Caterwauling

After digesting my last post for the past few hours, I realized something. Those big dreams I had — the ones I thought were SO out-of-reach and out of my league? Weren’t anywhere near big or dynamic enough for me. They were lucky to find their way into my head, but it’s time to clear the clutter.

That’s the terrific thing about my “happy place” — it expands to accommodate whatever I want to put into it. And perhaps it’s been a little too small and cozy till this very moment. Fuck it, if I’m dreaming, I’m doing it in a goddamned palace!

Don’t settle for only what the world gives you, friends. Ask for more. FIGHT for more. I’m finding that the one who wants it more than the other, gets it. But first, you have to define it or else you’ll spend all your energy going in a million directions (i.e., like me) and won’t have enough steam to achieve anything significant.

It’s time to focus. And focus elsewhere, in many cases.

God, I feel so free for the first time in a long time. *breaks mental shackles*

Gemini horoscope for today, courtesy of Astrocenter.com:

“Someone special who shares your philosophical and spiritual points of view could spend the entire day with you, Goddess. Don’t be surprised if you start feeling a romantic attraction to this person. If you aren’t currently involved, you might seriously consider at least getting to know this friend a little better. Not only do you have interests in common, the good communication, which the two of you share today, is likely to continue indefinitely.”

A girl can dream, anyway. I’m spending the day with my little red stapler. Someone just asked me if my stapler is actually red, and I said it will be when I bludgeon someone with it. So, beware! 🙂

I’ve been having these Bizarro World days in which they were both the best and worst of my life, all rolled up into one.

I’m going to take a piece of my own advice and not concentrate on the yucky bits because wasting time thinking about them only seems to generate/attract more of them. But what I did come out of all this with was this: Apparently I’m not the only one who makes mistakes in life. Sometimes it seems like I’m the only one who regrets them, but enh, at least I’m not the only a-hole on the planet who consciously, willingly and even enthusiastically jumps headfirst into an empty pool.

I had a dream the other night, in which I kept telling people to go away because I was meditating. I had told people that I meditated two to three times a day, and that’s why I was so healthy. Hmm. I can dig it — maybe a sign from above to do just that?

I was in mid-meditation yesterday (hey, it actually helped!) when I could actually feel the world turning. I was suspended in a moment, literally hanging in midair, when I realized that’s all this life is — a string of moments, both good and bad, but ALL of our own choosing.

Even if we don’t choose to, say, have somebody let the air out of our little balloons, we do choose how to handle it. We can smile and act fine — fuck, we can smile and BE fine.

Or we can just stop pretending to be fine because we’re not — at least, not at that moment. Even if we will be eventually — even if it just takes us needing to walk three steps away and gulp down some non-toxic air.

In my moment of meditation, I realized I screwed up U, V, W, X and Y in hopes that Z would eventually happen. And I realized that Z wasn’t screwing anything up for anybody — that Z was just enjoying apparently A through T just fine. And I’m sorry but you just can’t have your cake and eat me, too, as Mom would say. 😉

The lesson? If I can’t make U, V, W, X and Y work, what makes me think Z is going to be the thing that actually happens flawlessly?

I know I am in self-help land right now with the “Laws of Attraction,” but it’s all good. I’m reprogramming here. It’s probably the only reason why I don’t short-circuit; some outlets are unplugged anyway so the switchboard isn’t overloaded!

“There are avenues and supplements
And books stacked on the shelf
Labyrinths of recovery
In search of our best self
But most of what will happen now
Is way out of our hands
So just let it go
See where it lands.”

— Indigo Girls, “I Believe in Love”

I have a bed in my guest room now, and I have guests staying overnight for the first time.

I was thinking today, how different my summer is turning out from what I had planned. Judging from the spring, I really thought this would be the year that I would want for nothing. That … I don’t know, something … was starting.

I don’t know what else to say. I mean, life’s been good and full of intrigue and certainly carries its share of situations that make for good storytelling. But I guess I thought I’d have a very different set of stories to tell.

And there’s a part of me that will always want to know what happened, yet another part of me really doesn’t want to know just in case it’s something that could have been caught/corrected/forgiven. If there’s even something, or a pile of somethings, that can even be identified and not just an intangible evolution, which I keep telling myself is all that it was.

My audiobook tells me to stop focusing on the lack of something because all it does is attract a continuing paucity. Instead, I need to focus on what I want and then getting it. And, apparently, keeping it. But I suppose that’s a whole ‘nother set of self-help books I haven’t discovered yet! 😉

I’ve been listening intently to my audiobook and sort of scratching my butt head over what I’m learning and how to apply it to everyday life.

For instance, it seems the overall goal we should have in life is to seek joy. And to do so by seeking the people who have what we want and learning it from them. But therein lies a challenge in that the people who are attracted to us and what we have that they want for themselves (i.e., a shy person wants to be more like their extroverted friend) also bring a whole basket o’ negativity into your life that you can choose to not associate with. That you can basically only choose to acknowledge the parts of these other people that you want to take away as part of your own experience.

I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea; I’m rather intrigued by it. But I am not quite grasping how you can enjoy someone for the fun they bring into your life and not be overwhelmed by frustration for them being tightasses or immature or whatever other characteristic that you don’t want to absorb into your own personality.

It all goes back to what they’ve been preaching throughout these tapes all along — we attract what we want. And we attract what we don’t. If we give something evil more than a passing thought, we attract evil. So instead of dwelling on negative emotions and trying to figure out where they came from (I’m thinking, isn’t that the goal of counseling?) we need to wash our hands of the specter of bad things before we give them so much as a passing glance.

This is where I have hit a lot of stumbling blocks in life. It’s easy to hope that the evil people you know get buttfucked with a knife when they meet someone who out-psychoes them. But does thinking that bring even more insanity and stupidity to your world? I’m guessing yes, but I choose not to accept it.

All the small minds of the world can get together and be assholes together; the rest of us will learn and absorb from high-quality people so that we all become of the highest quality. Survival of the fittest, I say.

But.

Yep, there’s always that.

It reminds me of a very bad habit I have, which is hurting myself over things I can’t control.

I don’t mean cutting or throwing up or anything like that. Please. That shit takes too much effort, and I’m way too apathetic. 🙂

But I was telling my friend yesterday that I can’t really get frustrated anymore when people don’t realize how fabulous I am. Because I realize how fabulous I am, and if that has to be enough, then fine. I’m pretty happy and feel like I’m as close to self-actualization as I can be.

My friend, God love him, said that they all know I’m fabulous too, even if they don’t convey it.

I knew that. But it was nice to hear it for a change.

I guess I have the curse that every girl does, in that if someone doesn’t like us like us, I try to figure out why. I tend to wonder if it were something that I did or didn’t do. Whether my interests or looks or habits or whatever turned them off at some point. Even if maybe I wasn’t all that into them, but I am not one to drop off the earth either if there is something there that could possibly be turned into something greater. At least, I don’t mean to — again, you don’t always (if ever) get a, “This is why I couldn’t be with you” speech. Even if it would hurt or if I’d reject the data, I’d just like to know why other people aren’t gellin’ with me.

But when I get the chance to hurt myself, I do take it. If I get the chance to find out if they’ve moved on to someone new, I want to know about it. I want names, details, interests, etc. I want to know what it is they see in this new person. I want to know what they do, how they feel … basically, what makes them think that person is going to make them happier than I can and would if they would have let me.

Usually I can walk away feeling like wow, they really didn’t do better. And they know it. But what do you do with that data? Drink a bottle of red wine and hope it erases your memory? But no, I have that insane need-to-know that brings even more ache with the more questions I ask.

I guess I hope it’ll numb me and I’ll just accept it someday. But all it really does is kill me even more. I’ve got to stop that stupid habit before it’s the death of me.

My reaction is usually to move on at lightning speed. To not act sad. To just be fine. To not say, “What the fuck? I thought we were on our way to something special till you got off the ride. What went so wrong that can’t be salvaged?”

Especially if I didn’t think anything much was wrong and, in fact, was feeling sort of optimistic about the whole thing. That’s what kills me. People don’t invest enough time to find out.

I’m supposed to be the impulsive one. I’m supposed to be the asshole who gives a half-hearted effort and gives up when it gets to be too much work or I see something shiny in my peripheral vision.

But why am I attracting things that are only ephemeral? What is it in me that isn’t drawing in that which is healthy and sustainable? What about me is turning away what might be good for me? Is it coming my way and I’m not noticing it, or am I too focused on things that aren’t working/can’t work to know the difference?

Look, I know not to dwell for too long, because the universe has its plan for us. Blah blah blah. But I’m a lot more interested in having a say-so in my destiny right now, thankyouverymuch. And my audiobook is telling me to reject or repel that feeling of powerlessness to the universe.

You should be creating your sacred space and filling it with things that you want. As they said, envision the world as a fully-stocked store, and you can exchange dollars for any experience you could ever want. Bring those things into your happy place and immerse yourself in the possibility of them until they happen for you. Only think happy thoughts — if you obsess about something (illness, attack, etc.) then you attract it into your world.

That’s something that sort of freaked me out — how victims of attacks “attract” the perpetrators. I don’t get that at all. I sure as hell would like for people with ill intentions to leave me the fuck alone, and I doubt someone who gets assaulted would willingly open the door for the asshole with the Cialis prescription and the butcher knife.

But they say that if you’re giving it a passing thought, it could happen to you. That if we immerse ourselves in headlines, we are going to see more and more bad things just like it popping up. That you see a fire happen somewhere and suddenly, you’ll see a string of incidents involving fire. Because the nitwit pyromaniac out there who was looking for inspiration gets it from the first asshole to put a match to gasoline, and we get an instant epidemic.

It’s like when you say a certain person’s name, it’s like calling “Beetlejuice” three times — they always seem to appear. *shudder*

Anyway, I’ve got to get started rolling the rock up the mountain for the day. But what I take away is that one success will breed another, then another, and still another. And that’s the kind of collectible experience I want to have in my sacred space, so it’s time to go shopping for good things to enjoy today!

I actually had the title of this post ready before I even opened up my horoscope.

Gemini overview for today:

Everyone thinks it takes great willpower not to yield to temptation — and sometimes that’s true. Other times, however, that temptation is there precisely because it should be yielded to. So which is it in this case?

The word “absurd” keeps coming to mind, if I had to describe my life in nutshell right now. Well, not so much my life inasmuch as the situations that keep cropping up.

I’ve been holding in a lot for the past week or so. I mean, a lot. To the point where I called a friend who didn’t have time to talk when I rang and when they asked whether I were OK, I decided to say yes because, really, who could sum up this insanity in two sentences?

So I talked to no one. Because I couldn’t identify one person who didn’t know at least one of the characters. I have found myself in this bizarre Kevin Bacon six-degrees game to the point where three worlds intersected to form a veritable Bermuda Triangle, and my happy ass was caught in dead-center without so much as an inner tube.

The other day, I did have a very surface-level chat with someone I adore. Who promptly noted that choosing to stay inert is still a choice. Maybe not the best one, but free will makes us stay put sometimes, too, when maybe we shouldn’t. But the horoscope (yes, I know, it’s some hack who gets paid five cents a word to craft it — I applied for the job when it was open and believe me, psychic ability wasn’t the main requirement for it) hits the nail on the head for me, because I ask myself that very question about temptation all the freaking time.

To wit, why is the temptation there? Why were the thoughts put into your head? Why do you not function properly because this course is off-kilter? Why do you run, not walk, away and feel like the universe has this magnet stuck to your butt because you simply can’t deny the gravitational pull right back to where you keep telling yourself you should no longer be?

And don’t even get me started on so-called amnesia. I am starting to feel like I hallucinated all of this because I seem to be the only one without a spotless mind around these parts.

Maybe I did dream it all up. Every last second of it. But while it’s easy to forget the things that happened, it’s a bitch to let go of the way you thought they’d unfold.

It’s even harder when you still cannot come up with one reasonable answer as to why they still couldn’t.

I was sort of slap-happy last night as I slapped together my grandmother’s famous fruit salad, but boy did I learn the lesson that it doesn’t matter whether you use all the “right” ingredients. If you use them in the wrong order, something fabulous can turn into something rather ghastly.

Blah.

But do I have the time/resources to redo it? Not so much. As far as I’m concerned, it’s fruit, it’s pasta and it’s Cool Whip. Therefore, it’s edible enough. 😉 But I am sure as hell not taking it to the party it was destined to go to!!!

This culinary adventure sort of loosely puts my life into perspective right now. The dreams and wishes and wants and images are put into your head and your heart for a reason. What you do with them, however, is entirely up to you. Even the bad stuff — lord knows I’ve entertained the occasional homicide scenario in my day.

But it’s how you choose to handle the things that you find when you’re rummaging around in the recesses of your mind — acknowledging that they exist, developing a plan to achieve them and/or simply shooting them down before they have a chance to help (or ruin) you — that’s your job.

And that’s where my mind has been lately. (No, not plotting homicide — perhaps wishing for someone else to do it. … LOL, just kidding!) But it’s been sorting through all of the things that have popped into it, wondering whether my destiny was staring me in the face, daring me to do something about it.

On the other hand, I admit to wondering whether this was one of those random flights of fancy that the Muse likes to toss my way to distract me. You know how the proverbial “they” always say that good things come to you while you’re busy looking the other way? Perhaps, while I was busy looking at something shiny, it was to prepare me for something else.

But the scarier, and probably more-likely, explanation, was that the universe wanted me to take on a new challenge. Of wanting something, plotting to get it and actually getting off my ass to achieve it. Because follow-through is SO not my style.

Well, that’s not true. I did try. A couple of times. Maybe I tried hard, by my own standards. But failure is not a houseguest I’m willing to entertain for long, and I ain’t running no bed-and-breakfast for it, either. It can have the occasional stay, but I’m a bitch of a landlord — no repeat visits, damn it. At least, not too many of them. 😉

But then I went and attempted NOT to try/succeed, and well, I failed at that, too. I’m happy to find new dreams. I just don’t know why certain ones insist on recurring.

I don’t know. None of us will ever achieve greatness by simply setting mundane goals. I have always believed we’ve got to dream big, and we’ll grow into them eventually. And the way life goes for so many of us, we dream small and let our dreams get bigger, incrementally. But when you do it that way, do you ever reach a point where you’re willing to just settle down where you are than fight another day?

I’m never going to stop dreaming and pushing for them to come true, no matter how out-of-reach they are. But I’m scared to let them change too much because there’s still a part of me that says, “Patience, Grasshopper.” Then again, what if too much time goes by and the dream does come true, but I’ve changed too much to want it anymore?

Well, then I guess, in that, I have my answer.

Look, I trust the universe. That’s something I haven’t been able to say for awhile because it always feels like time is running out. And I’m not in that much of a rush, truth be told. If good things come to those who wait, then I’ve got an amazing reward coming my way when it’s ready. And I don’t want it in its less-than-perfect state — let the universe work out all the kinks and I’ll take my fairy-tale ending whenever it’s good and ready.

Just keep reminding me that it’s on its way. That’s all I’m asking.

In any event, I’ll share my recipe behind the fold. The problem is that none of us in my family cook with recipes, so nothing ever turns out the same way twice. And then when you’ve got people like me who never cook, you tend to forget what someone showed you 20 years ago! Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s hor(ror)oscope:

“Bring matters out into the open and make your wishes larger than life. You should note an extra certainty in your hopes and dreams that you should embrace. You are at a climactic point in your yearly cycle, so take advantage of this dynamic time.”

I don’t know how much more I can advertise said “matters,” although it occurs to me that nobody actually knows what I am talking about when I do. heh. I always prided myself on my convoluted blog entries, but apparently the latest batch take the cake.

I do have to take issue with that “extra certainty in your hopes and dreams” bit. I think that’s why I’m so fucking nuts right now. I was convinced that I interpreted the universe’s signs correctly. I’m still convinced of it, truth be told. But when confronted with obstacles, well, I sort of don’t know whether to shit or go sailing. But “things,” I can handle. People, however, not so much. I will sooner step out of the way than make my presence known.

Every day, every thing is such a struggle this week, and I’m so tired of expending energy fighting for the little things that, when the big things are saying “seeya,” all I can really do is wave when maybe it’s that I need to do something drastic.

I said recently that one of my biggest fears is seeing my soulmate with someone else. In tandem with that, I fear giving up absolutely everything and being left standing with nothing. Now, “they” say that the bigger things are worth the bigger risks, but I learned in Las Vegas that the more you bet, the more you can lose if you pick the wrong side.

But at this point, all I can say is that you go on to earn more money and the sting of losing so much starts to fade away eventually. But maybe in my heart of hearts, you hope that Roulette table and that dealer are there when you come back and you’re ready to win it all next time. Even if you thought you were really ready to win big now. …

Today’s Gemini horoscope:

“You’re filled with positive energy, and your powers of persuasion are heightened to an insane degree. You might even be able to convince yourself of something you really want to believe!”

I live in the land of Denial, so convincing myself of what I want to be true isn’t a stretch. In fact, I’m smiling at everyone who’s there in the land of make-believe with me, who thinks these projects on my desk are going to come together soon, too. *waves*

Actually, life is all about mind over matter. And it is slowly pulling me into reality, one agonizing step at a time, making me deal with lots of stuff I thought I could avoid if I pretended it didn’t exist. Some good, some bad, some I didn’t think was even worth the effort of dealing with in the first place.

In any event, the horoscope means something to me in that things I actually did try to deny, things that could be good or maybe even blow up in my face, are starting to show on my face. And I’m not sure if hiding them is, or will always be, the right way to handle them. But for now, it’s the only way I know.

On the other hand, I couldn’t lie or hide something to save my life, so at least if whatever it is escapes my tight little grasp, there will be resolution one way or another. Perhaps this is where I try to believe in the ending I want rather than the one I expect after all. …

Reader Poll Monday Tuesday Wednesday!

1. Is it just me or have all the cool websites been having technical difficulties today?
That’s because all the cool kids are using them!

2. What’s the last movie you saw?
On the plane from Vegas to Cincinnati, I saw “Bridge to Terabithia”.

3. What’s the last good movie you saw?
Uh. … Can’t remember the last time I walked out of a theater feeling good about the money I dropped on a show.

4. If you were paid $10 million, would you be willing to have a 1″ tattoo (of your choosing) applied to the middle of your forehead?
Nope — the government would get half of it anyway.

5. Welch’s juice commercial kids: love ’em or hate ’em?
I want to shove those little bastard children straight back into their mothers’ hoo-has.

6. What is your current must-have software/plugin/online tool?
None, really. I’m thinking about buying a new computer; who can actually afford shit to put on it?!?!

7. Do you have any live plants in your home?
Hell naw. Cats would eat them.

8. Quick, make up a word and tell us its definition!
Lord, I make up words all the time. I call my mom’s boyfriend “pudgefuckle.” Sort of a cross between pudgecicle and chucklehead. 😉 Actually, I was just being lazy and sort of wasn’t sure what to call him so I slurred them together.

9. Do you love eggs from your head down to your legs?
The thought of eggs just totally made me throw up in my mouth a little!

10. Ask me something.
What day will RPM take place on next week? 😉