Digging to find the brown gopher of gratitude

I read today that writing gratitude lists sometimes can make us feel worse rather than better. I find that news a great relief. Now I don't have to feel guilty about (a) not writing a list and (b) not feeling grateful. 

Gratitude means judging. We need to figure out what's worth being grateful about before we can decide to feel gratitude, am I right? Maybe you have a clear sense of good and bad, but the older I get, the more I fail to grasp the eithor/or-ness of the whole idea. I get stuck on the judgy part, trying to parse good from bad, and getting lost in the space between. My Jungian friend would call that the liminal space. I call it a mild form of hell. Life would be so much easier if I could clearly differentiate good from bad. 

It's a continuum, bla bla bla. I'm not going to debate whether it is bad to commit murder, for example, or steal a lint roller from Walmart. Those cases are not under consideration when I might be contemplating being grateful for something. I'm grateful I haven't committed murder, is that a thing to put on the list? I'm grateful I don't care if my clothes have lint on them, so a lint roller holds no appeal. 

I've maundered far and wide in this blog on the topics of creativity, success, and bad decisions, so I won't bore you with all that again. I can't remember what I've written before, but I know a few of you actually have functional memories, and I don't want to annoy. Ha. As if it were possible. But I can seek to minimize the annoyance. You are welcome.

I'm reporting today that it is possible I've made a bad decision. Oh, I've made a lot of bad decisions, and I've told you all about them, but this one might be right up there near the top of stupid things I've decided to do, worse maybe than the decision to move to Tucson. 

I decided to see if I could write a story a day. For a year. 

Not only that, I decided to publish daily on my personal website. For a year. 

I must be nuts. After eleven posts, I'm beginning to realize I might have bitten off something that is going to break all my teeth and choke me on my own spit. Not that it isn't fun writing, but writing for an audience as if no one is reading? That gets the heart rate going. Lucky for me, my heart can take it. My stomach is in knots, though. 

I think my ego is getting in the way. I just realized posting as if no one is reading isn't all that much of a challenge when no one is actually reading. 

Oh, poor me. I'm adopting a woe-is-me posture, claiming the pressure of writing and posting daily is so intense, I can hardly stand it. Truth, I don't have a subscribe option on my website. Nobody can sign up to get notified of my daily contribution to the infinite pile of stupid, poorly written stories. Whew, that's a relief. And with my mom now dead, there goes one-fifth of my readership, which was spotty even on a good day, a good day being when she could remember how to turn on her computer. What's more, my one timid foray posting on social media was like a grain of sand dropped into the Grand Canyon. My vague post was more of a practice run, really, just in case someday in the far future, when I feel like I might want to pop my head out of my isolation hole and sniff the air. 

You might ask, why put yourself out there like that, Carol? Aren't you afraid of what people will think? Friends (if that is what you are), I am not longer a perfectionist, as you will surely see if you are one of the lucky half-dozen who know who I am and can find my website. Typos, repetitive dialog, missing punctuation . . .  it's all there, like cakes that failed to rise in the Betty Crocker test kitchen, except these cakes, I mean, stories, are on full display. 

I am not a quitter. I signed myself up for the long haul. Only I will know if I failed to meet my goal. We'll see, I guess. I will try to keep you posted. 

All I can hope for is that the internet goes out. 

The path is less-traveled for a good reason

 

I'm blogging tonight because it is a task on my calendar. That is the only reason. My brain is a stinky pile of pudding. I've spent the past few hours formatting a dissertation that refuses to conform. 

It happens. Not all Word documents are built to my liking. No use complaining. It's far too late to do anything about it. The dissertation is done. The dissertator is defending in a few weeks. 

I can imagine the desperation she felt when her reviewers said, clean this thing up or you don't graduate!

Word is not a user-friendly program. I know it pretty well, but sometimes it is hard to figure out the quirks of a new template. There are a hundred styles in this thing. I picture bored academics sitting in offices drinking beer and gloating over their next creative ploy to make dissertators insane. And editors. Although I doubt if they are thinking of us. Me. No, they don't care.

They probably think they are making the formatting task easier for their dissertators. And if they knew what they were doing, I would say, right on. But it's just stupid to set a style to all caps and then assume the dissertator will figure out what to do when their page numbers suddenly appear in the Table of Contents in uppercase Roman numerals. I mean, I ask you. It's a travesty.

My brain is mush. I think there was some big game today? Did your team win? I hope you are fully recovered from whatever happened. I'd rather stay immersed in my resentment against Microsoft Word. It's easier to gripe than to see the news and be reminded that so many people around the world are suffering. 

Today as I walked along the bike path, enjoying the sun as I dodged the bikers, I thought about a crossroads moment in my young adult life. It was more than a moment, I guess. Maybe you could classify it as a three-year-long crossroads moment. I was in college (the first time around). It was around 1975 when my life forked into two distinct paths. One path headed toward the practical world of business, probably accounting (can you imagine?). The other path headed toward the mystical realm of art and creativity. It was never a real choice to me, but looking back, I wish someone had pointed out to me that I did have a choice. I didn't see it. I only saw one path, and so I took that path. 

It would not have taken a crystal ball to show me the possible outcomes of the two paths. One path would likely have led to a decent income, probably a house, a nice car, a growing bank account, and a retirement fund. In other words, wealth. The other path, the one I chose, has given me an interesting life of creativity, magical thinking, and constant struggle. 

Other crossroads presented themselves over the years. I took a few of them, in my quest to be a normal person. I went to school multiple times to reinvent myself. The editing skills I have now are a direct result of one of those detours. My detours have led me in some pointless directions, mostly because I let others persuade me it was the right choice. I wonder what sort of life I would have had if I'd ignored them, settled on one art form, and stuck to it. Painting, maybe. Or writing. I might have actually had a career. On the other hand, I wonder what my life would look like now had I chose to become an accountant. I can guess. Safe. Secure. Predictable. Now that I'm old and tired, it doesn't sound too bad.

I suppose it's not too late to look for another crossroad. As long as my brain still works, I'm probably employable somewhere. However, my best years, physically and mentally, are behind me. Barring a miracle, I fear my best earning time has come and gone. I should be living on my wealth now, and instead, I am still chasing the dream. Or it is still chasing me. 

Fight for your right to be stupid

Actually, we don’t have to fight hard to be stupid. Everyone is doing it, in some shape or form. If you don’t mind a little weak-willed nattering from a few bleeding hearts, you can pretty much do and say whatever you want. Hardly anyone will push back on even the most egregious act of stupidity, the most ridiculous assertion, especially if it happens to align with their worldview. It’s sad that women may give up their bodily autonomy, and it’s tragic that our school kids buy our freedom to be stupid with their lives, but that is how it goes in the wealthiest country on earth. I’ve said it before and recent events seem to support me, humans are too stupid to live. The demise of the human species can’t come too soon. The planet will be much better off without us.

Meanwhile, my heart keeps beating, sometimes hiccupping, sometimes swooping, the ticker takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It’s working harder than it should, though, which has precipitated a condition with an interesting name: a predominantly opening snap. My primary care provider offered me a choice: (a) get on medication or (b) have a heart attack or stroke. Nice of her to offer me a choice.

I made my choice. Despite the terror and sorrow of living, I still want to live. I want to see how things turn out, until it’s curtains for me. Therefore, in a brazen bid for survival, I’m getting medication to lower my blood pressure.

That brings my total medication list up to three prescription meds. It feels a like a moral failing. I think I should be able to just tough my way through it. And I could try, it’s my right and privilege to be stupid, remember. Curtains might come sooner than statistically expected, but nobody lives forever. Then I think of my departed maternal parental unit, who was taking a dozen meds and didn’t think anything of it. Maybe it was the dementia, but she seemed really at peace with the reality of her failing health. She bemoaned aging, saying things like getting old is not for wimps, but she always took her meds. The only time she really got pissed off was when we took away her car keys.

I wonder who will be brave enough to take away my car keys?

In other news, I’m feeling a bit lonely these days. I haven’t seen a little dude for almost a week. Maybe they’ve all gone north for the summer. Maybe spraying poison weekly convinced them this is not a good hotel and they’ve packed the aunties and kids into the minivan and headed up Mt Lemmon. Nice to imagine. I hope the reason I’m not seeing many little dudes, alive or dead, is that I’ve killed them, but pride and hubris go before an invasion. They could be watching from the baseboards and cupboards, waiting to strike. They could be planning World War III, Bat Cave edition.

I am starting to get organized for my move back to the Trailer. Notice, it’s the Trailer now. I’m giving it the proper-noun status it deserves. It’s not really a trailer, it’s a mobile home (also known as a manufactured home, depending on when it was built). It’s a single-wide thing, long and narrow, made of fake wood paneling, Fiberglas, and plastic, and wide metal awnings on both sides to ward off the blazing sun. It’s utilitarian, clean, and safe, and it will be a good place to hunker down and figure out what comes next.