pwacticing da counting

i often feel like i need to be doing more with my life.

i don't know if this is healthy ambition, unhealthy ambition, me being called to fulfill my true potential, or me doing too much thinking and not enough doing.  i suppose i'm having a third-life crisis.  no, not a mid-life crisis (because knowing my luck, i'll live until i'm 100); not a quarter-life crisis (because i don't forsee surviving to blow out 120 candles).  approximately one-third of my life is over, and it's freaking me the fuck out.

i mean, i just ate a chocolate chip cookie and hardly really tasted it.  i'm going to need to get my act together if i plan on making the other two-thirds of my years count.

i know part of it is the pressure of our culture: pressure to have a retirement fund set up by age 25 and a college fund for your kid 10 years before you have her.  i don't even want kids, but i feel guilty for having all of $400 in the bank and a crappy credit score.  i guess i can thank my family for my financial retardation...and since i'm not having any kids, my bad money karma can die with me and that will be the end of it.

i really should just be amazed that i made it this far.  everyone here knows that i attempted suicide, landed in the hospital for anorexia, blahblah blah blah blahblah...but instead of feeling like a superhero for being able to eat peanut butter and avocados without having a mental breakdown, i feel like a 17-year-old trapped in a 30-year-old's body, a girl who just figured out what everyone else was practically born knowing.  i can't even figure out relationships for buddha's sake (although i know some 50-year-olds who still can't quite get it).  there are people 5 years my junior who are running startups they'll be ready to sell by 2017...i have been putting off fixing my brakes for so long that i'd rather run the risk of a ticket for rolling through a stop sign than endure the embarrassing looks from pedestrians as my shrieking bansheemobile pulls up to the crosswalk, shattering a few storefront windows in the process.  i don't know why i feel that car maintenance is a microcosmic metaphor for life, but i just do.  so there.

thank god for graduate school and doctoral programs, because at least i can go to school for the rest of my life, rack up debt and avoid having to figure out what to do with myself.

yeah, i sound a little bitter and depressed.  sorry.  transitions were never easy for me, and the move is having a delayed effect on my stress levels.  i broke up with my ex because i wanted more space.  now i'm in the center of a gaping abyss with a dinosaur of a laptop checking into my Facebook profile page every 10 minutes.  it's just sad.  i should at least go to cafes and check Facebook...because when you're on a laptop at a cafe, you always look very busy and important, even if you're watching the latest episode of Baman Piderman.

what?  you haven't seen ANY episodes of Baman Piderman?  christ, man, click here.

anyway, i wish i had some uplifting conclusion to this post...but i don't.  i'm going to pick the cookie crumbs out of my teeth and try to recapture the taste so i can make the 100 calories i just ingested count for something.

you know it's bad when i start listening to cat power again...

pick me up
drop me down
kick me to the curb

rock
rock
rock
a
bye

sing me
lull me
i am your hypnotic neurotic
cutting you with my tongue

seep
sleep
into my open eyes
where the cup overflows
because it's much too much

but empty
can't be
i've worked too hard
spat on my hands
rolled up my sleeves
and all for this

spin, spin, sugar

i woke up briefly in the early hours to buckets of rain dumping from the sky.  i wanted to run outside and stand underneath it, to beg of it to wash me clean and drive away the dirt the film the scum, to wash away the self-loathing, the fear, the anxiety, the sadness, the anger, the mediocrity and the procrastination. but i fell back asleep.

the human condition is a strange one.  we are capable of such greatness--both beautiful and terrible--and we are so lonely and needy.  sometimes my loneliness sends me into a spin, and then i realize that i am no different than anyone else.  loneliness is not a matter of being surrounded or abandoned by other people, it is a story that is made up by the ego.  of course we are alone, and of course we are not.

now the sun emerges briefly and the far part of the sky turns much darker then i previously noticed.  it is light that makes the darkness so dark!  one moment i feel sure of myself--and my path--and invincible.  but there is always that dusty corner of pitch, that threatening current waiting to sweep and pull me down away from the sun.  but when it does, i can always count on--my strength? fate? the cyclical nature of, well, Nature?--to propel me up towards the surface, towards the light again, bobbing enthusiastically until my next desparate dive.

why do i have so little self-respect?

"if you want to grow, look at things differently."

i have more self-respect now than i did 5 years ago.  it's a process.

it's a good day at 9:55 a.m.

sometimes i feel like the buoyancy rising up in me will lift me in simple levitation, take me up into the clouds where i can finally adopt the perspective of my beloved red-tailed hawks.  a blush rises to my cheeks and my skin grows a bit warmer and colors seem brighter.  i notice things like the gorgeous weave of spider webs at the edges of windows, and the taste of warm maple syrup on my tongue.  i give hugs freely like they were pieces of gum (because i'm never stingy with my gum).  i look into people's eyes to see their smiles.  people are so beautiful, it hurts to think how some of them can have such evil actions and intentions.  i think at the bottom of evil is just hurt, pain, sadness.  someone needing to be touched, held and told they are deserving of unconditional love.  it's so hard to love the hard-to-love, but someone must.