reinvention

i am continuing to undo the in-shapeness i worked on before colorado. that ends today. also ending today are the poor choices of men i choose to hang out with, being intoxicated to the point of losing two of my most (emotionally) valued items, and the general shabbiness in which i have run my life.

it doesn't take einstein to make me realize that the former of the previous three is a direct cause of the second, and number three logically follows. it's a mess. i'm a mess. i spent the last few days with no drinking (save for two drinks during football with dave) and alone self time. i also watched blake snake moan, which wasn't what i was expecting, but was oddly parallel to my life. not nearly as dramatic or severe, but similar.

i feel different. better too, but mostly just different. i realized yesterday that going through things in my mind is a lot like the method of cleaning my room.

when i make up my mind to clean, i see the big picture. i look at my room, and i generalize tasks. i have to do laundry, vacuum, pick up things and put them back where they go, etc etc. the problem is that i get sidetracked into mini-tasks, which then turn into micro-tasks.

an example in my head is this: i find a book on the floor. i pick it up to put the book on the bookshelf, and then notice the books are out of order or disorganized for whatever reason. so i put aside the larger task of cleaning my room for the moment, and pull things off the bookshelf to reorganize that - mini project. once most of the books are in a pile on my lap and the floor and i'm just about to get started, i find a box of photos on one of the shelves. i look inside and see that they are all haphazard and in no order whatsoever. i decide that i need to organize the photos according to subject, and then maybe make little name tabs for them to keep them neat and in place. of course, i can't set this aside to do later, because i'm in the moment and the only way it will get done is to do it now. that's how i operate.

now, not only have i abandoned my original task of cleaning my room to the ultra-micro task of ordering pictures, my room is more of a disaster than it was due to the contents of the bookshelf being strewn about the now catastrophic living space .

i do this every single time. and cleaning takes way longer than it should because of the side projects i create for myself. but in the end, i feel like i've simplified my life, and my brain feels a little less cluttered. in fact, i clean when i'm grouchy or sad or emotional, and the brain clutter goes away, but it also gives me time to think. not that i need more of that, but bleh.

i noticed yesterday that my emotional healing process is handled much the same way. but it's on a way larger scale, and there's clutter going back more than three decades. in other words, this cleanup job is not handled in an afternoon, or even a weekend. it's not even confined to the spring cleaning season.

i will think about something that's bothering me. i will typically associate this thing with something else in my life from the past that's similar, and also bothering me somewhere in the back of my mind. and that will usually take me back through a chain of events that are deep in my brain. and each of them takes a long time to sort, if they can be sorted at all. if my brain cleanup was represented on a linear scale, it would probably look like a globe sized leaf, with lines branching off tens of thousands of times so that i can't remember where to backtrack to once i get done with something.

i'm a bright girl, but i somehow fall into the same hole too much. i realize that i do it. i know the hole is there, and as i walk up to it, i want to step over it, but i can't stop myself. one foot goes down and doesn't connect to earth, and i'm back where i was, at the bottom and cursing myself as i did the times before that.

so i've stopped walking. i can't resist the hole, and something tells me if i start out walking a different direction, they'll be holes that way also. so for now, i intend to lay down where i'm standing and look at things from that perspective for a while. the things i thought were important to me aren't. if they were, they would make me feel better. and they don't. so until i figure out a way to step over, or walk around those holes, i won't go anywhere. i'm not sure where i was headed to begin with. what makes me think that over there is better than here? i guess there looks cool from here, but things tend to look better the farther you are away from them.

one thing i did this week that was a nice catalyst for this needed change was watch 'the prestige.' i enjoy my thoughts a lot when i get wrapped up in a movie that i'm moved by and think about for days afterward. my mind gets to toss around another flavor for a change instead of what it's used to. i should watch good movies more often. or read good books. i like being in my own head when something moves me. it reminds me there's more to think about.

i realize you guys enjoyed the internet date stories, but those are gone. they were depressing, and didn't make me feel any better or any more social. i think most of those people are stuck in the same place in their heads, and in life, and from experience, it's not a fun place to play.

shortly after making my exit from the cyber date world (which was a few weeks ago, actually) i second-thought it. and when i was in colorado, i was reading the news. evidently 35% of people on dating sites are actually married. i run into enough people who masquerade as single, or kind, i don't need to mine for more.

anyway, this change is good. pleasant things are coming my way. it's the perfect time of year for change on a number of different levels. the weather changes, my age officially changes - autumn cleaning doesn't have quite the same ring to it. but i'm okay with that.