those weird feelings you can't put your finger on...

i have the weirdest feeling when i go to our creative group's atelier up on the top floor of our local library. something about being there just makes me feel prickly, negative and a little defensive. i think it's been going on for awhile, but i only just was able to put my finger on the feeling last evening. i don't know why, but knowing that is a step towards figuring that out. 

i can feel that i put up a wall around myself. and that the wall actually prevents me from being present and open. it's like it appears without my knowledge and i find myself behind it, feeling a bit negative and out of sorts. 

or maybe it's just that i'm sensitive to negative energy. and there's loads of negativity there. i'm not sure that i've always felt it. at the beginning of the pandemic, i spent a lot of time there, as the library has a good internet connection and ours at home was iffy at best. so i worked there many days during the time we had to work from home. maybe that's it. some kind of corona-induced anxiety kicks in when i'm there. but why would that make me defensive and negative? 

it's also the scene where someone questioned how i was raised because i had wanted to send flowers from our group to the funeral of our group's founder's father. the other members of the board were against that idea, by the way. i'm still wondering how on earth that makes me the one who is badly raised. but i live outside my own culture, so perhaps it's just one of those things that's impossible for me to understand. but perhaps i associate it with the place. 

but how do i shake it off? i can feel that it prevents me from enjoying getting together with women i genuinely like in a place that's made for creativity. do i need to burn some sage up there? exorcise the demons? how do i get rid of this feeling so that i can enjoy being there again and be present for the people who i like being with? 

i don't mean to imply that i don't take responsibility for this feeling in myself. i just don't know the source of it, nor how to get rid of it. 

it always comes back to you

i read a blog post late last night (after briefly falling asleep watching crossing lines on netflix, which my body/mind interpreted as a nap and then kept me up 'til 2 a.m. ... but i digress) that just really hit me the wrong way and frankly, rather royally pissed me off. i enjoy #stuckinplastic and i've even written a post or two for them on occasion. but this one really hit me wrong. it seemed so snobbish and arrogant. and frankly, people, you're taking pictures of toys, so how snotty can you be? get over yourself. this is supposed to be fun.

anyone sharing their life or their passion or their hobby online...whether via blogging or instagram or facebook or twitter or snapchat or whatever, has to be prepared for things to change. the communities change, the medium changes, those who are participating changes. you have to be doing these things for yourself, first and foremost and not for the sake of the likes or the audience or the reaction or the adoration or the discussion. it actually has to be about you. and i mean that in the best sense. that you do it for the love of it. for what it brings you personally. for where you feel it takes you. and not for anyone else. not for the comments. not for the likes. and for odin's sake, not because you want to be emulated (or not be emulated, as the case may be). do it for you. for your sanity. to find out what you think. to see where it takes you. and forget everyone else. this actually is the thing that's all about you. so enjoy it, will you? if it's not making you happy, stop doing it.

what i was trying to say as i unsuccessfully tried to say it a.k.a. thank you bill

following immediately on the heels of last evening's musings on owning my own copyright, a friend posted this article on facebook. and while i can swear like a sailor myself when it's warranted, it does feature rather excessive use of "fuck," and isn't for the faint of heart if you're not in the mood to read that word quite a few times. but the message is good - about learning when to give a fuck and about how very often we're not very good at recognizing those times and that we essentially give a fuck way too often. and it is also about how not giving a fuck is different than not caring. it could be quite freeing to give less fucks, frankly, but i suppose that once you reach a certain point in life, mortgage and obligations and even age intervene and we find ourselves having to give a fuck about things we would like not to.

things like ending a sentence with a preposition (or infinitive marker as the case may be). which i clearly do not give a fuck about (there's the preposition).

time passes. i stare at the screen....the words won't loosen, the floodgates won't open. not yet.

while i was sitting here, staring at the screen, trying to uncork the bottle of words that have accumulated inside of me over recent months, bill wrote this on my previous post...and he says it all more powerfully than i can right now, so i will share it with you here in case you didn't check the comments....

I’ve never believed our synapses fire with precision or orderliness …

We are both victims and perpetrators of our own chaos, our own timeline … and then we die.

You and me and most everyone we meet has agreed to behave as if not agreeing to behave within boundaries will produce the downfall of civilizations and a spate of crabgrass in everyone’s window boxes.

We accept norms of behavior, organization or minutia and future planning as if our lives depend upon the reality of hopes and dreams.

And yet … a few individuals ignore prescribed rituals and predetermined lives and they create … art and science, being, in my estimation, the two grandest of human endeavors.

But there’s a pratfall … a quicksand … a nemesis to individual creativeness… that despicable noun and/or adjective … the word is, of course, derivative.

To search within one’s psyche to fine the non-derivative and the unique is truly a life-long chase. A lucky few find it early in their life. Sadly, I suspect, there are far too many that discover their own uniqueness and creativity when their journey is ending.

That quest for non-derivative creativity is beguiling … it and love are the only two things I think and believe are important.

Sure, sure, it’s important to feed the dog, to vote, bathe regularly, to brush your teeth, to quest after knowledge, to search out the best and brightness and/or find kindred souls … nonetheless, all these secondary elements are but kindling and energy bars for the internal fires of creativity.

That’s it; we can do nothing else of importance.

and that, my friends, is what we should give a fuck about...

you own the copyright on your life

a scene much more serene than i feel on the inside

"you own the copyright on your life." what a powerful thought that is. i just read it here. i'm not familiar with ntozake shange otherwise, but that thought is precisely what i needed to hear. i think it resonates with me in the same way that elizabeth gilbert's "own your shit" did some time ago. it gives me a dose of courage that i've been lacking, making me think that all of the multitude of things i've been holding back from writing about should be allowed to come out, because i own them - they are me and my life and my story and even my copyright, with the emphasis on the latter syllable. but at the same time, i have to wonder how interesting they would be to anyone else. maybe it doesn't matter, i am, as always, blogging first and foremost for myself, to work out what i think and feel about things (it's cheaper than therapy after all). and with the state of blogs these days, perhaps it doesn't matter much what anyone else thinks as no one is reading anyway (i'm much less bitter about that than it may sound). but it is also daunting and it feels impossible to truly write something that encompasses all of the minutiae that make up the complexity of a life, even if i did attempt to write it all out.

i say this because i have, of late, fallen in love with norwegian writer karl ove knausgaard's writing and recently tried to read volume 1 of his six volume autobiographical novel-esque opus, my struggle. i say tried because i just couldn't finish it, despite really and truly loving his writing. it's a bit proustian in its level of detail and i never could finish proust either. but i just read a review of volume 4 in the new york review of books and i think i'll have to give that volume a whirl. he is fearless in his truth telling, and in his examination of the minutiae of life and when he began, he was nobody, so why shouldn't i be equally fearless?

there are many good reasons i've held back. no one wants to read a bunch of sad whining. i don't want to hang anyone out to dry (well maybe a little). i don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (and the fact is that sometimes the truth hurts). it might get in the way of whatever is next. writing it out will make it all that much more real. life is painful and hard at times and getting older is no fun, but who wants to hear that? and who wants to admit it? this all makes it sound like something much bigger than the regular disappointments and sorrows that life throws our way and it's not that. but sometimes when those small sorrows and disappointments accumulate, it can seem like too much. and so i've put off and put off writing about them. and i suppose that's why i don't feel particularly light-hearted and funny in this space anymore.

i think it's time to start owning the copyright on my life. i recently saw a quote on pinterest that went something like, "you own everything that happened to you. tell your stories. if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better."

if no one is listening...

there's so much to say...and it's strangely quiet in the interwebs today, and i have to admit i find the notion that no one is listening or reading quite delicious and very freeing. the notion of an audience is a both a wonderful thing and a bit of a ball and chain. you can't help but censor yourself at times.

but what would you write about if no one was reading?

how you wish those people you grew up with would stop trying to connect with you on facebook? there's a reason you moved away.

or would you write about your ex- and why you wanted out?

or would you express your innermost fears?

would you expose your insecurities?

or would you brag?

or would you expose with a link those saccharine sweet fakers that you can't stand?

would you say that those pictures aren't in focus.

and those haikus are crap.

and that that poetry is 8th grade level at best?

would you say that you refuse to buy isreali products until they're nice to the palestianians?

would you say you think that if ships really don't want to be captured by pirates, they should stay out of the gulf of aden?

would you expose your worries about the polar ice caps melting?

or the next US presidential election?

what would you write if no one was listening. if only just to get it out of your system?