My Tent on The Beach

I have great potential to be a small person, I think.  It’s something I’ve known about myself for awhile.  A consequence of my rabid perfectionism. A sign of my ultra-competitiveness. A character flaw.  I can be a very gracious winner and a very, very sore loser.  I used to hide it better; it used to be that which would stoke the fire to go back to the drawing board, never lose, conquer or else.  Now, I find my energy wanes faster than it used to; my resolve can be less and less.  I lose more than I used to and I take it less well, in fact not well at all.

Perhaps this is the place of life in which having kids would be helpful.  There’s little room to look like a selfish ass when little eyes are on you.  But, like Charles Barkley, there are days I say I’m not paid to be a role model.  Today is that day.  I’m tired of doing a lot and getting no recognition.  I’m tired of being the hard worker and being rewarded with more work.  I’m tired of being the one to bend and never break.  I’m due for a break.  I’m breaking.  That’s it.  I’m broke.

Of course it doesn’t mean that tomorrow I’ll be un-broke.  It’s not a forever smallness; in fact, I think at the opposite end of the scale I’ve found an incredible well of patience that I never knew existed.  And maybe these two go hand in hand…when my patience has completely run out, when I’ve thrown everything I have at a problem and the problem ceases to loosen its hold…I’m just gonna throw a big, fucking tantrum about it.  I used to apologize for that.  But I’m tired and broke and I’m going to act like I’m three.  Do you ever see an unhappy three year-old?  Not really.  They either have what they want or they’re in the process of getting it–loudly.

Is it selfish? yes. Is it immature? Yeah, I guess.  But I’ve been an adult my entire life…I don’t recall ever having the luxury of selfishness…I’ve always been called on to take the high road, to be the bigger person, to take the responsibility because I could handle it when others could not.  I’ll just say this…living in Chicago has taught me many great lessons but none greater than the lesson of Lower Wacker Drive.  This street runs under the city, directly below Wacker Drive (and incidentally is where they filmed the Batman movies).  Anyway, you can get clear across the city in nearly half the time if you take LWD.  Is it gross down there? yes.  Do I want to live down there? No.  Does it get you from point A to point B faster than any other route? Yes.

Sometimes, the low road is the right one.  It may not be pretty and frankly it stinks but it’ll get you where you’re going in half the time.  It’s not always the answer but it sometimes is just the answer you need even if you might get choked by the exhaust.

I’m getting a new post in within a month of the last so that is progress in my book.  After a couple months of hiatus, I’ve decided to fire the old girl up again (no, not me…thanks for asking) and give back to regular reflecting its glorified status of old.  In some ways, it seems obsolete this mode of reflecting…even I think if I can’t get it done in 140 characters, what am I doing?  But recently I’ve re-learned the value of capturing thoughts more substantial than mere snippets of frustration or mirth.  What I’ve learned in this time away is that there’s no legacy of those things…thrown away thoughts…that’s all they are.

What I’ve especially missed is the log of my own thoughts that writing like this creates.  We don’t think in a vacuum…we don’t have disconnected ideas…they all stem from exactly where we are at a particular time and place.  And as I’m having a go-around yesterday with Kristine about cycles and patterns of relationships and friendships and discussions, I realized I missed my own proof of those very things.  Over time, I can be my own advisor…because something I thought about 17 days ago might have been a problem then but might just be the perfect answer now.

So…I’m back to it…for my own sake.  Of course, things are a little different.  In the storm of the last couple months I got a job…like a real one…with a desk and a chair and a coffee station…and I can only wear jeans on Fridays.  And I may have sorta changed my dissertation topic…kinda…okay…really.  And I cut my hair…I might be moving to Illinois for reals (like my license plates and everything)…and I’m an aunt…and a godmother…to two different kids.  Cool.  And I’m not thinking about moving to a different apartment…in fact, I’m painting the dining room and thinking about getting a dining room table.  And opera is my new hobby. And I have business cards now.  And I almost started asking that people call me Kathleen…but then I got freaked out by the formalness of it so I guess I’m Katie for life. And…

With all this newness, I did think about changing the name of the blog.  It comes from a comment friends years ago made about not ever seeing the place I lived…it could be a tent on the beach somewhere and no one would be the wiser. With this new level of stability, maybe a tent isn’t the right place to think about being for good.

And then I remembered I paid for this domain name…so a tent it shall be.  Long live the tent.

I always have a feeling that I wish I wrote more here.  Oh well, there are times to be busy and then there are times to reflect…I guess I’m just having more of the former at the moment.  But since I do have this minute and I haven’t written a list in ages, I thought I might take the chance to write down the stuff I’m actually aware of that really scares me…that I am actually afraid to think about.  I’m not going to examine why I am in such avoidance or what that says about me as a person (although I’m sure all 3 of you armchair psychologists…and Nori…hi Nori…will have fun having a go).  Here they are in no particular order (or to you armchair psychologists, in a subconcious primary order):

1. Learning French. I think it’s because I cannot imagine ever making the sound required to do that correctly.

2. Skydiving or anything that involves defying gravity.  No and no.

3. Telling people that they really bug the hell out of me.  Not collectively…just certain individuals.

4. Losing out or being left out of things. Just things.

5. Being forgotten.

6. Going blind.

7. Losing my voice…both literally and metaphorically.

8. Having kids…like giving birth to a child of my own.

9. Being humiliated.  I only know this one after the fact and I’ll tell ya…the moment I realize I feel humiliated my palms actually sweat. I feel like I’ll never recover from it.  And then I do and everything’s fine.

10. People who are intimidatingly free. Like they live only on whims.  I need a plan…always.

11. Other drivers.

12. The feeling that I’m missing opportunities right in front of me because I’m thinking too big.

13. That I’ll never be able to really relax.

That’s all I can think of right now and I’m falling asleep so that’ll have to do.  But 13 is enough, isn’t it?  Much more and I’d raise a lot of red flags…although this really does feel like the tip of the iceberg.

I feel conflicted.  Usually I love getting together with friends.  It’s a respite for me…a chance to put down the weight of everything I carry on a regular day and just float for awhile.  But I’ve been particularly social over the past couple days and I’m feeling exhausted by it–abnormally so.  The usually light, airy times actually became halting, stuttering, difficult even.  It felt like whatever usually greases the wheels was gone and instead two mechanical wheels were scraping along together, creating sparks and a droning sound.  It’s been really bizarre.

I have to wonder how much (if not most) of this is completely me.  Despite my packed calendar…and I’m not joking…literally from sun up to sun down I’m just running, I feel distanced.  I actually want distance.  At my most haggard, I feel like I just want people to leave me alone.  But I know, in my heart of hearts, I don’t.  I just want not to work so hard at making things feel smooth and easy.  I think I need a vacation.

Yesterday was kind of the pinnacle of these feelings.  A friend I like very much and trust implicitly proceeded to have a very challenging conversation–not one that I felt was mutually challenging.  I maybe even felt attacked though I know that wasn’t the intention.  As with most conversations that I walk away from feeling a little tender, I know there was some profound truth in there…the tenderness comes from the fact that I know that he knows more about me than I’m comfortable with…and he knows it intuitively.  This is not information I’ve given; he, being the astute observer he is, sees it.  And now I have heartburn.  I really hate not being able to manage the information I radiate about myself.

But the other part of the tenderness stems directly from this suggestion, however implied or faint, that I’m ambiguous. It’s interesting being me, I’ll admit that right now.  Because at the same time one friend tacks me to the wall for apparently making no life choices and no decisions, from the other side I have people critiquing me for making statements that are too large, to aggressive, too loud.  To them, I’m intimidatingly strong–either willed or stated.  I think these are opposites.  Wishy-washy and intimidating–how does one actually achieve both?

The problem is I’m down with neither.  Neither one of these ideas fits me.  I think if you know me, you know I’m not ambiguous.  Is it hard to know me…yes…and I think that’s a problem for people.  I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve (my sleeves, honestly, aren’t big enough…I’m very sensitive…every square inch of sleeve would be occupied) and I trust very few.  I think, also, if you know me you know I’m not intimidating.  I am loud.  I’m tall.  Okay, I’m a big presence.  But it’s not my fault people automatically assume that’s some kind of power I wield because at the end of the day I’m more likely to listen to you and what you have to say and consider that at the same time that I consider who you are and why this might be important to you.  How can this possibly EVER be considered intimidating?  Because I have a utile mind, I’m intimidating…or because I don’t exude warm, fuzzy, cuddliness every time someone does something they want recognized?

I guess most bothersome about the whole discussion was the implied notion that I’m running away from something…myself, what I want, whatever, I don’t know.  I am not running.  I’m standing here examining my life more rigorously than most people I know.  I am flying in the face of my fears…it feels like I’m walking through fire here to make the changes I need to make in order to get what I want.  And I’m still compassionate when it comes to you.  So I don’t want to hear that I’m running or not working hard enough or not making the tough life decisions.

If I appear ambiguous to you it’s because you’re not working hard enough to know me.

I’ve known a lot of interesting people over the years–for some reason, maybe random, I was vaulted back to thinking about a particularly exceptional guy I knew back in the early days of the journey.  His name is Steve…I assume he’s still doing his thing.  There’s a lot of good reasons to remember him; he was full of resonance.  He radiated: wisdom, love, grace.  I’ve never really met anyone else that can do that.  And still be a normal kinda “guy” too.  He was (and I’m guessing still is) a phenomenon. And this morning I woke up with his resonant baritone in my head–it’s literally the first time I’ve thought about him in probably five years–but there his voice was giving me the first thought of the day…and it’s a good one.

Usually I wake up with some trace of pop culture looping through my conscious.  It’s not rare for Lady Gaga to be all up in there; yesterday I woke up to the Black Eyed Peas suggesting, “I have a feeling (ooh-ooh), that tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a good, good ni-igh-ight.”  Even if I tried I couldn’t tell you how the dial in that random jukebox up there works.  But last night I went to bed upset–always a major no-no.  I can’t even say that I was upset “at” something or that the feeling was even clear.  I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t nervous or sad…I was just…”not feeling great” about things.  Lot’s of things.  I’ve taken to being bolder about taking risks lately and hanging myself out there to be critiqued or called on the carpet.  I, like many, want to take the least riskiest risks; I do things that might be out of my comfort zone but that seem to have the probability for a predictable outcome.  Go ahead judge me…I like to plan my risks.  Anyway, of course nothing has turned out the way I thought it would.  I expected people to respond in certain ways and when they didn’t it threw me off.  And it kinda stung.  It’s still stinging, actually, and last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was feeling particularly lost as to what I should do. How could I fix all of these things so I could feel better about them?

“Always do what love requires,” Steve whispered in my ear this morning as I woke up feeling guilty about choosing sleep over yoga.  And his voice intoning that refrain over and over played like a loop in my head for the first hour I was awake.  And it was (and is) the answer to all of the questions I had last night as I was drifting off.  It explains how to deal with the ways people have disappointed me over the past couple days, it prescribes for me how to graciously handle all of the good wishes yesterday when that is really hard for me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  It gives me a guide to consider in how I talk to myself in those moments when relentless critique seems the only correct action.  In so many ways it just is the answer.

Structurally, it’s about as close to a perfect answer we could ever hope for.  When? Always. What? Do. Do what? Whatever love requires…requires. It’s 100% responsive in nature; it acknowledges my love for different people and things is 100% unique in each case…and therefore, what that means depends on each case, each circumstance, each interaction.  And it roots my intention; not in selfishness, not in an agenda…but in love.  It is the prescription for compassion.  It asks me, out of love, to respond to what someone else needs (or what I need).  That is the challenge of love, I think.  It requires we know we’ll do something we would not choose otherwise for the sake of the person(s) we love.

Obviously, I think I need not dwell on how hard this is in reality.  It implies accepting others as they come to us, with their own needs and constraints.  It means consistently standing on that line, knowing you may not get this in return.  It means challenging your own fears for the sake of someone else.  It could mean having to let someone go.  Ugh.  Just thinking about the challenge of this makes me nauseous; this is a lesson in advanced compassion.  Even now, and every minute, I wonder if I’m up for it.

And then I think…I just have to be.  It’s such a good answer, the answer I was asking for that I cannot ignore it.  I guess it just means I’ll try.  That’s all I can promise.  Because I just cannot receive a gift like that, in such a timely manner and in response to such a direct request for help, and disregard it.

“Always do what love requires,” he said to me as though he was just standing there right next to me, waiting for me to wake up to share the notion.  Thanks Steve.  It’s good to hear your voice.

A friend of mine who shall remain nameless cracks me up with his yoga malapropisms.  Let’s just say he’s not a yoga practitioner…and because of that, I love when he humors me and asks about how yoga is going.  The other day he opened with, “So…how’s downward-seeking dog coming?”  This is a hybrid of mockery and sheer not-knowery, but the actual pose is called downward facing dog…which makes the new title a darker, perhaps more morbid version (although more closely connected to my actual experience of working in downward facing dog which is just generally sheer torture).  Although, I digress…I don’t want to talk about downward facing dogs or even yoga.

I want to talk about the insights I’ve stumbled on this week…and they’re really about going inward.

Oh this single, solitary life.  Oh this PhD, dissertation-devising life.  I think I can imagine no situations more isolating…put them together and…well, you’re the equivalent of a hermit…no, you’re the troll that lived under the bridge.  At least a hermit sounds, in some faraway place, honorable.  But the troll…just warty.  And that’s what this summer was for me…warty and horrible…and friggin hot.  So it’s not coincidence that within hours of it cooling off, I’ve come back around to some of my senses.  But not without effort and a commitment to cleaning out the dark little corners of my life that I’d rather forget are there….the places I retreat to when I feel warty…and thus breed more wartiness.  If I wanna get out from under the bridge, I gotta start clearing that stuff out.

When I started to work at clearing out the underbrush, I realized a really interesting (and potentially devastating), nasty little habit I have.  When warty, I spread myself really thin.  Not with work or not enough sleep…I call and contact everyone I know in a (often futile) attempt to “be acknowledged.”  “Hey guys, I’m Heeeerrrrrre.  No, over HEEEEEERRRRRE.”  I’ve always thought that keeping social contact would soothe the wounded soul.  As it turns out, not really.  In fact, in this experience, it’s not unlike the Horcruxes in Harry Potter. Though not intended to make me immortal, each little speck of social interaction I would try to create would spread me out literally too thin.  No one was home.  People weren’t answering the phone.  I was getting the “text message response” (you know the one…when you’ve called and they return the message not with voice mail or a call but with a text…regardless of what it says on that phone, just the action says, “riiiiiight….I’m not going to talk to you today.”)  “No one cares. I’m insignificant. I’m an afterthought,” says my warty, trollish internal chatter.  Thus ensues more panic, frustration…ultimately isolation.

So, on this last round of wretchedness, out of nothing other than just not wanting to talk to anyone, I sat with the silence.  I sat with the aloneness.  I actually moved away from people.  And it ended up being a strengthening experience.  In a myriad of ways.  When I stopped flailing around in a panic, thinking I was moving toward making a better situation, and just was there in my world, in my moment…things actually transformed.  People responded in new ways.  They met my change with changes of their own, changes I had hoped to have but could never see how I’d get them.  It was incredible, actually.

I think my struggle in yoga with downward facing dog is not a coincidence to this story.  The whole spiritual point of that pose is strengthening in places that we don’t often use for protection.  When we protect ourselves we cover our vulnerabilities with our stronger parts.  We turn our shoulder into oncoming force or use our shoulders to fully absorb the weight of force, whether it’s our bodies falling or hitting into something.  We tense the neck and turn the head.  We firm our hamstrings, preparing to spring into action.  We cover and run.  Downward facing dog requires you to kind of reverse all of that…you’re deeply stretching your shoulders and hamstrings, thus rendering them not the strong points but the stretched points.  You open your chest to the floor, use the muscles of your torso and upper and lower arms to push you away from the ground…you relax the neck and jaw.  You open…you uncover…you dis-cover…or if you’re me you start sweating profusely as the muscle fibers in your shoulders and hamstrings audibly rip.

Interestingly, though, it mirrors what has to happen in order to be an inward seeking dog.  As I have to open my chest and torso in downward facing dog, I have to open myself to being alone, by myself, quiet, not panicking.  As I strengthen those tiny little muscles (that kill to the 12th power when you pull them) around your back and ribs, I also strengthen my resolve to emotionally support myself and not need to outsource my troubles.  As I learn to breathe through the hellfires burning in the backs of my legs and shoulders, I learn to withstand the heat of that panic that tells me, “no one cares what happens to you.”  It’s a journey that has to be settled into…and one that requires an acceptance of the challenges and an acknowledgment of the good sure to come, even if in the present it hurts like sideways facing sonofoabitch.

I am an inward seeking dog…and I think I’m in the process of learning to be okay with that.  But I already know this much.  Inward seeking dogs aren’t really warty…not warty at all.  Let’s put a “w” in the win column on that insight.

The funny thing about insight is that I can have it firmly in my grasp one moment and the next thing I know it’s poof, gone.  What the hell?

Today I want answers.  I’ve been trying (and actually succeeding) about being more Zen about accepting what’s coming at me and living with decisions and, while I vaguely remember that, the actual content of those insights is incredibly gone from my head.  It feels like I’m back at square one today.

And here’s why.  This always happens to me.  At the point I was having insight, everything was theoretical.  No changes happening.  Today the changes are real…I’ve hit those “markers” of time that I set weeks or days ago and now it’s real.  Before it was an idea.  Today it’s anxiety.  I guess it’s good to have the insights first…at least I can harken back to them and no matter how crazy they sound now, at least I know I thought them and that I do possess the ability to think them again…if I try…real hard.

Change is hard.  Uncertainty is hard. Working to fight a knee-jerk panic reaction is very hard.  And while I know that what’s transpiring here today–school-related, friend-related, me-related–will absolutely work out in the end…

…today it feels not good.  And the challenge is working through…

I can’t say for sure but I think I was born without the gene that motivates me to get what I want.  I only say this because I’m consistently amazed with the ability of others to get what they want. Amazed.  Mystified even.

Take, for example, a woman I worked with about 10 years ago.  At that point she was 40ish (I think…oh man…), single, and, to be frank, really bossy bordering on obnoxious.  At that point in time she talked about getting married and having kids and people (including this people) rolled their eyes and couldn’t help but think, “Riiiiiight…okey doke.”  Well, who’s laughing now, friends?  It ain’t me.  This woman not only is married but adopted a child and now…she has the family she always talked about.  The one that everyone doubted.  She made it happen.  I’m amazed by that.

Probably one of the keys to this is identifying what you want but that’s part of my own mystification.  How do “people” know what they want?  On any given day I have no less than 3 ideas for career paths, life choices, and ways to keep things interesting.  All of them seem feasible.  All seem somewhat interesting at the very least.  And yet, I still cannot say with any resolve that I “want” particular things; I really feel like I don’t know what I want. And I’ve always felt this way.

I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.  The other day I was eating lunch with a friend and he asked whether I wanted to sit on the patio or inside.  ”Inside,” I said without hesitation and he starting laughing hysterically.

“Why are you laughing at me…is it my hair,” I wondered out loud.
“I’m just surprised.”
“Why…’cuz I want to sit inside…because we can sit outside if you want.”
“No,” he said. “I’m surprised you made a decision.”

Huh…story of my life.  Making decisions seems to be the key to honing in on what you want but I’m completely unthrilled by that idea.  How am I supposed to know what I should do?  I don’t know.  I envy the people who so clearly say things like, “I’ve always wanted to be a mother” or “the only thing I’ve ever been interested in is becoming a doctor.”  I can only say my experience has been the opposite; there are literally 2039874 things I want to be before I cash it in.  How in god’s name does one choose which direction to go?!? (I’m also a little frustrated because I surely thought this would work itself out in time…I figured when I got “older” I’d get more focused…ummmm…no.  Once again…the opposite.)

I’m ending this particular post because I know I want a snack before bed.

I just don’t know what it will be.

So Kristine (of “Hey my friend Kristine…” fame) started a blog and this excites me for many reasons.  1) She’s funny.  2) She’s a fellow armchair philosopher. 3) It’s called Tomballery and if ever there was a topic to blog about, it’s Tomballery.  Of course, she provides an excellent definition of it over at the blog itself: http://tomballery.blogspot.com which you should definitely check out…all 3 of you…but I’ll provide the context of the name.  We were discussing a friend of mine who really struggles with confrontation of any kind who, in his avoidance of it, actually creates confrontation for me.  Through our conversation we said he was basically outsourcing his balls–completely ducking out of the way of his mess knowing that I’ll then get smacked with the effects of his problem and, because I’ll deal with them, I’m actually doing his dirty work.  Hence: Tomballery.  Similar to Tomfoolery, except we’re talking about guts (okay, balls) and not foolishness.

Anyway, I digress.  She wrote a very interesting post about relationships and the point in which a relationship crosses the line from mutual responsibility to me just letting someone else off the hook for not giving me what I need.  But the one thing that really made me think was her question about the “sunsetting” of relationships–the natural falling away of those who once served a very important purpose but have since grown more distant and, sad to say, less important.  At the very least, our relationship to them has changed significantly.   I have to say, this notion both terrifies and intrigues me.

I have always been something of a warrior princess.  If I think something is important or worthwhile, I will clamp on to it like a vise and fight to the  death to keep it.  What I often lose sight of is that the process of holding on generally turns it into a mangled, ragged version of what it once was while I’m standing there sweaty and out of breath.  It would have been better for the integrity of whatever I’m holding and  for me if I’d have just let it go and slip away quietly…and maybe beautifully. There’s a certain grace to letting things go the natural way.

On the other hand, if I’m being sunsetted…well, that’s just about my worst fear which I’ve come face to face with before…and it’s still my worst fear.  Being let go always feels to me like a total rejection with a side of shame.  In whatever way, I’m so disappointing in this relationship that they’re not even going to try anymore.  Personally, I’m scarred by this–yes, I’ve been sunsetted–and frankly, I’ll always be a little skittish when I suspect someone’s leaving me before their time.  Kristine knows.  For one day a couple months ago I thought she was moving to Tampa and I freaked.  No, sunsetting and I will never meet in a spirit of love and friendship no matter who’s doing the sunsetting.  But it’s not because it shouldn’t happen. It just always hurts.

I think we’ve become used to having our own comfort at our control.  We have things when we want them.  We have choices…lots of choices.  We can artificially sustain things as long as we want (except life, but we’re pretty close to that too.)  That kind of life has allowed us to lose touch with the natural cycle.  Birth leads to life leads to decline leads to death.  That’s how it’s always been.  And I think there’s a truly natural wisdom in that.  And if we let each stage have its moment and respect it, I think there’s something inherently beautiful about each.

Letting go, I think is easy.  Accepting that something’s run it’s course.  That’s just about the toughest thing we have to deal with.  I think because we’re all a little bit warrior princess.

Exactly one month ago I was celebrating a huge push in getting two viable drafts of papers in and moving this whole dissertation process forward.  Today I sit before you with the stress having returned.  Why? I have about 3 weeks to go and the amount of work in that time seems staggering to me.  And that’s just to get to the start of the dissertation.  Some days (like 4 out of 7), I wonder what I’m doing.  But here are the mantras I’m using to get through:

1. Time is your friend.  You will not be suspended in this state forever.

2. Eat. Sleep. Do Yoga. Plan breaks.

3. Do it Now.

4. Don’t panic.  You’ve not really epically failed in your life up to this point.  This will be no different.

5. Don’t overthink. (Underthinking is never a problem but don’t do that either.)

6. Write while it’s light outside and at least a paragraph a day.

7. You will financially survive the next year.  Today is not the day to figure out how.

8. People are not out to get you. Work with them and accept their help if it makes sense.

9. Continue to make reasonable social plans and keep them.  Cancelling on them for PhD makes you a hermit.

10. Today is not the day to find your “inner genius.”  Just get it done.

This is go time.  And it’s funny that my pep talks have evolved over time.  But I will say I’m glad I have ‘em in their sum right now.  Because this is the hardest thing I’ve done.  After this, I think I might be able to conquer the world.