I have been making new friends lately. I have never been good, or so I thought at making friends, and it is so refreshing to have things happening that is proving me otherwise on that assumption.

Happy Valentines Day everyone. My boyfriend brought me home roses and chocolate and came home early from work which really meant a lot to me. Its something we have fought about more than once, and it is a long day for me sometimes, with the way his hours work.

and he played the piano which he knows I like when he does.

But, and there is always a but isnt there?

I think he went to bed a little dissatisfied with his Valentine's Day.

So the end of the night tone was not so Valentiney but I did not let it get to me.

I think he wants more from me sometimes.

And I do of him too.

AH love, some of us get it all wrong.


 

I had a really good day. A group I belong to online talks about how the moon etc. effects your mood levels, and now I am wondering if there is some grain of truth to it.

Winter is usually a time of low energy, to the point of hibernation, for me. But I am definitely on energy upswing lately and I wonder where it is coming from. Because it has been SO cold and very winterlike.

But I have also been praying to God, and admitting that I need some help.

Last night I asked for help for my family, (me, Anastasia, and her father (my problematic boyfriend at times) and I was thinking and feeling at the time that I do not have what it takes to do my part.

and I woke up at four in the morning full of energy, so I cleaned the bathroom, took a shower, did yoga, had some quiet time, and ended up having a day that was so good for her and me.

So I now leave this blog to write in my gratitude journal, which I have neglected the past few say but now am inspired to do so again.
 

I am plugging a google group I just formed. It about how to create better families for tomorrow. You do not have to be a parent to join. Everyone is or has been part of a family, and I would like a lot of different viewpoints - from sisters, grandparents, brothers, daughters, sons,...

And I like to hear from the young and the old and everyone in between. For those young adults on WDC, your imput would be valuable was well - helps us bridge that generation gaps that sometimes arises!

check it out.

http://groups.google.com/group/hope-for-tomorrow
 

I been thinking a lot about what make us different as humans from other species on this planet and how it relates to our pain and misery.

I was wondering if dogs feel sad or anxious and depressed and I do believe they do. But my theory with those dogs is that they just have had to close contact with humans and they have those inherited some of our idiosyncrasies and issues.

But our brains never turn off, unless you are extremely good at meditating and can enter an altered state of consciousness. I have often thought without sleep we would all go insane. but even in sleep our thinking goes on, as I have realized from some of my dreams that as illogically as they may be -set up time-wise etc, there is often an underlying message that is all too true.

so we take our worries even into our dreams?

we do.

and that is what separates us from other species, our worries, our fears, our questions,

our symbolic, abstract thinking which is both our blessing and our curse.

in eastern tradition they stress that suffering is a natural state for humans, and our culture we spend so much energy, medication, and counseling, self help books - trying to rid our suffering, and we many times we cant, (and only focus more attention on it)

so if suffering is natural, and we accept that, and live our lives despite it, maybe that is the way to go

awareness

that suffering is a normal unavoidable human state and we can function with it.

I am not advocating misery, impotence, and powerlessness,

but the opposite. Know you misery, accept it, understand it, and function with it.

Because everyone suffers to a certain degree.

So many time I do not work on my writing because to do so makes me feel anxious and incompetent

so I can write anyways even though this is so?

Despite the suffering it causes me I can write anyway, and eventually I would think it would become easier to write.

Our ability to think symbolically and abstractly makes life complicated. It makes us ask and wonder about things we do not have answers to, and it leaves us feeling insecure and fearful.

I think this is the root of many of the problems in the world. People are afraid. They want easy answers, or a script to follow. So they adopt and follow other peoples ideas, or get a following for their own, and then they become fearful of people who think differently than those ideas, because they feel threatened and insecure, and because they hate feeling threatened and insecure, they hate the people who make them feel that way.

Cause basically many of us are afraid. Afraid there is no meaning to life. No God. That we are not important. That there is no divine sense to it all, but just chance and chaos and genetics.

Maybe that is why those creationist(or intelligent design) feel so strongly. They do not want to believe in evolution, because it make them feel insignificant and powerless.

I think I believe in God. But I can never really know for sure in God's existence. I believe I have soul and that my existence will not end with this physical life. But again I can not know for sure.

It is really a hunch really that make me believe these things. Some thing I feel intuitively.

But I also have this logical reasoning part of my brain that can hypothesize that the reason I believe in God is because I think abstractly, so therefore there becomes the need and desire for a God, for an afterlife, to some deeper meaning.

Birds do not need to believe in God, or ants, or....

You see what I mean.

It is the way we think that makes us feel alone and insecure and that is where the desire comes from for a God. We want a parent. We want guidance. We want eternal security.

but still you can turn it around again and say:

birds and ants and other species, they do not wonder about the Divine, because they think simpler and they just know. They are just part of it all. In a way we can no longer identify with, because of our separateness.






 

Well I am always complaining about my boyfriend when things go wrong. So tonight things went right, and I thought I should comment on that somewhere. You ever notice that? That you tend to want to call someone when you are upset about someone in your life, and your journal entries are often - well often you are compelled to write them when you are troubled. And therefore, the people in your life get kind of a one-sided view of your situations.

I woke up last night at one in the morning and then could not sleep, and I was in the bedroom. And the things I usually do, my laptop, my book, my current journal, were all in the living room where my boyfriend was sleeping on the couch because of the uncomfortable upsetting Friday night we had. And truth by told normally I would smoke, but to go out the balcony to smoke would have been loud and woke him up. So I was forced to do something in the bedroom. So I searched for books to read, things to write in, and I found a old journal. It is a funny journal, because it is oversized and I can not carry it around with me, I dont write it in it often. So I reread the entries and it spans many years, unlike my other smaller journals that are more compact covering a smaller amount to time.

So it was like a flash of my life, and it was pretty illuminating. I have the same issues now that I had ten years ago and all the time in between.

Dr. Phil says ever relationship need a hero. I know I need one. So it occurred to me why not be my own hero. So I had an intimate conversation with my boyfriend tonight. At first my ego got in the way. I mean why be the one to try to make things better, be the better person, if he was wrong, if he started it? But I did not listen to that ego. I remember my journals entries and how pitiful in a sense they were to read. Me dealing with the same issue over and over again.

I have intimacy issues. I always think my partners do. And they do. But it occurred to me last night- That was does it mean ( for me) that all my boyfriends have been emotionally unavailable commitment phobic men?

I choose them and I choose to stay with them.

And I think I might have figured it out. I am afraid of intimacy and commitment , but I chose men who are worse than I , so it is easy to blame it all on them. And I can feel better about myself. After all, if I compare myself to them, I dont seem that bad.

And its funny, I tried talking to him a couple of other times this weekend, and it did not really change things. But when I got brutally honest, naked emotionally, and emotionally vulnerable, it was different.

He did not say much, and no he did not say the things I wanted to hear in a perfect world. But I sensed something. His mood and attitude towards me completely changed. And we just had a pretty good time fooling around, clicked better than we had in long time.

But I dont think the lesson I want to walk away with should have too much of focus on how that vulnerable moment effected him - but how it was important to me. I am tired of being the way I am: a coward.

And I know that maybe I read too much into his "response", and it may not have impacted him the way I wanted it to ( cause as I said I date closed off men, so its hard to tell much) , and I may have even given him get out of jail free card- let him off the hook so to speak ,so that he does not have to take a long hard look at his behavior.

But you know what? I dont care. I feel proud of me. And l also doubt that my actions let him off the hook entirely.

One thing I have noticed about him is that I think I touch/effect him most when I communicate honesty and true caring.

And isn't that true for everyone. I mean to you ever get what you want when you try to brow beat someone and make them feel bad or inadequate.

I think I am figuring some things out, because of being involved with him.

So I am grateful, for God or my spirit guides or my subconscious for sending my the lesson they I need to learn. Apparently, I am a slow learner. But I dont care. I am just glad that I learn at any pace. I would hate to be so stuck like some people seem stuck changing hardly at all, incapable of seeing themselves differently.

So I thank the people who have pointed out my faults. And I also thank the people who have given me good advice, and the people who have modeled better behavior for me.

And I talked to me niece last night naturess and she seemed to understand some of the stuff I was saying about personal boundaries and how other people's issues do not have to be our own. (P.S. She is in need of an upgrade if any one has the money and can spare it..)

Does anybody else notice that this younger generation seems much more self aware, more poised, more reflective?

She seems more mature than I at her age. And I am glad for her.

I think you should never sacrifice yourself for someone else issues. I would like to stress that. Never enable someone else. Never let someone walk all over you and mistreat you. And never let yourself get lost.

But

I believed this so strongly, because of my childhood environment, that I limited myself to different viewpoints, different perspectives.(like a chip on my shoulder perhaps?)

I think Mother Theresa said it best with this prayer. And even if you do not believe in God. I think you can find a word or two to substitute the word God for that works.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centred;
forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ultierior motives;
be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough;
give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.





 

I am reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It is a beautiful. It is on eof those books that reopens a part of your soul: the creative childlike side of you that gets harder and harder to reach as you get older. That part of you that was so easy when you were a child. I wrote about this feeling before, in a flash fiction piece.

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P.S. Thank WDC. It was nice to pay my upgraded membership and see all my old stuff get umlocked! Thanks for not deleting.
 

It's a 11:05 pm. I like writing the time when I am writing in my journal, and that is all I have been doing lately when I write: writing in my blue book journal. I have not been writing on WDC for awhile, or any other public place for that matter. I wonder for how many other people, who like to write publicly such as blogs, write private journals, find it such a different experience, as I do, to write privately.

When I write in my journal, I feel like I am having a very private sacred conversation between me and God or the universe, or my subconscious.

And it is soothing somehow, and helps me grow.

But blogs are nice too, because you know that maybe some other human is reading it out there, who understands what you are trying to say, and that helps too.

So I guess I have been retreating the past few months, or more. Or I have been on a retreat.

I have been trying to make peace with myself.

Trying to change.

And trying to figure out why that is so difficult to do. Change.

So I have admitted a few things to myself.

1.I like being a stay at home mom. I don't like working. I just feel like I should out of some sense of guilt or responsibility or WORRY.

Not working outside of the home is good.

2. I am a very negative person. My thoughts, daydreams, fantasies, are all very negative with me being the victim somehow or the other, and that 'significant-other' finally realizing how much they love me and appreciate me after they realize how they have hurt me and how they have been wrong.

It is very difficult for me to have positive, happy daydreams or thoughts. I have been trying. And it is so strange, how hard it is. when I try, my mind goes white. I see white literally and nothing happens. It is like a computer hard drive that's freezes.

I freeze.

It is just a firmly ingrained habit that grew out of my childhood.

3. I feel very guilty about not being in a better financial situation - about being dependent on my partner. What if something happens to him? To us? Graduate school, the need to go, hangs over me. But yet I can not finish my application...

So what do I do instead? I obsess, stay up late, and edit and upload photographs.

http://picasaweb.google.com/JNSmorrow


and I worry about what format I should save them in. I want to save them in their original form, because I spend so much time changing them creatively. (obsessively?) And I do not want my hard work lost .But it is cheaper and easier to save them with less pixels, but then if someday I or my photographs become noteworthy or famous, the originals in all their sharp detail will be lost, but this leads to the next things about I have had admitted or come to accept. Maybe.

4. I am not famous. And may, more than likely, will never be. And I may not be that talented at anything. At any of the things that I love. Writing. Painting. Drawing. Photography. I have saved all my artwork since I was a child. And I have the same compulsion to do so with my daughter. And that's the word I have been thinking about lately: Compulsion. Am I have compulsive?

I chronicle my life through my writing (even my fiction has some thing essential to say about me), my art, my photos, my blogs, and the many journals I have. I always thought in the back of my mind that maybe some say I would be famous or at least well known and all things would be of interest to some people. Or at least to my offspring or surviving relatives. But even they may not be all that interested. and that's another thing I have admitted. The people who love me, who are in my immediate life, may not find me all that interesting. May not want to read my writing, journals, look at my art or photographs, or my course notes (that I also save) or all the books that I have read that sit on my shelves.

I am maybe essentially, or in some fundamentally way, alone. Alone with God. My autonomy. Or something like that. Alone with my unconscious - my brain, with its supreme sophistication and limitations of how it has stored my life and me.






 

Life I think is a series of patterns that we can not get out of. ( without some kind of support)

But I would like to get out of mine.

But unfortunetely I think the the people I have chosen (or been given) make it difficult to get out of mine, which leaves me feeling a little lonely and frustrated.

I try to think outloud or talk to someone, I love and know, about problems I would like to solve or that I am curious about, but it seems that I get anger, and stubborness, and a closed mind in response, or at least that is my perspective. Maybe I am wrong. But can not they entertain thay they may be wrong too? At least partially?

And isn't this what so many of us want share to share? our perpective with someone - especially those we love? - they dont have to agree totally but just to listen? to really listen? With a open mind? And to see some good points, some at least they agree with, even if they disagree with others? But they focus on one point that they can not get past. And they don't listen to you when you try to explain better. Because they can not get past that one point that see only a certain way.

right now (and other times of underlying moments and feelings), I dont feel that I have what I need and want - love and acceptence.

And its lonely, and makes you project so many negative thoughts, and it makes you think they dont really love you ( because they dont love you for who you are (and how you think) so how can they really love you? --- )

for who you really are? and how you see yourself and how you want to be loved?

and it makes you wonder if there is something better out there for you.( even though you love them so much)

Because they don't seem to understand you,( as you think about yourself and want to be known)

They dont care about what you care about.

And you don't feel like there is someone you can talk to the way you'd like to talk. So it's lonely and you think it would better if you left, because you really believe he does not love you for who you really are - for how you want to be with someone...

And sometimes you want to find someone who wants to really get to know you and loves you for who you are (sometimes you think this although you feel guilty and dont really want to give up on those you love, because you love them so much, and what you really want is for them to really try, but they wont, he won't. Maybe he is too different.)

But you wonder should you be in these people lives? ( if you stay would you be lonely forever not understood?),

and how can they really love you - as it seem they dont really know you at all ( although they will say they do - they think you know but it as THEY see you,

but you know they are wrong cuz it is not as you see yourself as how you want to be known

do they really love you as you would like to be loved? do they really konow you for who you really are?

How long do you wait? If you can blame it on the patterns? If even if it these that are at fault, these patterns that get set early on or throughout your lives? (childhood or failed realtionships)

dont you need someone willing to explore this possibilty with you?

I've said that maybe there is something I could be doing differently?, something that I could understand differenly?, I am willing to grow and change with some one? To realize what I could be doing differently?

can't I have that in return?

Am I with someone who is too different and for who will make my emotional life and spiritual life too hard?

The only thing I can make sense of for why my boy friend go so upset and... well I guess to be fair he should answer that.

but

he would read this and just think it is nonsense and not even bother to try to understand my feelings

Not even try to care.
.


 

My daughter slept from 11-4 today. She seems very tired for some reason. It is hot. Perhaps the heat is seeping her energy. I know it has taken some of mine. But I am tired, because I did not sleep well last night. I have moved back in with my boyfriend. He is a terribly sleeper. And it is difficult to get a good night sleep next to someone who is awake at all hours.

If I say anything he gets angry. If I offer any suggestions, he is too stubborn to take any of them.

Tues and Thursdays, i work and it is a long day for me. So on those nights. I should sleep in her room, and maybe have the luxury of sleeping through the night.