Apparently some subjects have no accompanying song

As I get further away from where I had been, I can see...sometimes too clearly...how I may have been wrong...acted badly...oh who am I kidding...I feel like a dirty, dirty accomplice and I don't like it. It is interesting how in the moment you don't question the integrity of something. Somethings just seem like whatever, then boom here I am feeling like a huge schmuck. I had an opportunity to say I am sorry. Just two people though, I am sure there are more.

Some day, I will write so much more on this particular topic. It's not straightforward by any means and that's no excuse but I don't think I have enough in me tonight to do it justice.

I am sorry.

I am sorry and sitting in here unable to distract myself or redirect with any sort of appropriate song.

Quiet contemplation and remorse that I am guilty by association and by deed of being a huge jerk.

'Cause we all know art is hard When we don't know who we are

I am sharing this today mostly because I like the lyric I used as the title of this post. I concurrently swear that I have never heard this band until recently and I have always known them. They feel familiar, like they soundtracked hazy memories of time passed in ethereal post-Civil War crackerboxes and late model cars. For as much as I can relate to these lyrics, I could go either way as to if it is reflective of a piece of my soul or exactly what I would write to a certain musician in my life.

Musicians. It's the STD they don't tell you about in health class but that's a topic for a different post.

This post...this post is about me randomly sharing that my renewed creativity is a sign to me that I am on the right path. There's volumes I could write and will write someday about all the twists and turns and whatnot that lead me to letting it all go for lack of a better word. I have struggled with a life-long lack of confidence that kept me from fully sharing what I was fully expressing. When I went off to college once upon a time, in a galaxy oh so far away, I didn't appreciate what it meant to be one of 6 chosen to be in the incoming design/tech class nor did I quite fathom what the financial backing behind that meant.

As of late, when I ponder with friends what I should be  when I grow up and everyone points to some sort of path with a creative tinge. Ffs, I had a random encounter with my 10th grade English teacher, whom I adored, who after all these years made the comment that she was surprised that I wasn't writing and getting paid for it.

Art is hard when you don't know who you are. Or perhaps better stated, art is hard when you think your voice doesn't matter. Art is hard when so many voices keep asking you how you are going to take care of your kid. Art is hard when it's the mortar filling the cracks of your day as an office flunky. Art is hard when you have dealt with continual rejection. Art is hard when you feel like you can't be who you really are, can't use your authentic voice. Art is hard when you and your husband have "Voices Carry" moments about your self-expression.

Well, art was hard because I made it that way. I listened to voices that weren't mine and took paths I was never meant to take. I tried to shy away and defer comment but those who know me and even people I meet, they keep seeing the spark. I am funny. I am thoughtful. I am creative. Sorry, I forgot about that. Sorry, I got swallowed by the sea of misguided adulting.

Sorry I have to go to work because I really want to write today. I want to write in a manic, frenetic state of scribble I haven't felt in a long time. God help my co-workers today, I am a artist in need of an audience and I will give six shows an hour today because it mother fucking makes me happy.

The Start of My Healing Journey:Trigger Happy Jack

Maybe "Trigger Happy Jack" is not a song that some people would pick for a post about healing but I find it pair well. I mean, I guess, I could have picked The Carpenters "We've Only Just Begun" or that wore out, played old disco song that everyone latches onto after a bad break up. Nope. This song by Poe is the one I want to write to tonight.

Although I have made some effort in the last three years to get closure, mend the broken bits and arrange the pieces in the right order, it didn't really start to happen in any meaningful way until a few weeks ago. Counseling helped but the focus was all wrong. I am not a person who likes or even clings to labels, except maybe for mom, I pretty fond of that one but other wise I would prefer not to cling to a label or whatever, so that being said I guess I kept tightening my bootstraps and marching on.

I am okay. I am fine. There's nothing wrong with me. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I am as okay as woman living in southwestern Ohio who has a trigger of overweight, unfortunately featured blondes can be. I am sure it's perfectly normal for any sort of colored paper attached to my front door or car to incite a complete loss of all sympathetic functions. And dude, it's totally funny, it's part of my schtick that I can't remember shit from the moment I walk from one room to the next. I am okay. I am okay.

I am not okay. (Yes, I thought about MCR but it was entirely too obvious a song.)

When I read that Sparkle book, my jaw dropped for real and not in some underhanded click-bait sort of way when I read about what trauma is by definition in the mental health community. It's not just my divorce that needs triaged. What I have called life for most of the last seven years has been acute trauma wrapped in upheaval, and I am sure that it leaves you wondering how I didn't realize sooner. Shrug. I didn't. I deal with life and I keep moving forward and THAT, my friends, is a bit of a character defect. I wasn't admitting the pain so rather than healing I just got a seriously of poorly healed scabs.

I have been picking at them. A few of them need to be opened up by a professional and properly repacked but I am not there yet. I have had amazing synchronicities happen with resources coming along and that has been tremendously helpful. I am learning to look out for me in a way that I probably (honestly) never have. I have spent an inordinately dreadful amount of time operating at less than. It's time to get up to speed.

Not too quickly though because as much as I want to be on the top of my game, I am seeing the value in being still in this space and taking the time to have a proper cry (literally and figuratively).  I can appreciate the concerns that I may be isolating myself. Boundaries need to be drawn. I am in regular contact with my own personal Justice League and yes, we are considering costumes. I have skipped over proper healing at so many other points in my life that I thought that maybe it was time to make time to be fully better.

This book I am reading as part of the book launch is phenomenal and I am only 30% in to it. Thank God that the Kindle highlighter will never run dry. It's nice to have some validation that I am not losing my mind or otherwise crazy. While I am finding that I do have to digest this slowly because some sentences bring a flood of memories, I am eager to finish the book and take positive steps forward. I am praying that this book continues to be a positive and pertinent tool for my healing journey.

So, tonight I raise my glass of water and propose a toast: here's to the end of Jedi mind tricks and all the other bullshit I have let drag me down for 25 years. 25 years based on having my first date at 15. Totally sure there is older drama but Jesus, I am not going to for sainthood...just sanity.

Timeless Classics: Sade - No Ordindary Love

There is no substance to tonight's post. It's just a memory wrapped in a daydream sprinkled with dreams. For whatever reason, this song is bouncing around my head. I could post some deep and exposing speculation about why it is this song is looping but it is merely speculation. It's only ever fully applied to one person at this point and you know it's whatever.

Whenever I hear this...suddenly, I am 17 again, visiting my friend during her freshman year at Wright State. Someone played this somewhere on her floor while I was there, I am sure of it. I let life soundtrack itself whenever possible and it being such a strong association with the visit I know, knowing me that I had to have heard it. My memory is just someone on the floor jamming it with their door open. Such a good weekend. I do have fond memories of it...and pictures to fill in the blanks.

This song, such a hauntingly fucking awesome song, that I can't even fathom why it is choosing to haunt me now.   Like I said, only one person ever in the history of my life of affections and affectations has ever been worthy of Sade. One. A perfectly good waste of Sade considering where he stands on the matter.To some degree it's just my subconscious picking brutally truthful lyrics to wrap around things I am pretending I am okay with, not that it really matters. It is what it is, right?  Stupid heart, stupid subconscious.

It's so awkward to have a stalkerish song on my mind when I haven't the least bit of energy to stalk anyone. I have spent a lot of time the past week or so verbally and mentally and every other way letting go of everyone who needs let go of and clearing my mind of any and all intent relationship-wise. I am notoriously bad for overactive romantic rumination which really isn't that great when I have marginal self-love and penchant for self-deprecation.

Somebody got Sade and it is so akin to setting a table with Wedgwood for a dude who could hardly appreciate paper plates. How does that happen? (Rhetorical question. I don't have the professional or libational support to write that paragraph right now.)

I don't know what the point of all this is except to work this particular Sade song into a post. Everything else is irrelevant. I seriously misjudged someone in a seriously fatal way. Merely a flesh wound but early 90s trip hop soul, that's forever.

People Are Strange When You're A Stranger:Thoughts on "Finding Dory"

I realize it's been out a month. I only saw it the other night at my daughter's suggestion. People are strange is a good overall theme (and I am going to go with the Echo and the Bunnymen version because it's my blog.) 

So, I read nothing, watched no previews, had no opinions other than my daughter's going into the movie. Truthfully, I didn't care for "Finding Nemo." I strongly dislike Marlon and I kind of felt like the Nemo movie had this undertone that broken people should settle for dysfunctional relationships. (Roll your eyes if you want but you tell me that if Marlon and Dory were in human form and in your circle that you wouldn't find their relationship in the first movie a bit offputting.) 

Dory hit me right in the feels. It hit me in the place that still feels weird and awkward after all these years, sure. Oh, but the place in my existence that so deeply identified with Dory's parents, I can't even type the sentence without welling up. Without giving too much away, although the reasons all that resonates with me are different from Dory's parents, the emotions and reactions are the same.

Life feels hard when you feel like you don't belong or that you are somewhat less than because you are differently abled. My friend, Statler, and I were talking about it last night. We have this pervasive feeling that awareness as it manifest itself these days does more to divide than include. It is almost as if people become some obsessed with their label that they champion it to the exclusion of any sort of meaningful relationships. Also, it seems that if there isn't a ribbon or celebrity endorsement for whatever makes you an alleged outlier in society, then you slip further in the cracks.

All this from a fish movie...a fish movie that made me cry and secretly want to the space in the hall by my door with shells. I hope that I am not the only one who sees it who gives pause. Faces do look ugly when you are alone and what sort of cruelty is it to ostracize or ignore because lack of understanding or egocentric perfectionism. If I have learned nothing from scrolling through Facebook, I have learned this...

Be kind. Everyone is facing a hard battle.

Oh, and JUST KEEP SWIMMING!

Can't Write Too Busy Enjoying "Beyond Control" by Kings Kaleidoscope

Seriously, I had a head full of words tonight. Multiple tabs open, trying to decide what which topic would be tonight's winner. Turns out tonight is not a night to write but to listen. Kings Kaleidoscope is one of my favorite bands that you maybe never heard of and a few weeks ago they released "Beyond Control".


The first track I heard was "A Prayer", the explicit version, an awesomely powerful piece that is causing a bit of controversy amongst the Pharisees and those with stones still cocked between there thumb and forefinger. I have been in that place where the fear is exactly as described in the song. Everything you know to be true challenged by some dark night of the soul. An agonizingly lonely place where people throw you platitudes or dismiss your pain as silliness or overindulgence. A space where the bridge of this song was my prayer because I was definitely getting more than I could handle and life felt more like incineration than a refining process.


But I am not in that place. I am in a place where I am going to drop all my plans and listen to this album. (That would be Proverbs 16:9 from the New Jenny Abridged and Implied Modern. Haha.) This Vevo playlist does not contain the explicit version and I don't want to tell you how to live your life but I'd listen to that first and then dig into the album.

Insert wistful, peaceful sighs here. 

Inspiring, positive, awesome...

Those were the three words I used last night to look at content suggestions on Hootsuite for my Facebook page. I was not sure what my next post was going to be about so I decided to choose fill-in content based on those three words. Well, there must have been some magic in that Hootsuite planning round because if I had to pick three words to describe my day today I believe I would pick those three words.

I am going to bed with a warm glow and a contented heart. I would write more but my eyelids are so heavy.

It is going to be okay.

Everything is okay and getting better all the time!

Sweet dreams my friends!