Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

[Meh]

Throughout the day I think of things that I want to deposit here, some sort of little insights that came to me but tonight I seem to have forgotten whatever it was.

I question the usefulness of documenting such things because I never go back and read old posts that I have written, I never have time to, life continues to move forward like an assembly line in a factory plant where one piece has two pieces added and three pieces added and then four pieces, the parts are welded together and finished.

I mean when does something ever get removed in life in a GOOD way? I ask myself.

For me, this day, I feel very busy, Miss Do-Do list has taken control and that is good and bad. I need Miss Do-Do list to function and perform like a responsible adult that shows up at the right place at the right time. I also need to remind my SELF when to tell her to go on vacation.

She needs to take a vacation sometime this week.

Remember the Artist Way Dates?

I need a SELF date. Not just a "ME" date but some other version of self.

Today the director that I'm working with handed the grant back to me to show me her changes and she kept a lot of what I had written she seemed happy so I felt relieved about that. It didn't take her very much time to clean up my version.   

A few times this week I have witnessed how people that I see as having some sort of important task such as the director still put their family first in a very BIG way. It's interesting interacting with these people because I don't relate with the world with the same priority set these people do because I don't have a "family first MO"

These people do things not to fill their lives up because they don't have family.

Maybe I am not doing these things to fill my life up. I mean I know that is not the whole motivation, yet there is a part of needing meaning that I don't have otherwise. (From other areas of my life)

When I have more time, I want to write about the "Insane" term in context of AA teachings.
I think this is applicable to Nar-people but I'm reluctant to use the term "insane" because it is a "judgment" and has clinical connotations at that.

[Meh]

Today, my energy level is low, I have been noticing this lately when I'm menstrating, this didn't use to happen or maybe I wasnt pushing myself all the time. Anyways today was a slow day, I met with the housing director and did laundry, printed some papers off on a public computer and that is about it, I feel like I didn't do enough and that I am being judged every day and every hour of my life to cram as much as I can in. There is some major flaw in this, I guess for one because no matter what is happening in my life this is still my life to live out. When I run out of time on this earth, I probably will regret having lived like I'm on the bosse's time clock 24-7.

So my first grant was turned in this week (I hope). I was being emailed up to the last minute even at times when I wasn't scheduled to volunteer.

I had to question how much dedication and extra work I should put in or I want to put in, and also the reason why there is all of a sudden a demand for my time. I figured it was because the other groups were doing things at the very last minute that they could have done earlier and due to lack of organization. So I let it go and I passed it back to the paid staff and the director to deal with it since I was no longer in the office.

I had to question this a bit because I do want the opportunity but at the same time I still have other things I need to do.

Probably every thing I have to write about today is mundane. I ask myself, if I was married would I just tell that person all the boring mundane parts of my life and I don't know what the answer is at all.

In the last two days I received 4 "rejection" letters in the mail that I completely forgot I even sent applications in for. Oh well.
Yesterday I had an interview and I have another in theory next week. I'm so burnt out that I don't really give a sh*t any longer.
I'm just exhausted, I think it all catches up with me when I am menstrating I don't think it is the menstration itself.

Debating if I should go listen to music tonight, work or sleep or fix my computer. Maybe I will try to talk someone into going with me to listen to music!

[Meh]

Heard roughly expressive Tom Waits like piano blues and singing the other night. I walked in with my pockets bulging with bulk chocolates, I adore the peanut butter cups & dark chocolate covered ginger chunks ummmm, I looked like I was pregnant with chocolates, I sat down by myself and it was 100% worth it even though I often feel like I am the only "only one". I could not have imagined more perfect music for that night, the only thing that would have made it better was if I could have sat in a dark little corner by myself.  

Thinking about Miss Do-Do list and how she is not the doer.

Maybe "I" should not even be the doer--oh yeah that is right I have Mr. (       ) who is the doer, I for got about him.          

Well thank god for Mr. blank because I did get something done-not perfected. But done.

Miss Do-Do list   &     Mrs. Perfect       sometimes those two aspects get on my nerves.

Even if I don't make progress, I still have to get up and do.

There is the do-er the be-er the list-er the judg-er the distraction-er.

The distractionist is sometimes considered a huge seduction in Buddhist Phil. but I really love my distractioner because I think this is the most creative character and I think distractioner is close to the be-er. That is very circular.

I have to draw cut offs and lines with Buddhism I like distractioner. This is not the TV-watcher I call that the lazy-me. or something I can't remember it's name.

I'm not convinced that the distractioner is the same thing as the seduction away from mindfulness or that mindfulness is all that great.

Mindfulness is an option but I also think there should be a willful opt out of mindfulness in favor of the passion of distraction (wears a mascarade mask).


----
I forget how insecure my life is because it is too stressful to realize that every single day and pointless.
Thinking about how I practice voicefulness and how I shoot myself down for not being perfect in that practice.

[Meh]

For some reason I thought I was going to master voicefulness, now I have realized that I'm only lucky when I find myself able to practice voicefulness if at all and that I will probably be practicing it indefinitely.

Seeing it that way also changes the way I think about what end purpose my practice leads to.

Maybe voicefulness is a daily exercise just like working out physically- I rarely feel achievement when I work out if I expect to be a comic book heroine super-woman.

------

There are some classes I will be taking as a preliminary to MAYBE get back into school. I don't personally care for the instructors personallity very much, she told me I should be thankful for anything at all, she vocalized her concerns that people use school-loans for drug money. That is fine that she has that personal concern and it's interesting that addictive personalities are that tenacious--but I'm not a substance user. I don't even take anti-depressants any longer. I take nothing except for lots of coffee with cream and sugar.

SO, I don't like this person and I don't care for the way she talked to me when I told her that the reason why I didn't completely fill out her survey was because I thought many of the questions were not applicable to me. Then she got pissy with me. These are times when I feel a bit voiceless --because there is a demand made on me that doesnt make sense to me AND she gets funded for having students in her class.

So I see her as being someone who is rude, judgemental, her degree is in something that has nothing to do with education or therapy and somehow during the class she plans to use what I think is some version of cognitive feedback.

I just have to get through the stupid class and try particularly to take in what I need to know about re-entering school and drop the rest of HER judgements and generalized ideas and opinions.

I hate it when I feel obligated to say something positive so that I don't appear to be a rebel or have interpersonal problems.

I do have a problem when an instructor demands complete compliance from students. I never learned that way, it is not selecting the authentic answer, it means giving them the answer they want to get back----and that is not good for a class like this --the classes purpose is not about wrong and right answers it is about exploring options for going back to college--And there are numerous avenues and subjects to focus on.

There were all these stupid questions on the survey about "Are you willing to change"

All I could thing was, that is a personal question and what exactly am I suppose to CHANGE.

I told the woman that I didn't feel like there was any personal thing that I needed to change really instead I just wanted to look into going back to school again and that it's been a long time since I have been in school.

She said to me "Well you must be doing something wrong and there is something that you need to change"----

SO I DON"T LIKE HER.

I feel like this sort of thing is a challege for voicefulness and that if I don't like the class it reflects poorly on me.

WHAT IF I'm UNIQUE IN SOME WAY? That makes the class a little off-topic for me.

The class is advertised as a reintroduction to getting back into school instead of a group therapy session. Personally I'm not comfortable with that because that is not what I need nor is it what I'm signing up for.

I picture in my mind being targeted as the "bad student" If I say : "I'm not ready to share that yet" or "that is personal to me and I don't wish to discuss it". And then the teacher getting pissed off.

SO I can set a boundary with the teacher? For me to be a student in my own way? Politely but without being harranged into responding in a way that goes along with her concept of me?

I don't know. It's not a regular class. They think people who have been out of school need to be brainwashed and reformed or something.
My mistake was I told her too much about myself to start off with without knowing her at all. I told her that I was in a temporary living situation.

I don't like people liberally making poorly thought out suggestions to me.

Well I don't think I can fail the class---you know what I don't need the added distraction in my life though of a person who sees themselves as having some sort of authority and insight into my life when they don't. I didn't really want this class to be a lesson in me setting boundaries- because I needed it to be a get-back-into-school class.

I find myself seeking to modify my own behaviour in off-the-subject ways just to avoid their personal style and to preserve my sense of boundary.

I have a need for boundary in this situation because I really want to target my own thinking rather then having some other person tell me that my thinking and living is wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if school is what really messes up people socially every thing is either good or bad, wrong or right.

The good and bad and wrong and right is determined by some person who is basing those judements on their own personal concepts instead of the class being about ME-finding a program that I WANT to spend my financial aid money on. It is my alotted money--it doesnt belong to any education instution yet and it does not belong to this teacher. I know she is trying to recruit people into her school but the class is not advertised that way.

I don't find her communication style to be especially helpful for me. If I bring up some area that I would like to pursue for example she will bring up cliche statements about the drawbacks of that occupation. In all the occupations I have been in the little cliche statements about the drawbacks to them didn't mean cr*p because every situation is unique.

[Meh]

Problems just happen, sometimes a person (a self) has a hand in their own problems and sometimes not, sometimes problems are inherited or just stepped in unwittingly like a pile of dung, there it is on the shoe, tagging along stuck and stinking.

In between problems and solutions there is another space and I wish I could be in that space, sometimes I can get there easy and other times carving out that inbetween space is like carving my space out of granite rock with a very dull chisel and atrophied arms-- I'm tired and I want a break, an Alice in Wonderland mini-door to crawl through and out of a maze of concepts and people and words and advice. I just want to fish in a lake or some such activity where all a person does is chill out with no agenda and no problems and no solutions and no doing and no figuring and no working on it and no getting anywhere. Maybe just float over to the other side of the lake and back or not, it doesnt matter.

In my mind I have this green or yellow or blue house depending on my mood behind the house is a scary waterfall drop or sometimes the landscape is different, I think I would like a fishing lake somewhere near to the house but I don't design the house usually it designs it'self. My fishing lake is like a kid's lake, there are lilly pads that have little lighted lamps sitting on them for the frogs to play cardgames at night. There is my boat, a small wood canoe-ish boat thing that is directed by thought or will that way I don't have to row with my emotionally atrophied arms. There are cat-tails and maybe sometimes they are like night-lamps also because really the frog's lamps are quite small. There are fish that talk with be of course therefore the idea of proper fishing is out the window. It is more like here fishy fishy come have a chat with me for a while. There are happy fish and a big man-eatting catfish BUT maybe not a woman-eatting catfish- so I won't worry about it. There is a small fishing pond that continues on into a swamp with water growing trees and through the trees to the other side is the ocean and beyond that I don't know because I really don't feel that adventurous right now. In fact I might think my canoe ashore and drive it up to the house where the lights are on- the one that has a Mr. Badger for a butler or house keeper or house owner. I'm going to sit on Mr. Badger's sofa for a while in his house by the pond and listen to an opposum sing.

Hum-Very Wind in the Willow like night I guess. That is odd.   

So back to what I was saying before Wind in the Willows hi-jacked by mind...
Some of the people around this place where I am wear me out no matter how nice they seem to be and struggling with their own stuff it's like every day I go to sleep and my mattress is some quicksand hole that sinks down to a place where maybe there are ladders out and maybe it just looks like ladders that maybe go nowhere in particular. That sounds dreary. Why shouldn't it?

I can authentically say that there is dreary here in my heart and in my life without it being self-pity. It's not feeling sorry for myself it's just a fact sometimes. Going to make a cup of fresh mint tea I think.

Night-Night

[mudpuppy]

Senior males haven't captured the market on boorish behavior.

It has been my experience that males of any age do actually account for less than 100% of observed boorishness.

mud

[Meh]

Senior males haven't captured the market on boorish behavior.

It has been my experience that males of any age do actually account for less than 100% of observed boorishness.
mud

Yawn......

[Meh]

So, I have a "room-mate" who is a recovering alcoholic whose mind is full of AA slogans and concepts that come out when she is talking all the time. At first I thought I might get annoyed by it but I've decided it's working for her and that's a good thing and even if I don't agree with all of the AA dogma there is probably some value in there. Especially when she interprets my life situations into the "12-step" process--there is a lesson in there for me of how I deal with a senario. Oddly enough the situation I told her about has nothing to do with Alcoholism it has to do with boundaries of sorts.

So the term "Insane" comes up in AA. When a person is over-taken with alcoholism and the life tasks revolve around it the person is called "Insane". On one hand this doesn't go along with some things I've learned in other schools of thought but it's appealing to be able to say my brother and his substance use is "insanity" because it takes the burden off of me. If I said that my mother's relationship with her alcoholic husband is based on insanity--then it takes the burden off of me to try to find the "normal" in their lives. When my nar-mother and her alcoholic-co-nar husband--reflect something about me to my Self --it may be a relief for me to be able to say that it's coming from "Insanity"

Insane is a label but it's a label that states an acceptance of the knowledge that something is wrong and not ok--rather then trying to peel back onion layers of disfunction--the AA people have a way to just accept that something is crazy and there is an automatic psychological boundary there to be able to say it's "insane".

Somehow saying that alcoholism or nar-codependant and co-nar life styles and thinking and behaviors are insane takes some of the perceived power out of their opinions or actions.

Too bad there is not a narcissist-anon support group.

Something that I see and do myself (happens with children of nar-people or family members of nar-people) is time spent thinking and analyzing and figuring it out as if that is going to solve anything. I think it helps so when the next event occurs I can say "Oh, I know what this is" to myself--but it doesnt stop the nar-people. Just like thinking about alcoholism doesn't stop the drinking and even when people have stopped drinking there are dry drunks.

I wish my mother would pass out in her own vomit drunk on the floor BECAUSE that would be an obvoious problem but her nar-codependant behaviours are not that easy to identify for the outside world. It has taken me a long time to figure my family out.  

I still probably haven't figured it out 100% and I ask myself do I really want a PhD in my family disfunction. NO I do not.

--Instead of why?
--Maybe I will just think "because they have reached the point of insanity".

It's worth a try.

~ I have to come back to what I wrote up above about "takes the burden off of me" because there is something huge there.

(I) or we depending on who you are---get left with a burden of making sense of it all. This is like a major life-long undertaking--as if we are emotional anthropologists and scientists dusting of the smallest shards and glueing them all back together just to get a possible hint at what the heck is/was going on. That is a big old compulsive burden. Sometimes I feel OCD about my personal emotional weaknesses or lacks or empty spots ---or maybe that is not the right words.

OCD--about trying to figure it out-- but I think that in part I'm moving away from that a little--but there is still a daily cope need.

How to cope with the end result of not learning certain skills or not getting positive emotional feedback as a child.

The end result = every day how I think about me and the situations I am in and my opinion about me and even today I had an interview and I assume all the time that people don't like me. I do walk into an interview with that little piece of expectation of being disliked and maybe it doesnt have anything to do with having nar-parents.

I think I'm hesitant to shake people's hands and to say it was nice to meet you or what-ever. I am a little mousy sometimes it's hesitation.
Always a hesitation in my mind --

I'm on the fence about attending any of the AA-related support groups--I have been a listener for a large portion of my life and I don't see myself wanting to sit and listen in AA groups and I don't really want to share either in that group setting. I guess I really don't want to do it. I just want to know what the possible benefit is and I want only that and not to waste my time with the rest of it. AA people always seem so down-and-out. Put principles before personalities is one of the concepts that they use in their groups.

I just don't want to waste my time hanging out with people who are alcoholics or love alcoholics because I'm sick of alcoholics and nar-people.
I feel like I have had plenty of alcoholism and nar-people----burnt out on them.

It is the duality of community the positive and negative of it. If there is anything useful in the AA or Al-anon or ACOA meetings it is via the group somehow even if the individual personalities are a drag. I guess I have to wonder how valuable it is to me and if it's worth my time and energy.
I don't know what I would get out of an ACOA group....I'm guessing nothing. Oh well I will let my room-mate continue to talk to me about all of it untill I make up my mind. When she talks about the concepts they "click" in a very big way for me the concepts make sense.

On some level it's hard for me to accept that my personality right now has been impacted by alcoholism/nar-people in my fam.
Maybe this is really a BIG key though. The personality as it is right now.

The other BIG reason why I don't want to go is because my "room-mate" is in this group--and even though she is "nice" I sense a problem there.  
Maybe it is also just too far and too late at night.


I can still study the practice if I want to for now until I find a group that fits me.
Insanity or disfunction is contagious. I think that is part of what these AA groups do is isolate the contagion as a behavior pattern.
It's contagious because my reaction to my family is just as insane as my family members are.

Bad as it is to say, I am almost glad that I have alcoholics in my family that way it gives me an excuse to attend Al-Anon or ACOA meetings if I wanted but the main reason I would go would be the nar-people not so much the alcoholism that drives me.

I think nar-people are harder to deal with over alcoholics. I'm not sure why. It's easy to see that an alcoholic is sick, it is harder to see it with a nar-person so it takes longer to figure out. I knew my brother was alcoholic for years and could tell my mother's husband was also pretty fast but to identify nar-habits in my mother was a long long time to get at.

[Meh]

I go to Buddhist classes then I come back and talk with an alcoholic and we trade ideas between us from AA/ACOA/Buddhism.

She brought up this idea that she has some sort of natural contentment. I say that there is that idea in Buddhism also called basic goodness.

Buddhism focuses on mindfulness. There is some part of that....well I want to draw some sort of association between that and narcissism.

There is almost a forgetting or laziness in unmindfulness....and I wonder how much of narcissism is a cope device or personality deformity instead of say a laziness of the spirit.

There is a concept of too much effort and the flip side of not enough effort. I can look at the nar-family and identify very obviously the behavior of not enough effort from a Buddhism observation viewpoint...and I have never looked at it that way before.

AND maybe that is where I have to leave them and draw the line in the sand is they are content with very little effort made and I should not over compensate on my end with more effort of sorts in relation to them.  

I could say that as a child I needed them to make more effort and they never stepped up.

Can also look at my own life and ask deeply in ways that I don't want to see myself: "where am I not making enough effort in my life towards my Self".....Because there are areas of my life that are covered in emotions -shame and fear - that leave those issues still neglected and unresolved.
Of course I'm not sure this is the best time for me to look at them and especially I doubt the clarity of my own thinking when I am surrounded by people with poor instints I don't have healthy reflections back onto me.

Of course I can always look at my life as if I was a different person from the outside seeing me and at that point I don't think I would want to give my issues much significance.

In Buddhism the absence of struggle = happiness   ?

Trying to make sense of someone that has come to the point of insanity = unhappiness... because it is an ongoing struggle with no end.

I was so resistant to use the word insane to describe family but I think it really works for me. If I call them insane I can start to let go of my responsibility to figure out why I'm so bad. Calling them insane puts the ownership back on them. I don't have to own their Narcissism or alcoholism.

I don't really get that last sentence 100% but I know it's important.

Looking at above statement I think about being an individual and individuation and the fallacy of such a thing in context of ACOA behaviors.
I feel sorry for myself as a young person trying to get therapy. There are all these new little distinctions I am all of a sudden making that I never had before.
Funny the lines that therapists try to make sometimes the areas of definition and where does one person start and another person end.
Alone in community. A community disconnected.

It's so ironic that a recovering alcoholic is the person who helped me understand the insanity of my own nar-alcoholic-family.

I feel really grateful for this recovering alcoholic. Very weird but I don't often meet people that are generous with helpful insight, I meet a lot of people that want to impose values or judgements or poor advice. I never know who I'm going to meet or even who I'm going to be on the path of life.


"The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all." ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

http://awads.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/notmyjob.jpg

[Meh]

Enough effort:

Not too little, not too much.

So I think of looking at the experience of struggle more closely, when I struggle with something I feel a deep frustration that there are obstacles to something I wish to accomplish. So I guess to look at it more closely I would consider the obstacles and maybe try to partially get around them even a little bit if not hurtle them like a jumping horse. I can just maybe attempt to nudge them and I could fail--that might be ok. Failing at getting beyond certain obstacles. Part of the obstacles maybe my mind's insistence that there is a form or vision (thought form) that I must create to accomplish a goal. Even when a goal can be accomplished in maybe numerous ways.

Gonna check with my alcoholic oracle

Seeing that struggle and frustration (mild anger) and powerlessness and complacency and one other thing________
may be all part of a little habit of non-completion.

powerlessness and voicelessness

And powerlessness as a faulty approach to accomplishment.

[Meh]

A finer line between complacency, denial, avoidance, acceptance, appeasement, enabling, co-dependency.

It's like all of a sudden there are more rooms in the house-story of my family's alcoholism. Certainly my mother is not the person to reflect the whole story of that house nor is she the owner of that house. No body owns the house of family disfunction, it just has a life of it's own and each member of the family understands the problems based on their own vantage point.

Co-dependency--(needing another to be sick) --This reminds me of that movie Stephen King movie "Misery"....isnt that like an extreme theatrical symbol of co-dependancy. A need for the other to be sick or powerless and stuck and needy.  

Sometimes I wonder why I was being alienated or on the "other side" why my mother would side with the alcoholics. I can say it's insanity when I don't want to think about it but it's also her appeasing the alcoholic that she is co-dependent with. That explanation still bothers me though because I think she makes a choice when she appeases the alcoholic.

I'm tired of focusing on them. Why do I do it? Because family is that powerful and a sick family will always be un-nerving?

So I don't have to focus on my own life? Or when I try to focus on me a thought comes up that leads back to them?
Or in order to heal me I have to understand them. OR NOT. Because understanding is only a thought.

In the end maybe I will just go for a jog, in a moment, I'm really going.

Narcissism and Alcoholism are very close together I think. In Narcissism and Alcoholism the Adult children miss out on developing certain skills that adults should have learned when they were children--no matter what the family issue is. There is a power problem, there is violence, voicelessness etc.

Narcissim and Substance abuse share a similarity of (selfishness) my mother was selfish in her ways with Narcissism and my brother selfish in his substance abuse focused life.






 

[Meh]

Today was the first day of volunteering with kids and lucky for me it wasn't super busy, so it was sort of fun, besides the moments when children look like they are going to jump off of an object onto the ground and hurt themselves even though I gently say that it might not be the best thing BUT they survive. I'm not a big authoritarian even though I have been called "School-teacher-lady" before by adults for some reason--I'm sure I will get better at it--and maybe it will be good for me. It was good I think. I just didn't know I was getting so deep into commitment with these programs. Then I felt exhausted when I got "home" layed down for about 6 minutes then decided to go hear some live music, woke me up.
I'm content relatively speaking. Just glad that I DID something.

Boys are really kind of scary at that age, seems like they do every thing possible to try to break their arms, everything they make and build has to be exploded and destroyed in the grandest ACDC-stuntman-volcanic explosion like way possible. I guess I didn't notice any destructive girls today, they were quietly doing projects and then not blowing them up afterwards.  

So we built these "electricity machines" that hooked up to each other with tubes to electrocute people (I was not the one who made this up) and it burns your skin if you don't have special skin--but we have special skin that doesnt get burned so it was ok for us to build the machines and there is hot lava that comes out of the machines......etc. etc.

That was my day pretty much.

[Meh]

Last night someone was driven down to the emergency-room at the hospital due to her feeling numbness/tingles in her arm, she thought it was heart problems, it turned out to be a migrane symptom according to the doctor. The doctor told her that we/people try so hard to suppress their anxiety/worry/stress or what have you that it starts to manifest in our bodies in these very stange ways such as this migrane she had that was impacting her back and her arms.

I write this down to acknowledge my own stress, even if I fill my life up with other things there is still stressfulness that is not going to go away easily or immediately. It's not caused by my own thoughts, it just is what it is for now.

What to do with a stress that I can not address right now, can not avoid, can not solve? How do I manage that?

I guess every day I just check in a little bit, is there an emergency right here right now? NO. and YES.
Technically I am still in a "personal crisis" BUT I can't go around freaking out all the time!!!!
Problem is I always feel like there is impending doom. That is ongoing anxiety.

Stress has got to be related to a lack of power of certain life situations. The key is within that range of stress, to continue to attempt to survive and have some form of little solution or work around or adaptation even if it's not the whole solution to the stress and it doesnt go away 100%. At least this is what I'm telling myself.

Today I was laughing with one of the directors I was working with because she takes things so light-hearted and I get super-dooper serious. We made an initiative today. We had to address a policy or an initive specifically and since there wasnt one exactly we just made one up. I have never made an initive before I assumed that it was a serious rule that I had to follow that was listed in some long document inside a boring book somewhere written by some important person. So we started giggling while we were making up our new initiative.  

[Meh]

Very tired right now. Today, I worked on some paper-mache props for a kids play-set. I haven't done anything like that since I can't remember when, and it's a lot of work. Mind is rather blank-ness at the moment even with two cups of coffee. So maybe it's nap time for me. I know that I shouldnt be playing with paper mache instead I should be doing serious job search activity I think about this and then I just say "who cares" to myself. I went to an interview on Monday and didn't hear anything back so---whatever.

I wish I could go on a little weekend trip to get away from where I am. Just for a few days. Maybe in the future that will happen and then again maybe it won't.

I remember one of my therapists from a long time ago was telling me how important play was for children and she assumed that I was not a kid that played very much, maybe she was right--so I watch the kids trying to figure out what the heck I should have learned from it all and I can't figure it out really. They spill water and then I clean it up while they are crying their eyes out like it's the end of the world. Then two seconds later they have stopped crying and are back to playing again.

So far it's pretty good, I forget to be stressed out there, the new stress is making sure the kids don't choke on something.
There is always something that could be stressful.

At least at the end of the day I feel like I did something and for right now that is good even if my imaginary judges in my mind tell me I am wasting my time and should be more serious. I need to not be serious for a while. Maybe at some point I will get to paint a whole back-drop for a stage set--that would be fun. Unfortunately I don't meet any single people there- because they are all parents. Another oh-well.

[Meh]

Filling their lives up with play-dates, yoga sessions, hair-cuts, oil changes, house remodel appointments, taking dog to the vet, trendy mood enhancing psychotropic pharmaceuticals. . I say it's easy because these people can still laugh and stop the worry when it's time to fall asleep at night, they don't really need the pills, they read about it in a magazine article so that is why they need it. They are self-important or something so that is why they go to a therapist--they are not going through a divorce or job-loss or life-loss or illness. Sometimes I wonder if these are the people that came up with that social voice of "I don't have enough time, I'm so busy, my life is crazy".

I look at daily routine lifestyles and they seem normal to me, normal and easy.

I'm not saying this very well right now, I'm wondering why some accept a simple life with emotional simplicity and other's----believe that life is very complex and always there is an emotional battle field inside. Some people face life with tremendous strain or reckless abandon--its that space between individual and the greater world that moment or space of interfacing with life. I think about some of the people around me, there is a damaging carelessness that some of them have, not so much a happy ease--but something else. Then there is my brother's emotional world--that is deeply toxic in some way. I don't know maybe people who have toxic inner-worlds can't interface with the outerworld with ease or light-heartedness.

I guess I've always wondered what was the difference between people who can feel basically safe and good vs. those who don't feel basically safe or well. Then there are people who appear to have an emotional framework that is basically happy but there is an obvious problem such as bulimia/anorexia.

I believe there are social voices---like a phrase/tag line that is said so often it becomes part of a collective mental-formation.