#TIL about a Christmas carp and now I want one

[amylehpamer]

rut and roll

"Do something each day that scares you"

My thought when I read this on posters in sub par cafes or on Lululemon bags is FUCK OFF.

An Australian translation would be "get amongst it", and I suppose it's all derivative of "Carpe Diem". However it's expressed, the reality is I'm allergic to the concept. The allergy presents itself in deep sighs, audible to my partner from across the room, aggressive nail biting and a very defensive tone.  

I don't like doing things that scare me. I don't like to be scared. I avoid compromising situations. In my case these situations vary from loud clubs to dog parks to meeting new people. I colour in the lines. And yes, everyone who has ever seen a counsellor/psychologist.. I know it all boils down to the fact that I don't like being out of control. Still, I don't want to grab life by the scruff of the neck and make it my bitch. I don't want to live loudly.  Life needn't be my bitch. I don't know which way to YOLO*.  And til now I've done nicely at achieving what I'd like at a steady, achievable pace. I've had a good dose of luck based on a great deal of preparation.

But I am stuck right now. And my attitude is a big problem.

My resistance to motivation is getting worse as I get older. I'm becoming a crone. And it is because I am scared. Unlike some of our neighbours, I am not scared of brown people, or even automation taking over my job. Who hasn't worked with a few robots in their time already (boom, tish). I can't go online without seeing towering achievement after towering achievement. People are fucking miraculous and motivated and continually asking things of themselves that push boundaries and surprise and elevate those around them. Fuck you, Facebook friends, for elevating the rest of us by association. Social media proves itself time and time again to be quagmire of shitness: its existence as a distraction, its fuelling of my clothes addiction and severe reckoning with my previously decent body image are just a few of these shit things. However, rising up from this fetid pit of consumerist, self hate motivating propaganda is a glorious local news bulletin of achievement. It is magnificent.

Things I love about the internet/social media No longer are parents reduced to a birth notice as the basis for congratulations on a new born. We now get fully detailed origin stories. It is always a genuinely great read and the photos are beautiful and the outpouring of love is real and life affirming.

People can post a clip of themselves singing and it gets watched and shared and praised. And probably bitched about a little, but that's not what I'm focusing on here.

New jobs, new homes, new hair. I love that every blow wave gets its bit of airtime, that birthdays get acknowledged and that every end of year we state our resolutions like we mean it and rescind them as soon as we capitulate during FebFast.

Podcasts!!!

You can write a dumb blog about being an unmotivated crone and at least your sister will read it and share it (not hinting, Stef, you're just very supportive and I appreciate that). If you just wrote shit down in your diary 15 years ago, no one was going to see it and printing it out and handing it out to friends at Christmas would be a little on the nose. Although, I have a mortgage now and maybe self publishing my essays on existing could save me a little Christmas cashola. Bookmark this thought, Amy.

Anyway, the social media can be a good realm for outlets and boosts. It can also be a cesspool of muck: destructive, hurtful and a vortex into which productivity goes to die. I have written another post all about this that I probably wont post cause it's not going to help any of us, because do I really need to add fuel to that bin fire?**

The point is, my point here is.. Despite getting some things done in my time, I now have down time and instead of feeling liberated and flexible I feel scared again.  And feeling scared is different to doing things that scare you.  It's pathetic and passive and makes me feel small and inferior. I've lost some groove. And getting a little older makes achieving anything BIG and life changing seem exponentially more difficult. The decreasing elasticity in my face seems to relate directly to my inability to bounce back from rejection. Vulnerability has never been my strong suit, particularly in public, and instead of liberating me it's causing heartache and volatility.  

Quite basically, I am human and I don't know what to do about it.  I'm a high achiever that doesn't know what's worth achieving. Sure, I got some skills but they may need retooling. And amidst all this happening from within my own ticking brain, on the outside I'm fighting with my boyfriend, my dad doesn't believe in climate change, and I'm only just climbing out of the dumb shock of being advised by a doctor to quit performing altogether so I could make a life more suited to being a mother, which I should aim to be within the next year. Or else.  

It's a bizarre and unbalanced life, this one, and it's gotten the better of me more days than it hasn't so far this year. (It's ok, I know that doctor is a crock. I only wish I had a good response on the day. I just cried a lot.)

So tonight I write. I write in thanks for the reminders that there is much super human happening around me. I write in fear for the world, because there's a lot happening around us that's scary and sad. I write to hold a giant mirror to myself, trying desperately not to criticise what I see. And I write to be productive. It's exercise, catharsis and yes, it is a way of forcibly scaring my scared self. I have emoted, I am now vulnerable. This is very uncomfortable for me.

Signing off, defeated by the positive messaging of Lululemon and mental health professionals but admittedly relieved that I have poured out some of the mess in my brain and done something. In protest, I'm going to attempt to live well within my comfort zone tomorrow. COME AT ME, COMFORT ZONE.

*YOLO is a really problematic concept for me. Do I to eat all the donuts and drink the wine because YOLO, or do I avoid refined sugars and alcohol because YOLO and your health is important in that one life of yours. I think I'm more in the latter team for YOLO (which just feels like the wrong team. It is the wrong team, isn't it?)

** I really just wanted an understanding place to detail my kaleidoscope of feelings after seeing an instagram video ad that showed a woman getting filler in her cheekbones. It was obscene in the extreme. But... is it actually the future that we will all be Maleficent and maybe I should jump on board and be a taste maker in the area, despite being fairly terrified of needles and also of Maleficent??

[through-the-red-door]

This Isn’t Easy, This Isn’t Clear and You Don’t Need Jesus ‘til You’re Here

We are officially in the second half of 2017. Is anyone else freaking out?!

 I swear Christmas was last week, but I woke up this morning and it is JULY.

 I knew it was coming; I’ve been dreading it for weeks. Living in denial about all the wasted time I’ve built up lately, about how quickly time passes and how the future already feels like it’s being eaten up minute by minute.

 It’s a very scary feeling. One that should spur a person into action. Carpe Diem and all that.

 But I haven’t moved. My anxiety and stress levels have been through the roof, but the competing depression anchors me much, much lower. The result is lying day after day after day in bed, utterly and completely terrified and so so tired.

 I wasn’t going to say anything. Saying something makes me look bad, like the oversharing, negative Nancy that I know I am. It’s embarrassing. It makes me feel weak. Bitter. Jealous. Which I also am.

 It’s not like I haven’t shared these struggles before but it’s been after they’ve passed, not while I’m in the thick of it.

 But I have been reminded several times lately that, as a Christian, I am part of a family who is called to bear one another’s burdens. I have to let that go both ways. Even when everything in me says to avoid being a burden at all costs.

 So here goes.

 I have been having a really, really rough time lately. In the past few weeks, it seems like every plan, every hope I had for my future has been put on hold, derailed or completely squashed. I had so many things to look forward to and now I have none. And my heart can’t help but cry, Not Again.

 I am angry. I am hurt. Disappointed. Beyond frustrated. Bitter. Jealous. Scared. Tired. So so tired.

 Most of you know of my recent hospital stay. I kind of hinted at it, but things get lost in cyberspace and I never came right out and said it, but that stay was probably the most difficult of my life. There have been plenty of times when I was in worse physical pain, but the emotional pain of this was unmatched. I felt like I was literally shackled to that bed.

 My foot is doing much better. It’s healing, although I’m still in a fair amount of pain whenever I step on it. This breakdown couldn’t have come at a worse time and, for what feels like the thousandth time, it has robbed me of opportunities, time and life.

I have had to bow out of going to camp for the first time since I was eight years old. Granted, I felt God leading me to step away this time before my foot broke down, but it’s so frustrating that this sealed the deal. It’s frustrating the way this snowballs into something big and life-interrupting every single time. It’s frustrating that I have been dealing with the same issue for half of my life now.

 It feels like I’ve been living the same day for a million years. Like that movie Groundhog’s Day, but with less humor and more crying.

 Everything in my life right now, and for so so long, is wait-and-see. My housing situation. My personal life. My driving lessons, which have been halted for the time being. Finances are the biggest reason behind this, but the breakdown of my foot made that decision clearer as well. We will still be looking for ways to raise funds for now, but I hate that I had gotten this far, faced my biggest fear, only to add it to the ever-growing list of on-hold, unmet goals.

 Speaking of unmet goals, my school career has also been derailed again. I am on year six of trying to earn my associate’s degree in in Human Services. I had two semesters left. I could finally see the finish line, even if I knew there would be more degrees, more years, more frustration up ahead. I was almost done with this leg of the race.

 Until I called to register for the fall and I ran into a big, fat road block. The last six classes that I need are only offered in Greenwood. An hour and a half away. At night. And oh yeah, I don’t even drive.

 After some discussion, I found there this is technically a detour that would work. I could get my associate’s of arts instead of human services, but that means many of my HUS classes were pointless and I would only be a second semester sophomore if/when I transfer. I know it’s petty, I know I’m being whiny, but I hate the idea of not completing what I set out to do. Settling, again.

 It. Just. Stinks.

 All of these things are temporary, non-eternal, ultimately unimportant things. My head knows this, but my heart is really rebelling against that right now.

 I just want to accomplish something. I want to go places, do things, make a difference. Live.

 And I really really don’t want to do it alone.

 All of these things on my seemingly doomed journey toward independence are Plan B (though, at this point I think we’re on Plan Q or something). These are not things I ever wished for, ever thought of as I was growing up. All I have ever ever ever wanted in life was someone to love. A husband. A family.

 That’s the hardest part of all of this - how utterly lonely it is. How absolutely isolated I feel and how desperate and scared I am. How embarrassed I am to admit to such a petty jealousy, but how deeply it reaches inside of me. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be overlooked. I don’t want to keep watching everyone else pair up and leave me in the dust when I know there’s nothing I can do to change it. It hurts and it breeds so much bitterness and anger and resentment and it’s suffocating. 

I’m having a hard time “believing love” of any kind right now.

Life isn’t fair, I get it. Others have it worse, I know. God has a plan, I want to believe it. It’s just so, indescribably, difficult when it seems that life is passing me by and there is nothing nothing I can do about it. It hurts and my heart, my soul, is exhausted from the fight.  

 So there it is. The whole, ugly truth. The way things really are. I hope I’m doing the right thing by putting this out there. Writing it certainly eases some of the pressure that had built up, but I hope it reaches someone. Makes someone feel less alone, and selfishly I hope it does the same for me. I need help carrying my burden, guys, and I want to help you too if you’ll let me. Isn’t that the point?