Cause and Effect

I work for an independent bookstore.

So, while I’m keeping my Amazon wishlist as a helpful archive of information, needless to say, my book purchases from them have stopped.

As I get older, I think more and more about the saying that you vote with your dollars. I don’t have a lot of them to spend, but I’d rather shop local and support small businesses when I can.

Otherwise, we’re all contributing to the growing monopolies and the power of the corporations which are gaining increasing control of our country.

I like to think that spending a little more to shop at a local co-op rather than a big chain store is a kind of activism.

Which is part of why I haven’t set foot in a Wal-Mart in over a year.

But, it is also more expensive, which is difficult to manage when you’re already struggling to make ends meet.

Now, what with Amazon’s recent treatment of Hachette (http://www.bustle.com/articles/26570-amazon-vs-hachette-everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-feud), I’m reconsidering ever buying ANYTHING from Amazon again.

As not only a book lover but a person of conscience, I can’t support a company trying to steal profits from an already struggling industry.

Today, however, I was forced to face some of my own demons regarding the issue.

I hadn’t realized the extent to which I’ve used Amazon as a way to bypass or manage my anxiety in recent years.

I decided to use the rest of my birthday money to buy a Camelbak so that it’s easier to bike in the Texas humidity.

In the past, I would have likely ordered it from Amazon.

But in light of my boycott, I researched local alternatives. I was visiting a friend this afternoon, and thought I’d stop by Target on the way home. I saw on-line that they had a variety of off-brand hydration packs which would be cheaper than a Camelbak.

I forgot however, that what’s on-line and what’s in stock can vary significantly. Target.com had so many varieties of hydration pack I felt sure the Target close to me would have one.

I was wrong.

I had already driven to Target in the beginning of rush hour. Instead of fighting to get home and having to go out again later, I decided to brave the 1.5 miles of rush hour traffic to Academy – my other nearby option.

Sitting in traffic trying to remember to breathe, I realized that I’ve purchased many things from Amazon over the years just to avoid having to drive to multiple stores in order to find what I need. I can save time, energy, and money by having something delivered to my door. Plus, I’ve benefited from the customer reviews, which can assist in determining which of a myriad of options and brands might be best.

But not if it furthers the corruption of society.

It turns out Academy only had Camelbak brand in stock, so I only bought the pack itself and not a backpack for it. I will just use mine, since I’m not using it for anything else right now.

I know the best way to beat anxiety is to face it. So I’m probably furthering my personal growth by driving even when it makes me anxious.

But I can’t help but wonder, how did I get here?

I know it didn’t used to be such a struggle to manage my anxiety and depression.

Am I still feeling the after-effects of working in call centers for two years?

Or is this residual anxiety from being rear-ended twice in two years? My back is still stiff sometimes, even a year and a half after my most recent car accident.

Or perhaps there are other lifestyle factors at play.

I didn’t have a car before I moved to Texas, and when I was in graduate school I mostly used my car to go to the grocery store.

I didn’t have much disposable income even then, so maybe that’s when my use of Amazon started. Or, maybe it just felt easier to run errands in a small town.

Before I started driving, and even sometimes after, friends would take me where I needed to go. I can grocery shop on my own okay if I go during non-peak hours. But I think I try to plan other shopping trips for when I’m with friends, because it does feel easier when I’m not alone. Then, it’s like I’m on an adventure with someone, instead of it feeling hard and scary and I can stop myself from worrying about how long it will take.

Except I haven’t had as much time with friends lately, or a friend who likes driving me around.

I can research places to go beforehand, like with Target, REI, and Academy for the hydration pack. But it’s still more difficult than doing the research to make a purchase on Amazon.

I’m going to stick to my guns, because I do believe this all matters.

And maybe I’m better off not even supporting somewhere like Target, anyway.

But I don’t want running errands to feel like an ordeal the way it does sometimes.

I hate the phone, but maybe something as simple as calling ahead would help. Maybe the store would hold something for me and I’d know I only have to make a one-stop shop.

Without much disposable income, like I said, this won’t come up much. But I want to be better prepared when it does.

I just have to figure out what will help me be better able to do the right thing, instead of just the easy thing.

 

Quarter-Century Crisis

Lately I’ve been struggling with time management.

With the bookstore gearing up for conferences and events this fall, I’m having to figure out if I can cut back hours on my other main part-time job.

My attention is too divided.

It turns out I can’t work three jobs and really be good at any of them. I might be able to be pretty good at two jobs, so it’s a matter of finding freelance writing that will supplement my income enough that I can just focus on my writing and the work I’m doing at the bookstore. Because I do enjoy both of them.

Between working, sleeping enough, cooking myself food, taking care of the house, and spending time with my significant other, it’s hard to get any time for myself. Let alone getting out of the house to make friends.

Maybe I just have to accept the fact that something is always going to suffer, and decide when friends or self-care win out over chores.

But I keep thinking back to when I was in college. I took 20+ credit hours a semester, plus play rehearsals, and still managed to keep a 4-point GPA until Senior year.

I did have a nervous breakdown when I was twenty, but that was more due to personal issues than my workload, per-se. Though I’m sure both contributed.

How did I ever balance seven classes at once plus memorizing lines and participating in student organizations?

In a lot of ways, play rehearsal was self-care for me, plus social time mixed in as a bonus.

So that might account for some of it.

Maybe this is just a part of getting older. Less stamina.

Or maybe I’m finally learning to accept my limitations instead of pushing past them to burn-out.

Semesters were only 15 weeks, so I could count on at least 2 weeks of doing nothing at all over Christmas vacation and during the summer. I’m sure that helps, too.

I know I’m fortunate and some people have to work 50-60 hours a week to get by. I’m trying my best to find a way to work 30-35. But it’s hard.

Until the past year or so, I hadn’t even heard of the idea of a quarter-century crisis. Perhaps it’s the economy, pushing us into a mid-life crisis sooner because there just aren’t good jobs for anyone anymore. But the idea makes sense to me. It feels like I’ve been smack in the middle of one since I left graduate school.

I’m so tired and scattered and lonely.

I’m doing my best, but it’s hard to know what might actually make things better.

This song came to mind today. Perhaps the worst part of higher education is the way it doesn’t prepare you for “the real world,” whatever that means. Professors and parents try to warn you it doesn’t, of course. But it’s hard to see past your current situation and imagine how different your life could be when everything seems full of promise and possibility.

I used to judge my parents for not having more friends, because I didn’t understand – couldn’t understand – how difficult it is to make friends as an adult.

It’s time to re-visit my priorities. Perhaps I need to accept that I’m always going to have too much to do and not enough time to do it in. So I need to always know what is most important to me. Otherwise it will get lost in the shuffle of “shoulds” and I will keep feeling dissatisfied.

I don’t know what the answer might be, but I’m doing my best to find it.

Well, This is Awkward

There was this moment of communication with my boss today that I don’t know how to process.

There’s this breast cancer awareness bicycle ride in September. She created a team for the bookstore, and since I’m learning to ride, I joined the team and pledged the least amount of miles.

Everyone who signs up also pledges to raise $250. (There’s a caveat that if you attend three of their FUNdraising parties and don’t meet your total you can ride anyway).

She’s asked me twice now if I’ve gotten any donations.

I haven’t. I don’t know anyone with money.

Plus, it’s slow at the store in the summer so I have fewer hours than when we have conferences. And the other woman I work for is out of town two weeks in July so I’m kind of concerned about how I’m going to make things work next month.

I kind of have my budget down to a science. I can’t afford to work that many (like 20) fewer hours in a month. I have some leads on housecleaning or sewing jobs, but I don’t know yet if that’s going to work out. So I feel like if I were going to ask my friends for money, it would be money for *me* and not this ride, because I really am not trying to pull money from my savings next month to get by.

And I don’t get it.

She knows how much she pays me. She writes my paychecks. She knows that my job with her is the bulk of the money I make in a month. She knows I live in Hyde Park. She lives in Austin, too, so she has to know what rent is like.

Her partner supports her, but I can’t believe she’s *that* out of the loop.

And she tried to tell me, “When you go out to dinner with your friends, ask them for $5.” I tried to tell her I don’t do that, but she didn’t believe me. I really don’t. I did go out for coffee Sunday after work, but that’s only because me and a friend are trying to start a queer women’s group locally and a coffee shop is the best place to do it. I can’t really afford that, but it’s once a month and we’re both trying to start this group to make more friends in town.

But I don’t know how to say to her, “You know how much you pay me.” Or how to explain that if I do go out to dinner with a friend, they’re buying. How rude is it to then say, “Oh, and do you have $5 for this bike ride I’m doing?”

At my old job, I was what a friend called “working class.” I had enough money for bills, a little for savings, and enough to go out on occasion. If a friend needed a loan, I could spot them. Not anymore. Now I keep dipping to the bottom of the savings cushion in my checking account between paychecks. (It’s an idea I got from my parents. You put X amount of money in your checking account but don’t figure it in when you balance your checkbook. That way, when your checkbook says $0, you still have money and won’t overdraw. And yes, I still balance a checkbook.)

Now I’m just poor. If I didn’t volunteer with a local farm once a month to get a CSA of vegetables free, I’m not sure what I’d be eating, but it wouldn’t be healthy. I also know of a local co-op that gets food Trader Joe’s was just going to toss out, so that’s how I’m eating vegetables the next few weeks.

I’m not sure how my boss doesn’t realize that this is the situation I’m in, and it feels really crappy and embarrassing to have to spell it out. I know the store isn’t doing so hot either, and she can’t afford to pay me more. And I did choose this job. It’s just… she was surprised that my other gig is as regular of a thing as it was, and now she doesn’t understand why I’m not pounding the streets for this charity ride. Both are for the same reason – I’m trying to make ends meet.

I’d rather focus on how I’m paying my bills in July and actually getting to the point where I can go on a regular training ride. It’s not like I’m not planning to do ANY fundraising, but I’d rather know I have my own stuff squared away before I start asking my friends to donate to this cause. Because it’s not like I have that many friends to begin with, and most of them are already helping me out financially as an individual.

Maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for this thing to begin with.

And I’m not trying to make her raise $500 instead of $250, either. Worst case scenario, I just won’t ride. And I’m planning to go to those FUNdraising parties anyway, so if I can’t make it to the $250 goal, I might be able to ride anyway.

But it’s just hard to worry about raising money for charity when I don’t have enough money for myself. And it sucks. I wish I did. But I just don’t know what kind of bubble she lives in where you can assume your friends have money.

I just know I don’t live there.

What’s Wrong With Being Open?

Maybe it’s a sign I’ve spent too long in “alternative” communities and just no longer have any conception of or desire to keep track of what’s “normal.”

I find there tends to be a lot of overlap between groups of people who have decided “normal” wasn’t for them. So it still strikes me as odd when people are a part of one group but still can’t wrap their heads around another.

Like when someone who posted for a gay-friendly roommate freaks out if I don’t have a shirt on in the house. And then tries to frame it in this way that makes it seem like I’m all enlightened and shit. “You seem to have a very… open… lifestyle and that’s great, but I want to be able to share common space with you and feel comfortable.”

So if one of us has to be uncomfortable it’s going to be me? And you’re sorry because I should be able to be comfortable in my own home, too, but… you know…

And I don’t get it. Hanging out with LGBTQ/burners/nerds/artists/etc can be really refreshing because we’ve learned to relate to each other just as people and where the boundaries are of other people being able to determine my self-expression. The roommates I’ve been able to be naked around I’ve felt more kinship with – like we were more sisters than friends.

And I like that. I love the intimacy forged in alternative communities where we just accept each other as we are and own our own issues. So why doesn’t life work that way in the outside world? Why are people not held accountable for owning their own shit and managing their own emotions? Why should I have to change to make someone else not have to confront their own issues? Why can’t we just take people as they are?

And what is it about being “open” that is so scary? I have found it to be the most liberating thing I’ve ever done. Being able to be who I am and do what I want and for the most part feel unapologetic for it is fantastic.

Why does it freak so many people out? I wish we could ALL learn to be more open. We’re all human beings and that’s okay. We shouldn’t have to be ashamed of our bodies or our desires or try to fit into some mold someone else created decades or centuries ago which is no longer relevant.

And if you can get past one of the things society is “normal” and make your own choices regarding that, shouldn’t it be EASIER to do that with other things? So how are there are these people who are still stuck in the grip of “normal” in so many ways?

Looking at my family, I wonder sometimes how I managed to be as emotionally mature and competent as I am (and trust me, I still have a ways to go sometimes).

And all I can come back to is that it was because of theatre.

In acting, we learn about truth in imaginary circumstances. In order to start building a character, I begin with me. How would I react to this set of circumstances if I was born in a different time period or geographical area? What social messages would I have been raised in in that environment, and how would that change the emotional responses I have now versus what this character might experience?

Studying performance makes it easier to see that culture is just something we humans made up, and we could make it up differently if we wanted. Some cultural messages may have had their time or place, but not everything society tells us is still relevant or useful or healthy.

Recognizing that we have the power to choose which cultural messages we internalize and follow is incredibly powerful. And also incredibly dangerous, which is why art is the first thing to be censored or have its funding pulled.

I understand that it is terribly subversive, but it is also incredibly liberating.

And I don’t think I’m super enlightened, but I do like feeling free – free to choose how to frame and build my life to one extent or another (because there are always consequences for deviating from the “norm”). I hate feeling like I have to be penned back in by anyone against my will, and sometimes I guess I grow impatient with others who I wish would embrace my difference.

But for now I guess I will have to be happy with those who do. I just wish more people would realize that they could be happier than they are if they just re-evaluated the messages they’ve internalized about how to live in the world and got rid of some of the ones that aren’t working for them anymore.

And I’d love to help people get there, too, if I can find a way to do it. Getting paid to do that kind of work would be the best of all possible worlds for me, I think.

 

Who Needs to Change?

In my past apartment I lived in a clothing optional environment. It’s definitely my preference.

I also lived that way in college when I roomed with my best friend and her mother. It just wasn’t a big deal if I popped out of the shower and left the towel in the bathroom to walk to my room.

I know America in general has a host of body issues. Art modeling is what helped me get past mine.

And I feel like once you’ve gotten past that point where bodies are gross and shameful, it’s impossible to go back.

Bodies are just bodies, actually. Everybody has one.

My current roommate is pretty cool and laid-back. But not enough to deal with my clothing-optional ways.

She said that I seem very comfortable with myself and live a very open lifestyle and that’s great, but she wants to be able to share common space with me and feel comfortable.

And she also does seem sensitive to the fact that I ought to feel comfortable in my own home, too, but it seems like her point of view “wins” here.

And I keep thinking about all the talk I’ve been hearing lately about trans people related to bathrooms.

It’s the same issue – in what context are bodies okay? What bodies can be in what situations? And most importantly, who gets to decide?

There was a post that came up on my Facebook feed regarding the issue where the man said, “Why should 98% of people have to be uncomfortable for 2% to be comfortable?”

But what if the 98% is wrong?

Being in the majority doesn’t make you right.

And I don’t think that I’m necessarily enlightened or anything like that because I’m comfortable sitting on the couch without a shirt on.

But why is it that we default to the majority opinion? Or to the less open person?

Why not see this as an opportunity for growth if I am “more” open than you?

Why am I the one that has to change?

Why not examine what being comfortable means or learn to realize that feeling uncomfortable won’t kill you.

I just don’t know how society is ever going to change for the better if we’re taught to pander to those who are racist or sexist or transphobic or in whatever way uncomfortable with how someone else is expressing themselves.

People don’t want gay people to get married because it makes them uncomfortable.

I’m not comparing my situation to that, but I’m saying it stems from the same kind of thinking.

To the majority (in whatever sense), being uncomfortable seems like the worst thing there is.

But having your rights stripped away is that much worse, actually.

And its that much more insidious when the majority tries to sugar-coat their message and say we’re better than they are but they just can’t handle it so can we be patient with them? Because then you feel like a dick for saying no.

And I know it’s important to meet people where they are and all that jazz.

But I just get tired of it, you know?

In a lot of situations I am outside the majority. And I get tired of constantly feeling I must bend myself to fit some mold that never even made sense to begin with?

Can’t we just live and let live and make people accountable to deal with their own issues just as much as we are accountable to meet them where they are?

Can’t we all be adults here? Or is that too much to ask?

a new chapter

I think all humans both require and on some level fear change, or are at least resistant to it.

No matter how much I yearn for change, the closer it comes, the more anxious I become.

I also tend to get nostalgic for the good parts of my life – probably a coping mechanism in my lizard brain trying to make me believe that change is bad for me.

There are things I will miss about this place.

Mostly people.

I am fiercely grateful for the wonderful people I have met here, and I know their love and friendship is what got me through the greater part of this year.

But if loving someone was enough to make me stay, I never would have moved to Texas in the first place.

I had wonderful friends back East, too.

Routine makes us feel safe, but when it turns into a rut it can be suffocating.

I know deep down that this is the right choice for me, and as the time to move has approached, I have felt more and more rejuvenated.

I know it is the unknown I fear.

But I also feel confident  I can handle whatever comes my way.

I am more equipped with resources this time around and know the pitfalls of relocation better.

Also, thanks to social media, I have more resources for meeting new people via FB groups and events.

There’s a part of me still in disbelief that all of this came together somehow.

But I have signed a lease and submitted my new hire paperwork.

My last day at this job is Friday and the next two days will be spent packing and doing a last load of laundry.

There is a deeper calm below the anxiety.

Change is hard but change is also growth.

And I have learned a lot this year about who I am and what I want and need out of life and what I am willing to tolerate and what I can endure.

I am grateful for those lessons and also ready to move on to something new.

I am continually astonished and blessed by the Universe’s ability to meet our needs when we say what we want and don’t back down.

You have to put in the work, but if you make your desires known, eventually, something will happen.

Maybe not in the way you expect or plan.

Really hardly ever that way.

But SOME thing WILL happen if you put your will out there, do the work, and are prepared to accept whatever the consequences of your actions might be (i.e. expect the worst and hope for the best).

So never fear.

If you’re going through Hell, keep on going.

I’m headed toward the light at the end of this tunnel, anyway.

Contientious Objecter

I’ve hardly gotten anything productive done this weekend.

Thinking about going to work tomorrow puts my stomach in knots.

I might be able to do substitute teaching, but it doesn’t pay well and the work isn’t guaranteed. So if they hire me I still need to find something else to do part-time.

And that’s proving difficult.

Last week was pretty bad even though it was a short week due to Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

Sometimes I can put up a wall and not let the bad calls get to me. But sometimes there are just too many bad calls in a row. And sometimes the caller is legitimately angry or upset or feeling betrayed by the company’s wrong-doing.

And they’re right.

And I raise my hand for floor support and get fed some BS excuse that I then have to relay to this person. This person who isn’t an idiot and KNOWS it’s BS as well as I do.

So then they direct all those negative emotions at me because I’m the one on the phone with them. Even though everything I say is recorded and I have to tell them what I was told to tell them. Even though I want to help them but can’t. Even though I want desperately to be able to relate to them as a person.

Sometimes there’s a hint of real human interaction – I offer my condolences for a loss and someone opens up for a moment to thank me and express their pain, or someone calls and explains some backstory usually involving the shareholder being in the hospital or otherwise incapacitated.

But I have to follow the script and I keep getting told to get my call time down so I feel pressured to stop them talking and get off the call, rather than engaging in those real moments. And then I hate myself for it.

I want REAL human interaction – not fake customer service bullshit.

Even when I was acting it was all about getting to the truth of what it means to be human. I want to be able to interact with people as if they’re human beings and my job doesn’t really allow that – what I’m doing FEELS fake.

Since I’ve been playing D&D, it hit me the other day that the company I’m working for is lawful evil. They’d like the customer to think they’re lawful good, and maybe they think they’re lawful neutral, but I’ve seen too much to believe that. All that matters is the bottom line and that the company comes out clean in the end. And if someone gets f*cked over, that’s business.

And I don’t work that way.

I don’t know how anyone can work that way.

I can’t turn off my brain and my conscience. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.

If they’ll hire me, maybe it would be better to substitute teach. Even if I have to go back on food stamps.

Then maybe I could sleep at night.

I just don’t know how to keep this up. I don’t know how to spend most of my time every day working for a company that goes against everything I believe in.

And I know there is always a system and nothing is perfect. But at least when I was working in the theatre there was a sense of community. Like we were all in this together.

Even in the darkest days of graduate school when I wanted to give up and quit, I could dig down deep and remember all the good reasons I was doing what I was doing and find the strength to persevere.

With this job I think I’m out of ANY reasons, let alone good ones. When “I’m stuck in my lease until July” is literally the only reason I can bear to go to work in the morning…. that doesn’t work. Not anymore.

Plus, the girl carpooling with me found another ride to work. We used to be able to commiserate about the job and that helped. But now I’ve lost even that.

Occasionally I can talk to other coworkers and that helps me feel like a person again, but the system is set up to prevent us talking, really. And there’s not a lot of space for meaningful conversation between calls, anyway.

I want to dig deep, develop relationships.

I’ve never done well with surface interactions.

I just feel so alone.

And that makes everything worse.

If I thought anyone at my job really cared – about me, about the customers, about ANYTHING besides making money… but I can’t. I don’t.

I just don’t know what to do.

But my soul is worth more than $10/hr.

Change is Inevitable

Something I’ve been musing over lately is how different my life is now than what it was while I was in graduate school.

I hardly see any of the friends I made during my graduate studies and fieldwork due to the time constraints of my current job and how disconnected I am now from the activities happening on campus.

I also feel disconnected from my deeper purpose.  It’s been eight months now since I graduated. Am I still able to say I “just” or “recently” graduated? I’m tired of explaining away my current job when people ask me what I do. I want to be able to say that I’m an artist or a performer. Maybe I can still say those things, though it’s harder to feel when I spend so much of my time doing other things.

I still live in the same town. I still shop at the same grocery store.

But my apartment is different. My social circle is different. Even the car I am driving around town is different.

The people I meet are different. The conversations I have are different.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in sci-fi novel – like I’ve been dropped into some parallel universe version of my life that is *just* close enough to what it was to be recognizable and comprehensible, but it’s still jarring at times.

I stayed in this town ostensibly to save money and figure out where to move *to,* but also so I could keep some sense of continuance in my life – same town, same friends… mostly the same life just minus graduate school.

But when I only moved here FOR graduate school, that doesn’t really work out so well.

My life is drastically different from what it was, whether I want it to be or not.

You can’t stop change.

Life changes, with or without your consent.

Nothing you try to do to stop it from changing will work.

So you might as well *choose* or at least ATTEMPT to choose the ways in which your life changes.

Because if you go with the flow you might just find yourself further upstream than you wanted to go. And without a paddle.

So that’s my next step. Thinking about what changes I could consciously implement in my life to make it better. Because standing in place didn’t stop everything from shifting around me. So I’d rather cause at least some of the shifts (keeping in mind that life always likes to throw us curveballs, too).

And part of that is going to be scheduling more time to write. Not just here, but also partly here.

If I can set aside X hours per week to work toward the kind of life I want I think that will be a better use of my time. And maybe one of those days can be actively strategizing, rather than doing things in spurts when I don’t feel tired.

If I accept that I will always be tired and stressed out to one extent or another and that these are not valid reasons to not do anything, maybe that will help me get things done. I also have more practice dealing with firm deadlines, so I need to find a way to set deadlines for myself that will work as well as ones set in syllabi, and then I can work backward from those dates to break things down into smaller chunks.

I think my goals are too broad or fuzzy right now. I need to know exactly what I’m doing rather than stabbing in the dark.

It’s time to embrace change again and seek it out, rather than trying to avoid it.

Because it’s going to find me one way or another.

And I could do with some more positive changes in my life.

New Year; Old Problems

It’s January.

Can I just say, “Holy Hell, how did this happen?!?”

Wasn’t it just November yesterday?

I really thought I would have found a new job by January. That was kind of the plan in my head even if I hadn’t set it in stone.

And while I looked and applied some yesterday, there isn’t a lot out there in the area that won’t just end up being “second verse, same as the first.”

I’d rather not spend effort training to do a job that has as much to do with anything I care about as this one (which is negligible).

But I also really hate my job.

I am feeling so creatively blocked.

Do you know it’s been three years at least since I’ve been in a play?

Sure, I’ve done some workshops while in graduate school, but that’s too long for me.

I really need a creative outlet – crocheting and sewing aren’t cutting it anymore.

Maybe writing this blog isn’t even cutting it anymore.

There is some community theatre around, but it’s all mainstream and musicals from what I can tell. I want to create new work or do challenging pieces, and I don’t know that there’s much of that in town outside of the University.

I just want to feel that I’m using my brain or my heart or my creativity at all.

And I don’t at work.

I feel like my life is ticking by. How has it already been almost eight months since I graduated?

And what have I accomplished?

I suppose living on my own for real and holding down a full time job for the first time is something, but I feel like I’m running in place.

I want to move forward.

But I don’t know how.

I get a sinking feeling in my chest every time the thought crosses my mind that maybe the job I have is the best job I can get.

Around here, it just might be.

I need to get out of here. That much is clear.

But to where? And doing what?

Those are questions I don’t know the answer to yet.

In other news, the D&D group I play with Monday nights has started playing Chore Wars. (http://www.chorewars.com) And getting XP for things like doing the dishes and feeding the cat makes the daily drudgery feel a little more exciting and useful. Plus, the competition and the fact that other people will be able to see if I don’t brush my teeth or clean the litterbox might actually keep me honest and the apartment a little bit cleaner.

But I really need to figure out the next step.

Yesterday.

And I could use all the help I can get in figuring out what that is.

‘Tis the Season

So, I’ve been kind of bummed lately, and it took me a while to figure out why.

Usually, I love Christmas. It’s been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember.

But this year I haven’t been feeling it.

It could be because this is the first year I haven’t gone “home” for Christmas. I wondered if perhaps I’m just nostalgic for those Christmases going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house. Or whether I’m just sad that I won’t get to see my sister for Christmas. Or that I have to work Christmas Eve and this is the first year I haven’t had at least two weeks off for Christmas ever.

It could easily be a combination of those things.

But I also realized that one of the joys of the Christmas season for me is all the ritualistic aspects tied to the holiday. I grew up in the church, so there was always Advent and decorating the fellowship hall and the Christmas cantata. Then there’s decorating the tree, baking cookies, singing carols, wrapping presents, sitting around together Christmas morning-ish opening the presents and eating Christmas cookies for breakfast still in your flannel pajama pants (I grew up in the North, remember)…

The list could go on and on.

I also like the story of Christmas – messages of love and peace and being kind to your fellow man.

I mean, I believed in Santa Claus until I was twelve.

And not the “sees you when you’re sleeping” Santa.

But the kind, jolly old man who likes to eat too many cookies and make children happy.

I still believe in the spirit of Santa Claus, which I think is also the spirit of Jesus even though I consider myself agnostic now.

Peace on Earth, Good will towards Men.

That’s what Christmas is to me.

A time to refocus on what’s important – honoring those you love and extending that love outward to all. Taking the time to be kind and generous.

I miss my Grandma Julie a lot around Christmas especially because she is one of those people who really embodied that Christmas spirit all the year.

Putting up some lights in the apartment and baking cookies with my roommate to share is helping.

Holidays and rituals exist for a reason. They are meaningful, even if that meaning isn’t the same to everyone or shifts over time.

I think whatever pull toward ritual is in me is also part of my love of storytelling and drama.

A lot of drama is about searching for meaning in existence and trying to understand what there is worthwhile about humanity.

Those are important questions.

And Christmas reminds me of them.

So I’m going to get some yarn and string up the crochet Christmas ornaments my mother made for me several years ago, and that are the same kind of ornaments that were always on our tree and Grandma Julie’s tree growing up.

Because it’s important to remember and honor the moments and acts of love in our lives.

Especially in times of darkness when our way is lost, twinkle lights can brighten the way and remind us that Spring will be here soon enough, and that this, too, shall pass.