Batter My Heart

By: L.

Feb 19 2012

Tags: postaday2012

Category: self

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I’m learning.

I’m also very full.

It’s Sunday night.

Time to zero in on what is true.  Time to tell you that I had a nice day.  Time to get to work on what matters to me instead of spending some more time watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent reruns and thinking about nothing.  Time to feel something.

So, I’m continuing to read Agorafabulous.  I’ve been crying a bit at it, but it’s a good cry, a cry of sympathy and recognition of familial love rather than empathy and self-recognition.   I’m really rather glad I bought it.

I sent some of my writing to a friend and she gave me back what I needed:  actual feedback without bullshit.  I need that in a lot of areas, but certainly when it comes to my writing.  Not fawning, not destructive criticism.  And my friend who is a genius and so helpful and generous with her time just told me what she thought of it and where she was confused and so I’m going to work on tweaking.  She felt it was Raymond Chandler-y, which wasn’t precisely what I was aiming for, but I can definitely see how she could see that and now I’ve got to figure out how to tone down the noirishness because I think the transitions will be too difficult once I get to current day events in the story which I want to be much more suburban/rural mystery/magical realism than trenchcoats and femme fatales.  But, it reminds me how critical it is to every now and then ask for help, ask for outside input.  Which ties in perfectly with Agorafabulous and ties in perfectly with my life wherein I just churn along, being and doing as I think I need to be and do, sometimes just so frustrated that I’m standing still and not getting where I want to go, and when I take 10 minutes and talk to someone about it, I stop feeling like such a martyr.  I hike up my big girl pants and realize that it’s neither the end of the world nor is it an excuse to stop trying.  There is always room for improvement and work, self-care (self-love? ahem? what? I’m not even…) to keep me going.

My boss is gone for two days – Monday and Tuesday –  I dreamed last night some weird things about Masonic lodges and people I know and Assassin’s Creed and I remember specifically telling people about how much I liked my boss.  And I do, really, I just am looking forward to some personal time to get done what I need to do.  Well, me and the volunteer.

There’s always more to say – my great aunt passed away, the second in a month.  They live in Minnesota with my grandmother – it was her sisters.  And I think I knew them better than my two sisters, having gone to Minnesota a couple more times than them.  But we didn’t really know them that well at all.  I’m still sorry, though.   I’m sure my grandmother must be going through so much right now.  Her sisters.

I always think my life is small, tight, unbearably self-oriented.   That nothing will ever happen.  But things do happen.  The world finds out how to make you meet your pain.  But it also, once you’ve been through some of what the world has in store, delivers you with a small consolation: you aren’t alone in any of this.  There is no pedestal for untouched souls.  There’s just one another, from a distance or all mushed up together, there’s just us.  So, breathe.