January 2008 Archives

01-31-08

Where has the time gone? Not that I am complaining about winter flying by, believe me... tomorrow is February 1st, Lesley's baby is almost six months old, and in three weeks my mom will have been gone for a year. I had crazy dreams about her last night, funny when I remember them and see them in my head, the minute I try to attach words to the scenes they just dissipate immediately. Leaning off the top of the Space Needle (and freaking out from the fear of it, but winding up not having to), climbing up to a house or something, animals that should have been scary that didn't bother us, a house that should have been empty but had someone there, old cameras, he was a photographer right before I woke up - but before that people taking pictures of this huge old insides of a worn out mansion-y kind of big place, and the man who kept coming to do his office work spread out (physically, not like, papers) on the top of a table... he wouldn't leave, Donna with bags of cash, all these snapshots -

The sun is up a little higher across the street and I'm sitting facing it, and it's not all irritating, it's making me feel like morning and light and daybreak and beginnings.

I need a dream dictionary.

Faraway Friend is still the same, Close On The Highway Friend is sad about miscommunications and wants to have lunch. I've got to send an email back to the first one, so I think I'm going to go get that off my plate because it's rattling around in my head and needs to be out.

vvb

seriously. free internet, gushy awesome bread, a fireplace, and - get this - a double espresso with meticulous crema.

who knew?

it's getting a little bonkers in here what with lunchtime at all, but I didn't write this morning and I feel like I did something wrong. I did go to the gym like, four days in a row though. I'm in-between appointments and have to get cracking in about fifteen minutes.

I just sent out two emails to clear some space in my head, so technically I did do some writing today. one was to a friend that moved away physically, and things kind of got lost in translation about six months ago, and it's been strained-slash-nonexistent ever since. the other was to a friend who is here, but not near in the emotional sense, I suppose friend #1 falls into that category too - but she's both kinds of far away. friend #2 is at arm's reach, maybe fifteen exits on I-95, but it might as well be mexico.

I've always been one, since the last few years at least - okay, for the last few years I have turned into a person who (that's better) feels like saying the quiet part out loud can, at times, be the right choice - I used to think that it was the case all the time, and in sobriety I have gained some semblance of grace and tact... these days it's relegated to big stuff, a close friend pulling away from meetings, that kind of thing. not every little moment of minutia (sp?) that I don't agree with or understand. friend #1 got to a place where she wasn't sure of her alcoholism anymore, and I said it out loud, and it caused a rift. friend #2 got to a very sure place of anger and blame, and I tried to say it out loud, and got rapid machine-gun fire in return. so neither of those worked out nicely, but like I started with, I would rather say the quiet part out loud than be fake and make nice noises in conversation (oh? mmm-hmm. that's great! really?) and talk about the weather... apparently once I'm sober for a long time I will see the spiritual fitness in saying nothing, but for now, it's almost - it is - how I keep my side of the street clean. if something is going down in flames, I'd rather throw some water on it than ignore the charred canyon in the earth as a result, you know?

even if you don't know, that's fine. it makes sense to me. it gives me a pretty short list of people to talk to when I'm out of my mind, because I become convinced that almost everyone is full of crap, but whatever. a shorter list means less stupid time, less ridiculous phone calls I don't want to participate in anyways, and more meaningful relationships with those shorter-list people anyway, which is what I want. when I got sober, I always talked about how it felt like having a soccer team, a handful of important women in my life - now, there's tryouts to make the team, and it takes work to stay. on my team, and on the teams I'm on.

so, maybe they quit my team, or I quit theirs - either way, they are both important enough for me to do a few replays, painful as they may be - to see if any of us made any mistakes along the way. we'll see what happens - I should have some results shortly, because they (like me) can't resist confrontation, especially when they're (I'm) right.

kiss kiss,

vvb

I think I've found the solution to my tortured mind:

Guitar Hero.

Seriously - have you seen this thing? I've seen commercials, and heard the fuss about it, and have even seen people playing it - but last night, for the first time, I played it. And I didn't want to stop.

It's like playing, only not. It's the fun and wank-ness of guitar, with no skill required outside of hand-eye. But what I realized on the way home, shocking as it were, was one important thing - it reigned supreme over all else, over the echoes of "Sunshine of Your Love", over the maddening dirt-rock band lead singer guy and Japanimation girl alongside him...

I had fun.

A lot of fun.

And I saw in a snapshot how freaking stiff I am, how jammed up I am, how I forget to have fun and how everything is so freaking serious all the time. I was laughing my ass off and I was good at it and Frank (Kristen's husband) was cheering me on and... I forgot. About everything. I forgot to worry, to be anxious, to wonder what was happening with my life... I forgot about everything I wasn't and everything I thought I needed. All that mattered was making it through the song without being kicked off stage.

You (imaginary you I am prone to address whilst blogging) may think I'm actually more crazy than I've been in prior entries, or that in my bliss that I am taking the effects of this game too seriously, thereby creating an entire other batch of issues in and of itself - but I swear, I'm not. When I was going to tons of shows and constantly taking pictures and stuff, the band part wasn't my doing, but I wasn't glomming on to someone else's glory - I did my own thing. I captured moments, microphone stands in the stagelight glow, faraway stares and necks of guitars. And I was (still am) good at it. And I was immersed in everything, and I loved talking about current favorite sounds with strangers in the audience, and I knew things, and I was good at it.

Somewhere along the line, there was a fadeout. I couldn't listen to KEXP all day, and I ran out of money to be jaunting to New York twice a week. But the fire didn't go out... All of my mental energy turned to my Mom, and to taking care of myself, and I thought the fire went out, but it just (literally) got turned down and put on the back burner. Now, there are moments of awareness of the adjustment, fleeting glimpses of acceptance, and singular seconds of having that quiet mind back that hand come so far. Jim C. always says, "I have a quiet mind, and I'm comfortable in my own skin." And I started to get there, and then there was a ripping away of sorts, and now, all the chaos ceases to work, and fighting with Raf doesn't work, and hating people doesn't work, and defiance doesn't work, and crawling under the bed doesn't work, and slowly - slowly - I settle back into my skin.

I suppose that means there's a fade-in taking / about to take place, seeing as there was a fadeout before.

Donna spoke on Friday, and really set a lot of things straight in my mind, without even intending to - she talked about how she was always reacting and how she couldn't even cook dinner without fighting and how she just had to work and go to meetings and be immersed in doing that - sober. With a couple of years sober. And I was just amazed, because part of me, even knowing I have a lot of growing left in front of me to do - was like, I understand elements of this, and sometimes I am okay. And it's not that that's not true, I mean, it's not that I'm not okay anymore, but I was just struck, like, I do that. I am that way. That happens to me. We can't get through a Saturday without some kind of trivial insanity, and I react - inside and outside of my relationship with Raf - to everything. I'm all thin skinned and analytical all the time. Everyone with five seconds sober talks about how good they are doing, and everyone with tons of time talks about how it takes a long, long time to begin to get well. As I stay sober, and realize how sick I still am (which is progress from completely insane), this gives me great amounts of comfort.

I had The Most Insane Dreams Ever last night. A cartoony coy fish following me around, because all of its water had evaporated out of the tank where it lived, and I had forgotten, and as I remembered it got all excited and fluttered everywhere, all pretty and fluttering everywhere, and I couldn't find the water drops that you put in the tap water to make it okay for the fish to be in - that one was at the end, before I woke up. Before that I was talking to Abbey, in front of what looked like my aunt's house, talking about vocal cords and some kind of strings, piano strings or violin strings or something, some kind of instrument - harp - whatever - and talking about how when you have dreams about stuff like that, vocal cords turned into something you can understand, or teeth falling out of your mouth, that it has to do with watching what you say, talking about how it related to my aunt, and realizing this morning when I woke up that it was about me. And the first part, before that and the fish, that I can't even repeat, something about gay men and all kinds of chaotic vivid imagery. It's a little embarrassing, so I won't go into detail, but it was weird. I usually don't have any kind of sexual dreams, once or twice a year maybe, but when I do, they are so freaking vivid. I'm kind of uncomfortable just even thinking about writing about it.

I can't get online, and I don't know if I'm going to be working today. It's Denise's birthday, and I didn't see any new orders yet - it's a struggle, trying to ride this out, but I've made the commitment to it and I'm going to see it out. Another day, another pair of jeans to try on, right? Right. I brought my gym bag though, surprisingly enough, so if there's not anything to do, I can work out, shower, and see if I'm going to have to pick up a part-time job.

I got an email from my brother-in-law yesterday. He said that my aunt had "declined to do my mother's taxes", whatever the fuck that means. She is such a fucking asshole. If she wasn't living in my grandmother's old house, I would have figured out how to burn her fucking house down by now.

I don't have a book, and I'm nearing the end of my journalistic span this morning... I'll give it to 8:30 and call about work today. Wish me luck.

vvb

Morning time, coffeeshop time, purging and cleaning and untangling the knots. I don’t know how I ever lived without this, the writing, the quiet self-time… I feel like, even thought I just wrote to the contrary, that my life is boring, and this starts happening because I compare how I think to how everyone else’s life looks and I get all jammed up. I’ve got a simple life. I guess I’m just not functioning at such a crazy pace, all shows all the time and out all the time and everything – I feel like I’m hibernating.

I’m all slapped together with bubble gum and promises today, I hardly slept – Buddy is really getting out of control and all of the cat stuff I’m reading is saying that we have to re-separate and re-acclimate him and ChaCha, so this weekend we are getting some shelves and setting up the back as his official room once again. Also, apparently some cats won’t pee and crap in the same litterbox, so we are getting a second one. And some enzyme cleaner, because he keeps pooping in the exact same place on the floor, and also some heavy bowls in a holder so he can’t throw his dishes around. Yesterday he got into the trash, he’s broken a few of my favorite things, and we are getting to the end of our respective ropes. Apparently he is redirecting some type of primal fear in our household – so Buddy, like the rest of us, is jammed up and acting out. And I am willing to go to any lengths to provide him with a loving and stable home, poop and flipped kibble dishes and everything. Even flipped water dishes. I know he can change, he wasn’t like this when he moved in, so that probably means in our lack of cat-knowledge that we have inadvertently caused some kind of response in him. He’s like a little kid that got caught in the system, and everyone has yelled at him his whole life, and now he’s the troublemaking scrapper that nobody wants. But I do, we do. He’s a good boy under all that, he’s just had a rough life.

Do I have a charity-case magnet adhered to my forehead? Sometimes I wonder. I must be projecting all maternal nurturing time vibes out into the stratosphere… I really think he wound up with us because no one else would be willing to participate in this level of love and tolerance with him… I think I got into this already…

Here I am all talking about my cat. WTF. This is why I think I’m lame.

I’ve got a bid out for a wedding that I’m waiting to hear back on, I’m purging my whole house, and being home-based to do some restructuring does not mean that I’m boring or lame. I read Kristin’s site and I’m all, I have no weather angst, I play it too safe, maybe I should move, I don’t have anything exciting like a scooter and ensuing scooter drama – it sounds silly, but that’s what happens in my head. I compare, instantly. Which means I’m judging, myself, everyone around me, all the time. I don’t quite know what to do with that. And I keep forgetting that trying to make myself think differently isn’t what’s going to make me think differently, because I only know what I know. So that leaves me with taking a different action and knowing that my thoughts will catch up eventually.

I am okay. I am good enough. I am responsible. I am wearing the pants I wore yesterday (but not the ones from the first three days of this week) and my shoes don’t match anything and I put on a sparkly necklace and pinned up my bangs and didn’t shower. I feel all scrappy hippie playing dress-up.

Respect your hormones.

I want to go back to school in the fall. We’ve decided we can probably get me out of debt by the end of summer, so that would leave a few bucks for school, even just one class at a time like I did last time. And – gasp – we’ve got to start looking at wedding plans, if were shooting for the end of next summer, that’s a little less than two years away. I want to be on the beach, but there’s this place I saw online up in the woods, some girl’s school, that looks lovely and awesome but it might be all country-time. Ducks and carved wood and stuff. Blech. And somewhere in there we have plans for a condo downtown, or in Branford, so there’s all these adult plans in the works. Who knows what will actually happen, but I feel better having a set of goals. Goals make me feel like I’m working toward something… duh. School makes me feel like my existence is being validated.

Maybe I need a bigger plan. Sometimes I’m depressed, and other times I’m just lazy, and any time I talk about this stuff with anyone they tell me I’m being too hard on myself. But when I don’t make things happen, I wind up just writing about the same stuff over and over – I feel like I’m repeating my entries and just wasting away.

So what’s the solution?

-goals list, for like, life, not for the new crap I want for the bathroom
-destination goals list
-school goals list
-savings plan
-national novella writing month… a ha…

There’s something that should stir the pot up. I figured February is just the end of it, just shit cold fucker crappy freezing lame inside time stretching on and on without an end – so why not change it up a little bit? Then I can write about writing. I don’t have the stuff from the last time I did the real NaNoWriMo, I had done a cut-and-paste into an email so that I could save it, and didn’t realize it had cut it in half (message truncated or something) and I had deleted my copy of it from my work computer (where I spent most of the time writing it). It was great, I wrote about a girl who was writing a book, and touring with Tom Brosseau, and wound up bumping into other bands in these imaginary cities (well, real cities that I’d never been to so I made up what they felt like) and it just went on and on in the greatest way. I don’t quite know where my main character was going to wind up, but I would go back and read it and it really was a piece of great writing – or there were pieces of great writing in there – and it’s gone.

The crazy part is, it started to happen. Tom Brosseau asked me to come on tour with him for a stretch of shows, to shoot, and I froze. Like my head got all paralyzed, and I told him I couldn’t get the time off from work… I think I was just scared. And on top of that, I didn’t really think it was an appropriate thing for someone in a relationship to do – and I simultaneously thought that I should be able to do whatever the hell I wanted, whatever the Universe put in my path – so there I was, in a perfectly secure relationship, telling Tom I couldn’t go, and knowing that it just wouldn’t sit right with me and Raf.

Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing, because I started to pull away from all of that then, and one side of me is like, you made all these contacts and did all this work and built up so much, and then you pushed it aside. And the rest of me is like, it just didn’t seem appropriate – hey, I’m going to go live in hotel rooms for two weeks with a guy you don’t know… it’s like I built up this single-girl life and then it collided with my girlfriend-boyfriend life… see, then, if I really get dirty and talk about it – I was still in the place where I was getting a lot of validation from boys in bands, and that’s just not what you do when you’re seriously dating someone. Fuck, I was supposed to go do two days of shows with the Wrens and like, stay with them. At their house and stuff. And when I was going to do KEXP time that first year I was with Raf, I had a conversation with him about how I’d stay with Michael and who he was and how I knew him… and as I heard myself telling him my plans, it just felt awkward. Split right down the middle with independent girl doing what she wants and maybe if you don’t like it then you’re not the right guy… so Raf said, look – if I had an opportunity to go coach for a softball tournament in like, Philadelphia, and it was an all-girls twenty-something team, and I was the only guy, and I had to go share a hotel with a bunch of them for a few days – how would that make you feel? And it made me feel awkward. Jealous. Uncomfortable. Split right down the middle with feeling like he should do whatever he wanted to make himself happy. And he was all, see how it feels on the other side? And then I decided that creating all that angst just wasn’t worth it – let me annihilate our relationship so that I can be in a van with Kevin Whelan or alone for a week with Tom Brosseau, all in the name of art – it just didn’t add up.

I talked about all this with my therapist and she told me I had to get over it, and that there was no reason I couldn’t be with Raf and pursue my art career and that some of that stuff felt like inappropriate behavior because it was… I’m just tying the whole experience to the wrong strings in my head. So when we fight, or things don’t work out very well, sometimes I’ll go, shit, did I do the right thing? And then every disagreement affects the entire scope of our relationship (in my head at least) and I don’t know how to make it stop.

I’ve had to do a lot of growing up in this relationship. I’ve had to learn how to work, and sacrifice, and not give up, and change, and allow room for change, and to tolerate… I had to choose between being in love and riding around in vans with boys in bands. And as alluring as the band life is, we’ve all got to grow up sometimes. Maybe I’m identifying the whole thing with a period of change and shifting of my place in the world and… part of me still wonders what would have happened if I went with Tom, or with the Wrens, or to stay in the city that week for KEXP.

You know what? I would have taken some great pictures, and I probably would have made out with someone eventually (not with Raf, not cheating, but Raf notwithstanding) and I’ve got it all disguised as whether or not I’m sacrificing being true to my art. It’s so hard for me to clear it out, but maybe it’s just that I’m afraid to look at the fact that that was going to be in the very near future in a few different situations. And then what – I’m continuing the manifestations of my youth, being the girl on the side and not the girlfriend and wondering why, and wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t pushed Raf away, and I’d be sitting here with a wall of photos and a bunch of notches in my belt, well on my way to becoming a late thirty-something year old tragic band whore that lived in the body of a photographer.

Holy shit.

And I think I knew that then, on some level – I was there for the music and all the goodness and the magic – but I hadn’t separated it from enamored with boy in the band time. So, that string of decisions, all that angst, has actually saved my career, because I kept my pants on past the time where I could figured out what was going on. I always say that – when it’s all tragic decision making time, you’d better make sure you’re not doing something you can’t take back if you change your mind.

I never thought about that – if I go with having taken the other route, it would have been a freaking mess. It’s like I romanticized it this whole time, like drinking or something.

No, just like drinking.

I feel like I’m getting to the “Part Two” of my life, like the character is waking up to all these things and not only does the chapter end, but another section of the book starts and suddenly, everything has changed.

I literally feel like I’m going to throw up.

vvb

New England… Connecticut, specifically. New England to me is snowy Vermont, rocky beaches, Rhode Island sunrises, and lighthouses and stuff. Like a picture-perfect postcard, houses on the beach, oceans crashing… mixed with a little bit of Fairfield and trips to the city. Of course, there’s a few ghettos here and there, but not in the postcard I’m looking at in my head today.

As I drive around the greater New Haven area taking pictures of houses, I’m learning that our great nutmeg state is a lot of farms. Once you get north of the shoreline or too far away from any of the main highways, it’s rural. Like, really rural. Like, new construction going up on a road that’s gravel and dirt with turn-offs to mini dead-ends in the woods with signs that say KEEP OUT and PRIVATE ROAD, all written with a paintbrush on a scrap of wood. Seriously. I had no idea, just like I didn’t know how bad the ghettos got, I didn’t know how backwoods everything else got. There’s a few fancy towns here and there for good measure, but it’s a lot more farm than beachfront.

I’ve never wanted a land-locked life. Even in New Haven, shitty as it may be with all the industrialization, there’s water. There’s Long Wharf and Long Island Sound and you’ve never got to go far to get to a beachy retreat – you might not always want to swim in it, but the ocean’s there for the taking – to wash all the corners of your head out and to just kind of let you get lost (in a good way, I mean). It’s even better out in Rhode Island, where there’s no Sound and no oil tankers and really just ocean as far as your head can even comprehend. Now there’s all kinds of crackhouses and farmers, and it’s kind of shattering my illusion of having lived here my whole life, the pictures my mind paints… there’s this reality now that’s just dirty and grey and leafless trees. When you look at Google Maps, the photo kind, it just gets progressively more dirt colored as you get to the east coast, at least around New England. California’s all lush and green and crazy blue ocean and over here it’s a lot of… well, dirt. Dirt and buildings.

Now I’m longing for fireplaces with hearths and mugs of cocoa in the winter nighttime, all pulling back like a movie shot from a house near the beach, snow on the rocks, and a lighthouse for good measure.

It’s kind of like I just found out there’s no Santa Claus.

When we went cross-country, everyone thought we were little rich girls running away from easy lives, and we didn’t understand. Does the rest of the country just see us as a retreat for those billion-dollar bonus-having Goldman Sachs hedge fund people? Have they ever heard of Woodbury? Or Plantsville? Everything in the freaking valley, even, it’s either white trash mobile home on the main road time or white trash in the woods with my shotgun time.

I think I want to move.

On a completely different note, I was scanning the poor excuses for radio stations on aforementioned drives yesterday, and I hit the cd button inadvertently. Turns out I still had my Mighty Purple Barn cd in there, a cd that I was quite ecstatic about acquiring quite a while ago, a cd that most of us never thought would come to fruition. It would come up in conversation now and then, and there was all this political pseudo-label mumbo jumbo that was given as reasoning for it not to exist. So when they just whipped it out one night, one of the four nights over the course of a year that I actually went to the Space, I lost it. And I flew out to my car and listened to it for days and remembered sitting in the audience and how the floor looked and the dirt and earth out back where we smoked bowls in hippie skirts and nothing else mattered… Things have changed in so many ways since, that cd really is a snapshot of a piece of my life – it was an era, almost – and I don’t think about how any of the relationships were screwed up or how Will almost didn’t show or any of that – it was just about that thing that got created when the band started to play. I left it on yesterday, and as I drove down the highway there were these moments of really just remembering everything, like a movie I was in playing back in front of me, like a memory that never faded.

There was a patch of time there that really moved the very earth on which I stood. You can hear it on the cd, I can at least – it’s a tangible… thing. Like we could walk around the room when it was happening and reach out and take handfuls of it out of the air and just hand it to each other, piles of flowers and stars, handfuls of heartache – like all of our dials tuned into the same thing and we all just knew. It outweighed all the times we were sad, the angry girlfriends, the broken promises, getting left behind in the wake of bigger things – it made us stay beyond what we would tolerate anywhere else. It was some insane form of unconditional love, where we turned a blind eye to the mayhem, maybe because we didn’t want to see it, or at least I didn’t want to, I just wanted to stay in the magical parts. I guess that’s not love, but still, I’m not quite sure what other words to use…

And it all came crashing to the ground like a piano falling from a city apartment window, only there was no beauty or amazement when you slowed down the tape to watch it over again. The part that didn’t work started to outweigh the part that did, and that beautiful junk we all knew so well got buried in a pile of bullshit. Bullshit that couldn’t get cleaned off without stains, bullshit that left an undeniable smell behind – I always call it the little spot on your favorite shirt, the shirt that fits you so well, with a perfect color, that goes with everything… and there’s this little spot. Technically it’s still the same shirt, but all you can see now when you put it on is the spot, and you could still wear it and maybe nobody else would even notice, but you know – and it ruins it for you.

That’s where all of that wound up.

I don’t think I would change a second of it. Especially the part where I woke up, literally almost, in the middle of a show that Steve and Jon were playing – and I stood up and walked out. Not to be an ass, I didn’t make a scene or anything, but it finally struck me that I didn’t have to keep torturing myself. That was like jumping out of a plane, all foreign and scary and perfect all at once. And then the part where I really spoke my mind to Steve about six months ago – maybe I could have said things a little bit better, but I was honest about all the stains and all the bullshit for the first time, ever – I wouldn’t take that back either.

It’s time for another thing, the next thing, the next part. I think I’m ready.

Mercury went into retrograde, Tuesday I think, and here I sit with an accidental bump into the past by way of a cd I forgot about, and an email from Kristy in my inbox asking if we could have coffee because she’s in New Haven for the next day or two. When we get to look back, maybe to heal or sometimes just to uncover things, that’s the good part about Mercury retrograde that I like. The rest is all frozen computers and bounced checks, and before I change my tune, I’ve got to go save this and get off to work already – it’s almost nine.

(Cue the perfect nineties movie soundtrack, and fade to black.)

vvb

It’s a little extra quiet this morning, only two other people in here and they forgot to put the music on (even though I asked, it has been steadily busy though).

It’s a little extra quiet in my head today too. Not extra, just more than yesterday… like someone turned the radio down or something. The minute I start to participate in being better / healthier / etc., it’s like the Universe kicks all this energy back at me and stuff shifts right away. Just a little, but enough to prove to me that I’m not just making this all up.

I hate it when people wear their sunglasses inside when it’s not even at all remotely necessary.

So all I did was get honest, and ask for help, and take a step back from throwing people under the bus (because I think that will make me feel better) and that’s really it. Oh, and I went to the gym. And I ate good food the last few days. I am being a bad cat mom though, I keep running out of wet food and the little babes are standing in the kitchen yowling at me and I put kibble and promises down on their placemat and they look at me like I’m insane. I can’t keep buying all this crazy gourmet stuff for them, and it’s only at a few specialty stores, so I switched them back to Natural Balance which is always on the list of top 5 foods and one of the few things they will consistently eat every single flavor of without hesitating. You’d think Buddy wouldn’t have such a discerning palate, what with living outside and all, but no. He will knock his plate right over, and then proceed to go after ChaCha with everything he’s got. Like guys, when they get hungry and they get all bonkers – it’s like I need to feed him 3 or 4 times a day or something.

Blink. Blink. Blink. A penny for your thoughts…

There was a girl at the meeting last night who, while crazy and overtanned and high more than she is not, came in and sat down halfway through, and when they asked for any burning desires she said she had just found out her mom had cancer. And she cried, and she talked about how it’s hard to even just say anything or ask her for anything because she feels so horrible about it, like how do you yell at your mom over cleaning your room (she’s nineteen) when she might be dying, you know? And my heart just went out to her, and then I was like, shit – do I go talk to her? Hand her my number, pat her on the back and go, well, my mom didn’t make it, but I sure do have a lot of experience with that, so call me if you want – and I said I didn’t know what to do and Abbey was immediately like, I’ll go with you – just like that. Poof. She’s really starting to get it beyond the first part of getting it. So we go up to her, and I’m all, I wanted to make sure you had our numbers, and I said, I know how hard it is, it’s like you can’t even ask for your favorite dinner because you feel like you can’t ask anything, and her tears just all spilled over and I just wanted to cry with her – and what came out of my mouth was something like, look – you’re going to get a lot of advice, but the most important thing for you to do is to take care of yourself so that you can be there for her, whether it winds up being big stuff or little stuff. And that face, all screwed up with the pain of fresh tears, just broke my heart. But it’s like something else took over for that ninety seconds, and just let me help her. I walked away with Abbey and let out a big sigh that I didn’t even know was in me, like letting go of a balloon, and I walked out to my car in the cold.

They just got the music working at Starbucks and it came blaring out and just assaulted everybody, when they turn it on in the back they can’t hear it… it happens almost every time. It’s funny.

I’ve been wearing the same jeans for three days, and there’s a whole pile of clean stuff sitting on drying racks at the end of my bed.

It’s just so nice to do this every morning, to take the time to get in touch – it’s been about a week now I think, and it’s definitely shifting on that level as much as everything else.

I finally found a happy medium with my nails, fake ones looked so gross and then I felt like they didn’t fit all the time with how I felt and who I was right then, and not having them made me bummed sometimes because when they did fit how I felt, they looked so pretty. So I treated myself to a pedicure for the first time since summer, or maybe the second, and I found out about silk wraps – so it’s just a layer of literal silk over your nails that they put this adherent stuff under and over, and it’s like my nails, only stronger, and I leave them a nice light color, and they’re so good you could leave the polish off if you want, and it costs the same as shitty acrylics. And I can be wearing whatever I want and they always match how I feel, because they are just all my nails almost, and I don’t feel awkward.

I miss smoking sometimes.

I’m feeling a whole lot less pain today than I have for the last two weeks… it’s just all about participation, doing the work – I can’t just sit around and wait to get struck healthy.

I’m feeling like I’m running out of things to say. My mind retains the funniest moments, not ha-ha funny but the little movies that play are of the oddest, most inconsequential things sometimes – of course now I can’t think of one of them. All these little crazy snapshots. Pictures of the house I grew up in, but of nothing in particular.

Now there’s all this commotion, there’s eight people all around where I am all of a sudden. Maybe I’m out of words. I should go.

vvb

I’m in one of those places where I want to pull my sleeves over my hands and cry… like, all the time. I want to put my hood up and shut the world out and walk forever in circles downtown.

(It’s hard to be all serious and depressed – or, to connect with being all serious and depressed and write about it to try to sort some stuff out – with Boy George pumping through the Starbucks speakers. Why can’t they hard wire KEXP in here? Yes, I really want to hurt you. Sheesh.)

I got up early today, went to the gym, and now I’m here writing. I’ve made sensible food choices since I woke up, I’m going to a meeting tonight, and I asked the Universe for help this morning. I know things just might still feel like crap even if I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself, but I think I should at least give myself a fighting chance, a blank slate, a nourished physical being and as calm of a mind as I can find.

Sometimes I wonder whether or not I’m holding Raf hostage. Not literally, obviously, but just wonder from time to time if I’m fit to be in a relationship in general. I talk about it with Donna and she’s real laid back about stuff. Look, Victoria, this is just how things are right now. It will pass. Everything passes. When your life is bursting at the seams there’s no room to feel any of this stuff, and when it slows down, you just have to go through patches like this sometimes. And it doesn’t mean that I’ve made bad relationship choices or bad life choices or that a day that I don’t feel so hot about myself means that I’ve done something horribly wrong that I can’t find. It just is, things feel how they feel, and it passes.

Tell that to the army in my head. Seriously.

I heard a speaker last night who had just turned 77 and he had 55 years sober. I almost fell off my chair. And you know, he said the same stuff everyone else said – I knew nothing except the way my life was, I didn’t drink, I went to meetings, and my life started to get better. And now I don’t have to drink myself into oblivion anymore. But he had the time and the wisdom to talk about things, like how it took 25 years for the circus to leave town - I loved how he put that. How he fell apart and had his first wake-up to everything then, and realized he still had no coping skills and no nothing and no gauge and no starting point, so how the hell was he supposed to know where to start? So there he sat, almost 50 years old, with a ton of time, having lost all his money and everything around him and got to a place where things started to change for him. He talked about people blowing 15, 20, 40 years sober and going back out and drinking, and it was the same thing – they stopped going to meetings, stopped using the phone, got disconnected, and drank. Period. I guess, in a basic way, that the tune really doesn’t change… I mean, we all have clay feet (as Donna likes to say) so I’m not going to take every word the guy says as the Gospel of Everything Sober Ever, but you can bet I’m going to pay attention. Same message, different decade.

So what does that have to do with now, and my head being inside out? I think it’s that the base solution works. We all have our trips and our experiences and whatever, but under all that are these stepping stones to recovery and then the life that ensues as a result.

I miss my mom. It’s almost a year already since she died, I am beside myself with that reality just – staring at me, I guess. I feel the year of time having passed, the year of pain and healing and pain and change and all of that, but if I hadn’t had a calendar or interactions or seasons to mark it by, I’d swear it was maybe three or four months at the most. A year. And that my dad’s been dead for five years. And that it’s been fourteen years (!!!) this spring since I graduated high school. See, when I look at that one, it really feels like there’s about twelve lifetimes that went by, half of it sober, half of it not, relationships and apartments and bliss and insanity and everything in between.

I am in such a state of restlessness, I’m irritable and discontent. Apparently there’s only one solution for that, and a big part of it is me sucking it the fuck up and getting my shit together. I need to play nice, make my bed, and take some help from my friends… I really hate a lot of the people I know right now. I’ve got a short list, kids. Short. A lot of people I’ve been sitting in meetings long enough with to know that they are insane, and then there’s the handful that started good and wound up not wanting to talk about things like not wanting to go to meetings. Right now the only people I’ve got are grownups, women I know that I’m sort of detached from that have been sober through patches like these, and Donna, Kristin, Meg, Kacia, and Lesley. I mean, there’s a huge secondary list, but some of it is full of young people’s meetings brand drama… the first list (grownups) I think would consist of Hillary, Robin, Betsy, Gale, not Pauline because she doesn’t call back anymore, and maybe Lori and Elizabeth… it’s time. I don’t fit at meetings where the most time tops out at two years and everyone is texting and just general chaos is ensuing. I’m not 23, I’m 31.

I just realized that a big part of the struggle is just being okay with where I’m at – not like I didn’t know that, but it’s more defined in this minute – it’s literally where I am, my age, my finances, my body – things are changing. I can’t get away with being a kid anymore (not in the running around outside way, I mean more like the childish emotional not dealing with things popularity contest way).

“Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means. It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.”

This is going to take a lot of fucking work. Wish me luck.

vvb

Morning time, writing time, awesome laptop that people stop to look at time. I’ve got this great closeup photo of a lavender field that came with it on the desktop, there was such a great selection of stock stuff – I don’t know how I ever lived in the computer world without this! I have to install that Apple Care software or whatever the hell I’m supposed to do with it, I keep forgetting.

I make up stories about people in my head that walk by. A guy all bundled up, with a backpack and eight layers on, cutting across the parking lot to walk down Route 1 against the cars. I’m immediately storytelling – or maybe it’s prejudging – that he’s crazy or poor or has some bonkers shit going on, and he’s probably just walking to work. Being more environmentally responsible than a lot of us.

Do I have some lazy American kind of disease? Where I sit with a four dollar soy latte in a cushy coffeeshop hammering out my angst on the keyboard of an expensive computer? Car in the parking lot, cash in my wallet, lamenting over everything I don’t have and everything I’m not? (As a cover of “Creep” comes on, I think it’s Damien Rice or Joseph Arthur or someone, all stripped down and perfect…)

I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice / when I’m not around
You’re so very special / I wish I was special

Sometimes I just can’t make all this stuff fit. Damien Rice, I think. Sounds very Closer-soundtracky, even though that stuff was just on the album and not on a soundtrack – that movie pulls my heart right out of me and throws it on the floor. I need to get the Glen Hansard movie, I don’t know how I haven’t at least rented it already. I’m so retarded sometimes.

So, yeah – so there’s got to be some balance between being ok with what you’ve got and being motivated to have goals without feeling like a putz for wanting more when your life is already so full of wonderful things when there’s people starving… and I get all caught up in the perfection of a chain coffeeshop that’s all hip so it makes you feel better about spending the money and it’s really more of a Wal-Mart thing… but there’s this magic thing that happens in coffeeshops, for me at least. It’s like a sanctuary, a church with caffeine, a place where I can go to shut everything else out and quiet my mind and clear my slate off for the rest of my day…

Sitting in a coffeeshop writing about the beauty of writing in coffeeshops, is that like holding onto a picture of myself, or a picture of you holding a picture of me, writing in a coffeeshop, while we write in a coffeeshop? (I am thinking about Kristin and visiting Seattle and she was blogging and I was blogging and it was all computers back to back finding our coffeeshop thing, and she was writing about being with me in the coffeeshop… writing. She took a picture and everything.)

There I go all explaining myself like I think someone is listening, you know? This “you” I address, I suppose that’s really no difference than the “they”, who know so much and say you, that very same present yet invisible you, should do certain things.

What a wacky pile of words this morning.

If I don’t do laundry sometime today, I will have to put on summer clothes to go to the grocery store. I literally do not have one stitch of clean laundry, like, how far can we keep driving before we really run out of gas? I bet we could make it home… I have to go take some pictures for work, meet Ava back here to talk about her website at 10:45, get cat food (picky fuckers), drop off Raf’s laundry, clean the apartment, do my laundry, and tomorrow is grocery time. I love that I’m making the time to write in the morning, I almost don’t want to talk about it because I don’t want it to go away or anything. It’s mostly because I have work early and Raf has to be here for his job to get picked up every day at 7, and then I don’t get going until 8, and going home after to shower and get ready just seems silly, so here I am – even on this Saturday, we both have some work so it was get up and get ready time.

I feel like I’m writing about nothing.

Do we address how I’m not addressing my fears about The World and the vortex of insanity that everything seems to be falling into, and how it’s making me panic? Or how I think that people are assholes because they have the balls to complain, when I sit there at night missing my parents with an ache the size of a canyon that nothing seems to comfort? I guess I complain about stuff too – what am I saying I guess, I do – I can’t believe this dialogue just goes and goes and goes in my head. Maybe maybe maybe why is it saying I’m saying maybe wrong? I thought grammatical errors were a different color than spelling errors, whatever. I don’t want to wind up being someone I don’t know, and it seems like it’s something almost like going to the gym, I have to work at finding things inside me and staying true to my truth. It’s so easy to just hide inside other things, underneath other layers… being true is being lonely sometimes. Not a lot of people are into really dealing with some of this shit – really really, not just really in private and then not out in public.

I must sound crazy. Dogs in cars, heartbreak through the speakers, maybe all this writing about nothing is to get me to the place where I can function in real-time instead of all the perpetual angst all the time.

Ten more minutes… it really does feel like I just went to the gym. The discipline, the result, following what I’m supposed to do when I’m stuck – just like stretching when you need to, I’m writing through the stuck… even though I don’t think you’re supposed to stretch a strained muscle, but you know what I mean.

I’m just a pile of words and a pile of thoughts, all consumed with self and balking at the thought of really having to do anything else – is that true? It is sometimes, but I think it’s the good kind of self.

I still don’t feel like I’m saying anything, really. Is this the last set of reps?

I am sad sometimes. I have a hard time wading through the sludgier part of my relationship with Raf sometimes. I wish we could move away sometimes, and not to run away from anything, but just to do some different stuff. I get all caught up hoping for a better past. I am so bloated and pms-ing right now that I want to shoot myself. I want to finish the apartment because I hate feeling all in-between all the time and looking around and seeing a big to-do list, and it’s such a freaking waste of energy.

I think there are some AA people a few tables over that just got out of the morning meeting.

I’m judgemental and cynical and painfully self-aware (sometimes). I feel like my life is flying by and I’m missing something, but when I really go, okay, then what needs to change? Where would you go, etc. – there really isn’t too much that needs adjusting. I need to write more… check. I need to plan out healthy meal plans and shop and prepare accordingly… uphill battle, but I’m doing the best I can. I want to go to more shows… money’s rough right now. I have a laundry list of places to visit… all in good time, see previous statement. I just thought of a whole stack of stuff that’s hindered by money… what a fucking drag.

I don’t even think I’m going to post this, I feel like I just wasted a bunch of time sitting here and not saying anything about anything.

Why do I feel like I’m screaming and yelling inside but I don’t seem to have anything to write down about it? It got all quiet in here for a second during that Feist 1234 song. I think sometimes that I’m jammed up with Raf. It’s hard to differentiate what’s normal relationship stuff and what’s trauma of parental unit death stuff and what’s growing pains and what’s this or that… it’s so wintertimey for us right now, work work work and eating and napping like bears, then bearing the cold for meetings and more work, and then more sleeping. I look back in my blogs and I know a big part of feeling this way is the time of year, by the time we get close to February I’m out looking at shotguns and at the end of any ropes I’ve managed to hold on to. And I can’t do anything without knowing what’s what. I am in a good relationship with a good man, my parents are dead and I’m all fucked up and I can’t figure anything out so maybe I should stop beating the shit out of myself and trying to make all kinds of decisions like a rational person would because I’m not normal and I’m not how I used to be and I’m kind of shot and this shit is hard. It’s really fucking hard. Sometimes brushing my teeth another day in a row is hard and sometimes just sitting there with an ache is hard and sometimes the good stuff is hard. It’s almost been a year and that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to be magically cured right now from all the hard and all the hurt…

There. Now I feel like I said something, and that it’s okay to go.

vvb

What a fucking morning. I need to start over, but I only have like ten minutes before I have to leave and drive around for the next three hours. Which is fine, driving is fine, the job is fine – but we woke up with like a half hour to leave this morning. Normally that’s no big deal, but I have interior appointments today, so I have to like, put on pantyhose and stuff. And I’m screaming and Buddy is being a fucking psycho freak and I’m tired and Raf snores so we haven’t been sleeping next to each other and I’m afraid ChaCha is going to die of a heart attack and I’m cranky and bloated and angry and sad and broke. I’m sitting in Starbucks (which, I have to say, makes it all worth it, to be sitting here even with ten minutes to write) and I look like dog crap and and and… and I like to start sentences with and…

I think I would rather be cracked out from getting up at 5 am and have time to write and shower and get my day together than I would like to be sleeping late, everything is just everyplace all the time (and not in a good way) and it’s a flurry of laundry and digging under the bed for my other shoe and there’s just never enough time to do it all. AND I have to come up with a topic for the meeting tonight, blech. (I wind up loving it, but going into the day I’m always like, what the fuck am I going to talk about) and here I sit complaining about my wonderful life. Really.

Driving through full-blown crackhouse burnout neighborhoods yesterday was pretty unsettling. If I have seen places like that, it’s in an environment I know (usually, the parts of New Haven that are bad enough to freak me out are places I don’t have to drive, and even if I cut through them, I’m oriented and aware) and Waterbury and all the places I have to go sometimes now are just not like that. Like, you go down a street and about 40% of the neighborhood is boarded up. Old and tired and dirty and sad and just generally disconcerting. I find myself in a panic, or maybe I’m just high strung and in a panic, but it’s all jittery and scary and it makes the demise of America that much more real. It’s like we’re Lindsay Lohan and crackhead gangfights and everything in between is starting to fade, almost like it’s a fight to keep all the in between, to keep the most important.

“Frequently overwhelmed almost into a state of paralysis”… right.

So, I’m supposed to be grateful, and then turn myself to something or someone I can help, maybe that’s just some elegant form of denial so that my head doesn’t explode from thinking and settling into too much reality… crap that’s not a good statement. I can’t even think about not thinking about that anymore.

What am I grateful for? I’m sure there’s a lot. I have like, two minutes left. So let’s see…

I had a full and amazing life with my parents before they died
I’m sober
We rescued Buddy, even though I want to throw him out the window (hence the new name, Buddy Popsicle, which is what he should be grateful for not being, living outside and all eight degrees out and stuff)
I don’t spend my days feeling like I’ve compromised myself for a paycheck
Rafael is a good man, I love him and I want to be with him even in our tough spots
I only feel fat because I’m hormonal and bloated
I actually like the gym
I take good pictures… I am a talented photographer

That’s not all, but it’s a good note to end on. Gotta go take a quick ride through the hood… peace out.

vvb

So all of a sudden this morning, Raf’s all “well, I’d like to have a kid.” I thought that was out, but I guess not… I had kind of resigned to the fact that while I wouldn’t mind, and would even embrace, bringing a life into the world with him, that such things are best left to people who don’t use “wouldn’t mind” and “bringing a life into the world” in the same sentence. Kids, I think, should be left to people – women especially – who are all kinds of wanting to have kids in a hardcore way, who know from being children themselves that being a mom is something they want from the insides of their bones almost.

That doesn’t really seem like me, and I don’t want to go into something like this on a maybe. I’m saying all this like it’s something we are going to do tomorrow, I know, but still… I see pursuing a strong sense of self and doing things like living on the beach and taking vacations as life, but with kids in tow as things left to the rich and famous, and not necessarily a good template for the everyday people. I do have those maternal pangs, and wonder if I’ll die all old and alone (as far as family goes) if we choose not to get pregnant. But I just don’t see how it would work, not like that stops me from doing stuff, but… but but but. I don’t know if I’m unselfish enough to not want to do all the stuff I want to do with my life. Over the next few years, saving up and getting married and buying a little house or a little brownstone condo downtown, all of that seems like enough. And to get through all that, and to breathe, and to look around and love my life more every day, and to write, and to photograph, and all that – it’s not like all of that is mutually exclusive from rearing children but there’s this whole issue of the Clock that throws it all into a tailspin. It’s ticking, this Clock, they talk about it all the time… so let’s say in about 4 years we’re married, maybe have money for a down payment on a little place, and have gotten through or almost through our bachelor’s degrees – then I’m 36, it’s getting late, and really we’d probably have to do all of that a little earlier on… and I just don’t want it like that. I want to be able to pick, to say, here is this phase of my life and here’s that phase, and I don’t know if men really get it because they could run around impregnating women until they were like, sixty or seventy. Seriously.

So now all that’s rattling around in my head.

It’s cold by this window, the big freeze has settled in and it’s like eighteen degrees out or something.

I don’t think I want kids… I have pangs of wanting a child… Raf is the only person I’ve even ever considered it with… well, the Clock isn’t about to explode or anything, so it’s not like I’ve got to get a handle on it today. It’s just unnerving. But nothing is happening right now, so that’s enough of that.

So I like working with / for Denise. As much as I know her and think she’s wonderful, as much as she makes me cutlets and meatballs and does a little bit of mom-time (even though she doesn’t seem old enough to, but it’s just this way she’s got about her) it’s a job. A job I’m interested in, a job that should take me to bigger and better places, a job working for someone I believe in, a job where I’m not selling anything, a job where I get to drive around and take pictures all day – it’s a job. There’s no bullshit, there’s always just a big pile of work and we just… work, and the pace is fast and there’s always stuff to do and we work until it’s done or until we burn out and… there’s just no crap. None. No baggage, no anything, just computers and typing and driving and reports and goals and all good stuff.

I’ve felt weird about all the job hopping, but I need to know where I fit, and I’m not going to know how shoes fit without trying them on, you know? It feels like the last job was a pair of shoes that looked great but hurt my feet, and before that they were shoes I found on sale that I thought were as good as fancy shoes but then they fell apart, and then before that they were shoes that seemed right but wound up not matching anything else and I just felt all awkward and had to convince myself to wear them. There’s got to be a balance…do a job you like, make decent money, and have enough resources (money, time, energy) to spend on the things that really make the big part of your life worth it all. I’ve gone to all the extremes, tons of money but unhappy, shit money and a shit job, shit money and a good job… I need to find decent money and a decent job. And I don’t think it’s any kind of coincidence that all this photography stuff is happening, now yesterday Raf’s cousin Kristen called me and said someone at work needs someone to shoot their wedding in May. Last night, I brought it up with Donna briefly, and she said that when the cup’s full, the cup’s full – that there’s no room for anything else unless you dump some of it out (of course, all in relation to the cup being full of not all good stuff). So I dumped out my cup, or maybe I spilled it accidentally on purpose, I don’t know.

Nada Surf! I love this song.

(tripping in 7-11 / the shelves were stretching out of control… I miss you more than I know…)

I miss you more than I know… it’s nice not to be pining away and missing anyone that much, to be caught up in a pile of heart-wrenching lovesongs where something is just blowing people apart, or that it’s so real that you just can’t breathe, like any of that could sustain for forever, like it does in the lyrics – I thought things were just supposed to be all extreme like that all the time… a woman in a meeting said recently that she learned about relationships from Joni Mitchell and Jack Daniels. Not that elements of that aren’t good, but she was all in the context of everything being a train wreck all the time. I never thought I’d say it, but I like it that the bulk of my life is normal. When it’s boring, it’s because I need to be doing more of the things that set me on fire, or because I’ve chosen to rest and recharge and relax – not because I’m stuck somewhere I hate. I cook dinner and I like when it snows in New Haven and it’s a wonderful day when I make the time to write in the morning. I don’t mind excitement, but I don’t need much to be happy.

I feel like I don’t have the right words for everything this morning and that I’m not being accurate. I should go.

vvb

Blog blog blog. Bloggity blog blog, blog blog blog…

Blog? Morning pages? Who knows. New laptop, new week, new job, new me…

I’m all up and dressed this morning, thinking that Denise might need me today but it turns out that it won’t be until after 9. Which actually works out great, so that I can sit here (Bucky’s) after having done a few errands and what have you.

It’s crazy, I am either completely and totally on the ball with getting things done or I am unable to do anything about anything and I’m all immobilized in the apartment. I’ve got to stop watching things go by, wondering if I’m going to wake up twenty years from now – twenty years having got behind me – already I’m appalled at the fact of having been writing in coffeeshops since I was 15, from poring over my first notebooks (the blue one, and then the yellow one) at the Daily… skipping class and chain smoking… to all-dressed-up for my real life job and taking the time to “journal” like all the healthy adults do. That’s almost seventeen years now. And sometimes I wonder if I’ve gotten anywhere at all, or if there’s just been a couple of scenery changes.

Inherently, I know that’s not true. And I forget, when I do this, and get the bat out of the bag all about to do a number on myself and everything – that nothing is wrong. Not that there’s not things to strive for and goals and all kinds of things that fall under “other” but inherently, there’s nothing wrong. I have a good life. I engage in the daily dance-slash-fistfight to better myself on a daily basis, be it through meetings or therapy or speaking my mind and removing myself from toxic situations… trying to hear my voice… I guess it’s just hard to not be a pile of all the books I never read and all the movies I never took the time to watch. There is such a massive, massive learning curve to all… all this life-stuff. Now I know why they all force College and Respectable Job and blah blah blah down our throats growing up, because all of that proves pretty handy – and then Kristin starts writing about school – and I remember that I would have been blowing tuition out my ass in a freaking blackout had I managed to show up at any type of college immediately after high school. And I remember that I’ve got more Respectable Jobs than I could shake a stick at at my fingertips, if I really wanted to put myself in a place to get them – and that I’ve purposefully walked away from so much because it fell under This Just Doesn’t Quite Fit and I’d Rather Buy Underwear At Target And Be Broke and Happy… not that being rich and happy are mutually exclusive, but it’s artist-with-a-dayjob time for now. Which means I have to do the work at the artist part and Put It Out There. Which goes back to being immobilized in my apartment.

Right when I decided to quit my job I thought to myself, well, on top of selling everything I own on eBay so I can get out of debt, I should push more efforts into my photography. At a few hundred or even a thousand dollars a shot would wrap it all up quick (with the exception of the car, I’m at about $16,000, which means with crappy paying jobs I’ve managed to get through about $7,000 over the last few years with just throwing whatever is left over at my debt for the last two or three years… sheesh). I’ve even stopped using my credit cards, and keep shoving the debt over to low balances, and this shit still annihilates my life. And then right out of nowhere, shit just almost fell in my lap – so far I’ve got a website redo offer as well as two potential weddings – and the funny part, oh Universe, the funny part is that the day I was getting coffee just dying over having to go in and quit what I thought was my dream job was the same day that a bunch of potential photography jobs and photography-related stuff just fell right into my lap. Literally.

So, I’ve been chatting with the guy next to me, about roofing and computers and stuff – usually that annoys me but this time it was tolerable, and hopefully I made a contact for Raf – and now it’s time to go take some pictures all up in the hood for Denise.

I’m just going to start straight-posting this stuff out of my laptop meanderings in the morning and see what happens… I’m not even sure if anyone is still listening, but I'm still speaking.

vvb

wow. long time, no type!

(I think I've started an entry like this before...)

new year, full notebooks, and so much to catch up on - of course, now is one of those times when I get all geared up and have nothing to type. I'm feeling unstuck in so many ways, though - I'm sure things will fall right back into place. or, into a new place. you know what I mean.

more to follow -

vvb