Posts tagged with "uncertainty"

stepping into groundlessness

I can tell I’ve had enough of win­ter when I start to enjoy the days above 0 more than the ones below. Those are the days when the air is clear with­out being frigid, and you’re only cold when sun isn’t on your skin. I know I’ll be okay when such her­alds of warm weath­er appear. Spring is com­ing just in time this year.

Constant plans and new projects are mak­ing the weeks pass as quick­ly as ever, only now I mark the time by my days with Lisa. We’ve set aside every oth­er Thursday for each oth­er, and it’s the only com­mit­ment I have in my life now, some­thing I haven’t had the plea­sure of shar­ing with some­one in a while.

chicken hearts

Step one in mak­ing cat food: get over the fact that the souls of a mil­lion chick­ens will even­tu­al­ly haunt you at night for grind­ing up their hearts.

She recent­ly start­ed help­ing me make my own cat food, which involves her schlep­ping a meat grinder, vit­a­min sup­ple­ments, and giant tub1 to my place every time, but she loves tak­ing care of my cats as much as I do. We can both agree it’s well worth the effort when see­ing how much they appre­ci­ate fresh meat and how healthy it makes them.

The rest of our time is spent with Miley Highrus and Zelda Hitzgerald, shar­ing the things we’ve grown to love by our­selves as much as the things we’ve yet to expe­ri­ence togeth­er, watch­ing Skins and learn­ing that I like Chris cause Chris likes Angie and I real­ly like Angie. Some weeks, this is the only time we have off from the rest of our respec­tive lives, and the things we can share only in per­son make it all the more spe­cial.

Return to Ravnica draft

Slinging card­board.

I can’t help but ques­tion what I know about love and hap­pi­ness and truth and the world and myself. I’ve been try­ing to let go of the things I under­stand and the way I feel, giv­ing myself time to let every­thing set­tle, but embrac­ing the ground­less­ness has­n’t been easy. It often leaves me feel­ing very much out of my ele­ment no mat­ter what I’m doing, and long­ing for some sem­blance of sta­bil­i­ty. The most I can do is keep in mind that there’s no pres­sure to be a cer­tain way, and that answers will come in their own time.

  1. I don’t have a sin­gle con­tain­er in the house that’s large enough to mix the rough­ly 10kg of chick­en parts required for a two-month batch. [↩]

feels like falling

Before play­ing at Slaysh we decid­ed to call our­selves The Jeff Band, fea­tur­ing Jesse as front­man and Father as Dad. Our half-hour set con­sist­ed of five songs, Jesse charm­ing the audi­ence with his ban­ter (as always), and not a sin­gle unre­cov­er­able mis­take made.

When there’s only one take, it’s easy for me to get caught up in focus­ing too intent­ly and los­ing my place. That’s why no mat­ter how much I prac­tice, I’m always ner­vous about play­ing solos and car­ry­ing vamps. Nevertheless, it’s good to know I’m still capa­ble of such feel­ings, and that in some ways, we’re for­ev­er chil­dren.

Howard the Fox Project

Howard the Fox Project on her Godin 5th Avenue, an arch­top with curves in all the right places.

Slowing down has­n’t been easy. Being effi­cient is an old habit of mine. Only now do I under­stand how much pass­es by when you’re con­stant­ly going at full pace. I’ve been savour­ing every expe­ri­ence, hold­ing each one in my aware­ness and let­ting it be as intense as pos­si­ble.

If only it did­n’t feel like I’m falling every step of the way, con­stant­ly expect­ing to land on sol­id ground. I’ve nev­er been so unsure of every­thing. The book says it’s nat­ur­al to expe­ri­ence some unnerv­ing ground­less­ness when the foun­da­tion of old beliefs falls away, but know­ing this is all part of the process does­n’t make it any eas­i­er. I nev­er would have expect­ed to be going through so much upheaval at this point in my life.

French toast loaf

French toast loaf is the most inge­nius thing since syrup.

Good com­pa­ny has been help­ing me ride out the storm. People have been nur­tur­ing my sense of secure attach­ment by say­ing the things I need to hear, help­ing me get shit done, and tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to make plans. If only it did­n’t leave me feel­ing even more over­stim­u­lat­ed and dis­tract­ed at a time when I’m con­stant­ly try­ing to remain focused and present.

makeshift wings

I’m ready for the win­ter. To be reborn with the first snow­fall that cov­ers the grass, awash in muf­fled seren­i­ty.

Time is mea­sured in weeks, not by the cycle of day and night, and this makes every­thing pass at a blis­ter­ing pace. The good weeks involve bacon break­fasts and peo­ple bring­ing me food and new projects and Magic nights. The bad ones involve bat­tles with my old arch neme­sis, acne, and his side-kick, scar­ring-on-my-fuck­ing-nose.

I’ve been deal­ing with this over­whelm­ing sense that any­thing can change. So much has left me feel­ing like there’s no cer­tain­ty any­more. Maybe that’s why I’ve stopped dream­ing. I have no idea what to expect from the future, and I don’t know if that scares me or gives me hope.

To stop myself from think­ing about it too much, I dis­tract with all the right things and few of the wrong ones. It’s a frag­ile form of sta­bil­i­ty. Some days, the strings, they don’t do enough.

Flirting With Disconnection

I had been writ­ing non-stop for weeks. I’m not sure if it was rest­less­ness, or if I had too much to get off my chest, or what. Sometimes I wrote two or three entries at the same time, because my mind went off in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It’s always been a habit to over-ana­lyze things.

Then at some point, the world stopped mak­ing sense. My mind went blank, leav­ing me with noth­ing to say. It’s like my brain had giv­en up on try­ing to fig­ure it all out. I guess it’s bet­ter than think­ing too much.

I feel so dis­tant from every­thing now. A strange numb­ness, unlike any­thing I’ve felt before. The things that used to mat­ter don’t seem impor­tant any­more. Or maybe I just stopped car­ing.

Every now and then, I get a surge of emo­tion, and I’m unsure of whether I should fight it or embrace it.

Therapy in 140 Characters or Less

Twice in one day? What?

Five years ago, I wrote that hope was the mind­killer. It can be a euphor­ic feel­ing, but as the result of sev­er­al bad expe­ri­ences, the poten­tial for dis­ap­point­ment out­weighed the gain.

My way of deal­ing with dis­ap­point­ment was to assume the worst. It made me com­fort­able. There was cer­tain­ty, and I could move on.

So I had learned nev­er to hope. This is how I changed. This is how I adapt­ed. A defence mech­a­nism I used to pro­tect myself from being hurt. I had been fine with this, until today.

Perhaps it was hav­ing Julie tell me that I’m bet­ter than the atti­tude I have, or the life I lead1, but I’m filled with hope again. For once, I dare to dream of some­thing greater.

I want it and hate it at the same time. It gives me courage, but throws my world into uncer­tain­ty, like I’m set­ting myself up to be hurt again.

But Julie’s strong enough to believe in me and stub­born enough not to give up, because I’m not capa­ble of believ­ing in myself.

And maybe that’s enough to break the cycle.

  1. It made me real­ize I need some­one else to tell me cer­tain things, because I can’t see them for myself. I hate the fact that I can’t be strong enough for myself. I prob­a­bly should­n’t. It just means there’s some­thing else about which I’m being too hard on myself, which I’ll have to tell my psy­chol­o­gist about any­way. [↩]