I write in a journal daily, but that wasn’t always the case.  I started journal writing when I was old enough to hold a pencil, and have kept up the habit somewhat sporadically ever since.  I filled several in junior high, several in high school, and then just went in phases, sometimes skipping years at a time.  But at the beginning of this year (January 1st in fact, because I’m cheesy like that), I committed to daily writing again, and haven’t skipped a day yet.

Some days, I write multiple pages.  Some days I write a paragraph.  And some days….. some days all I can muster is a single word.  And it’s usually not a polite word.

Today’s a single word kind of day.  And I decided – in a flash of inspiration as I drove to CVS to get something the nine year old needed for a project – that I would counteract the day (both in my journal, and right now in this blog post) – with gratitude.  I do that sometimes on my personal Facebook page, but not with any real regularity.  And I should, because it helps.  It sounds very woo, and corny, and Oprah-esque, but there really is always something to be grateful for.

So I hereby give you my first four-letter-day gratitude list.  (And I encourage you to write your own!)  I’m listing five, for no other reason than the fact that it’s a nice tidy number.

1. New friends.  Of course, I’m grateful for old friends too, but today’s about new friends.

2. Familiarity.  You know how when you’re at your own house, everything’s just…. familiar?  I’m sitting in “my” spot on the couch. I’ve got my laptop on my lap. I hear the hum of the fan. I’m drinking tonic water (which became my “fancy” drink after I gave up alcohol) My daughter’s singing.  There are sounds of someone cooking in the kitchen. It feels familiar and it feels like home.

3. Technology.  This one’s a mixed bag, for sure, because I seem to spend just as much of my time frustrated with technology as I do enjoying it.  But Technology. Is. Amazing.  It allowed me to complete and submit all my schoolwork today (including a resume, the first one I’ve ever written).  It allowed me get about a million questions answered.  It allowed me to chat with a friend, on and off, for the entire day.  Technology helps my life to be better, fuller, and more convenient.

4. The desert. I never knew I’d enjoy the desert as much as I do, but the desert in general has become one of my favorite places.  The desert is my church.  Yesterday, we went for a nearly 8 mile hike, and came home exhausted, dusty… and clear-headed and relaxed.  Desert hikes are easily one of the best things about living in Phoenix.

5. Tomorrows.  Yes, we’re never guaranteed a tomorrow, but I like to think about tomorrows because 1) It’s just hopeful, and hope is good.  2) Tomorrow means I’m still here, and 3) Tomorrow is a new day, and a fresh start.

This is the quote that greets me when I open my bullet journal:

  “Courage doesn’t allows roar.  Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” ~ Mary Ann Radmacher

Solely for the cuteness factor

It’s been such a week. With the exception of my little adventure yesterday, and maybe the time… nope, that’s it, just my little adventure yesterday… it’s been a highly stressful, highly emotional, highly anxiety provoking week.  And I’m tired.

Today I spent the day – the whole damn day – working on school work.  If you’re reading this and are unaware, I went back to school to study psychology this past summer.  I was really selective about who I told in the beginning, mainly because of bubble-bursters, but it’s not really a secret.  I went back to school, and it’s an adjustment, and I love it and it’s hard and it’s scary and it’s stressful and it’s liberating…. all at the same time.

But I don’t really want to talk about school.  I just wanted to clarify that it is ME who is going to school, because I got a comment a few posts back asking, “If you’re an unschooler, then why do you have a planner with lesson plans in it?”  I have a planner with lessons in it because I’m in school.  My kids are not.

So to sum up:

I had a hard week.

I worked on school work all day.

I’m very tired.

It’s 7:00 at night, and we’ve announced a yoyo dinner (I totally just googled whether or not that was a universal phrase or something just my family used, because it occurred to me that I didn’t know.) The Google says that lots of people use it.  Anyway, I finished my school work, it’s yoyo for dinner, and I. Am. Done.  I would actually go to bed right now, except that I am already waking up way too early and going to bed at 7:00 wouldn’t help in that regard.  Also, the two younger boys are in Tucson with friends, and won’t be home until very late.  As any mother can tell you, I won’t be able to really sleep until they’re safely home anyway.

So, I’m just clocking out.  I’m washing my face and putting on my Snoopy pajama pants and I’m reading a book.  Not a school book, or a book that I’m reviewing for my blog, or a book that tells me how to be a better me, but just a book-book: with drama and intrigue and pages and pages of escape-from-real-life bliss.  I might read it in the bath tub.  I don’t drink anymore, but maybe I’ll make myself some tea.  Maybe I’ll go all out and light a candle.

And just like yesterday, I know it doesn’t actually fix anything, but it’s still a piece.  A piece in the intricate web of self-care that has for some reason found itself unraveling as of late.

I’ll be okay.

So, I wrote that Tuesday was a bad day.  And it was.  But in the interest of total honestly, it was actually the vertex (look at me, using my College Algebra words) of a bad… stretch.  It’s been a stretch again.

Today though, I got to not think about that for a little while.  In an awesomely impromptu, quickly planned little adventure that was just drummed up a couple weeks ago, I had a friend fly out from San Diego, just for the day.  Just to get pierced together.  We threw a little whirlwind shopping trip in there too, and a stop at Sprouts and Starbucks.  And then I brought her back to the airport.  How cool is that?

We drove and chatted, and bonded over a great number of things, including our shared lack of directional skills.  In my defense, there is a MISSING EXIT on the 202.  There’s a 2, then there’s a 4, but there’s no 3.   Where did Exit 3 go???  And also, why would the directions have you go east to take a u-turn to go west, when it was completely possible to just go west in the first place?  And also, right turn only lanes need to be more clearly marked.  I’m a big fan of printed directions, and don’t usually trust GPSes.  But dude, did they ever fail me today.

It was a good day, and a fun day, and getting new piercings always makes me feel a little bit like a superhero.

Good company.  Good conversation.  Good times.

Did it fix anything?  Well, no.  Life is… life is what it is.

But it helped.  It certainly helped.

So, I’ve mentioned in past posts how much music has meant to me in my life, especially as an adult, especially over the past year and a half. It seems counter-intuitive, since crowds generally really rev my anxiety, but going to live concerts to hear my favorite bands is one my all-time favorite things. I listen to a lot of things, and go to a lot of concerts (next up is Pink in March :)), but my basic modus operandi is to get stuck on one band/album/song, and listen to it obsessively. Like over and over and over until I get sick of it and have to move on to something else.

Blue October is the band that has provided my soundtrack for the past year. They’re probably not a band that a person who tends toward melancholy should really listen to (they write about heavy stuff), but so help me I CANNOT STOP LISTENING.  And really, the effect of the subject matter can go both ways.  It sometimes does make me a little extra… weepy.  But it also empowers me, and makes me feel like someone has put a voice to so much of what I’ve gone through.  We saw them in concert a few months ago, at this tiny little venue in Flagstaff, and it solidly lands itself in my top five favorites. My 17 year old – who loves music as much as I do – was the one who first introduced me to their music, but I can take full credit for being the one who finally discovered that their frontman/lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, also made a totally stripped-down, acoustic album of their best songs, and is about to release another one.

This music changed my life. As my daughter likes to say, it touches my soul. I can’t hear it and not be transported. Not be moved. Like deeply, deeply moved.

This song is just one of about a half-dozen that I’m currently listening to on repeat.  The lyrics are empowering (as the title suggests, it is all about learning to rise above fear), and his voice is amazing. If you need a new life anthem, this is it:

Yesterday, Mike asked me if I was having a midlife crisis.

He didn’t ask me, now that I think about it.  It was more like a statement:  “This sounds like a midlife crisis”.  He didn’t say it in a mean or condescending way.  It was much more matter-of-fact than that, and, to be fair, not really out-of-line with the conversation at hand.

We were talking about my current affinity for piercings.  And when I say, “current”, I really mean an affinity that I’ve been nurturing for the past several years now.  It started with my nose ring (which I got around the same time I dreaded my hair, which I’m told was another midlife crisis red flag), and progressed to stretching my ear lobes, then piercing my cartilage, and my daith, and my tragus.  Earlier this year, I took a young friend with me to my piercing shop – because one of my favorite things to do with visiting friends is to go get pierced together – and fulfilled a long-held desire to pierce my belly button.

Not a lot of people know that about me. so there you go.  I pierced my belly button shortly after turning 43.  And I love it.

I got my first tattoo at 30, which the young 20-something guy at physical therapy told me was “really late” to get started, and a couple of months ago, I got my tenth.  I have no plans to stop.

And I mean, you can call it a midlife crisis if you want.  But I’d have to argue that it’s pretty much the opposite.  In my mind, a midlife crisis is a sort of desperate and frantic thing.  An outward expression of an inward mind that is freaking out about getting older.  It’s an attempt to grasp at … something … to help reclaim some idea of youth.

And can we stop right there for a minute and acknowledge the fact that “middle aged” is a really silly concept to begin with?  I get it, and I understand that it comes from averages and everything, but none of us – not a single one of us – knows how much time we have left earth-side.  So the idea of me, or anyone, being middle aged is purely hypothetical.  Yeah, sure, I’m not 20 anymore.  And I’m actually really glad about that.

But to get back to my point:

I’m not desperate.  I’m not frantic.  I’m not freaking out about getting older, and I’m not trying to reclaim my youth.  I’m just finally being myself. 

I spent the better part of four decades trying to live for everyone else.  Trying to please my mother, my friends, my teachers, my church.  Everybody but myself.  A free, and related, piece of advice:  This life strategy does not work, is not actually attainable, and just makes you miserable.  You’re welcome.

I like piercings.  And tattoos.  Full stop.  My extended family does not.  And you know what?  THAT’S OKAY.  I mean it is really, truly okay.  I’ve decided that a lot of what people call a midlife crisis is not a crisis at all, but a person finally deciding that they are going to stop making decisions for anyone else.  That they are no longer going to give two flying flips about what their friends or their family members think about their hair or their clothes or their job or their hobbies or their piercings.

You don’t have to like the way I look.  You don’t have to like ME.

You don’t have to like me even a little bit.

I like me.  It has taken me a (painfully) long time to say that with any honesty, but I do.  I like me … warts and shortcomings and all.

I am strong.  I’m kind.  I have a big heart. I am empathetic. <—- (filing those away for the next rainy day, when I might not necessarily believe them).  All that other stuff?  Piercings, tattoos, clothing?  That’s just packaging.  It means nothing.

And what I’ve realized in the time it’s taken me to write this blog post is that I don’t actually care if I’m having a midlife crisis or not.  I really don’t. Whatever I’m doing, whatever you want to call this stage of life:  I’m going to keep it.  In fact, I’m going to embrace the hell out of it.  It feels good, it feels right, and it feels freeing.

That 20 year old girl, the one who did what she was told, and didn’t make noise, and didn’t stand up for herself, and didn’t pierce her belly button – even though she desperately wanted to – because nice girls didn’t do things like that?  She wasn’t me.  I mean, I was in there, somewhere … but I was buried under a morass of religious and societal and self-imposed pressure.  I barely had an original opinion in my head, and I wouldn’t have honored it even if I did.

I have opinions now.  (A massive understatement, if ever there was one, for those who’ve read my blog for any length of time. :))

I am comfortable with and happy with and proud of those opinions.

I am comfortable with and happy with and proud of who I am.

Even – or especially? – if it took me 43 years to get here.

I’m not a morning person.  It takes me a long time to fully wake up and get going, and even longer before I feel up to actually interacting with other humans.  Nor am I a night person.  I go to bed early or it throws me all off my game, and the few times I decide to live dangerously and stay up past 10:00 PM, all it really does is make me feel hungover and remind me that I’m not 25 anymore.  If I’m being honest, I’m not exactly an afternoon person either.  If I’m not taking really good care of myself, I get a serious case of that afternoon slump.  2 or 3 rolls around and I get sleepy and irritable and start wandering around, looking for the closest source of caffeine.

So, basically, I’m at my most pleasant peak for a very short window of every day, somewhere around the middle.  Good luck to you.

The one thing I DO really love about early mornings though, is the quiet.  That super, super quiet that comes before anyone else gets up.  Before I un-silence my phone and it starts pinging with notifications.  Before I let the dogs out and they get all crazy, and I give them their breakfast (my German Shepherd is the noisiest eater ever.  Ever.)  When all I can hear is the hum of electricity, the sound of my own thoughts, and the very occasional car outside… whose driver, I can only assume, is off to some super exciting life-changing job. Where it’s probably not all that quiet, but there are likely no dogs noisily scarfing down their kibble.  So, you know.  Trade-offs.

It doesn’t last long.  It doesn’t last long at all.  Even though all the kids are late sleepers, real life always beckons.  I’m a grown-up and there are Very Important Things To Do.  But it is lovely while it’s there, and I try every morning to appreciate it.

The frequency of the cars has picked up, there’s a plane overhead, and the dog has finished his breakfast.  He’s sleeping now, and just let out an enormous sigh (he’s a noisy sleeper too.)

But I’ll remember the quiet, and like the proverbial golden ring that’s just barely out of reach, I know I’ll grasp it again.

Tomorrow.

If I were to make a list of my top ten favorite simplest pleasures, unexpected days off would be near the top of the list.  Since I’m a full-time mom, a lot of my time over the past 20 years has been spent taking kids to play practice, and music lessons, and football, and karate, and scouts, and play dates, and and and….

And I have been glad to do it!  My happiness has largely come from my kids’ happiness, and from being able to help them do the things they love.

But.

Cancelled plans are the Best Thing Ever.

A day when I don’t have to do any peopling?  Don’t have to make myself “presentable?”  Don’t have to speak in coherent sentences?  Don’t have leave my house at all?  Gimme.  It takes so much energy for me to prepare myself for outings – even pleasant ones – so when they are unexpectedly canceled, it brings a relief akin to finally spotting a gas station bathroom after 100 miles and chugging 32 ounces of soda on a desert highway.

Anyway.

Today I had plans to leave the house, and they were cancelled.  I could have stayed in my pajamas and watched TV all day (which, don’t get me wrong, would have been lovely in its own right), but I decided to use the day to get organized, to make a giant to-do list of stuff I needed to get caught up on, and to get started on said list.  I put on my favorite cut-off shorts, put my hair in a ponytail, and set my trusted timer.  The timer is my best friend.  I get… sidetracked… easily, but if I set a timer I can generally stay on task.  30 minutes of cleaning.  30 minutes of answering emails.  30 minutes of folding laundry.  30 minutes to relax and drink coffee and browse Facebook.  Etc.  It is currently 3:00 in the afternoon, and I have admittedly not gotten very far on my list – It’s really long – but I’m enjoying the process.

AND, I’ve even had time for some non-to-do list things too, like:

Chatting with a friend about an upcoming visit

Making a giant pan of scrambled eggs

Cleaning every nook and cranny of my desk, and erasing everything on my whiteboard (Also, on the top of that simple pleasure list?  Fresh whiteboards)

Getting my feelings hurt on the internet

Watching my daughter play with the hedgehog

Cleaning poop from said hedgehog that had accidentally gotten smashed into the floor

Like Clark says in Christmas Vacation:  “It’s all part of the experience.”

In about two minutes, my timer will go off (and I’ll be able to cross “Write blog post” off my list. Yay.), and I’ll be on to the next thing.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering?  I did finally notice the egregious misspelling of “Unexpected”, but it was only after I had stared at it ALL DAY.  It made me laugh harder than it rightfully should have, and somehow made my little day off all the more perfect for its imperfections.  One of the – many – things I’m currently working on is embracing the imperfections, the mistakes, and the foibles.

It’s all part of the experience.