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...

Man, this stupid bullshit drama saga just keeps going. I've been writing these posts to myself for months, and very little has changed. Have no fear, self, that's about to change. So, the worst thing about being stupid is the need to hide your stupidity from others. When this being stupid involves a man (or woman, or whatever form of sexual interest you choose) in your life, someone who's there all the time, the need to hide your stupidity evolves into isolation. It can't not. If you're going to hide how fucking dumb your life is right now due to this person, you kind of have to hide most of your life. Moments that you don't want to talk about start getting bigger, turning into days, and then weeks that you don't want to talk about. You complain once or twice, you vent to people you trust. And then things don't change, and you feel a little stupider venting the next time. And the time after that is even worse. Very quickly, you stop venting. Because a...

Something to remember. A very important something to remember. Any man, any person, who encourages your weakness is a weak person. If they need to be better than you, it is because you are better than them. If they see the best parts of you, and they need to bring them down to their level, it is because their level is far below yours. It's not a matter of pride, or class, or money, or intelligence. It's a matter of strength, whatever that means to you. If you can not be stronger than your partner sometimes, if you can not be stronger than your friends, if they can't bear to see that strength inside of you without trying to tear you down just a little bit, think about what that means. And if you get a little thrill from my words, a little sense of righteous smugness... "I knew she couldn't be that good". Think about what that means. My honesty isn't for you. It's for me. It's to remind me to never be that weak again. It's to acknowledge...

It's been a long time since I felt like this. I used to have this habit of hope. It was a big habit. It took up a lot of my life. It was a longing for potential, and a sense of absolutely limitless desire and reality. I dreamed big, about a million different things. I had a sense of who I was, and it was huge. I was a teacher, a gardener, a piano player, a consort, a wealthy lady, a zoologist, a marine scientist. I would save the world, I would save my part of the world, I would save you, I would save me. This hope lasted well beyond my youth. It pushed me out of my family, out of the safety of my tiny little existence, out of the surety of my religion. It pushed me beyond incredibly strong barriers designed to limit my hope to safety, dictated by others. It kept me from falling in love, because I hoped to be able to have a better love than I was capable of some day. And then, my hope stopped. It hit the boundaries of my own frailty, and it crumbled. I had never realized how very...