she*had*a*thirst*for*knowledge

So it’s been a rough few months.

There was a death in the family, a drive halfway across the country, the worst Christmas ever, and more.

I turn 30 this year. My hope for 2008 is to become more settled with myself, and to make my home a place of happiness, warmth, and hospitality.

In 2007 I learned how to cook. That was a good growing thing for me to learn.

I am trying to be less engaged with the things happening. I am trying to let things happen as they will.

Some days it’s so hard to be satisfied with just living you know? I’ve got such an incredible life, really, there are so many wonderful things going on. But that old craving for being in some gorgeous rush of vibrating intensity of living seems to have set itself on me again. I can’t create those times, just be open to them, I guess. Have I ever had moments like that? Yes, I think I have, those are the parts of my past I remember fondly now, I think. I’ve even experienced them as recently as a few months ago, I recall fondly the bell tower on a windy, sunny winter day. Those times make life worth living.

But then there are times like last Thursday, sitting on a bench outside Local 506, when I really wouldn’t have cared at all if the ground opened beneath me and the earth swallowed me whole.

Is it depressing that a lot of the explanations for the way one feels about living at any particular time can be ascribed to chemicals, be they bodily created or not? On a day when I’m struggling really hard with not letting my hormones determine the course of the day, I think maybe so.

Sometimes I think I have too much clarity about myself, and then other times I am rudely reminded that I have certain blind spots about myself. I’m trying not to let it all get out of hand, seem to have stopped documenting everything quite so obsessively. I haven’t been writing down the titles of every book I read in the little notebook my Aunt Susan brought back from Venice for me anymore, for example. But then I read an off-hand remark about a certain friend’s grocery spreadsheet, and I say “Oh!” and get a glimmer of curiosity about how to implement such a thing for myself.

But no. Fewer self-documentation opportunities, please. I need to devote myself to living rather than thinking about living and documenting living and talking about living (so stop!) and so on.

In other news, there may be a ghost in my house!

From Jonathan Cainer’s forecasts:

…now, as you attempt to settle into a new routine for a new year, a part of you feels as if you may be living on another planet from certain other people. In a sense, you are. That’s why it is so important to live by your standards, not theirs.

Which I should keep in mind as this new year begins. I’m starting to realize how living by other people’s standards in the past has damaged me, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get past the damage to my self-esteem, to my ability to be loved, among other things. I’m figuring out how to do that, I hope. But it’s just barely starting.

I feel like I’m drowning right now, barely holding it together. It’s been so hard for so long now, it seems, and it’s going to continue being hard.

But I am learning how to cook, because I have to. Last night Tallulah started eating the food that I made for us, and she said, “Mom, this is really good. You’re getting better at cooking.” This, after I burned the bacon on Christmas morning. I guess I am getting better. Putting a meal together requires a certain type of thought process that I just haven’t cultivated in my entire adult life, because I always had someone to rely on to feed me. Yesterday evening it started clicking in for me, that thought process, very vaguely, but I saw it come together as I poured olive oil into a pan, chopped garlic, and almost without thinking decided to add some tomatoes and marjoram, and so on. And a meal came together and the children actually ATE it. Even the broccoli. And it is so good to know that I’m doing something right with my children, that my daughter, without prompting, in an appropriate moment, knows how to show appreciation and encouragement. And she’s not even six years old yet.

That was the bright moment of the evening. The rest of the time I was in tears, not really holding together very well, feeling frantic inside. My eyes drop the tears without me even knowing anymore. The future is very scary.

But people tell me I’m strong, and I guess I am. I look back on the last 6 weeks and don’t understand how I got through the days without completely falling apart. But I’m still here, and I’m still (mostly) functioning, so there is some strength in me.

Things I want to work on this year:

- cut back on the amount of smoking, so I’ll be closer to my goal of quitting before I’m 30
- walk to work more
- learn how to plan meals that are healthy and inexpensive (eat less meat!)
- check out the gym and see if exercise helps my stress
- get on top of getting the dental work I need
- reduce the amount of “stuff” in my home environment
- get closer to becoming the adult I want to be

To relate all the interesting bits about Christmas this year, I should just send you over to Maria’s journal, since we were at her house on Christmas Eve, and she captured the best parts, for example, the ham flying off of Tallulah’s fork onto my breast. I had told that girl many times to be careful about waving her fork around when she’s got ham on it, but she was excited, and so the ham finally did fly off. Directly onto my black-clad breast. Which aroused a few moments of amusing, be-careful-where-you-put-your-ham banter around the table.

The children greatly enjoyed their presents, and they got a number of good-quality, interesting stuff this year. But other than their joy (which is precious to me) not much else about this time of year is causing much happiness in me. To quote one Sufjan Stevens, “that was the worst Christmas ever.”

Here’s hoping 2007 is a good year. Though I know it’s going to be tough. I think I’m actually going to make a few very well thought out resolutions this year.

What is going on? For years I’ve consistently scored as a personality type INFJ. And now all of a sudden I keep turning up the result ESFJ.

How to talk about one’s self without sounding like a total ass?

How to relate what really made me happy about this and that social event without sounding like a vapid trendster?

How to talk about my day without giving away all my secrets?

How to be self-reflective in a journal while maintaining a “do not think about things too much” policy of action?

For the last week or so my stomach has been clenched tightly, and I’ve been having trouble eating as much as I should. I frequently feel like throwing up. It’s not pregnancy-related nausea (goodness knows I know what that feels like…) but I think it’s more nervous-related. I’ve never localized my nervousness into my stomach before, usually it stays in my head, so this is new for me.

In conversation with one my friends yesterday a song came up, Broken Social Scene’s “Superconnected” and while listening to it yesterday evening these lines came into my mind:

But I don’t really want to think about those things anymore.
I really don’t want to think about those things.

So I’m going to try not to.

But all my concerns are minuscule today because THE REPUBLICANS LOST THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES last night. Hell yes.

I DON’T FEEL VERY WELL TODAY.

I read a story in the New York Times this morning about a graduate student at Stanford who years ago made a couple million dollars due to his involvement with PayPal. He’s since gone on to study computer science (I believe), despite the fact that he is one of the founders of YouTube. He doesn’t work at YouTube, he’s just a smart guy with smart ideas. He’s about to make A LOT of money, now that YouTube is being bought. I don’t know why his story made me so angry. I guess because this guy is making so much money pretty much just because he’s a smart guy with smart ideas. And I’m a smart person too. And most people I know are pretty damned smart. And none of us are making millions just because we’re smart. Even with hard work, for a lot of us, our smarts take us nowhere. Here I am worrying about how we’re going to afford Christmas presents this year, and cutting out my afternoon coffee consumption so I can afford to have a social life.

And then I’ve had this nagging feeling of hopelessness today. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I guess some things are going to change again, just when I was getting so used to how it was. One possible change promises to be good. Another doesn’t, at least in the short term. And in some respects I just can’t even articulate what I want anymore.

And that’s how it is, every day brings new changes. Right?

I just saw Doug Martsch from Built To Spill sing Woody Guthrie songs about Sacco & Vanzetti in a record store on my lunch break. That’s the sort of town this is.

Things continue to be very wonderful. Almost every day at least one lovely thing happens that makes me excited or happy. And I hold that little loveliness close to my chest and it sustains me until the next loveliness comes my way. All these years of talking, and I’m finally learning how to keep the words inside of me and savor them. So many things are happy little secrets now, for my own pleasure. Not out of a need for secrecy. If anyone needs to know I have no problem telling. But I don’t proffer as much these days as I have tended to do. It’s an interesting way of doing things, very new for me.