I just republished most of what I took off my blog. Not because I want to re-read my whole life, or because I think other people want to read about my whole life, it's more... it's like seeing a shelf full of notebooks, or boxes full of photographs. All lined up. I can look at it and know I did it.
And that being said, I'm so glad I stopped blogging, but I'm grateful for the perspective I get reading back to all the old notes. Getting here and just dealing with the transition, writing down every second of my life on a blog, but not actually focusing on living my life. I suppose tweeting and Facebooking fill that void, a note or a moment to connect on a blog-slash-update level, but unless I'm drinking too much coffee in an empty office, it's not the primary thing I do in any given hour. I would have never made the connection, or the break, without Kristin. And I'm obliged to say, of course, as she would, that I would so have. I suppose I should start to rephrase -- Kristin has been a very good person to fill the post of holding up my mirror, and to do it in a way that lets me see myself clearly, and as a result I am then able engage in any necessary changing the view requires. Since I can't un-see something once I've been shown it.
It's crazy, or awesome, or a little bit of both, to see all the unraveling. Writing pages and pages and pages in circles trying to figure out how to leave Raf, but thinking I had to find out what I had to change about myself to be okay -- turns out a big chunk of me was fine, and it was in fact the things I could not change about me, and the things outside me that I had to have the courage to make different. Which means an inside change on my part, yeah. But still. Point being -- fuck. It's crazy how clear it is now. The relationship not working. My jobs not working (still in process, thanks). My mom dying and how it tore me apart for a long time beforehand, and how I kept calling it other things. And the pre-Raf. Which is the most fun about the blog republishing -- watching myself catch on fire with all this awesome stuff I had going on in my life. Quoting articles from indie blogs about a band that was coming out and the difference between the dude that was making their album last time and the interpretive direction they were taking this time. Pages and pages and pages about slicing my veins open in front of the stage.
Funny, how Kristin and I weren't ever on the same plane at the same time. But she was free and got me out, and I was free and got her out, and before that she was free and got me out. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be.
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Everything is so different now, it feels so strange to be writing on a blog, like, an update about nothing, a journal entry that's not event-related or major upheaval-related. I don't think there's a lot of point in this kind of blogging. Experiment successful!
It just feels like so much is happening right now. I'm making a box of things to take to a photography studio that I don't have, and somehow I inherently know it's more okay than it is insane that I'm doing this. I still don't know what's going to happen with work, and I'm not worried about that (also, seemingly insane) either. I stuffed my cabinets, almost bought a little bit too much, actually; with the healthiest food I've ever had in one instance, for like, twenty-eight dollars at the grocery store. I'm hanging a show tomorrow, and if I manage to sell six or seven prints, it will be a wash. Imagine that? Paying bills by selling art. Crazy! And I'm writing. In a notebook. All the time. I typed and typed and typed and I swear -- literally, I shit you not -- I think I wrote in my notebook, with a pencil, for two days. Two. And then I broke up with Raf. And I knew it was happening the whole time, and two days of longhand -- wham.
I second guessed every instant and every decision I made. I think it would have literally killed me, I mean, in my head, to have kept living that way. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know really until I got here, and just... broke out of myself, I guess. Baby elephant time. It's like when I tell my story, and I talk about all the awful, shitty stuff -- and I know it's me I'm talking about, but it partly feels like I'm talking about another person. Even though that part of me is an arm's reach away. That's how it feels reading back about everything before the last few months -- the crazy, the perpetual circles... it seems like it's someone else that I only see glimpses of now. Like, being that way all the time seems impossible to me now -- I don't know how I wasn't shackled to the wall in a mental institution.
Exaggeration, obvi. But that's how bonkers it feels.
Cat on lap, bedtime, so I can get up and write, and get to work on time so I can hang my show tomorrow. I suppose maybe I'll post after the show if anything epic happens. But until then, I'm just out living my life.
Who in the fuck am I talking to? For the love of bread.
That's quite enough out of me. Good night, imaginary audience.
PS, I'm totally convinced that someone is controlling my shuffle button by some remote somewhere, because the Sunday night music it's been churning out has been so beyond perfect that I can't even put it into words.
Viva, Seattle. :*
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