May 29

Missed my book club on Wednesday due to testing related exhaustion. Ugh. Plugging the word "circus" into a search engine supplies the definition, "a public scene of frenetic and noisily intrusive activity," and if that doesn't perfectly describe the end of grade testing cycle, then I don't know what does.

Our group was supposed to discuss Kim Werker's charge to go out on a "date" alone, which was sort of underwhelming an assignment for me as I do dinners and movies by myself all the time without thinking of it, and (did I mention?) I went to a freaking concert alone, so go me. However, this evening I did find myself briefly on my own in a public date space, and I didn't feel entirely comfortable or natural in the scene, so joining my group in spirit if not in person, I guess I'll talk about that a bit.

I made plans a while ago to meet D for an event at the art museum (Hell yes cocktails and crafts) this evening. Driving from my small town to The City during rush hour on a Friday afternoon seemed like a dicey proposition, so I left with way more time to spare than I actually needed and arrived at the museum an hour in advance of D. I wasn't too angsty about this since looking around art museums is a thing that I like to do, and I haven't been to our local one in years.

At first I didn't do a lot of nonsensical thinking. One of the first paintings I encountered was The Beheading of St. Catherine of Alexandria which married two of my favorite things -- excessive gold leaf and heads getting cut off. Mmm.... shiny AND gory....


As I wandered around though, the museum got more crowded. A band set up and started playing jazz-with-horns. Everyone who came in had really nice shoes. High heels with decorative wooden platforms and big buckle-y straps that hooked around the ankle. Bare legs all around. I had on tights and an old thrift store dress and I became very self conscious of being The Girl who was Alone and Looking at Art. Suddenly I couldn't shake the feeling that I was trying to star in a performance of myself, and not doing a very good job of it. I felt like a parody of a girl in a vintage dress at an art museum.


I stopped being able to enjoy the paintings and started worrying, "If I spend too long looking at one painting, then I'm just trying too hard to be a girl who comes to museums alone to gaze at Art. And if I just wander around, then CLEARLY I'm just here to be seen being here and not here to actually see anything." Such ridiculous dithering, and yet I could. not. stop.


Happily, D arrived very shortly after that crisis, and I was able to transition to the event where I had an AMAZING time which I will probably write about later.


 I've written before that I have a lot of hang-ups about the performance side of keeping this blog. There were definitely points in the fun part of our evening, especially when pictures were being taken, when I thought about how much I was going to enjoy it later when I was writing about what I was doing. But shouldn't the point of doing things just be the experience of doing them? This is something I struggle with a lot. I worry that this website is the equivalent of my self-conscious overdressed ass standing in the middle of a bunch of museum goers, thinking about how she looks and thinking that the only way to be genuinely herself is to not be thinking that. And yet still thinking of nothing else.

 

I own no red clothing, and I kept wanting to fist bump the other few people who had done their best with purple.

The best thing about today's sermon (er... collect? homily? I am an Episcopalian by current practice, but a non-denominational "charismatic" protestant by upbringing, and there are times when I feel more adrift in the waters of our current church than J does, and he grew up without religion at all.) Anyway, the best thing about today's church service, which was outdoors on account of Pentecost, was the pinky fingernail sized frog that hopped along the edge of our picnic blanket. It was cute and fascinating! I've grown a lot in the time since I was a kid drawing on the back of my church bulletin, but I don't seem to have matured much in my ability to maintain focus on any kind of preaching.


Other good parts were the music, which was normal singing set to guitar rather than "chanting" led by piano and a cantor, and after church when there was a real church picnic, which I have not been to since I was such a young person and which provided all of the wondrous foods that seem exclusive to picnic lunches. (Oh three bean salad, how I love you! And cut up watermelon and baked beans and pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off!)


At some point I will have to gather and organize my thoughts on the topic of Why It Is That I Go To Church In The First Place. Largely it's because I do have some vague sense that it is important to focus on living a life that is in line with one's values, and church seems like a good way to maintain that focus.


I started to fall out of non-denominational "charismatic" Protestantism at age 18 when I could no longer reconcile what I felt in my conscience to be true with what my church was telling me I should believe. I was at my friend L's house, and he had a painting on the wall that his boyfriend had done of the two of them in the bathtub together, L's arms around the artist. It was the sweetest, most romantic thing I had ever seen, so pure and good and right that it killed the last shreds of  the "love the sinner hate the sin" bullshit that I had been clinging to as a young Christian with gay friends.


That's why we're at least sort of Episcopalians now. Our congregation anyway is big on social justice, and I get a lot out of hearing the lessons I've known since childhood framed in a way that supports this kind of thinking. There are a lot of aesthetic, decorative things that I would prefer about a less ritualized church experience, but amid all of the incense and chanting here there's nothing that I am ashamed of being associated with.


So there are lots of good reasons for us to attend a weekly service. That said, the real reason that we started going was J's mom. It would be a nice routine for her and good for us to have the support of a church community. ("We pray for all in our congregation who care for family members with dementia," is included in the"cycle of prayer" email that goes out weekly, and I do feel something when I read it. Uplifted.)


K moved into her eldercare home last Tuesday. This was our first Sunday without her. Yeah, we still went.


Like I said, I am still considering and sorting out the reasons that I'm going to church again after a solid twenty years without it. Maybe it will just boil down to picnic lunches and Our Friends Are There. I don't think I'll ever feel like a Christian the way I did as a teenager again. But I do feel like there's something valuable in fellowship with a community of like-minded individuals and being reminded of things like the beatitudes and being stewards of creation.

My favorite is the one where she eats the whole cake.

The pool at my condo just opened for the summer. (In contrast, for the summer at my MiL's house, the palmetto bugs have come back out in force.) Even though J and I won't be moving back for four weeks at the earliest, I took a trip over there today just to get in to the water for a little bit. I sat in the sun reading Hyperbole and a Half until sweat was running down my back and I knew I'd be able to convince myself that it was hot enough to swim no matter how ridiculous-cold the water was.


The water was ridiculous-cold, and I waded out slowly like a wimp, listening to the kinder set make up the rules to their water-football game as they played it.


"Ok, starting now only throw it to a person."
"Ok, but starting now, right? That didn't count."
"Yeah, that didn't count, but now it does."
"Ok."


"No more jumping on people and wrestling them!"
"Unless the other person wants to."
"Well, yeah. Unless they want you to."


Spent about an hour floating and lazily paddling around in the deep end (out of the way of the football game, in case the 'throw it to a person' rule was suddenly revoked). Now my skin is tight, and I'm doubting the effectiveness of my sunscreen. Also, I smell like chlorine.


Also,  I am blissfully content. I'm hungry for signs and symbols that this year is at its end, and this definitely counted as one.

Napping would be the worst sin of all.

The worst part of weekends is that I stress out about the ways that I am NOT resting and recharging properly. All of my media serials (which is to say, three television shows and a podcast) have new episodes all at once, but I'm not watching (or listening to) any of them because that would be "wasting" my weekend. I am, however, sitting here on the internet, halfheartedly playing through a visual novel I've already completed twice as though that were a worthwhile use of my time.


And why do I have to use my time in a worthwhile fashion anyway? We're four weeks out from summer vacation, and I am exhausted. It's getting to the time of year where not just throwing a film on the Smartboard and calling it a day is an feat of incredible planning and fortitude. You'd think I'd allow myself to "just put on a movie" in my real life at least, but NO.


I have no real resolution to these thoughts. I have a feeling I'm going to post this for the sake of knowing that I've done so and then return to my listless sifting through of 'meaningful' activities that I have no desire to get down to. Gah.

Your heart refilled...

The circles on a grid sampler is slow going. Once the novelty of new stitches and yarn-instead-of-floss wore off, I started to find the coloring book quality of the project a little tedious. (I also finished my engaging plot-heavy audiobook and switched to The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, which I've read before and LOVE and RELATE TO, but will admit is light on the suck you in story side of things.)


Anyway, I don't like the idea of having given up on the project, so I picked it up this weekend and made a good deal of progress. I'm trying to remind myself of the reasons I started it. Learning new stitches was the main thing, and I've done that. Check out my French Knots and Chain Stitch, y'all.
 

Pretty inexpert actually...

There are a lot of things that I've realized I was doing wrong over the course of the project. Initially, I did the key in order, stitch by stitch and color by color. That's why you'll see that all of my Satin Stitches and Pinwheels are already filled in. Eventually, I reached a place where it made no sense to do the outside of a circle without having first done the middle, at which point I stopped and looked at the directions again and realized that I was supposed to go circle by circle. Dang. 

I'm not sure about the marks that my hoop is leaving. Am I doing it wrong? Will they come out? Can you iron this sort of thing? 

(Google solves all, and I just discovered that that answer to this problem is a product called Magic Sizing, which I am already well familiar with from my long ago days of wearing vintage dresses that I actually ironed.)

Anyway, expert or no, I have enjoyed the new stitches aspect of the project. I especially like chain stitch, which is mentally engaging enough that I can listen to music rather than books while doing it. (I confess, my enjoyment of music is too shallow for listening to it to be a primary activity. I need to be driving or cleaning or cooking, or, now, doing needlework in addition to keep from getting bored.) 

I'm obsessed with this song lately

I can't tell if I think its a sweet ode to the reality of long term relationships as opposed to the fantasy promised in novels and love songs OR if it's just some creepy stalker whining about being in the "friend zone."

Either way, "An ocean of whiskey and time..." Damn, that's pretty.

I carried a watermelon.

I'm in the final quarter of my third year teaching. Although I still feel like a hopeless amateur, the contexts of my life as a teacher are becoming more and more familiar and comfortable. I used to stand at the front of my classroom, looking at the carpet with different primary colored squares, desks arranged into neat "pods," cubbies bursting with notebooks and papers, laminated posters of sentence starters for math journals and accountable talk written in my own still-shaky handwriting ... Sometimes, I kid you not, there'd even be an apple on my desk. I'd feel coldly out of place in these moments. Every detail so clearly spoke "Elementary School Classroom," and here I was, standing at the whiteboard with a marker in my hand, feeling not at all like the "Elementary School Teacher" that would complete the scene. It felt like I was in the middle of some elaborate playset, and if I could just close my eyes and remember hard enough, all the pretend would fall away and I'd find myself back in a "real" world  that was more suitable to the "real" me.

That doesn't happen as much anymore.

Yesterday (Friday) was a big day. J's band was playing for the first time in two years. I've mentioned some of the difficulties that we have getting out lately, so for him to have been able to attend a series of practices AND for us BOTH to be able to go out on the same night was a serious big deal.

The show was at a bar that he's been playing at since we started dating, 17 years ago, when I was only 21. If you want to talk about the "real" me in my "real" life, it doesn't get much more familiar than that booth at the front of the bar facing the right of the stage, where I've been sitting with different constellations of bandmember girlfriends (and boyfriends), acquaintances, and other hangers on for most of my adult life.

(The title of this post is what I would say to bartenders and sound people who, seeing me hanging around before sound check, would ask me if I was in the band. Really, all I carried were amps, and no one got the joke anyway.)

Friday also was the 5th grade dance at school. I'd kind of forgotten they were on the same day and ended up dashing from one event to the other.

At the dance, I jumped and bopped to the worst pop music in the world. I did "The Wobble." I raised my hands in the air and sang "Baby, you're a firework!" with crowds of ten year old girls. I clapped and stomped to We Will Rock You. I crowded around and applauded the groups of boys whose lessons at the local hip hop dance studio had clearly paid off.

At the bar, listening to some of my favorite music in the world, certainly made by my favorite person, I stood with my arms crossed, nursing a beer, and nodding at only the best, best moments of the songs.

The bar felt right and familiar, but these days, now, things that are vastly different and unlike anything that my past self who spent every weekend nursing beers at that bar would have been able to imagine also feel right and familiar.

(Oh, and these days, I have students create my posters. My handwriting never did start to look right on an anchor chart.)

It's like middle aged livejournal in here!

I'm thinking a lot today about engaging with my own faults. Confronting my poorer traits instead of shying away from them. This is counter to my usual strategy for dealing with feelings of shortcoming. Normally I try to protect myself from any perception that I am deeply flawed. At some point, this self-shielding became defined as healthy behavior for me (It's important to have good self-esteem, right?) but I don't think it really is.

There's a science fiction short story, and I'm going to be utterly obnoxious in referencing it because I can't remember anything close to its title or author, and it's shelved somewhere at my condo too far away from me right now to look up. I'm going to talk about it anyway because it is an important reference point for me when I think about my own insecurities.

In this short story, there's a boy who has some dread disease of the brain. Miraculously, though, he gets an experimental treatment and lives. Unfortunately, his miracle cure leaves him completely unable to experience happiness. The part that is important for me is when the author describes the interactions that the boy (er.... man, at this point) has with others. Because he cannot process any positive feelings, all of his conversations with other people are tinged with a sense of disapproval and the perception that he is disliked. This struck me because OH! That's like me! Not all the time, of course, but sometimes I feel as though EVERYONE, from cashier to confidant, disapproves of me and is annoyed by my presence.

In the midst of these feelings, I cannot tell if they are periods of clouded vision or moments of clarity. Because I am too far down into it to refute the criticism I perceive at every turn, I turn to other strategies for preserving my sanity and self-esteem. Usually, I make plans to FIX and IMPROVE and THEN, once I have stopped "being horrible" or having qualities that inspire criticism, everything will feel ok.

(And when she is perfect, then she will be loved.)

(When this doesn't work, I retreat deeply into fantasy until it goes away.)

The problem with this is that no amount of self-improvement has helped, and even if I could become perfect, I suspect that this feeling would still come on sometimes, like a storm or the flu. Nothing I've ever tried in the past has made this cycle STOP. I've been able to disappear into myself until it goes away, but it always comes back.

Also, I ...ah... will never be perfect.

(This took me a while to accept, actually. Asked to solidify my goals for therapy once, I said, "I would like to know that the voices in my head that tell me I'm not good enough are wrong, and if they're not, I'd like to become good enough to silence them.")

So what do I mean by engaging with flaws, and how would that help this situation?

My real issue isn't that I'm not thin enough or pretty enough or good enough a teacher (or engaging enough a conversationalist, interesting enough a person, creative enough an artist, productive enough a worker...). My real issue is that I crave approval and affirmation to an extent that isn't healthy.

Which is a hard thing to admit.

And I think it leads me not only to the above-described blue periods, but also to a spirit of unhealthy competition. (Perfect = The Best at Everything.) This in turn leads to being impatient with and critical of everyone I encounter, even as I imagine that they are criticizing me. (I become mean and jealous, oversensitive to small slights, and generally nasty.) It sucks, but these states of mind make me doubly wretched -- both self-loathing and hateful of others.

Since I'm writing about it, I guess it goes without saying that I have been feeling like this for a few days now. My methods for dealing with it are as ineffective as ever, and, like I said, I am a miserable person in this state, as hateful as I feel hated.

The impatience with and lack of compassion for others is actually more of flaw than any of the failings I feel so painfully at these times, but it's the personal imperfections that I always choose to focus on. I'd like to change that.

(The desire for approval is even more of a problem than that, but I don't have a strategy for dealing with it right now.)

Inspired by the genuine and affectionate (if naïve) heroine of my current gothic novel, I decided today that every time I felt cross and impatient with someone, I'd stop and think about what I like about them. It sounds affected and utterly Pollyannish, but it kind of worked. I stop focusing on MY need for approval and love and start trying to just give it instead.

Does any of this make sense? It all follows logically in my head.

1. Before, when I got lost in the spiral of self-loathing, I'd try to fix the things I hated about myself at the time. Superficial things like my looks and my manners.

2. The trouble isn't those things though. Much worse is the way that I am when I feel this way. I feel miserable, and I think miserable things. I think that's where the spiral comes from.

3. I'm not yet ready to address the source (desperate need for approval), but at least I can change my miserable thoughts, which is a long way from plan A, which was telling myself, "just be perfect, dumb bitch."

(This should really be in a personal journal and not online, but I just typed it all here, so... here it is.)