i know its kind of obvious and perhaps lame...

...but there is something comforting about the blog community. i just checked my comments from my last post and then started clicking on the links of the people who commented and found out that i am listed under some of your "blog friend" lists... and it made me feel special. its like, no matter where i go or what i am doing, i have this little set of friends who read my blog and who list me as part of their blog world. i think i am somewhat of a narcissistic blogger, cause i really only blog to emote and then dont actively participate in other peoples blogs. how selfish. so i am going to attempt to enter the blog world and be an active member.

i will also be attempting to write a lot more on this thing, as its good for me. i have been thinking a lot about writing and not just that, but am actually feeling pressured/encouraged to write... people encouraging me to write, people who want to write with me, people who want me to see how writing fits into my future. its all very flattering, but also unnerving. what is it i am to write on?

alone... on purpose

i did it.

i spent the last 36 hours by myself. for your introverts, you are not impressed. for you extro's... be proud of me, cause i finally did it. i have been wanting a "personal" weekend for so long... the only other time i have done it was in italy this past summer, which was of course incredible, but also, i mean it was italy... you can do anything there.

no, this time, it was different. a bigger challenge (especially in the winter weather and in the midst of regular life), taking time away to be alone, to think, to be with my thoughts, was a feat i didnt know i could accomplish-- but i did do it and i am glad.

i feel more exhausted than i have in a LONG time and thats saying a lot, since i have recently been pretty tired in the new job/new relationship/general wear and tear of life. but this is the best kind of exhausted.

some of the observations of a day and a half alone:

my thoughts are consuming, my brain on hyperdrive so much of the time, that its like this dog gnawing a bone where the meat and flavor is all gone, but it still gnaws. time alone is exhausting, cause no one is there to stop you from gnawing.

time alone does not equal instant spiritual enlightenment, per say.... it does give you nice insights into things, good observations, time to let thoughts unfold. but its way more normal and mundane than i expected, which is a relief. i didnt know if i was capable of sustaining instant spiritual enlightment.

i LOVE being in new places, exploring new towns and new streets. its enlivening to me, i dont know if i can explain it. but i do love it so much and i got to do it a lot this weekend. walking around downtown palo alto, i felt very carrie in sex and the city. like any conversation could become a new way to see something, like possibility was everywhere, like i was capable and able and (gasp!) very comfortable on my own. there's kristin, alone, eating a yummy sandwich at pluto's. ah, there she is again, walking down the street in the rain, soaking in the atmosphere, the wind, the wet converse, the people, leaves fall, laughter. here we find her browsing borders, reading interesting things by intellectual and pop culuturally saavy people. ah, look at her sipping tea, reading her book, laughing, rubbing cold socks on cold feet, wishing for a heater. (ah, is self observation and narration narcissistic or cute?)

driving all these new places, i got lost a lot... and it made me laugh. God, in his little way, was teaching me the whole-God is in control, knows the directions, is in charge, its ok to be lost and find your way again-thing.

going to dinner alone... not as terrifying as you would think. its, well, enjoyable. you pick up on things from people, situations, much more easily. you soak things up. you worry less about silence. people looked at me with sympathy, but i just smiled, assured in eating my pasta and bread and coke on my own.

going to a movie alone... also not so bad. great, even. especially when the movie makes you think and ponder writing, life, meaning, death, fate, control. and you leave feeling empowered and stronger simply because you did something normal, totally alone.

accepting the laziness

i am a doer. i try to fix things. i try to remain active. i try to be in constant motion. stillness feels impossible.

the last couple days, with the excuse of thanksgiving, have been incredibly lazy. to have been so motionless feels strange, but sort of intoxicating, too. not in the intoxicating where you love it and want more and are lost inside yourself in a good way. but intoxicating, like, i cant seem to snap out of it. like, i will talk myself into doing things, but what i really feel like is just laying on the couch and watching "sex and the city" (tbs edited, of course).

what i am learning more about is planned stillness. i think if i accept that i will have a still, slow day... then i am ok. but if i have even the slightest expectation of activity, or interaction or even productivity, and then i dont do anything, i hate myself for being so lazy. which is silly, everyone needs lazy times. but i think in this place i have always been, in this world with so many friends and people to distract and things to do, in the familiarity of all of it... i just expect so much.

i am also realizing that those lazy times, good or bad, feel like escape. complication, overthinking, stress, unknown, all of it... they make me want to just escape.... to find something to focus my mind on which is not so overwhelming. so i find little things, fixed periods of time, where i can just not think.

i talked with some girls the other night about alcoholism and what an escape addiction is. how over-indulging in drinking, drugs, sex, food, work-- can become escapes when we cant cope with trauma or even just cope with life. i think as i enter into this real adult world, and as i grow and experience adult pain and adult decisions (because whether i like it or not, i am an adult), i am beginning to understand so much more about the escape plans. like, i could rationalize them before, i understood logically why they were there and why people planned them and took them... but the motivation, the raw emotion of it, the clawing desperation to be away from whatever is causing the need for escape... i am just getting to touch on. feeling the corners of it. peer over the edge.

whats the balance between laziness and escapism? to be sure, no one can remain "on" all the time. but i dont want to get lost in the escape either... as always, the need to understand balance remains. but i done dwelling on that for now, carrie bradshaw calls....

adventure

in every epic adventure movie or story, you always have these elements that pop up to signify the epicness of whats going on. i place myself as protagonist, i imagine my life a movie.

i see...

the foreshadowing comments made by characters during the "normal life" sequence in the beginning... the little things that later turn out to mean so much.

the mysterious mentor/gandalf-type person, who knows way more than you and who has an idea of where you might be headed, but wont tell you. instead, they just ask questions that make you think and probe you so that you will realize things about yourself that you were afraid to uncover on your own.

the random wanderer you run into on the road who is maybe heading the same direction, who has experienced the same things, who has some of the same ways about them, but has perhaps also been a little further down the road and can encourage you, challenge you, tempt you to open your eyes and dream.

friends who come around, similarly unaware of a bigger story, laughing, playing, being by your side... potentially joining you for the journey ahead, maybe getting ready to say goodbye?

moments of doubt, indecision, fear... paralyzing unknown.

a narrator only the audience can hear, a soundtrack that plays and moves you.

a great love.

the great love.


.... i can't ignore the epic overtones anymore.

god's heart to be loved

i am discovering something i already knew. God longs to be loved by me. i think i spend, most people spend, so much time wanting to be loved. its what we are geared toward (especially many women)-- the pursuit of a love that would last us a lifetime. for all my early feminist inclinations and all my pop psychological understanding of relationships and all my "lessons learned" in the dating experience, i still long for a love, that idyllic love, who would stand by my side, would fight for me, would long for me, would be with me through everything, would love me in a way that would keep me going.

but if its true, if God longs to be loved by me in the way i long to be loved by whoever i end up with, how much deeper are his longings for me than mine are for an earthly love? how much longer, how much wider, how much deeper? i cant seem to get my head around this-- God, in whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together -- wants ME to love HIM? why? does he need us the way we sometimes seem to need others? is his heart tugged at when we walk away, ignore, dismiss, set him aside? i guess so, if our faith is based on relationship-- that supernatural, mysterious "relationship" with him. if his people, when faithful, are his loving bride, then when unfaithful, are harlots-- then he must love us with some unfathomable love, bigger than any scorned lover or any happy husband here in this life.

and i dont understand that.

i think that God is allowing a connection between what my head had known, what my heart has been hinting at and what my soul longs to truly understand and experience.

slow down

for two days in a row, i was stuck in worse than normal traffic on the highway. today, as I sat there barely moving at all, i started noticing how different the highway looks when you are going slow on it. this part of the highway i was on literally never has traffic and usually moves so quickly that i never even notice what it looks like. i began to wonder if its like the highway itself is not ever even supposed to be seen at such slow speeds. you can see all the places where cars have wrecked into the sides, the marks ugly and scarring. and you notice the broken glass, too, the places where things have come completely apart. but you also see the other people around you better, notice the person in the red suv ahead put their hand on the door and then stretch it out a bit, absent-minded, bored. the other cars moving opposite you are seen more fully. the road signs and directions clearer.

a forced slow down.

intersections

i have been learning of late about repeating.

facing so many of the same mistakes i have made before, i am seeing repeating. all these same circumstances and fears haunt me because of their cursed familiarity. i was wisely reminded that we all will repeat our mistakes and that our set of "issues" does not change from 25 to 55. not to say healing and restoration is impossible. not to say we dont learn to deal with the issues we have and that we dont have times where we feel we have overcome them.

but our issues will always be the same. we are going to keep coming to these same intersections that look so familiar, wondering why we keep coming back to them. havent i learned? havent i worked through this? why do i keep coming back here? the familiarity becomes sickening, inbearable.

but just because the intersection is the same, doesnt mean that we arent learning or changing. maybe its the same intersection, but maybe, this time, the semi-truck isnt going to run us over. maybe, this time, we will wait at the red light. maybe, this time, we will slow at the yellow. maybe this time, we will get to go right through on green. maybe, this time, we will not freak out that we have come to the same intersection once again.

maybe, this time.