Closing Down for Something New

I have decided to start a new blog that focuses more on positive and cheerful topics. I feel like this blog has gotten kind of bogged down (pun intended).

I feel like I start whining and complaining about my life a lot of this blog, and in the future I want to focus on good stuff. This blog was made to be about musings and contemplations. But I think I mused and thought a bit too much about feeling sorry for myself. I think I want to just move on, and be much more cheerful.

: ) Thanks for reading!

Creating Your Own Opportunities

I spent the other morning daydreaming and looking up real estate that I will not be able to afford for about 10 years. It was a little bit fun, but really overwhelming and counterproductive. I realized afterward that as long as I am happy and living someplace halfway decent, that is what matters.

Long term planning is difficult. I want to travel. I want to become much more athletic. I want to earn more degrees so that eventually I can work in a field that I find meaningful. But in the day to day stress, I’m not giving everything one hundred percent. I would rather read a running magazine than go out and exercise. I would rather daydream than start experimenting with writing a novel. I don’t actually seem to value the real time and energy that these goals take for days and months before they can become a reality.

My husband and I would like to save up for a fun trip to Japan. We’re not getting any younger, and travel is important to us. It will take us at least one year to prepare for a large trip like this one.

Isn’t it funny that daydreams can seem more enjoyable than real life? In daydreams you are never overwhelmed and exhausted. A daydream is a pretty montage of delightful events in your mind, instead of the often frustrating daily work that goes into accomplishing anything that is really meaningful.

I spend a lot of energy whining and complaining. And then when I run across an instance of someone else whining and complaining as I am with a book I am reading currently, I am shocked at how unappealing and unpleasant it sounds. I need to funnel all of that energy into a slow progression forward.

So from time to time I will continue to gaze at the horizon and imagine what the future could bring. But I will try to more often take dainty steps toward goals that are important to me.

Attempting to Stay Silent

          I got pretty far today in becoming the monster I never wanted to be.  Right now I am listening to the beautiful sounds of REM’s Automatic for the People.  I just wrote a really honest essay for class tomorrow.  The class is about child maltreatment, so I made it a little personal and wrote about my experience in childhood and now as an adult living with the afterwards of that childhood.

          I know what I value, but I keep putting my parents’ values into place instead, pretty automatically.  I guess I was conditioned in certain ways and learned certain behaviors are acceptable that shouldn’t be considered acceptable.

          “Talk is cheap.”  Not all sayings are true, but some are.  I can talk any topic around in circles and that topic into the ground with fairly mindless chatter.  If there is something I don’t like, apparently my tactic of the day today was to yell and scream until it changed.  Guess what?  That doesn’t work and it is a horrible way of doing anything in life.

          I say that I want peace and quiet, but I seem to be very uncomfortable with peace and quiet.  I say that I want calm in my life, but I act on in ways that are anything but calm.

          Since talk is cheap, I need to keep my mouth shut, listen and observe, and then see what happens.  For me it would be a completely different way of living.

          My husband can barely get a word in.  I start one topic of conversation, and then I am off and running to the next topic of conversation before he can complete his thought.  How does he deal with that every day?

          I come from a very intense family, and I am admittedly a very intense person.  I don’t want to be intense and I don’t want to be a speed talker. 

          (smile.)  I should just relax since everything has been said multiple times anyway.

Current Reading, Part 2

The Fifth Book of Peace, by Maxine Hong Kingston    I discovered this author when I took a women’s literature course in college.  She has a very unique and personal style of writing that encourages me to be myself somehow.

Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main  This is a great book the gives you a lot of the ideas behind a modern yoga practice.  I really like the way the author writes using many examples from his own life experience.

What is Zen? by Alan Watts  I read this entire booklet from the library, based on some talks by Alan Watts.  It inspired me to read even more books by Watts on Zen Buddhism.  I like the direct way he puts things, it really seems like he is trying to effectively communicate some very interesting ideas.  I would have to say that my understanding of Zen and Buddhism in general is so far a collage based on the various books I have picked up by different authors.  So far the different angles on Buddhism are very fun and inspiring.

The Writer as Migrant By Ha Jin   I read the novel Waiting by Ha Jin and was completely captivated.  It had one of the most poignant endings that gave me chills.  I have barely begun this book from the library, but I am very interested in reading about Ha Jin’s views on writers who must write from a new country.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville, with a great intro by Alfred Kazin  I must admit that so far I have only read two short chapters of the actual text.  But I read the very interesting introduction and I was pleased to finally understand the exact reasons why this is such a classic.  It seems as if Melville were able to capture something epic about life’s beauty and the force of nature in a tragic yet elegant way.  I think sometimes classic books are intimidating, but then as soon as I actually begin to read, I realize that reading the classics is certainly possible.

No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh  I read this book cover to cover after checking it out of the library.  Our local public library has a decent section on Buddhism, luckily for me.  I really enjoy the peaceful and elegant style that Thich Nhat Hanh writes in.  I believe he really incorporates his view on mindfulness into every aspect of his life, which I find quite admirable.  I still have trouble facing my own death.  And I still respect the way that Buddhism asks you to face this fear.  Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas from this book will stay with me.  I was especially struck by his metaphor about the manifestation of clouds and how clouds then change to rain.

Simplicity?

There is a current trend about simplifying one’s lifestyle.  The idea of simplicity can be looked at in many different ways.  I feel like my recent interests have led me to a type of simplified lifestyle, but certainly only by my own idea of that term.  I don’t actually scale-down the number of possessions I have.  Possessions don’t really bother me.  I de-clutter my lifestyle by trying to completely de-stress.  The process of ridding my life of stress has really meant a complete overhaul of every aspect of my life.

I think my lifestyle change was really begun when I recently got married.  By feeling personally and romantically secure, I was able to ask my self about why I tended to be so stressed out and anxious most of the time.  Also, interests of mine that I had saved up and let be dormant began to surface.  I re-sparked my interest in spirituality.  I was able to admit my interest in yoga.  I began to meditate fairly often for the very first time in my life.  Even though I was accepting most of the lifestyle changes wholeheartedly, I would still be somewhat crippled by anxiety from time to time.  The strange issue about the anxiety is that I had no real stressors in my life at all.  I had reached a haven in my own life.  Unfortunately, this haven became a sage place for all of my hidden memories of traumatic past events to return and kind of haunt me.  It’s not an overly dramatic thing, it’s not some type of movie flashback.  But I was forced to face emotional issues that I had buried and set aside for a long time.

It was difficult to accept the contrast in my huge lifestyle change at first.  Having the life I had always hoped for meant coming to terms with the chaotic and almost hopeless route my life had taken before.  I was feeling sorry for myself and almost mourning for my vulnerable former self as I looked back at earlier periods of my life.

My early twenties were not at all what I wanted them to be.  Maybe a lot of people can say this about different periods of their lives.  It hurts me that I was so vulnerable and alone and that I had to trudge through all those years of difficulties in order to reach my current idyllic haven.  But really I still feel lucky, because I realize that not everyone gets the opportunity to create the haven of their dreams.

So “de-cluttering” my life because an emotional issue about accepting the past and attempting daily to let go and move on.  Memories and the past have a way of haunting the present, sometimes when you least expect it.  Facing my anxieties and imagine stresses has meant examining my entire view of myself and of the world.  I enjoy it, there is hardly anything I’d rather be doing.  But sometimes it is very difficult to completely face the way things are.  I am working on a steadfast gaze of the present moment, but maybe I have more of the past to let go of before the present moment is truly appreciated.