randomy randomness
I keep wanting to make an entry, yet I do not. What is up with that? I really have not abandoned my dear OD. Not in the least. I’m just…. I’m not sure what I am, honestly. I seem to be at some sort of strange…. crossroads. OOoooOOooo! No, I don’t know exactly what I mean by that either. I just seem to be perpetually cranky and restless and dissatisfied. With, oh, EVERYTHING. As usual, I blame the weather. Which is warmish (a plus) but grey and drizzly (a minus). This time of year is rough. It seems like spring, yet the weather can turn in an instant. We’ve had our biggest snows in March, and even early April. I don’t trust this place. I have to be on my guard! I can’t appreciate the non-freezing, almost-springlike weather, because it may go away!
SIGH.
I need a change. I don’t know what it is.
I started a Tumblr account, but seem to be awaiting divine intervention to create the most perfectly perfect blog in perfection. So I have yet to make the first entry. I did try last night to post some photos, but it was, of course, down.
I joined a writer’s group today which I have belonged to in the past, but I’d let my membership lapse. They have many many places to submit things, and I think maybe that is at least partially behind my current ….angst. I need to be doing something, and yet I am doing nothing!!! In all aspects of my entire life, actually, but I think the writing thing is really the most important piece of myself that I am currently totally neglecting. Well, I’m neglecting pretty much everything that can possibly be neglected, but I think that’s the biggest thing I’m neglecting. Along with excavating the basement.
I had a nice long chat with my brother this weekend — a rare nice long chat, as we hardly ever see each other- and after running his own business for 20-some years, he’s trying to get a new job. And suddenly he has not only one really good prospect, but TWO really good prospects. One is close enough to where he lives now to commute. The other is in….Charleston. My brother is 48 and has never lived anywhere but Asheville. For all but a few months of his life, he’s lived pretty much exactly where we grew up. (They had a trailer on one lot adjoining our parents’ lot, then moved another trailer to another lot adjoining our parents’ lot on the other side, and then built a house where the second trailer sat.) So the idea of moving to Charleston is pretty… radical. And complicated. They have three (adult) children who still live with/beside them, and three grandchildren with another due to arrive next month. How will they leave?? Will everyone follow them? They could, actually. The Charleston job is with a major MAJOR company, and there’s a ton of competition, but he got an interview. The other job would be really good too, and also is something he loves doing. And sounds like more of a sure thing.
My point in all that wasn’t really to tell my brother’s tale, but to relate something he said that rang seriously true. He said, "I’ve always just done what the {insert our real last name here}’s ALWAYS do – I’ve just sat around waiting for things to change!!"
Dude. WORD.
Our family is not exactly known for going out and breaking new ground, that’s for sure. We hang around waiting for something to happen and for things to change. I am waiting for my book to publish itself. After it finishes writing itself, of course. I am in my current job due to a series of lackidasical wanderings-around. Ladedadeda!!! I’m really lucky I ended up with as good a job as I have, actually. I’m the only person in my immediate family who has finished college. Both nieces and my nephew have taken classes — and Goth Chick was within ONE semester of finishing when she quit, and we are all trying to get her to go back and finish- but that’s it. Not that many of my aunts/uncles/cousins went to college.
What is my point now??? I’m not sure. Just that something needs to change and I need to figure out what that something is, and …DO IT. Quit waiting around twiddling my thumbs like a {insert my real last name here}!
That Great Moving Scheme of my own from a few entries back was part of this, I think, but Baker B and I kind of came to our senses and realized that we do not have the funds to move. What we have both agreed, though, is that we WILL FIX UP OUR HOUSE. We will make some improvements and then if we do reach a point where we can sell it, it will bring in more money. And I won’t feel like I’m going to completely lose my mind. We’re getting new carpet if I have to put it down myself. (Of course, last night Baker B spilled an ENTIRE GLASS OF WINE on the nasty carpet that we have, and said, "we can’t get new carpet! Too many things get spilled!!!")
What I really want to do is move to England! Right this minute!!! I think The England Adventure ruined me for this life.
SIGH.
Okay, I’ve spent all afternoon writing a long-overdue entry instead of smashing my nose against the grindstone like I’ve done every single other day in recent memory. My office has been very busy, and I’m very sick of work too (although I DO appreciate that I HAVE this job, and that we ARE busy). This was like a little mini-vacation– and now I actually DO feel a little better. Writing always helps, and thank you lovely readers for listening to my whiny angst!
Gold Stars all around!
OOOOHHHH! Which writing group? Congrats to your brother. Maybe his example will spur the others on? RYN: One more thought on your note: I think that as the rhetoric builds (and it will), the Republicans who are NOT extremists will move further and further away. Already, many have indicated an Obama vote. I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as Romney thinks, especially as he moves farther right.
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so don’t get carpeting. get something else instead?
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RYN: I had no idea either – I was thinking it was a totally local Grampian (Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire) hickey thing until you mentioned it and here it was all over the world just about! Amazing.
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Oooo scary stuff for your brother! That’s pretty much how I live my life as well – I don’t seem to have the energy or wherewithal to take any bull by the horns much less ride it so things tend to happen which of course makes me feel all out of control like I can never take charge of my life and I’m all full of angst as well. *Sigh* What are we like??!
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Yep, the only thing that changes when you sit around waiting for change is that your bum gets all old.
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I live for the day when I can rip every last shred of carpet out of my house. I hate every dirty, worn out fibre of it.
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The sensible thing for your brother is to take the local job. A new job is change enough without uprooting all the family. One change at a time is easier. I think we’re all a bit influenced by inertia at points of our lives, and more so as we get older. Human nature. Why not set up a project schedule with deadlines & rewards for meeting targets? Uk trip as the ultimate reward on completion?
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I think we’re all at this crossroads now…some because of circumstances beyond our control and some by choice…but I so identified with everything you’ve said here. A change is gonna come…I’ve decided to do all the prep I can to jump on it when the door finally opens, no matter how hard that is to do right now.
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Buy a red carpet. A red-wine carpet. Or a very splashy axminster pattern. I love your ‘excavating the basement’ statement. We don’t have basements in this country, but I have a couple of rooms that definitely need digging out.
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i could never get a new carpet unless i got a new cat. he urps entirely too much (ew) i definitely can relate to both the “stuck” AND the “waiting for something to happen”, but yay writers group, that sounds like a step in the right direction. xo
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i’m sorry you’re feeling so irritable right now. nothing is gonna seem right or exciting til that feeling goes away. take care,
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RYN: A lot of Republicans, including myself, have no problem with jumping party lines when they deem fit. A lot of Republicans, including myself, feel our party has been hijacked. People who refuse to vote both sides of the aisle are locked into a mindset as dangerous as the Nazis, regardless of party. BOTH sides have valid points, BOTH sides care deeply. But Limbaugh is not a politician. He is just someone who flaps his lips. I don’t think a few loudmouths speak for everyone, but Limbaugh should have been fired.
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RYN: no, no, no. I didn’t mean to infer that you’d been insulting. People often read more “tone” in my words than I mean, but this is how I speak, so please forgive. I was trying (not very well, obviously) to convey that *I* felt betrayed by my own party and how much I despise the “lockstep” thinking these days. It is destructive and no different, really, than living under doctrine of a fanaticalTaliban rule. Regardless of party, race, or religion, if we’ve lost the ability to say, “Hmmm, that’s a valid point”, we’ve lost the core of democracy. All Miss Fluke did was stand up for one aspect of healthcare and Limbaugh turned it into a personal attack full of sexual reference which only serves to reveal how base the man truly is. He COULD have disagreed without making disgusting remarks about her personal life, KNOWING he was probably wrong, but hey, when you’re ripping someone apart, why care about pesky things like truth and respect, you know? (That’s sarcasm, not meant to infer that I think you think that way)
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You know, I kind of feel you. There are so many things I imagine myself doing and so few of them that are getting any attention. That hamster on a wheel feeling totally sucks.
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RYN: Yes, I agree that people tend to only consider what they or their party believes. The majority don’t really want to think but they want to be thought of as smart, so they listen to their favorite pundit and come to OD and repeat it, much like Asleigh bin-crazy-person. I avoid the news these days. Very little of it is real.
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I loathe carpet, especially with the addition of my mother’s cat who throws up every day. Every single day.
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RYN: Americans like that also seem to make ‘comebacks’ about the Royal Family, who no-one here really cares about; when America gained independence (a.k.a. ‘we’ kicked ‘your’ ass), which isn’t exactly going to offend anyone; ‘winning’ World War II, when U.S. were more a late substitution that contributed to the team effort (only after being attacked); and bad teeth, which I don’t even understand
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I love the pic of the old bridges–if there had been a way to widen the roadbeds, it would have been nice to keep the iron–it truly has character. We had a wonderful time on the trip, in both Savannah and Charleston, but to tell the truth, I liked Savannah better–maybe because we had a better tour guide and we were able to get out and see things rather than just looking as we rode by. I’d loveto go back and spend about a week in each city. Turns out that my brother-in-law’s brother lives in Mount Pleasant!! And I didn’t know it at the time. I knew him when I was in high school–he’s about a year older than I am. In fact, my dad used to date their mother when they were in high school-pre-1939!!
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I am glad you could talk to your brother particularly as he is on the verge of such a big change. And best wishes for the writing group. I need a Fairy Godmother who knows all about photography social media and getting published and loves me dearly and exclusively and is full of just the right kind of encouragement and moral support. I despair more lately and more now as winterwanes of ever doing anything worthwhile with my art and my life. Something that helped recently was that after all these years my sister and brother-in law printed and framed one of my photos and put it smack in the middle of their living room wall for all to see, and this couple I met that are big fans of my poetry and treat me like I am really an artist.
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