helen.blog

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again…

This place feels so old-fashioned, in the world of facebook and twitter, and the ever growing instant communication… blogging is so … early 00’s. Who has the attention span to read the blogs anymore? Look around, these are all the tweets within a 1 mile radius. Who has the time to read this? It’s all about knowing where your 200 closest friends are this very moment and what is on their minds… With hundreds of friends, who has the time to go beyond 140 characters? If people find out about the death of their friend through twitter, if all it takes is a “no no god no” tweet to know that someone you just talked to yesterday is gone — who needs writing? if you can post a map and a picture, who cares about what you have to say? It’s a brave new world and I feel like a dinasour.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. I like my blog — it is my place on the internet that is solely mine and noone else’s. That’s why I disabled comments. There’s something freaky about this. I’m alone and this place is mine and private — but “private” is an oxy-moron for something that is publicly accessible. It is paradoxical — anyone can access it yet not that many people know about it. It is not linked to my facebook, or my twitter, or my linkedin, nor is it searchable through Google. Am I totally stupid for trying to make this “private”? And it is not, because anyone who knows the URL knows of it…

Why don’t I tweet more? Dunno. I don’t want my words to be lost in the sea of other tweets — why does it matter to me, I do not know, nor do I care enough to find out.

OK, this is turning into a rant…

I think about Emma and I think about the life I want her to have. I have found a very good measure to see if what I’m doing is right — it is whether I want Emma to be doing the same. And the answer is no. I want her to know what it is like to get lost in a really good book, to know what it’s like to be able to let go, to feel free, to feel that inner peace, to have that first hit, to enjoy that sense of accomplishment, to look forward to an adventure; airports, buses, meals, bars, people, nature, music, love — she has it all ahead of her and it is nothing less than amazing. I want her to be happy more than anything else — and the first step in that is to reflect back and to see if I’m happy. Why am I doing what I’m doing? Do I want Emma to spend her days at the corporate job, trying to survive one day to next? No. Do I want her to feel obligated to call me and tell me how her day went? No. Then why do I think it’s ok for me to have the life like this when I clearly do not think it is the right kind of life.

I do not know. I do not know the way out either. I do not think that winning the lottery(c) is the way out. There is nothing external about this. It is all internal. This is deep in me. Deep in my upbringing. Is it too late for me? I do not think so. I just do not know how to change it.

You asked me to write something, so I’m writing. But I don’t know what to write about. Should I write about Emma? Probably not — it’s hard to put it in words and I’m not sure I can write anything that is not corny. I could write about people at work — that is surely a never-ending theme, but that’s probably not too smart of me ’cause I don’t want to get fired or piss people off. Should I write about the new house — nah, that’s just plain boring.

So what can I write about? Is that what happens when one grows up — all the creativity is sucked out by the real world and you don’t have enough imagination to even day dream. I remember when I was a child/teenager, I used to love to day dream. Just to sit there and think about possible things that might happen to me and imagine all the possibilities, some of them not too possible, let’s put it that way. Like when I was really little, I used to think how aliens were going to come and take me away. Like in a good way. When I was a little older I dreamed of pretty caring boys. Then when I was even older I though of me being incredibly rich on a yacht.

Ok, maybe all these sound lame, but at least I could think of something. Now when I try to day dream, I simply cannot. I end up running through all the stuff that needs to be done. And there’s always something to be done.

So I wonder — will my posts become more and more depressing as my life progresses? It’s not that my life is depressing — it’s not. Some would say I’m pretty lucky. I love my family and I even like my job. But the creative juices are drying up, so to speak. And I’m not sure how to fix it.

Even though I’m spotting a big belly, I’m still the same person I was 6 months ago — I find the same things funny, I can discuss the same topics I used to discuss, and I find life just as amuzing as I used to. Hey, maybe I got a little slower, but that doesn’t mean I won’t understand what you’re saying or what you find interesting. Really, the only change that happened is in *your head*, because you make an assumption that I have changed, but really I haven’t. It your attitude toward me that changed, not me. And that is really really sad…

Things just seem to be dragging along, accelerating for a couple of days and then decelerating again and almost coming to a halt. There’s no way around it, time needs to pass before things will happen, errands need to be run, decisions need to be made, weekdays need to be worked through, weekends need to be planned. There’s no bailing out, no time for a timeout. I feel like a horse on a long journey. I left my starting point long time ago and I still have a long way to the destination. When will train A meet the train B? When will things start coming together? They are all disjoined, in different worlds, different parallel universes of work, family, friends, etc. I’m the only dot that connects them, and I’m just travelling through space and time, and there’s nothing I can do, I have to go the distance. Or rather, distance needs to be travelled and time needs to be lived through. By me or anyone else for that matter.

Sometimes I get this very rotten feeling about certain people, or a certain situation, or a certain event. I just know that something is fucked up, not right, and just completely broken. But then noone else says anything about it, and everyone is going about their business, so I try not to say anything. Although most of the time I do say something and end up sounding like a complete bitch.

I’m not saying I know better than others — I don’t. But sometimes things are so obviously fucked and I just don’t understand why noone else sees it. Or maybe they see it but they just keep quiet. Or maybe they don’t care. Or maybe that’s what being tactful and polite is all about.

But then when months (or years) later shit hits the fan and it’s all out in the open and everyone is in this who-would-have-thought state, it strikes me again and I want to say it-was-obvious-all-along, but then once again if I do say it I sound like a complete bitch.

I guess when I’m old and wise I’ll just be this mindful observer of the situations and myself, and I won’t feel the urge to tell people my opinion and I won’t feel the urge to say i-told-you-so. Maybe one day, maybe one day. But not now.

Someone told me today, “It’s really easy to be nice to people.” I thought about it, and I think there’s some truth to that. I think I’ll give it a try.

I’m getting stupider and slower by the day. It is quite interesting to observe, actually. First, I just started spacing out in the middle of the conversations. Second, I started doing random stuff in the middle of a task (like stopping in the middle of pulling out of the parking space and checking my email on my iPhone). Then I couldn’t figure out where to turn while looking at the map (something that was always extremely obvious and intuitive to me). 

I wonder how bad it is going to get. My main concern is work, obviously.

Even now I don’t have the energy or concentration to finish this blog entry. Well, this will have to be it, then.

Testing my new blog server …. Don’t have the energy to write anything smart or witty….

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies…

They say that people don’t change, but I think they do. People change all the time, and I see it constantly: sometimes they open up, sometimes they close down, and sometimes they are really unhappy and in denial about everything, and they try really hard to act normal, but it never ever works…

…Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes….

I love watching people opening up. Very often it’s a very subtle, quiet process. It happens a lot in warmer wetter climates. They just sort of slow down and get this absent minded smile on their faces. As if they just took 2 vicodins. But they haven’t. That’s the whole point. They just feel very peaceful on the inside. So they don’t feel as threatened by the unknowns on the outside. So they open up, and their eyes get brighter, with little sparks in them. It’s really cool. It happens a lot at Burning Man too, but it’s usually not sustainable because you cannot force this sort of thing. So it goes away once the drugs wear off.

…Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head…

Often people get very unhappy but they never admit it. They suppress it and cover it up by working too much, drinking too much, getting high too much, running too much, watching tv too much, basically just doing anything that would keep them from admitting their unhappiness. And then there are ones who do admit it, get depressed, and go on antidepressants and/or write whiny entries in the blogs. We all feel really bad for the latter, but we shouldn’t because at least they are dealing with their unhappiness somehow. It’s the former, the ones that cover it all up that we should feel bad for, because they are in the way worse shape.

…Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.

Everyone feels underappreciated and misunderstood, and no one knows what to do next. I wish we would just stop thinking that we’re all so damn special.

I think people are mostly good-natured. As in, nobody wants to actively screw you over; usually people either just fuck up or act out their insecurities. Or you fuck up and people get pissed at you, but because noone ever talks about their feelings openly, it all comes out in some sort of a twisted absurd misunderstanding. People, don’t be afraid to speak up when your feelings get hurt! Things will be much easier if you do …

Of course, a very small percentage of people do have their hidden agendas or are just outright bitches or assholes. It’s better just to stay away from them, because they are rotten deep inside and nothing can change that.