Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Battlefield of the Mind

Photo: http://mylittledrawingdesk.blogspot.com

For numerous reasons that exist both within my mind and throughout my daily life, I have somehow become bankrupt of inspiration. I'm not clever or witty. I don't know exactly just what to say or how to say it.

My ability to constantly generate, extend and upcycle ideas - much to the absolute exhaustion of anyone in close proximity has since dried up - yielding only painfully deserted, dried up cracks in my once flourishing stream of wonder and creativity.

What happens when there's nothing left to write?

You write anyway. Even if it's not very good writing.

Someone recently suggested that this creative drought is because I have no sense of longing in my life. That perhaps I'm content with no room to yearn for anything more. That's not exactly the case. While I agree that I am devoid of longing, it's not because I am overindulged with privilege and convenience. Maybe my sense of ideation starves because I haven't mentally struggled this long or this hard in a really long time. Maybe I'm so astonished at life's twists and turns, it's simply too overwhelming for my words. Hard to say. Maybe I need to look around and be supremely grateful for everyone and everything in my life.

In the battlefield of my mind, I can't decide which side I'm on. Or what I'm fighting for, or why. Scenarios like this typically make for great writing, and yet my keyboard is silenced. I need to identify the demons that are holding me back - and fight like hell to slay them.

Friday, November 30, 2012

I miss my blog...

I spend so much time living out loud, rushing around to the next big thing scribbled into my calendar and sometimes just barely managing to put one foot in front of the other. All the while, none of these amazing parts of my life are being documented. I miss writing things down, I miss sharing.

Here's hoping I get my priorities back on course... stay tuned.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I dreamt I was a Jew during the Holocaust...

http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blauschwitz1.htm In the foreground is the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free). (1945)

 And I think that getting beat up by the German police, being shackled and led off to a concentration camp (in my dream) taught me that in my real life, I don't know a damn thing about human suffering.

I don't know why my dreams are so vivid and hard sometimes. Maybe it's the same texture of the lessons I need to somehow try to learn.

And no, I wasn't watching a movie involving this part of history before bed or any other time in recent memory. Like you, I wondered about the influential source of the dream too.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Corporate Base Jumper


Photo: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
 Today an old friend rang me up and thankfully, I had the brainpower to mine the most sobering nugget of reality from our conversation.

In true bon viveur style, my friend smartly quit corporate life after many years of ultra hard work and long hours to find himself elsewhere. HE JUMPED OFF THE HIGHEST SKYSCRAPER WITH A STRETCHED SMILE UPON HIS FACE. Since then, he's gone from extreme skiing, to learning to sail, to piloting small engine planes, to novel writer, to rock musician stints and back.

His on-going journey is nothing short of opportunistic and incredible. He reminds me very much of Tim Ferris who wrote The Four Hour Work week. We psycho-babbled like best girlfriends do when out of nowhere he blurted, "I can't work for 25 years and get the corner office. Even though there's perks galore and a private seating lounge area in the executive bathroom with imported Italian marble, you're still in close proximity to a cube farm, endless feelings of intense insecurity and people that are all too eager to cut your throat".

It occurred to me that even the guys at the top of the money grubbing food chain don't always want to be there. And what if your corner office only has a shitty view of the parking lot? I write that most metaphorically, of course. Things just don't always look the way we think they will when we get there.

I'm still letting this conversation marinate in my brain... after all, there are far worse things than trying something new. Questions are already spawning uncontrollably inside of my mental cloud. What if one day I'd get my priorities straight? Why am I not spending the majority of my time with the people I love? How can I change that? If I'm not finding a way to do work I love for a living, why don't I just do it for free - BECAUSE I LOVE DOING IT?

All good questions, self. Keep thinking.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Just try not to look him in the eye...

If I ever met her (with the aid of a time machine), June Cleaver would punch me hard in the face.
Your husband arrives home from work. He walks through the front door with weighted feet and you're standing right there at the perfect moment, giddy to greet him. He's had a very long, trying day and is completely eager to come home to decidedly greener pastures (i.e. you). He lets out a great big sigh of relief that the work day is done and gazes affectionately over to you. You're ecstatic to see him too. You put the basket of freshly folded laundry down on the floor and move in for an embrace. He's home, you're happy, it's all just apple pie! Isn't it?

Right before you get to the part where you're imagining yourself in a 1960's episode of Leave it to Beaver, you realize that your laundry isn't clean at all. Infact, you've just barely started to load the washer at 4:30 in the afternoon. Never mind that June Cleaver would have dinner on the table, you haven't been to the grocery store in weeks. Now, you'll have to order out.

And what's that you're wearing? It's not an apron, or a dress, or a matching pantsuit. It's not even faded jeans and a crumpled t-shirt. No dear, you haven't cleaned, cooked or even dressed yourself today. That's why you're still clad in wrinkled pajamas and hair done up in a scrunchie. A freaking scrunchie for crying out loud! A scrunchie!

Your husband narrows his brow and begins to squint in your general direction. Your once happy mate is now examining exactly what it is he's come home to. When he first walked through the door, his expression excitedly read, "This is what I have!" and sadly digressed to a somber, "This is what I get".

From then until now has felt like an eternity inside your head, but really, it has only taken a couple of minutes to shift the mood from a once gleeful exchange, to a disappointing, "Same shit, different day" head shake.

Women everywhere cringe at your lackluster failure to run a household and work from home in parallel. Luckily, it's only Monday. Tomorrow, you say, I'll be better.

Friday, July 13, 2012

On telling a "Technical Expert" they are mistaken...


SuperNerd: You have to do it like jeopardy... "This is what you do before you wreck yo self."
Me: ...
SuperNerd: "What is check yo self, Alex?"

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I HATE answering the door... when it's cold.

I'm working. I'm messaging away on my laptop and the speaker phone is full of mixed personalities discussing the day's business. I take a big drink of coffee. The door bell rings. Coffee shoots out my nose.

I can't run upstairs without being detected by the visitor (whomever it is) to put on more clothes, and the dog has already run out front to announce that we're home. I check myself out in the mirror in my office. It's noon. I'm wearing pajamas and a ribbed tank top. No bra. NO BRA!!!!! Gah, I hate answering the stupid door.

Arms folded out in front of me, I muddled through an unexpected visit (and lunged for my yoga jacket from the coat closet at the soonest opportunity). I need a better plan than this. If I'm going to be lazy all day and not get dressed, I at least need some backup clothes stashed in a drawer or shelf nearby.

Monday, June 11, 2012

On Being Domestically Inept...

Last week I decided to surprise my husband by popping in a load of laundry for him. Though I primarily work from home, ruining clothes with machinery is one of those tasks that luckily doesn't fall to my lot. At the last minute, one of my  meetings was cancelled and I thought it would be quick and helpful to dry a load of jeans.

I grabbed a big handful of denim and moved toward the new dryer we purchased a few months ago (when the old one pooped out). With arms full of wet, heavy jeans, I became instantly (and most unexpectedly) dumbfounded. "How do you open the damn thing?" I stood there stared at it. There's no handle. There's no sticker or arrow that says, "Start here, you idiot!"

Frustrated, I shoved the clothes back into washer. I've been a complex network engineer for a lifetime, why is this baffling me all of a sudden? Yes, it took me a minute to get sorted, and I felt like a complete imbecile all the while. Turns out, I'm just not the domestic type.

To save myself from further humility, I'm keeping my distance from kitchen appliances for now, too.

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