a consensus on dates for scattering. It involves a rather elaborate trip somewhere to honor his wishes... while I know he doesn't care wherever he is, which he believed was nowhere... it is a dangling chad that needs to be dealt with.

Thirdly (did I say only two things?), I haven't been sleeping well at all. Like hardly at all. I am aware of the passage of time, I sleep so lightly. I had a dream last night about moving back to my old town and asking for my old job back, and that somehow it would be all wonderful and cheerful with those co-irkers that I really really couldn't stand (which is why I left in the first place!). So, yeah, very very weird dream.

In the end, I'm really at a loss on how to grieve. I need to move on, but there are still so many dangling chads. I wonder if time will heal them, or if I need to actively do something. I'm so busy, and not in a really good way either. And I get no feedback from my dead family members. That's the roughest thing. I want to tell them, "hey, this is what I'm doing to honor you, to remember you. I miss you all." Just a little contact, a little encouragement from them would be nice.

So yeah, that's why I feel inconsolable. There doesn't seem to be any closure to this grief stuff. No consoling, no satisfaction. I understand now why married couples sometimes die close to one another... it's easier to do that, than it is to figure out how to move on. But I'm a young (ish) woman with a half-grown kid, so I'm in the big middle of life. Waiting for death is not an option.

Exhausted

It's 1130 on Sunday night, and I'm tired but not sleepy. I'm in pain, and stewing over something minor. About 15 minor somethings. This is the time when it would be nice to have some anti-anxiety meds. But when you ask an MD to Rx them for you, they think you are drug-seeking. Well, duh. I am. But really? seriously? 10 last me for six months. TEN. And I split them in half.

I start a new PT job tomorrow and will have students for the first time in 7 years.

It was a good Sunday... we walked in the park with dogs and it was gorgeous and windy. No one was out because people in this town are either godly or too cool for a park where there's a tad of mud and wind. I say bring it on.

Had an awesome lunch and a beer. Had a good nap, but now? I'm a little antsy and so all the demons are right there, ready to plague me. I hope I can sleep soon, but the alarm will go off at 6am, and spring break is over.

So many bittersweet thoughts, so much sadness. I see on Facebook how people are having lives, chit-chatting, making plans with friends, reporting on events. I got nothing. I have work where no one really knows me or cares to know me. I have the new job where I'll be as foreign as my students, and I have .... not much else.

It's this untetheredness that bothers me most. It's not having someone who really cares where I am, what I'm doing, if I'm ok. I do have the compassion and friendship of some awesome online folks. I cherish that. But it's not a substitute for the RL connections. The phone calls, the plans, the events, the chit-chat, the nicknames.

This could all change, but how? I just don't know. It's been like this since we moved here. And it doesn't help that I get email from someone I used to love (and could again) that confuses me and makes me pine away. And ponder what went wrong. We are so right for each other

Time to hit the sack again, tame the aches and pains and see if sleep comes.

The lad is good... he told me that his spring break was awesome. That's solid gold.

I See Dead People

I am certain that one of the most primary factors of what is going on with me right now is that I see dead people.

They are everywhere. In my house, in my life, in my heart. My mother died in 2003, my father and eldest brother in 2007, within six weeks of each other. I have one brother remaining, a handful of nieces and nephews and cousins who are distant.

I am divorced too, single mother to one son. The (ill-advised) marriage died, perhaps before it ever drew breath.

Somewhere in all this dying, divorce and turmoil of the past few years, I died too. I look in the mirror and I see someone else. 20 lbs heavier, I type-out on the MBTI as an I now, where about 10 years ago, I was an E. (Extrovert v. introvert).

My aunt died last fall. She was the one who had all the family memories. She was sharp as a tack until the last time she laid down in her bed at home. They broke out the emergency pain meds, and she floated out on morphine and terminal cancer. And all those memories died too. All the stories. The artifacts remain - those that she kept and that my cousin did not throw away. Those artifacts are in a box in my office. They are unconnected dots because the family is dead.

Everything I've ever known about who I am and what family I come from is gone. All I have is memories, disconnected. I've got a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and only about half of the pieces anymore. Most people could enjoy the bit of lake that did get put together, or half of a big-eyed kitten. I'm only able to see the gaps, the lost pieces.

I've spent more than 10 years being a Good Mom. Now that the lad has begun to turn into teenager, all that hard work seems to be for naught. No one looks at the mother of a teen and says, "ah, what a good mom." The pudding is cooked, so to speak. Though I do know there are important months and years of parenting still to come, my 24x7 vigilance is not essential.

So what do I have left? Visions of people dying, young and old (brother died at 60 - that's young.). I held my mother as she died, I spent many hours with my father at the end, and I witnessed my brother in extremis. I've looked into the faces of the people I love, the people who made me, who raised me, and I've seen death.

Moreover, I've seen myself old and dying. I've seen it like it was today. And the way I feel in my body, the way I feel in my heart, it IS today. And so I wake up every day like it's the last. That, unlike the country songs, makes me feel like it's over, not like it's time to live. Or at least it's an uphill climb to live, to function like I'm part of the world here and now, instead of the world that is gone from my sight.

The emotions and moods come and go, but the simple loss of identity, the loss of people who cared about me on a cellular level - that's the hardest thing to deal with. The world that passed is more real to me. The world I live in now is foreign, bewildering, difficult.

Maybe I am coping... grieving, as the shrinks like to say, but it's just vastly different, and a lot less glamorous, than I thought it would be.

Edited to add: while I say that I wake up every day like it's the last, I do still wake up and have some kind of interest and impetus for living. I always look forward to what the day might bring. I'm decidedly NOT suicidal. I don't WANT to die at all. I don't WANT to be in this limbo between life and the beloved dead, but I am.