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my parents are moving - where, i can’t say (military rules), but suffice it to say, they’re not going to be super-close by. don’t get me wrong, i’m SO excited for them and for this next step in our family’s life, since eventhough i’m on my own, i’m still affected by my family, of course. but the impending change got me thinking about my family’s dynamic.

as i’ve gotten older, i think i’ve become more attached to my family. when i graduated highschool i was more than ready to cut the apron strings, and happily went out-of-state to college. it only took one summer spent at home before i made college my new home, and was happily living in that vicinity year-round (minus holidays, of course). military life has made our family relationship extremely strong, but also further forged our independent personalities. i really never thought i’d care about spending lots of time with my parents. being together at holidays has always been important to us, since german and swedish tradition is still heavily incorprated into our lives. i knew we’d always be a close family, but that we wouldn’t be close, geographically, and that didn’t really bother me. until a couple years ago.

now, i don’t want to live next door to my parents, or even necesarily in the same town, or even state, although there would be something to be said for being able to go visit over the weekend. or see a ballet with my mom. or take my sister to the quirky places in my city i know she’d love. i just like having the ability to see them often. every few months would be nice, though not really do-able, but i definately want to be around them more than once a year.

this is something ryan always has given me a hard time for. i talk to my family at least once a week, i see them on a semi-regular basis, yet, i’d love to see them more. he doesn’t really “get” that. his family has a much different dynamic, and he relates to them differently for a lot of reasons - a big one, i think, is that he went away and lived in italy for three years right out of highschool. but something ryan articulated for me last night, after thinking about this move and what it means for me, is that my family is my sanctuary. besides ryan, they’re the only people i feel really GET me. i can be my true self around them because they know all my weird quirks and inside jokes. we have the same sense of humor and we share all those things you “get from your parents” - good and bad. in general, they are the only people i completely count on.

that’s not the case for ryan, for a number of reasons. not to say his family doesn’t have a good relationship, it’s just … different. and i’m not sure many people would say they have a family dynamic like i do - i know for many people it’s the opposite, and family is a big cause of strife. i’m FAR from saying my family is perfect, but they’re the best family for me - although it took me 20-some years to realize that. what i am saying is, eventhough i’m grown up, i don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to be close (geographically) to my family, or see them often.

ryan says he’s noticed that people who grow up and still live in the same place, close to family, have a harder time growing as a person because they’re still in their comfort zone, and you know what they say about growing and comfort zones. i say that’s probably true. i think, even if you LOVE where you grew up and really want to stay there, it couldn’t hurt to set a year or two or three aside and go somewhere completely different. just to try something new. but that’s just me - i have a thing for change.

so back to my family … i’ve been away from them for a while now, i’ve definitely done some growing, and i couldn’t really live near them even if i wanted to - since they still move every year or two. i think it’s all that, that’s led to my current sentiments about them. i am obsessed with change, but maybe i can be that way because i have a family that is rock steady.

people always comment on how weird it is that i’m married - because i’m so commitment-phobic. it’s true. i hate deciding to wear a hat, because i hate the thought that once i put it on, my hair will be messed up, and i’ll be committed to wearing that hat all day. it’s also true that i’m a little crazy. but my fear of commitment spans beyond my choice of head-wear.

one of my greatest fears is that i’ll get comfortable somewhere - in a job, a city, a lifestyle - and wake up one day, 20 years later, not having done all the things i wanted to do. so i have a HARD time commiting to a job, or a place i’m living, even if i REALLY love everything about my life circumstances. this is the case now. we’ve been here for almost a year and i’m already thinking about where i want to go next - not because i’m not happy here (i AM!!), but because i want there to be a “next.” i don’t plan on staying here forever. as far as my job goes, i’m six months in and it’s the first job where i haven’t actively been seeking out something else within the first few months.

i blame this, largely, on my military upbringing. i’ve never lived anywhere longer than three years, and that’s on the high end. the average was more like two years. i can’t imagine what it’s like to have grown up in the same place with the same friends and the same schools. sometimes, i start looking around (to move, switch jobs, careers, whatever) because i think there’s something better out there. but usually, it’s just because i know there’s something *else* out there. this can be good, because i’m always pushing myself to find that next step and to continue to grow. it can also be bad. i don’t want to live a life where i’m never content, not fully able to enjoy what i’ve been given. somehow, i have to find a balance between the two.

the combination of being a military brat and a commitment-phobe has meant something else, too. i don’t really have roots, i definitely don’t have a place i call home, and i only have a few “childhood” friends - and even they are technically from highschool and not “childhood.” surprisingly, this doesn’t bother me. i used to freak out at the thought that there would come a day when i’ll have to decide where i want to live FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. then i realized, my parents are in their 50’s and they still haven’t “settled down” - there’s nothing that says i have to. and right now i’m not planning to. of course there might be that perfect circumstance where something clicks and i change my mind. but the way i look at it now, there’s no way i can see and do everything i want, live everywhere i want, accomplish everything i want, if one day i have to “settle down.”

so when people comment on the irony that i have such a problem with commitment and yet am married, i tell them i used up all my commitment-making ability on that one decision, and now i’m out. probably for the rest of my life.

anybody who knows me (and by “know” i mean maybe passed me once or twice) knows that i ADORE dogs. i have a desire to raise some little puppies the way some people i know have a desire to have kids. that said, it makes the story i have to tell, that much more traumatic. i’ve never really told it before because it’s so upsetting to me, yet it also brings back so many good, happy memories, i thought getting it all off my chest would possibly be a good thing.

when ryan and i were first married, we got the cutest, bestest (well, more on that later) little brindle baby that we named baxter.

we got him from a guy ryan worked with: his dog had surprisingly become pregnant after apparently mating with a roaming sicilian dog. i think in part because of the brindle, when he was born he looked like the dad was maybe part boxer. so we nicknamed him baxter, the bastard boxer.

as he grew up, he became taller (although only about knee height) and really skinny. i think he was part italian greyhound - but a little bit bulkier. he loved to run and was SO fast, just like a greyhound. he had those little pointy ears that greyhounds have, but his flopped over when he wasn’t alert.

we lived out in a sicilian villagio on the beach - the homes there were most people’s summer homes, so during the rest of the year, there weren’t very many people around. i think early on, baxter missed out on crucial socialization. we’d have friends over from time to time, and he was ok, but never very well behaved. he barked and whined, and sometimes got pretty snappy with kids. which doesn’t really bother me, but, well, is usually frowned upon by their parents.

now i know, sometimes - a lot of the time - a child’s bad behavior can be blamed on the parents, to an extent. even if the “child” happens to be your dog. i’m sure that’s true in part for us. part of my love for dogs includes an intense spoiling of them. we crate trained baxter and kept him in his own space when we weren’t home, he learned basic commands, he was housebroken (and in a ninja-like way). but as time went on, i began letting him up on the bed, on the couch, under my covers, and i coddled him. i know i did. i held him ALL THE TIME (see above picture). my dog growing up, bailey, would never let me pick her up, she kind of became a little bitch about it.

so i vowed to raise baxter so he would always let me pick him up. and he did.

when baxter was only about ten months, we moved back to the states. he had to be in his crate on the plane for a very long time. that was SO hard for me, and in some ways, although he was fine when we landed, i think it was kind of traumatizing to him. hell, a flight like that is traumatizing to me. we lived with ryan’s parents for a couple months until we closed on our house, then moved in. maybe living in a state of flux for several months further upset him.

i think his temperment also had something to do with the fact that we don’t know who his dad was. if he was a wild italian dog, he was probably mean and scrappy - just like bax turned out. and for an italian, who “breeds” their dogs to bark, guard their homes, and devour anyone who comes close (all things baxter was good at), then a dog like baxter is just what they need.

however, america has laws against dogs like that. laws that made having the bax a slight problem. we lived in a four plex, where neighbors (and sometimes their children) were always close-by. i understand a dog’s initial need to protect himself and his pack - to bark and lunge and the like. but baxter never calmed down from that, he’d never realize someone was ok, that WE were ok with them. we began to live in fear that baxter would bark at/ nip/bite the wrong person and we’d be brought down in this crazy law suit.

so we got a personal dog trainer. she worked with us and with him for many weeks. it was hard to see much improvement - although in all honesty it’s hard for me to be that patient.

we tried to take him to doggy day care so he could get socialized. but after bringing him in there for weeks, JUST to get him comfortable with the front office staff, when we felt he was finally well-enough adjusted to be introduced to the dogs, he didn’t pass the temperment test.

fotunately, he never bit a stranger or a kid - he usually only did that when someone got inside our house (the only person he was ever ok with was the trainer) - which was only our friends. some of them got nipped, never anything super-serious, and they were our friends, so they didn’t sue. still, there was the fear.

then we began to talk about moving to san francisco. it would be hard to live there with ANY dog, let alone baxter. we began looking at our options. i don’t think it’s right to euthanise a dog just because you don’t want it any more, but sometimes i feel like that’s what we did. except i DID want him, i wanted him with all my heart, and i miss him so much.

it wasn’t that simple. i lived a tortured state of not knowing what to do for probably six months. we looked into every option possible - boot camps, rescue missions, but nothing worked out. even the humane society couldn’t take him, because he was aggressive. in some ways i think leaving him there might have been worse - for him and for me. in the end, ryan had to take him to be put down.

it makes me even sadder because i rarely even talk about him, or keep pictures of him at my desk - like i used to - because i really don’t want to answer questions about what happened. i don’t want people to judge me for what i did. deep down i’m afraid that i didn’t do EVERYTHING i could have to help him be a better dog. i think, what if i wasn’t patient enough to enforce what the trainer told us, what if i didn’t discipline him like i should have, what if i didn’t look hard enough for someone to take him. i don’t know if i did the right thing, and that might plague me forever.

i can barely write this without crying now, almost a year later. but then i think that, baxter’s up in heaven and it’ll be like 30 seconds to him before we come up there and join him. or maybe it’ll be 60 years - but he’ll be so busy running as fast as he can and chasing rabbits that he won’t even notice. i know i gave him the best life i could while i could, and he probably has it pretty good right now. probably, this is harder on me than it was on him - i gave him a lot of credit, but i doubt he really understood what was going on. i guess that’s what makes death so hard - in a lot of cases, death can actually improve someone’s life (not to sound morbid) but those left behind have a much heavier task.

i think this credit card company is just laughing in the consumer’s face. and rightly so. the irony of the whole ad campaign dawned on ryan and i as we saw the commercial one night (while watching something online, of course). still, it took me several times of hearing it before i got it. the company’s name is chase, and at first brush you think the card’s name is something akin to visa platinum. chase freedom. on the surface i guess that’s right. but then the tagline is, “your choice, your chase.”

it’s so geniusly ironic to me that a credit card company is tellling you, in essence, to “chase freedom.” how fitting! how many people will spend their time doing just that, because of credit cards. never really being free from that balance. losing more and more of their freedom with every dollar they charge. how many americans lay awake at night wondering how they’re going to pay that next bill. how many people just resign themselves to living an unfulfilled life, wallowing in debt.

i’ve never had a credit card, and grew up a little differently, so i’ve never dealt with this, and ryan and i are living out a plan to make sure we hopefully never have to. but as i’ve gotten older i’ve realized *i’m* more of the exception in this situation. this IS the reality for most people. so it’s your choice. what will YOU chase?

i recently got a t-mobile dash.

it’s beautiful - and as i’m usually not one to jump on the gadget bandwagon (since i can usually barely operate the 1.0 version, let alone the 6.0 version), i convinced myself i NEEDED a PDA phone. i’d been holding out that my work would get me one, but no dice, so i finally just got my own. i don’t really have to have it for my job (although it does come in handy sometimes), but it kinda makes me feel more professional and legit. of course, i’m probably only using it to, like, half its capacity since i’m not a 6.0 person.

the one thing i noticed right away - i used to be able to leave my old phone (a RAZR) on for a week without charging it, but not so with the dash. the second day i had it, it died at work. at first i thought, well, it’s getting more data, i have it hooked up to my work email, so it just works harder, and the battery runs down faster. i’ve had it for about 2 weeks now, and thoses first two days were the longest it’s gone without dying. so i started plugging it in EVERY night, instead of one night per week. i did that last night. then this morning by noon, the battery had already died. the battery was SO spent it actually shut off and wouldn’t turn back on.

WTF? i just paid nearly 300 bucks for a phone that’s claim to fame is it’s a PDA phone - y’know who uses them?? busy professionals. neurotic people who like to be able to work while they’re not ACTUALLY at work. people that need to rely on the fact that the phone’s battery will last longer than FOUR HOURS!!!

so tonight i’m going to be trudging into the t-mobile store and asking for a new phone. i hope i don’t lose all my settings i’ve become comfortable with. it’d seem a shame for such a smart phone not to save the preferences to the SIM - but what do i know, i have a 1.0 brain.

…we have no great war, no great depression…

brad pitt says that in fight club. At the time it was true – I guess it’s sort of true now, thinking of our generation overall. But now we have the great blunder. I’m not sure what else to call the situation in iraq. I’m not even sure how I feel about it. Everything is so mixed. things go round and round in my head concerning this and I don’t really have everything hashed out. That’s not what I want to write about. What’s constantly on my mind, weighing on my conscious is the soldiers fighting over there – the ones that don’t come back … and the ones that come back only a fraction of what they were; physically, mentally, emotionally.

I think our nation has done a good job, whatever the public opinion might be, of still letting our soldiers know we support them. No matter how we personally feel about the conflict there. Still, I feel like I have a little bit different burden for these people –or maybe I don’t, and I’m just glorifying my emotions. Either way, their lives and sacrifice move me so much.

When we were dating, ryan dragged me to see We Were Soldiers – even though he knows I HATE war movies (this was the first and last time he did this). I cried through about half the movie (and I am not a movie crier) and by the end I was sobbing. We had to sit there long after the credits rolled and the lights came back on, so I could get everything under control. I couldn’t believe the way things had ended for so many of these people who gave themselves to defend our country. The line at the end of the movie haunts me to this day: something to the effect of, “these soldiers didn’t return to welcome home parties or parades. For many of them, the closest family they had were the people they fought with.”

How sad (on the nation’s part) and how profound. For whatever reason, I am unusually touched by soldier stories. Maybe it’s growing up in a military family and bleeding red, white and blue. Maybe it’s thinking about the fact that when people started to ship off for this war, the ones going were my age. Now they’re years younger. Maybe I somehow identify with them. Maybe it’s having married (at the time) a military man. Maybe it’s being able to remember exactly where I was when the world trade centers collapsed (something I’m sure will stay with all of us forever), wondering where this was all going and seeing scary thoughts run through my head: what if they send ryan. What if they send my dad (they did). What if I become, like, a candy striper or red cross nurse. . Maybe it’s a little bit of everything.

So probably because of all that, when I went to visit my parents in DC for Christmas, I asked my dad to have his aides set up a visit to walter reed army medical center. As a (extremely) patriotic family, and my dad in the position he’s in, it seemed like the least we could do (since we are some of the few who have access to something like that). Since dad’s people did all the work, I really didn’t think of it after I made the suggestion.

And I didn’t know what to expect. I think in my mind’s eye I saw us in a Shirley Temple-esque situation. In a dorm-style room, with dozens of men, us going from bed to bed, maybe passing out Christmas cards or cookies. (as things developed we were told we couldn’t bring cards – not everyone celebrates Christmas – or cookies – some soldiers were on strict diets.)

When we got there, we basically had a handler – someone from the hospital who had a pre-approved list of people who were ok with us coming to see them (gotta love the military). She briefed us on who we were going to see, and prepared us for the fact that some of the situations could be disturbing. Then I realized what I’d signed us up for, and I wasn’t sure how I would handle seeing a soldier who had a bandaged head because part of his skull had been blown off. Or someone with partial memory loss and no legs. he was only 19 or 20.

We ended up seeing about 3 or 4 people. I think what may have startled them at first was my dad. I’d thought about that at the last minute – I told my mom I didn’t want them to feel intimidated because of him. She brought up a good point though, saying it was probably a good thing for them – and a complement – to see someone in his place make a point of thanking them and spending time with them.

The first person we saw was doing fairly well, his family was there – his little son was laying on the bed with him. he’d lost several of his fingers in an explosion. He was pretty quiet. But the second guy we saw was a surprising burst of positivity. He’d taken his first steps in three months that morning. He’d had a sniper shoot him through his hip, so while his bones were healing he’d been lying down the whole time. When he finally got to the point where he could stand up, he was having to re-train himself to walk. He’d been in the ready reserves, working in the civilian world as some sort of contractor (I think). His wife was there – she was a pilot for delta. They were both extremely personable and positive.

The last guy we saw was the young guy with memory loss and missing both his legs. it was like he HAD the memory, he couldn’t bring it to the surface. He’d tell us about his time in iraq, and get hung up on the exact city they were in. his mom was there and she was also really positive, and patient. Helping him say what he wanted, without getting frustrated and saying it for him.

I know we only saw three people, and that’s barely a fraction of even the people who were in walter reed. But it brought the whole thing even nearer to my heart, gave it a face. I did make it though visiting with each person, and held myself together – thanks in part to my mom’s gift for ultimate diplomacy and chit-chat ability. I did tear up when we got on the elevator. Knowing if our generation had a great war, this was it. Even if it’s not a great war, it’s a great tragedy. In spite of how blessed we are as Americans and no matter who’s side of the debate you’re on, it’s hard to overlook the complete loss of life – and also the partial losses.

Just like I’ll always remember waking up in my loft bed and hearing a phone ring in my crammed room in sigma third long, the furthest dorm on biola’s campus, the morning of 9/11, I pledge to always remember a father without his fingers. A reservist shot by a sniper and learning how to walk. And a teenager without his legs, re-training his memory so he could tell me the name of his girlfriend.

i grew up pretty sheltered in a Christian/Air Force/ bubble - and looking back, i don’t think i’d really change much, eventhough it kind of turned me into “that girl:” the girl that thinks everyone’s parents encourage them to go to (a private) college and volunteer to pay. the girl that got a car soon after i turned 16 (it was “only” a VW!). the girl that knows she’ll always have her parents to rely on if that need arises. don’t be put off yet. i know that makes me sound pretty spoiled, but it really didn’t seem that way. i have extremely down-to-earth parents who did what was in their power to make my life better without, i feel like, leaving me with that pesky entitlement mentality. i really don’t know how they did it.

it may sound really “entitled” to say something like, “i didn’t realize till i was an adult that some people had to raise their OWN money to go to high school camp,” or make another such assumption. so i guess maybe it is true to a certain extent. but i don’t know that it’s really hurt me. i don’t feel entitled in the sense that i think the world should just hand me things. i’m willing to bust my ass for a good job, and prove my work ethic before i ask for a raise. willing to scrape by for a few years in order to save/invest a bunch of money that will hopefully secure our future.

if anything, i feel like the things i think i’m “entitled to” will only force me to work harder. i guess i do feel entitled to end up with a good job, living in a nice house, in the city of my chosing. able to take vacations if i want and help people out when they need it. is it bad to be raised in a house where money really isn’t an object (while still learning the value of a dollar, of course)? to look at things, experiences and investments objectively, for what they are, not in terms of how the exact dollar amount might make or break you?

what i DO think about is maybe i don’t appreciate all the things i have in my life as much as someone who, for example, “earned” their way through college. (but then, would they really appreciate either taking 6 years in school or having 100 grand in debt?) maybe they’re a little more hell bent on making something of themselves because they DON’T have something to fall back on. i look at ryan and his drive to make his financial plan work. some (like me) may call him obsessed, and there’s a lot of reasons for this - he loves finances and investment and real estate. he enjoys researching and taking on new projects. but i know a big reason he works towards these things is because he wants to create a different environment (in some ways) from the one he grew up in. in that respect he as an extra (or maybe just different?) motivation to make it work.

i also have a motivation, but my motivation is to create a SIMILAR environment to the one i grew up in. and i guess i do kind of feel entitled to that. i may sound spoiled but i don’t think i’m a brat. i’m extremely greatful to my parents for everything they’ve given me - financially, spiritually, academically, relationally - and while i may have “assumed” some things about life and finances while i was growing up, now that i’m older and wiser those assumptions have turned to complete appreciation for the life i was given.

(Feb 2, 2007)
My belly dancing class is a weird thing. I guess it’s not the class, it’s more how it causes me to think. It really points out my double standard.

It’s the one place in my week where I look at myself the way I WANT to look at myself. Where the back fat that sends me to the gym five or six days a week for an hour each time doesn’t bother me. Where I might look kinda funky trying to get my dance on, but I’m not thinking about it nearly as much as I am when I’m in a bar, with a drink, lookin’ my prissy best.

Don’t mis-hear me … I’m not gonna give up the gym (the back fat MUST **DIE**), and I still like a couple hours of over-excited primping before a good old fashioned girls night out. But belly dancing makes me feel really good about my body without me really doing anything but shakin’ what my momma gave me.

Also, it makes me look at other girls in a different way. There are some BIG girls in my class. And by big, I mean if I were completely honest with myself, the primped, prissy out-on-the town me would look at them and think they were fat and maybe even gross. I’m the girl (maybe the only one?) who thinks the “Dove campaign for real beauty” is kind of a turn-off. After all, there’s a reason models are paid an obscene amount of money and re-touched to hell – they’re supposed to make you want to buy the product, not turn away in disgust when you see the ad.

That’s a thought that has many layers. I know I’ve bought into the advertisers scheme that they define beauty. I know I’m contributing to the complexes of thousands of little girls (and not-so-little girls). I know I probably have some sort of complex. That doesn’t change the fact (I guess it probably explains the fact) that I just don’t want to be bombarded with “real-ness” or fatness in the real world.

So there it is, there’s my huge double standard. The beauty of my belly dance class is these women are ok with, and proud of, their bodies. They’ve learned how to move with it, dance with it, and it’s beautiful. I haven’t reconciled the two sides of my thinking. But that much I know to be true.

(Feb 1, 2007)

I’ve always said one of the reasons I need to be on a coast is because I love the water and can’t stand being land locked. Then people point out – you don’t live on the beach, you can’t see it from where you are, and you don’t go all that often. All that is true – but for me that never really mattered. Knowing it was there was always good enough for me.

But now, another one of the randomly wonderful aspects of my work is, it’s on the Embarcadero, right across from the water. I ride the train right under the Bay Bridge and along the marina every morning. I take this for granted. I know that because I’d been doing this routine for about 5 months before it really dawned on me just how perfect this situation was. This was my ideal. Boiled down, this was one of the reasons why I moved back to California (although I knew I should never have left!), and into San Francisco. To be in such a perfect city.

So I’ve been trying to really focus on how lucky I am every morning, when my cross-city commute takes me through some of the most beautiful (non-vacation) landscape ever. I see a picturesque downtown as I walk to the metro every morning – the highrises, the amazing architecture, even the americorp building. Then when my train pops up from underground on the Embarcadero I go right by one of my coolest sculptures ever – a crazy huge bow and arrow made to look like it’s crashing into the ground. Then there’s the bridge, the mini-park, the boats parked in the marina, the palm trees.

Today as I thought about it all, I actually got a little teary-eyed. I am SO lucky. And sometimes I don’t live in the moment enough to really taste that. I have the most amazing job, at the most unbelievably cool company - which I randomly fell into before I could even realize what an opportunity it was. I live somewhere that I’m actually excited about and proud of (if you can be proud of a place you live). It’s been a long time since I felt that way.

I think some people just have places written on their hearts. Since I didn’t like Colorado, it was really hard for me to understand how people could be so in love with it. But I can’t judge them if that’s where they feel drawn to be. All I knew was I just didn’t have “that feeling” about it. (my anchors – who had been gone from CO for a while – once said that they just couldn’t stay away. I remember thinking, “are you kidding me? Whenever I go visit somewhere else, I cry when I have to get on the plane to come back here!” And I really did cry.)

Now I have the “feeling” again – and I don’t expect it to be the last time I do. There are a lot of cities out there with a lot to offer, and I plan to live in a lot of them. For now though. I’m going to do something that’s tough for me – try and focus on tasting the moment I’m living in now.

(Jan. 30, 2007)

Do it now, clean up later.
That’s my new mantra. I know, it can sound a tad self-serving: yah, that guy you’re flirting with? Go ahead and just sleep with him. Deal with the fact that you’re married later.

That’s not what I mean.

Here’s the story. I recently started journaling again – something I haven’t done on a regular basis pretty much since I got married. Until then, it had been an almost religious thing for me, since my dad bought me my first journal when I was like, 8? Or was it 10? Either way, for a very, very long time.

My entries kind of morphed as I grew up. First they were the childish – here’s what happened today, down to the very conversation I had with my best friend. I could afford to be detailed as I wrote almost every single day. Then I wrote a lot (a lot, lot, lot) about boys – a litany of my crushes, my friends crushes, who said what to whom.

When I got into high school I got more philosophical. I started to examine my life more. I looked at my friendships and relationships and asked questions. I tried to figure out why I did what I did, why I interacted with people a certain way, why I was friends with the people I was friends with. Of course I documented occurrences, too. My three serious guy relationships – and a bunch that weren’t so serious … - are there in detail (sorry guys). Drama with my best friend is spelled out.

From these different ways of writing and interacting with myself, I learned a lot about, well, myself. So I made a pact with myself to start writing again on a regular basis. Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy. Although let’s face it, I still need therapy too. Well, my therapist will have something to read anyway.

So today, I was writing about writing. Yes, you read that right. Writing ABOUT writing. See, also back when I journaled more, I wrote in other types of medium, too. Wrote a lot of poetry, even made some decent headway into some “novels” (short stories?) I started working on. This kind of tapered off, and by college it completely stopped. I attribute that to a lot of things – busy-ness for one. Also, a lot of my writing was to work out those crazy feelings I had bottled up inside when I was a teenager and life was WAY more dramatic. Things got a little less (a LITTLE, I say) confusing as I got older, and maybe I didn’t need a way to work things out as much. (Although that’s not entirely true. Just ask my husband – or me – about the first two years of our marriage. Maybe I still NEEDED a way, I just didn’t take it).

So for whatever reason, I haven’t really written anything non-journal related in years and years. I haven’t really had a desire to. And today, as I was pouring this out to my journal, I came to the realization that I think fear is holding me back from being passionate. Maybe. Although I would automatically say the opposite: Psh – I’m way to mature to let my insecurities keep me from going after something I might love. How juvenile.

So the thought process started. As I was getting to know myself through writing this all out, it dawned on me that every time I think about getting back into non-journal writing, I automatically think of how much work it’ll be – all the research I’ll have to do (depending on the subject), the organizing (kind of like writing a REALLY long term paper – ick), the agonizing. And god forbid I try to find a publisher. Work, work, WORK!!! It’s like I’d somehow subconsciously associated something that was once my complete passion (I’d write a chapter of my “book” before I’d do my homework!) with doing a lot of work.

Then I thought about people I know who have complete passion – my friends who are documentary filmmakers, my husband who loves (and has tied up hundreds of thousands of dollars in) real estate, my dad who is in the air force and is consumed (in a good way) with space and secret spy-type stuff (how glam). All those passions require lots of work. So it shouldn’t be a deterrent that a passion would require work.

(of course I’m not saying you should force it – if it’s a lot of work and you don’t absolutely love it, it doesn’t matter. You won’t stick with it. I should know. I have a problem with this, but that’s really another subject.)

so maybe, I thought, it’s not the work requirement so much as I don’t really know how I’ll handle all the work, I don’t know that it’s worth all those things I’ve mentioned, which I associated with my passion (still with me?). maybe, I’m afraid of the work. Not in the way a lazy person is “afraid” of work, but in a way that I’ve translated the work to fear, then associated THAT with writing. Fear in some form is kind of a theme in my life, so it really makes perfect sense.

I enjoy writing, and I think I have a talent for it. I don’t want it to be something that just falls by the wayside in my life. I always thought your passion should just be something you did by default. But maybe sometimes it’s work. Maybe, when you know deep down you love something, but have fallen out of love with it for a season, maybe you have to make a conscious effort to resurrect that love into your life. And be committed to just see what happens.

So that’s my mantra. Do it now. I’m just going to start writing. Maybe little (and by little, I mean epic) blogs like this. maybe I’ll revisit a story I started in high school. And I’ll answer the questions about “how” as they come – I’ll re-learn how to put my words down on paper. I’ll do the research I need if it comes to that point. That’s the “clean up later” part.

Bottom line – I’m going to give it a try. Maybe it’ll end up a casualty of my short attention span, like PR, or social work. I think I’m ok with that though.