Comfy chairs and cushions

Being in Seattle has been hard for me. There's something about a giant city that, trite as it sounds, is so lonely. Surrounded by people and not one of them is yours. It's been making me think a lot about my lack of connections. I am, in some ways, doing the exact opposite of what I should be doing right now. I'm hunkering down, feeding my introvert, spending too much time alone. When I do go out, alcohol is involved and I avoid the people who approach me because I don't want to make stupid decisions based on alcohol and loneliness.
Which is great! Hurray for not making stupid decisions.
But choosing to be alone is also a stupid decision. For me. Right now.

I crave connections. Since I associate connections with long term settling in, I'm fantasizing about settling down.
I want to open a book store, in a little town on the ocean. A slightly run down little town, quiet and stormy in the winter, rambunctious in the summer. I want to have a fireplace in said bookstore, impractical as that sounds. I want comfortable chairs and giant cushions. I want beaten up books that have been adored by most of their owners, and will be adored again. I want to offer coffee, really good coffee. I want to make my own bookshelves, with elaborate designs cut out of their sides.

When I fantasize about the bookstore, though, it's more often about the connections I would make through it. Hiring a kid who needs the work, regulars who need the coffee, probably a lover who loves the books... I set up an entire world around the bookstore. But when I think about the world without the elaborate setting around it, I get nervous. I need the story, apparently, to make the reality of the connections appealing. But what happens when the story isn't exactly as plotted out in my mind? What happens when, as stories inevitably do, it goes awry and becomes something stressful for at least a little bit.
I get nervous thinking about my ability to maintain anything in the face of that reality.
And that, right there, is what often stops me from doing what I need to do.

If I have learned NOTHING else on these adventures I've been on lately, it's that I just need to do things. Not think them through too hard, not plan them out. Just DO IT. I hate you, Nike, for stealing that phrase. But it's so very, very helpful for me.
Before last month, I had never driven anything like a ATV. I pretended to know what I was doing when the owner asked me, which was silly and irresponsible of me. But I didn't want them to get nervous, and I KNEW I could figure it out. And I did. I watched a bunch of tutorials, I sat on the bike looking silly a bunch of times, figuring out where everything was, and then I fucking started it up, put it in reverse, and figured it all out as I went. Alone. By myself. Just me and a bunch of kids on YouTube :D.
That has been true of everything I've done lately. I had no idea how to blanket a fucking giant draft horse. But I figured it out. In the middle of a snowstorm in goddamn Montana in winter.
I didn't think I could climb a mountain, didn't think I was fit enough. But I did that in an Arizona desert, alone. And by god, the view from the top was amazing.
I didn't know how to build things, how to work with wood and sharp objects, but I've done that too.
I've saved a young colts life by recognizing signs of blockage, getting her off the ground and into a trailer and to the vets in time. With help, of course, but I knew what to do.
Everything I try, I figure out. I trust my fingers, trust my brain.
So why don't I trust my heart?

I think I just need to do with my heart and my social needs, as much as with my physical needs. No overthinking, no overplanning. No worrying. Well, only a little worrying.
But mostly just doing. Letting go and jumping out into the void of human interaction.

Ugh. That sounds so... unappealing in my current state. That's ok. I get a little leeway. There are things still to be done before I'm fully comfortable trusting myself again to the hands of other people. But soon, Sarah. SOON.