You can play with my fish. No, thats not a sexual invitation. The little fish at the top of the page…. yeah, put your mouse up there and they'll follow it. I haven't fed them a post in a long time and they outlasted the two I won in a raffle a week ago tomorrow.
If you're in the market for a fish bowl or some flakes let me know….
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Crazy, I was crazy once
Do you ever feel like you're ready to climb the walls? Literally…? Like everywhere you go you just want to stand on a table, push the roof up and somehow escape into another world, another realm. I'm feeling like that lately. I love so much about my life, my husband, our travels, our pets, our families, but I feel like I'm drowning in this life. I think theres something bigger out there and I don't know what it is but I want to go get it.
Sometimes, okay, every day, I think what would happen if we just sold it all? The houses, the clothes, the workout equipment, the furniture, the cars, the computers…and just hit the road. What would happen? Better yet, what could happen?
.
.
.
.
It's been a month or so since we hiked. At least a month since I really felt free. Free from a cell phone, free from a deadline, free from a responsibility, an email needing to be returned, a household chore left to be done. When we we go, my mind goes. That's what I need, what I crave.
I know hiking won't pay a bill, but I'd like to think that those bills and obligations could be smaller than our adventures. I remember reading something once that talked about your possessions like a knapsack. You take a bag and for everything you own you add a weight: the clothes, the house, the car, the computer, the desk, the TV and so on and so on. Eventually that sack gets so heavy you can't possibly move. That's how I feel. Remember that dumb thing we did when we were little? Someone would say crazy and you'd say "Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room with rubber walls and a rubber ball that rolled round and round. That was crazy… Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room…" and so on and so on.
When we're hiking, that's all gone. When we're climbing some mountain, everything we need to survive is in a space we can carry, a weight we can handle, in a bag we can set down. Nothing is rubber. Everything is natural. Everything moves in its own time, the wind, the sun, the leaves. They have no schedule, no alarm, no weight. Thats a really good feeling.
Sometimes, okay, every day, I think what would happen if we just sold it all? The houses, the clothes, the workout equipment, the furniture, the cars, the computers…and just hit the road. What would happen? Better yet, what could happen?
.
.
.
.
I know hiking won't pay a bill, but I'd like to think that those bills and obligations could be smaller than our adventures. I remember reading something once that talked about your possessions like a knapsack. You take a bag and for everything you own you add a weight: the clothes, the house, the car, the computer, the desk, the TV and so on and so on. Eventually that sack gets so heavy you can't possibly move. That's how I feel. Remember that dumb thing we did when we were little? Someone would say crazy and you'd say "Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room with rubber walls and a rubber ball that rolled round and round. That was crazy… Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room…" and so on and so on.
When we're hiking, that's all gone. When we're climbing some mountain, everything we need to survive is in a space we can carry, a weight we can handle, in a bag we can set down. Nothing is rubber. Everything is natural. Everything moves in its own time, the wind, the sun, the leaves. They have no schedule, no alarm, no weight. Thats a really good feeling.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Dumb women
Okay, so it could just be dumb people but for whatever reason it seems like its always women I see walking down the road with their small children.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're walking, and I'm even glad they're kids are (sometimes) getting exercise. I'll tell you what I hate and why they're so dumb: they walk IN the street, ON the street, not down the side, not in the dirt, not a few feet from the roadway, IN the bloody road. These women walk with their strollers, which I can only assume have babies in them, in the road where anyone can hit them.
They walk down outer highway 18 at 5:30pm where there is endless dirt on the side of the road where they could be walking, they walk on Apple Valley Rd where there is a hill and there isn't a foot of pavement for cars to go around but there is a whole dirt path, they walk down Navajo and Bear Valley, every busy street in the town, but never on the sides of the street... Nooo, always in the line of traffic.
I don't even like kids but the fact these people put their own lives in dance Nd the lives of their tiny kids, their babies in strollers, their 3-4 year olds I see them dragging behind them by the hand in danger makes me furious. It's nerve wracking as a driver and they're stupid.
One night it was a stupid guy with a shopping cart full of groceries and kids with at least another 3 kids walking along side the basket along outer 18 after dark.
Seriously buddy? You couldn't just hand each of the big ones a bag and been a man and carried the rest so that you could actually walk a safe 5 feet off the road? Sheesh.
I should buy them all a baby bjorn and some study tennis shoes.
That is all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're walking, and I'm even glad they're kids are (sometimes) getting exercise. I'll tell you what I hate and why they're so dumb: they walk IN the street, ON the street, not down the side, not in the dirt, not a few feet from the roadway, IN the bloody road. These women walk with their strollers, which I can only assume have babies in them, in the road where anyone can hit them.
They walk down outer highway 18 at 5:30pm where there is endless dirt on the side of the road where they could be walking, they walk on Apple Valley Rd where there is a hill and there isn't a foot of pavement for cars to go around but there is a whole dirt path, they walk down Navajo and Bear Valley, every busy street in the town, but never on the sides of the street... Nooo, always in the line of traffic.
I don't even like kids but the fact these people put their own lives in dance Nd the lives of their tiny kids, their babies in strollers, their 3-4 year olds I see them dragging behind them by the hand in danger makes me furious. It's nerve wracking as a driver and they're stupid.
One night it was a stupid guy with a shopping cart full of groceries and kids with at least another 3 kids walking along side the basket along outer 18 after dark.
Seriously buddy? You couldn't just hand each of the big ones a bag and been a man and carried the rest so that you could actually walk a safe 5 feet off the road? Sheesh.
I should buy them all a baby bjorn and some study tennis shoes.
That is all.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Squeezing the tube
I'm quitting my job.
I'm quitting my job the week after I pass a 10 month probation.
I'm quitting my job the week after I get a cost of living increase of 2.8% and a raise, just for passing probation.
I'm quitting a job with a great organization, a good boss, and a benefit plan that adds about $1,200 to my check every month because I can use my husbands benefits instead of theirs; a job where I have an employee; a job where I direct my own department; a job that has put up with a fish hook in the eye, the death of a parent, and a wedding.
I'm crazy right?
I don't know, but as of a couple days ago I prefer to think of it as "squeezing the tube." You see, there is this podcast (yes, another one: Thing you missed in history class by How stuff Works) and they were doing a special on Vincent Van Gogh. It was awesome, but what stuck with me was a quotation they cited from an article or the encyclopedia or something where they are taking about the period when Van Gogh had just left Paris after all this formal training. He'd studied art, studied the masters, learned the techniques and decides to set off for Southern France to start an artist commune. It's then he started "squeezing the tube"- literally taking the tube of oil paint and squeezing it directly onto his canvas instead of dipping his brush in some little plate of paint. He had mastered everything he could learn from school and from studying others and started to experiment, to trust his craft. I want to think of this crazy little adventure in the same way.
I am giving up so much and yet my commute will go from 45 miles to 6.4, from nearly an hour, to 15 minutes. I will have health benefits and a full time job. I will have some Fridays off in the summer in exchange for 10 hour work days. I will have a very well respected and admired boss, a leader in my community and work with another well respected and active member of my Town. I will be learning a new field, grant writing, which may open new doors in the future, and give my husband and I a little more flexibility when we decide to move. I will have a mentor. I will be helping students and teachers achieve projects that otherwise may have not been possible. I will be writing. I will be researching. I will build relationships and funds.
I am taking everything I learned in marketing and PR and in school studying history and communication and leadership and laying it out on a whole new palette and painting a new canvas in new and different ways. I am squeezing the tube.
I can't wait to see how it turns out.
I'm quitting my job the week after I pass a 10 month probation.
I'm quitting my job the week after I get a cost of living increase of 2.8% and a raise, just for passing probation.
I'm quitting a job with a great organization, a good boss, and a benefit plan that adds about $1,200 to my check every month because I can use my husbands benefits instead of theirs; a job where I have an employee; a job where I direct my own department; a job that has put up with a fish hook in the eye, the death of a parent, and a wedding.
I'm crazy right?
I don't know, but as of a couple days ago I prefer to think of it as "squeezing the tube." You see, there is this podcast (yes, another one: Thing you missed in history class by How stuff Works) and they were doing a special on Vincent Van Gogh. It was awesome, but what stuck with me was a quotation they cited from an article or the encyclopedia or something where they are taking about the period when Van Gogh had just left Paris after all this formal training. He'd studied art, studied the masters, learned the techniques and decides to set off for Southern France to start an artist commune. It's then he started "squeezing the tube"- literally taking the tube of oil paint and squeezing it directly onto his canvas instead of dipping his brush in some little plate of paint. He had mastered everything he could learn from school and from studying others and started to experiment, to trust his craft. I want to think of this crazy little adventure in the same way.
I am giving up so much and yet my commute will go from 45 miles to 6.4, from nearly an hour, to 15 minutes. I will have health benefits and a full time job. I will have some Fridays off in the summer in exchange for 10 hour work days. I will have a very well respected and admired boss, a leader in my community and work with another well respected and active member of my Town. I will be learning a new field, grant writing, which may open new doors in the future, and give my husband and I a little more flexibility when we decide to move. I will have a mentor. I will be helping students and teachers achieve projects that otherwise may have not been possible. I will be writing. I will be researching. I will build relationships and funds.
I am taking everything I learned in marketing and PR and in school studying history and communication and leadership and laying it out on a whole new palette and painting a new canvas in new and different ways. I am squeezing the tube.
I can't wait to see how it turns out.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Progress
Again, NPR.
A Russian woman explains that "Progress makes people weak. They forget how to struggle to survive." It's a thought I've had often, but never put so eloquently. What do you think?
A Russian woman explains that "Progress makes people weak. They forget how to struggle to survive." It's a thought I've had often, but never put so eloquently. What do you think?
The good, the bad and the ugly
Lets start with
The Ugly: me
Me when I'm frustrated, me when I'm impatient, when I plan things and they go wrong, me when I don't communicate what I want, need or expect, me when I'm tired, me when I am overwhelmed, me from a profile perspective and me anytime I am on camera apparently.
so me, 90% of the time.
The Bad: the life I have created
Over-committing to everyone and everything in my life, commuting to work so that I'm gone 11 hours a day, the demands that I put on myself, the expectation that others put on me, the never ending to do list, the feeling that if I really did just sit down and relax and let go of everything for an entire week there would be 4 meetings missed, 30 calls to return, 3 loads of laundry, 2 loads of dishes, a broken chair/drawer/appliance to be fixed, a press release, a board report, and 100 + emails to write, photos to be sent, gifts to be bought, stacks to be sorted....
The Good: the rain
I love the rain. The rain has always been philosophical to me. When it rains, I can change my frame of mind. I let the rain wash away my worries and my stress, my exhaustion, my tension, my nervousness, my feeling of never being enough, doing enough, knowing enough. The rain is my symbolic stop sign, the smell and sight and feel of everything being clean and fresh and growing again.
My pace of life leaves me feeling like I am in the desert with no water to quench my thirst.
I need the rain.
I need the earth to give me that fresh start or I need to find a way to do it myself even though it feels so impossible in this moment.
The Ugly: me
Me when I'm frustrated, me when I'm impatient, when I plan things and they go wrong, me when I don't communicate what I want, need or expect, me when I'm tired, me when I am overwhelmed, me from a profile perspective and me anytime I am on camera apparently.
so me, 90% of the time.
The Bad: the life I have created
Over-committing to everyone and everything in my life, commuting to work so that I'm gone 11 hours a day, the demands that I put on myself, the expectation that others put on me, the never ending to do list, the feeling that if I really did just sit down and relax and let go of everything for an entire week there would be 4 meetings missed, 30 calls to return, 3 loads of laundry, 2 loads of dishes, a broken chair/drawer/appliance to be fixed, a press release, a board report, and 100 + emails to write, photos to be sent, gifts to be bought, stacks to be sorted....
The Good: the rain
I love the rain. The rain has always been philosophical to me. When it rains, I can change my frame of mind. I let the rain wash away my worries and my stress, my exhaustion, my tension, my nervousness, my feeling of never being enough, doing enough, knowing enough. The rain is my symbolic stop sign, the smell and sight and feel of everything being clean and fresh and growing again.
My pace of life leaves me feeling like I am in the desert with no water to quench my thirst.
I need the rain.
I need the earth to give me that fresh start or I need to find a way to do it myself even though it feels so impossible in this moment.
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