Colleen's posterous http://warmaiden.posterous.com Most recent posts at Colleen's posterous posterous.com Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:41:00 -0700 Small Smiles and the Compass Question http://warmaiden.posterous.com/small-smiles-and-the-compass-question http://warmaiden.posterous.com/small-smiles-and-the-compass-question

I'm trying to find a balance somewhere.

I made someone laugh aloud yesterday, in person. It made me feel real instead of like this amorphous stressball.

I took myself out to dinner to a small diner in town Friday night, and for less than $7, had a hearty country meal and a lovely helping of semi-silence while I watched a man wrangle his two toddlers through dinner, and at another table watched what looked like grandparents indulging their granddaughter, whose jeans had a jeweled applique of pink and purple flower on one leg that sparkled. I left all the gadgetry and notebooks and books and other trappings in the car. It was lovely, once I got over the twitching.

A friend and colleague shared tickets to a short event Friday night, and we helped a new distillery ring in Chattanooga Whiskey. It did me a world of good to get out of my office's four walls. I think maybe my world shrunk while I wasn't looking, and I forget there is a category other than Work and Home. It was nice to be reminded of Other, and Fun.

I walked Otto and as I was telling him what a good little furboy he is, he pooped out part of a ten dollar bill. Then he grinned his doggy grin, as if to say, "Are you really going to be mad about this, when really it's just sort of funny?"

I have a wonderful life. I have a good job with great colleagues in a nice city, the love of family and friends. And yet I spend so much time feeling like a failure, like there should be ore to show for my 33 years than just waking up and working and eating and sleeping and rinse repeating. I thought there was going to be more than this, that there would, sometime after college and after becoming a Real Life Grownup (TM), come some sort of epiphany that would give me a sense of belonging and rightness, to let me know where I am supposed to be. I've been waiting on that epiphany, waiting to set down roots, to make firm commitments, to make major decisions. I've been waiting on maybe-meeting someone who could serve as a stand-in for that epiphany and maybe help guide my decision-making.The recent death of a friend made me more impatient than ever that this Sudden Realization (TM) should come along and quickly, as I am running out of time, in addition to just being damned tired of waiting for Life to begin.

I am slowly coming to the realization - I don't think there is a big epiphany. I don't think God or gods or the universe hold their own versions of the Intervention show (though I suppose the occasional tragedy serves, sometimes). Life is in full swing right now, and I'm living it, and I'm more than a third of the way through it, if family history is any indication. And is this really the way I want the next years to go, blurring by as I go through the motions, waiting for an Undefined Something to serve as my compass? I've been using work as my compass, but that has become unsatisfying. (Not the work itself; I enjoy librarianship. But I don't want that to be what my major decisions revolve around.)

I'm curious as to what others use as their anchors. I was going to say, "primary motivators," but I'm motivated - just in too many directions. How do you choose what to focus on? What is your Big Thing that serves as your compass? Or is there no Big Thing at all?

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Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:12:00 -0700 Overwhelmedness http://warmaiden.posterous.com/overwhelmedness http://warmaiden.posterous.com/overwhelmedness

Stream of consciousness, just to get it out of my brain, where all of this is incessantly spinning:

Crazy business at work with a new building and planning for new service models and wonderful colleagues leaving us making a reorganization possible/likely and revamping my own department and meetings everywhere and making people mad with changes while making other people happy rewrite job descriptions data data data data oops and volunteered for chapters got to write those soon calendar it

Penultimate semester of doctoral coursework which is hybrid by whichh they mean mostly online and I much prefer hard meeting times since that's a good deadline and one case study one policy brief one minor 10-15 pager and one major 30 pager all due before April 21 and then three more classes this summer and comping in July and then all I have to do is the dissertation it'll be like a vacation I swear to me I promise just do this get it done

Damned arthritis autoimmune disease bullshit that requires I get [at least] 8 hours of sleep per night don't stress it makes things worse slept poorly due to knee pain looking like an odd duck at meetings holding my head to the side to crack my neck don't sleep that way you know better now you have disclocated ribs you idiot and no time to hit the physical therapist fingers swelling from too much time on the computer hobbling across campus with cane because there things to be done and meetings to be attended and I really don't care to be sick or an invalid and who has time for this suck it up and MOVE

And oh I am tired in my bones of it all and I want a house and I want to not do anything but come home from work and garden or maybe learn the electric guitar with my claw-hands or set up a studio so I can oil paint and do poet-y things and make beautiful things and words and sit in silence with my dog and watch the boats and there needs to be more of me and oh Lord there's no time and we're young but we're dying anyway and Shara I miss you and where is all the time?

 

 

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Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:26:18 -0800 Preposterous! http://warmaiden.posterous.com/preposterous-68 http://warmaiden.posterous.com/preposterous-68 From email? Really? hrmmmmm...

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1952251/2012-01-24_13.36.56.jpg http://posterous.com/users/3sIP0oR0MjZL Colleen Harris Colleen Colleen Harris