playing the space card
i feel
differently about blogging lately. i'm aware of it constantly, "it" being my attitude, my sensibilities, my tendencies towards this plot of cyber unreal estate. there's a distance between this page and myself, a distance that's sprung from a manner of necessities. i often wonder, had i felt this way a year ago where would my life have gone instead of having been sent packing from a generally good job, from having chafed at old wounds on the flesh of strained relationships, from having maybe ruined new relationships at their starting gates. i suppose i'll never know. i suppose i wasn't meant to know.
i can attribute some of my withdrawal to good old fashioned self-censorship, and the need to measure my words maybe a little too carefully. there's a short list of readers of whom i fear their reactions, whether it be because i might hurt them, be taken the wrong way, or just be plain ridiculed by them in a similar forum. you, dear reader, may or may not see yourself as belonging to that list. if you think it's you, you could be right. just know you're not alone in my considerations. i don't like to cause hurt, and, selfishly, i don't like to be hurt, either. and i've found myself stepping back out of a need for self-protection.
this distance now is partially due to a great deal of "same-old, same-old" in my life. i've become a little bit of an isolationist in the past couple of months, mainly because i've not had to attend school, partly because most of my friends have hectic schedules that don't often mesh with mine. i find myself saying to myself, and others, that "this is a weird time for me" and then it dawns on me that it's always a weird time for me, always a time of changes, of challenges, of sadness mixed with hope. it's just that the problems shift, change names, change loci. i'll spend the day at work daydreaming about being at home, tucked inside my four fortress walls, then, once at home, those four walls are stifling, suffocating, and i daydream about being anywhere else in the world, or in my imagination.
what's become a frightening but thrilling realization on my part has been that things that have existed only in the realm of the fantastic and imaginative are finding niches in my reality. there is a potentiality for actualization in my dreams and ambitions nowadays that is heady and terrifying at the same time. and so i retreat from the public forum, whether it be the social world, or the web's world, and i now am tending to those tangible dreams, those blossoming realities. and that lends to me a desire to want to be cloaked in secrecy, to keep the parameters tight around my endeavors lest they be stolen from me, lest they be mocked or even simply exposed too soon.
i don't mean to say that i'm burning any candle at two ends, slaving away on some top secret project that i must keep to myself. to be perfectly honest, the people in my everyday life are in on it, are supportive of it, are encouraging of it. they're the people who've known me for years, whether just a couple of years or over a decade, and they've watched me toil a little in unsatisfactory life choices, they've heard me wax endlessly about my goals, my secret wishes. they know, and i know, that now is an exciting time of 'can do' in my life. that i'm more determined than ever. maybe crazier than ever. who knows. but it isn't all this fancy labor. to be fair, i spend a great deal of time absorbed in movies, in rare instances of quality television, like pbs' brilliant
colonial house, with my nose in a book, gabbing on the phone, or listening to music for hours on end. i read the
new york times online, and alternate between the
new yorker and >em>martha stewart living in the bathroom. yesterday i scrubbed the walls in the upstairs hallway and filled old nail holes with spackle, and then did laundry while wearing my red high-heels and a pair of jeans that haven't fit me in years. not exactly hemingway-esque material here. everyday is not a miraculous insight in to poetry, love, human nature or the world at hand. my world is sometimes as narrow and limited as some great finds at the local used bookstore, a crafty recipe employing egg whites or getting a great movie from netflix.
but life is far from boring to me. it's actually immensely satisfying in that i feel for the most part i'm truly
living it. i'm not in love, and, quite frankly, i'm not looking to be. i'm continually stressed about money. i'm full of nervous excitement that i might be nearing some of my goals in life. i'm a lot more quiet than i have been in the past. i'm a lot more sure of myself. i'm not the same girl who started this page over a year ago.
this isn't my swan song, i'm not throwing in the towel. i just feel like i've been keeping my readers at arm's length of late, and it's not something i necessarily enjoy doing, but feel i have to. but i'd rather step back than offer you some sort of daily serving of inane nonsense for the sake of fresh material. i'm fine, really, i'm quite okay. it's only that, these days, i just need my space.