Random Acts of Awesome

Ok, here we go. Writing out the negative is important, but doing something about it is much, much more so. So, here's the plan. First off, push back my travel till the first of October. I already spoke to the woman I'd be renting the house in Costa Rica from, and she's fine with me pushing my dates back. I'll give her a deposit on the house, and we're good. Talk to Trevor about options. What I'd prefer: We rent out the basement. Move out of it after my brother moves in with Callie, Sept 1st, and move into the bedroom upstairs. $600 a month for the space downstairs, $550 for the upstairs. He's there for 3 months while I'm traveling, then moves when I come back. Gives him 3 months of cheap rent to save. Cats. I've already got ads up on Craigslist for 2 of them. Sitha is going back to Jake, and I'm going to ask him to take care of Lucious while I'm gone. That leaves Cloud and Rufus at the house, much more manageable. My bonus comes in S

I've known, for a very long time, that I'm particularly vulnerable to manipulation. I'm sure part of it comes from growing up deeply immersed in an extraordinarily manipulative religion. And part of it comes from my own manipulativeness. We are always weakest right behind our biggest strengths. I manipulate the shit out of people, mostly in an effort to make them happier and healthier (I comfort myself with...), but it means that I'm prone to be drawn to other manipulative folks. Who do not have my best interest at heart, but rather their own. (That begs the question if I actually have the best interests of others at heart when I manipulate them, or if I'm just creating a world that is in my own best interest, of course) So, knowing that I'm vulnerable, knowing that I'm drawn to these people, doesn't make much of a difference in avoiding them. Or at least, it hasn't so far. Every person I've ever loved, every person I've ever let myself get

I've still got the "Holy SHIT, Universe" vibe going on, but it's mellowed out a little bit. I bought plane tickets to Phoenix and back for the 19th through the 21st, and reserved a car rental. I've talked to Peter, and am staying at the house, in the master bedroom suite I'd be renting. Checking the place out before packing up my shit and driving halfway across the country seemed like a good idea, even though it cuts pretty deeply into my moving budget. I've also decided to keep the apartment in PDX for now. It's cheap-ish rent, and it's a safety line. Part of me wants to cut that line completely and just free fall, but the other part of me realizes that I fucking LOVE Portland and I'm about to try and move to the desert. The exact opposite climate of what I've been living in and loving on for the past 12 years. So, a nice little line back to sanity if I need it sounds like the adult thing to do. I keep going back and forth on this, tell

Ugh. I'm nervous. Normally, I'm more than a little superstitious about writing about things that haven't happened yet, but might happen soon. Writing them out, I feel, makes them less likely to happen. But this? I'm a weltering morass of nervousness and giddyness, and I want to write about it. See, all the things that I wrote out, about what I want? They're all possibly coming to fruition in a couple of months. Every. Single. One of them. I was randomly poking around Craigslist in Arizona, looking at places for rent in spots that I've found beautiful (I do this regularly, all over the world. You never know what you're going to find). And I found an ad that made me gasp. It hit me, right in my head and my heart. It was written by a 78 year old farmer/scientist (RIGHT???) who was looking for someone to rent some space from him in his house or on his property. But he didn't just want someone to rent space from him. He wanted someone to contribute to w