Saturday, October 2, 2010

SATURDAY MUSINGS

I have seen people blog about different ‘challenges’ and this is the first one that I decided to participate in. I have been reading Lovebabz’s blog for a little bit and I think she is a cool, cool sister. Reading her recognition of what currently ‘is’ and why it has to change, made me think about how I feel if one is serious about change in there life, how to go about that change is to take the first step.


Always, the first step begins with the most mundane, overlooked of tasks. She describes her room and how it needs to be something more than it is right now, and how beneath all of the clutter, there is the potential for it to be what she wants and needs her room to be.


So I am glad that my little ‘fit’ happened the day before and I don’t feel self-conscious in taking her up on this challenge. What I would like to add to readers and those who have made a commitment (to themselves, if not to me) to follow along with me on my journey, that over the next three-and a-half months, you do allow me some ‘creative license’ in my entries here. There is something about the difficulties of life and how you deal with them that makes the triumph so much sweeter. Reading about Lisbeth Salander and how she has played the hand she was dealt, has earned her consideration to join other fictional characters who I don’t mind openly identifying with. Part of her appeal to me is that she has kept on going in spite of circumstances that would have left others cowering in a corner. Lisbeth deals with those in a way that is emblematic of my ‘less than good’ ethos, and I know that clearing up the clutter and accepting that it is going to be hard, is something that she personified for me. Plus, she does the ‘get back’ thing, for the times when she feels that she ‘owes’ someone.

With that said… the curtain rises…

SCENES FROM STUDIO A

I haven’t had someone flirt with me in such a long time that I have not really considered whether I am lonely or not. The incident had me think about the new adventures I have forward to in Omaha and the kind of people that I will meet when I start to live and be myself there. The excitement that I have gurgling in me once was reserved for birthday parties and summer vacations 5th grade. The year is 6th grade and junior high, and from bigger boys to be bullied by and comparisons to girls for whom puberty has them filling out their figures while Mother Nature has not yet seen it fit that such outwardly maturation has come your way, I think is a the first of what will become an increasingly rapid series of changes and growing up really begins. Elementary school was so, well, elementary and there is more to the relationships that start to form in junior high. You start seeing people who are really ‘foreign’ to you, from neighborhoods and places that may as well be from a different state if not another country where ‘English’ is one of the language options and the Lil’ Wayne, Katy Perry and realities shows about New Jersey poseurs highlights popular culture.

When the ‘exercise Jill’ came up to me Wednesday evening, I thought about how cool it would have been had we ran into each other in June. But we didn’t and we merely made good conversation as we did our respective workouts. When I rode home and would pass by prospective places for me to de-camp and start anew, the illusion looked very inviting, in the way that free falling from the edge of a cliff does to a person wanting to experience freedom does. Not to mention that I would no longer have to think about what is going to happen between Nebraska and me… which is a ‘Mark thing’ that I have had to wrestle to the ground and pin for a count.


Morning drizzle was not enough to prevent me from getting up and going to Mickey D for morning chow. A hidden bargain meal at this particular location is a two hotcake-for a-dollar deal, that I gladly partake of. There hasn’t been a whole lot of talk about the everyday and I think I have mentioned why already, as it was a part of a calculation made when I got here and aimed for Omaha. I am going to miss enough about this place as it is, and did not want to add to that feeling or forming any kind of attachment than what would already occur (see, I knew that I was going feel a sense of belonging here… Detroit, after all, IS my home).


Sitting and enjoying my full ‘value breakie’, a young family of three, the child being a toddler I would guess at being a 3- year old, came in for a meal. As it was on the edge of the lunchtime switchover and that is what they had came for, they three of them, sat at a nearby table. One of those ‘eternal flashes’, a moment in time where your mind races through hundreds if not thousands, of different possibilities against the one reality that did happen (and again proving why wondering ‘could have been’ weighs heavier on the mind than ‘I am going to take my shot’). For me today, I thought about how different a three year gap in age looks to a 40-something than it does to a 20-something.  I think the age difference between Nebraska and myself mirrors the gap between my ex-wife and I, with in the former couple, I am the senior in age.


It isn’t that I do not have images of the ‘three of us’, my ex-wife, her daughter and me that was similar to the scene that I was looking at in McDonald’s. I definitely know that my stepdaughter and I had our own little adventures together, along with my twin sisters, where we would go to a mall or grocery shopping and giving someone else the surge of emotions that I had eating my morning breakie.

DOING WHAT’S BEST… DOING WHAT WORKS

For me, that is.

I am going to make that a priority if not THE priority when I make the choices when it comes to making decisions for my life.  By that I mean that I will funnel everything through whether or not it is 'pro-Mark' or not. Part of my bitching about doing things for other people at this particularly intense time of my life, is that I feel that I would be playing a part in a play that I had no desire to even audition for. Not only that, this ‘last act of penance’ alters my immediate future planning. Having other reasons than filling a need in someone else is making this a lot easier to handle and it now is something to look forward to other than to ‘get it over with’.

Becoming comfortable with the strain of effort and the kind of stress that working towards an unseen goal is another ‘something’ that I think will bring to me, a peace of mind. It usually does. I flash back to discussions with my friend about my coming out west, and how I look forward to sleeping on the floor and having the quiet and solitude that has been missing in my life. She’d take offense (not that she get put off anymore than anyone else would in growing closer to me… it always works like that for me… and really, it IS cool and no worries, at least none for me), thinking that I am saying she is going to ‘bring me’ out to Omaha and leave me to fend for myself in the wilds of the plains. I should have done a better job at explaining or worked harder at having her understand that I was merely speaking from the experience I have. Starting from scratch means just that and all I was trying to express when I would talk about ‘sleeping on the floor’.

This time next week I will be on the highway somewhere between Chicago and Iowa City (I am guessing…). The butterflies in my stomach will prolly have grown to the size of gypsy moths, but I will be ok.

4 comments:

Ken Riches said...

Hard to believe it is that close. You know I support this decision, never having to ask...

Babz Rawls Ivy said...

Woo-Hoo! I am glad we are fellow souls on the journey. And I am honored and thrilled that you read me as much as you do...thank you. Blogging is a lonely thing and you never know who is lurking, reading or caring about what you have to say. I am taking the 100 days, one day at a time. I am not allowing myself to race ahead. This moment is sweet and I am owning it.

I certaily will pop in and check on you... better add you to my blog roll to stay up with you :)

laurenne said...

i love this challenge! And I think so many others (almost everybody!) needs to do the same when it comes to being a pushover.
You shouldn't do anything in life that you don't want to do.
Easy to say!
Also, I can't believe nobody's flirted with you! Don't believe it at all. My mom saw your comments on my blog and said you were (in her words) a hunk! ha! Moms.

Toon said...

The word 'challenge' gets uglier the older I get.