i have once again been struck with a profound sense of motivation and by that i clearly mean i have been lacking motivation for about an hour now where i can't seem to get my mind to cooperate with the idea that it is still the work day and it is ill spent by screwing around on the internet. to be fair, i did have a very productive morning and neither my co-worker or boss (for my department) are in the building today so it's really hard to summon the desire to start a new project. so instead, i have had several glasses of water, to afford myself the time to pace back and forth from my office to the kitchen, i've done the mail with our office manager and i have considered how badly i need to paint my nails. while considering what color i would paint my nails this week (this is a saturday activity for me lately, not sure why) i was perusing a former friend's* flickr account, hoping that i might find a new picture to use as my profile picture for this blog or on my twitter account. *this former friend was someone who i used to be particularly read: very close with once upon a time in our lives and she is now quite a talented photographer. i mean, she probably was when we were friends too, i just didn't know that; 13 year olds are more interested in talking about a lot of other things that burgeoning artistic abilities. it is one of her photos that serves as the profile picture for this blog.* upon examining through about a hundred photos, i found myself realizing that everything that she snapped a picture of was something that was an experience. even something simple, like an afternoon snack of wheat thins, kiwi and a clementine was aesthetically organized in a way to be pretty. i, on the other hand, would eat that kind of snack, sitting at my desk and not think for a second to stop and look at how it looked all together in a bowl. there was a photo of a recently emptied plate with a fork and knife left haphazardly upon it and one of a crosswalk in detroit on her walk to work. it makes me think a couple of things. i am slightly jealous that i am not so creative. i wish i could look at something and just visualize how to arrange it or shoot it or whatever to make a creative and interesting image. i can't do that. my brain simple doesn't accept it. second, i think that this is kind of like the modern day equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. stop and take a photo. at least that lasts longer than a rose.
i mentioned yesterday that if given the time i would discuss my thoughts on wanting to be a robot, vampire or super hero and considering that i find myself without any other engagements for the next little while, i thought i would document those thoughts while killing time. that's right, i'm a multi-tasker. i have, for a long time, had a fascination with the idea of being able to do well everything. and the problem was, i was good enough at doing everything that i wanted through delicate juggling, excellent scheduling, not sleeping and consuming obscene amounts of coffee to get everything i wanted done. work, school, friendships, boyfriends (one at a time, for the record), leadership on extra curricular activities...you get the idea. in addition to this rather extreme desire to be able to do everything, i also fancied myself to be a person who was cold, unemotional and accordingly rational enough to always make the smartest decisions. again the problem was i became so good at this too that it became very difficult to try to convince me that i was wrong or that my approach to facing the world was at best sad. i think that part of this desire came from the early lessons that i learned quickly from my mother which can most easily be summed up like this: always do the best you can, don't accept anything less than that from yourself and understand that sometimes in life you are going to get hurt. well, when you find out at age 9 that your best is all a's, you feel a kind of pressure to keep that going. when you watch those behaviors carry over into other areas of life, you make a mental note and before you know it, it is an adult behavior that can't be shaken easily. it only took me one try of getting hurt to realize i didn't want to do that again so i carefully constructed a wall around myself to keep a distance from everyone. really. there are a good number of people who met me around my sophomore year in high school who don't know a damn thing about me but if you asked, they would say we were close in high school. i was just passing time until i got to college where i assumed i would find people that didn't seem to waste my time. because the people in high school that i did trust were the ones that hurt me, it was easier to just shut everyone down. so i did.
it was lovely for a while. lonely, yes but wow. such a wonderful feeling of safety. no one could get in, no one could hurt me, i had control. but that can only last so long, especially if you expect to grow as a human, have new relationships and so on. this was a horrifying prospect. and the very few close friends that i chose to discuss these fears with all said the same thing; they made it their business to remind me that i am not a robot. they reminded me that i'm human and therefore will experience emotions, both good and bad, and if i keep myself from some then i'm going to miss everything. yes, this makes logical sense now. at the time, you could have just as well told me to go take a long walk off a short bridge. it took a lot of undoing to get me to wrap my mind around the concept that it is okay for me to just be human.
i understand that this should not be difficult but this learning came after lots of work, visits with friends, old and new, visits with therapists (even though i never let our conversation get here, i think they did something to contribute), a failed experience with anti-depressants and lots of personal discovery. i want to be clear. i'm not good at this. i'm working at it, i've been working at it for a lot of years now and i think i'm getting a little bit better at it. but this in no way stops my desire to be a robot, vampire or superhero. i feel like you can probably deduce why but here's the bottom line: they aren't human thus don't have to deal with human emotions and trivialities. that is marvelous, i think. maybe in my next life i'll be better at this emotional stuff.
from the girl who's kind of hoping to meet edward cullen to be turned into a vampire
until next time...
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