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’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.

It’s motivation to work out.  I have none.  I currently have a fully functional gym membership, all the time in the world, and I live three blocks away and I cannot force myself to go.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I view it as “the worst thing I’ll do all day” (even though once I get there, I actively disagree with myself).  Maybe it’s because my gym clothes suck (but I love them…).  I don’t know–I just cannot force myself to get there.

So, here’s what I need.  All 3 of you who read this…I need to know how you motivate yourselves to go.  Respond in your inner monologue, using the exact phrasing you use to tell yourself the gym is a good thing and you must go.  Maybe I just need an inner monologue update.

Until then, I think I’ve talked myself into yoga as a workout again.  Yoga’s wonderful…but it’s not making my jeans any looser, if ya know what I mean…