Holding my breath

A friend wrote about that feeling that might be summed up by people in our lives in a single word: Disillusionment. But how it's really something much more complicated.

She wrote about how a momentary thought breeds other momentary thoughts. Usually harmless day dreams of what life would be like in an alternate universe. Where you've made different choices.

It stirred me.

When I'm at my worst - I think of disillusionment as moribund.

A death spiral. Nothing good will ever be again.

The clinical amongst you might call that depression. I'm sure it is that and more.

But it's complicated.

At the point of disillusionment we try to measure our worth against the perceived value we've placed on others.

It is a losing strategy.

There's always a thumb on the proverbial scale.

I keep having to tell myself that my shortcomings are each important cogs in some machine I can't fully comprehend but must trust.

We could be self assured and be wrong. We can be angry and be wrong. We can be happy and be wrong. We can be kind and wrong. We can be wrong any number of ways. We will be wrong many number of ways.

We can be right and be wrong.

But if we have hope we can be wrong and move on.

We may not know how our stories end but we know they will. Someday.

So today, I must remember that there is always something else. There is always a place to go. To be. To explore. To rediscover.

This life is insignificant and everything - it is tiny and huge - and no one, especially ourselves, has all the tools needed to measure it with any real precision.

Importance is relative.

Placement is arbitrary.

Happenstance can be amazing.

None of it matters.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Social diseases 2.0

Can't say I was surprised about a new study that says sexual harassment in school-age children is widespread and pervasive.

I was a teen once.

It was pretty bad then.

But now ... with the speed of your wifi connection ... it's probably going to be the worst social disease ever.

You know ...

If I were a fatalist.

Or something.

According to the report in The New York Times:

Girls reported being harassed more than boys — 56 percent compared with 40 percent — though it was evenly divided during middle school. Boys were more likely to be the harassers, according to the study, and children from lower-income families reported more severe effects.

“It’s pervasive, and almost a normal part of the school day,” said Catherine Hill, the director of research at the association and one of the authors of the report.

This most recent statistic is up significantly from similar reports just three years ago.


It doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to see that surging hormones and immaturity combined with the ease of access to cell phones and wifi - not to mention a virtual ocean of other immature, hormonally charged neophytes just waiting at the ends of their facebook accounts ready and waiting to "Share."

But what do we expect? We all know adults - some of whom in power - who haven't matured past a middle school understanding of interpersonal relations.

We have politicians who aren't practicing what they preach.

Add to that an increasingly diminished journalistic standard, where ridiculing ordinary strangers is not only accepted but status quo.

The noise is just getting louder.

And what do we learn?

Not much.

We even have debate over morality of sex education, as some parents and politicians practically up in arms over schools' plans to offer sex ed in public schools, and yet a zero tolerance policy for pretty much anything that could be considered distasteful or potentially illegal, harmful or a target for litigation.

I can't wait to start reading about politicians creating more laws we can't enforce.

In short. I think we're fucked.

Of course an energy shortage could be the most hopeful thing ever.

If you think of it that way.

Hang ups ...

Have to admit, I'm a little sad that the baby days are behind me. The not having a fundus to measure makes every annual visit that much more bleak.

But that little hang up isn't really what I'm kvetching about today.

Today I'm interested in the picture at the top of this post.

I took this with a camera phone, ran it through Photoshop and voila! Instant illustration. While I'm amazed and excited about this discovery, I'm also a a little terrified at what it heralds. The devaluation of true talent by technology.

A few years from now the guy who repairs the car will be doing heart bypass surgery as a lucrative little side business.


So.

What's your Hang Up?

Sounds like somebody has a case of 'The Mondays'

I am not depressed.

I am tired.

I am overwhelmed by inertia.

I think if I got regular exercise I would have more energy.

I do not get regular exercise.

I tried to exercise this past weekend and was thwarted by the awakening of my son

... who won’t allow me to do anything in his presence that doesn’t include him in some appendage-like way.

My husband probably thinks the situation is well deserved.

He's probably right.

The boy, after all, is still nursing. Still sleeping in our bed.

He is why we are tired.

Or more accurately ... My inertia is why he is causing me to be the way I am ...

I don't blame you if you can't follow that.

It doesn't make sense.

Exercising makes sense.

My husband gets up at the crack of dawn. I hear him downstairs gliding in place in the living room. The ski machine is now wedged between the couch and the toys. In front of the television. Like everything else we own.

Momentary.

Distractions.

The scraping of wooden ski against the metal rollers is rhythmic to itself alone. The sound of talking - a morning news broadcast - is just a backdrop of babble on war, and destruction and apathy. All of it floating up through the floor, filtered.

Diminished.

We have settled in here.

Few boxes are left to be unpacked.

Things that finally have a place are being encroached upon by the things of new desires.

Get healthy. Need the fitness machine. Bring it in.

Need to fill time. Make stuff. More and more stuff.

Some things that were waiting for a place, wait no longer.

A counter is made especially for the under-the-counter television.

Move. Perch. Pile.

The landscape changes daily. I don't seem to change with it. Nothing is as I thought it would be.

Most days I can accept that.

Most days I can just keep plodding forward. I can keep believing there is a purpose. For me. For this, whatever it is.

I can remember all the times I listened to people say they could have been just like …

And all the times I thought: 'Nope. You couldn’t have been just like ...

'You are not ...

'You are nowhere near ...

... Of course, neither am I.

We are all jealous of Dot-dot-dot's success.

We all think it could have been us.

But it couldn’t have been us.

When did I stop moving forward?





...I am not depressed.

I am overwhelmed by inertia.

Potty Mouth

There's nothing worse than refering to a bench in one's dinning room as "The OUTHOUSE."

Well, maybe the fact that the children think it's fun to play in the "Outhouse" is worse.

Although, what do I know? I seem to have no trouble "doing business" under a photograph of "The Fall 2003 PROBABLE Champions" of Chatham's Over-30 Soccer Team.

The navel-gazing rhetorical question that *might* just break that camel's back

So ... when you've gotten the children breakfast, and you've washed the dishes from the night before, and you've gathered lunches, wiped counters and swept the floors (not to mention p*ssed off the husband by not caring what he gets done in the house while you are away ... so long as he gets the youngest child to put on clothes) ...

AND there are still 15 minutes before you have to battle your way to the car and the commute and work ...

So you sit down with your lukewarm coffee to watch your kids as they play ... and watch the Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Walter Matthau narrating) because they, unlike you, really can multi-task.

AND then your littlest one creeps around the corner of the chair that's facing yours, peeps his little scrunched-up face in your direction and crooks his finger as if he's waving at you with some imaginary puppet ...

You just look at his beamish little face and have to ask yourself ...

What *bleeping* JOB is worth missing this all day long?

And your brain snaps you back to sanity: The one that provides health insurance benefits.

And you can't help but hope that someone, anyone, you've elected to public office realizes the costs of doing nothing are just too high.

And they finally do something about it, even if it costs them the next election.

Often, doing the right thing hurts.