Is Risk Worth the Potential Reward ...

"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."
— Will Rogers ... so, take those risks and be authentic, at all costs ...

Into the Woods ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easier Said Than Done

Continue on,

at leveled or disheveled best,
but is it over the next hill,
or do I bypass the obvious,
taking to the wood --
taxed lungs and chapped cheeks
ascending meaning everything,
backing down not an option?

Or, is it better to trip and fall the bogs,
leading to the depths of a black forest,
my hands and face torn by nettles,
teeth clenched in firm resolve
even though I’d like to spit and quit?

I’m not sure which is best, or who decides.

There are no forks in the road,
Mr. Frost, and I can’t see beyond
the end of my nose, the hurt in my heart,
the silence killing my ears,
and all my good sense is lost.


... there are no forks in the road, there is only forward, and forward involves risk ... must take that road, the forward risk road ...

The Direction of my Dreams ...

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined." -Thoreau

These are the words of wisdom on the back label of the Organic Raw Kombucha I'm drinking, my "drink me" potion, as I continue to fall down the rabbit hole of a full night's worth of work, much of it "right this very f’ing minute/needed that an hour ago” and very, very time-sensitive and deadline related. 

So I got kind of pissy tonight when Markypants came up from the garage, after a full day in the "man cave" with his best friend, ate, watched TV, started to fall asleep on the couch and then was heading to bed. 

We (okay he?!?!?) hadn’t really considered making any face-time contact with me today, knowing both our schedules (it was his day off, and not my day off … but there were still ways we could have remained “connected” and on sort of the same weekend page).

Anyhoo … he stopped at “go,” on his way to our bedroom, didn’t think and then walked right through my donotdisturbmecan’tyouseethedoorisclosedtightlyandI’mnotevenlettingthedogsinrightnow door!

He then crossed the room toward me, even though I had already raised up my hand with the “stop, don’t even start talking” motion, palm out … but palm out, only for seconds, because then I went head back down, and put that hand back on the keyboard.
 

He came closer ANYWAY!

I was all whattheholyfuck!?!?!??!

He said he just wanted to kiss me goodnight, and then he made some kind of snarky comment like, “What?!?!?!?!  Are you ignoring me now?!?!?!?”

If I wasn’t in the midst of A FUCKING DEADLINE, KILL ME NOW!!!!!!!!! … I would have said, “Oh, you mean ignoring you like the response I get when we’re spending a rare night together (aka you are watching TV and I’m talking to myself) and … well, and because there wasn’t time for one of those stupid kind of bickerfests, even though they’re fun because we end up out-sarcasm’ing each other and then laughing.  BETTER.THAN.SEX!

Well, you know the drill.  We get it but they don’t.  

If we interrupted them at work, OH MY GOD, or while football was on, or …

Well, I’ve also been getting interrupted for years, while I work, because I work at home.  Everyone supposedly “gets” this, but everyone also might as well be “un-getting it” when they go, “I know you’re busy, that’s why I’m just going to BOTHER YOU FOR A SECOND.”

Or when I’m sleeping because I just finished working and they go, “I know you’re sleeping but … “

OKAY, I’M NOT SLEEPING ANY LONGER, THANKS A LOT!!!!!

They BOTHER YOU FOR A SECOND and it either kills concentration or disrupts sleep and dreaming!!!!

Just saying ...

So, yeah, I barely “air-kissed” him tonight, and then rolled my eyes back into my head, put my hands back on the keyboard and went back to work. 

I must have said 1400 times this week, “Just a reminder I have a big contract and stuff I’m working on this weekend and unfortunately extra hours,” but it fell on the only deaf ears that are left in this empty nest of a house!

And you know, I’m aware of the hour when I'm working.  I'm oriented to time and place.  I eventually would have had a lull in the onslaught of time-sensitive/get it out the door stuff tonight, and I would have left the confines of my office and crossed the hall to hang out a bit to say a proper goodnight. 

But, for the most part, he was saying, “Hurry up, let be bother you because I want to go to bed!”  It wasn’t about what was convenient or what would work for the both of us. 

It just burns me sometimes!

Barring the fact that anyone was standing in front of me bleeding, or ready to deliver a baby with its cord wrapped around its neck, or maybe choking, I’m trying really hard (now, especially when the nest really is empty) to stay focused on my work.

And I’d like it to feel less like a struggle and less like I’m the bitch who won’t take your phone calls … when truth be told, I really won’t take your phone calls until I get my shit done, so get over it!

So it’s not okay to say, “I’m not trying to bother you, but I’m just going to bother you for a quick minute …”
 

Just.not.okay.ever!!!! Unless you are hemorrhaging, or something (see above list) and act polite and accordingly, PUHLEASE!

Shit really can wait, and no one will die.  I’m learning that I’m embracing that.  So.there!

 
Weird how kind of angry this post sounds, and weird that it sounds like I'm a raging bitch who wouldn't even lift their face up from their computer/work to air kiss their loved one goodnight, but really this post is not angry at all.

It.just.is.

... and it is a risk, now and then, and also a lesson therein, to realize that you can say HOLD IT FOR ONE DARN SECOND, and the world can survive without you!

:)

P.S. I wrote this during a lull in work tonight, but not while I ate my late dinner.  I did both separately, wrote this post and then ate my salad, because I’m learning to take risks, all kinds of them, but also to do things one at a time, in real time, taking time … learning as I go.  

Sentence Lifted

Sentence Lifted ...

You go girl.
Chin up.
Face the mirror,
your womanhood,
your worth.
Run like a girl.
Ties that bind you now
are of your own making.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who's the fairest one of all?
The wicked witch is dead.
No more poison apples.
Live out loud.
Unleash your words
on the screen.
Make them scream
for all the times
you kept quiet.



... and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and one should fully believe in taking risks!

Per Chancing and Living out Those Dreams ...

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

Nearly 4pm, on a Tuesday, meatloaf sammie, hot coffee and two drooling dogs by my side, he-man in the driveway with the shovel, home from his own full day of work and driving, laptop open, late in this day, I begin again.

I night-shift it, four nights a week now, which is nothing new, and has always been my favorite zone.  Night shifty behavior is my thing!!!  But it’s funny now, because I tend to get 6, today 7,  or sometimes even 8 hours of sleep after working my fandango off all night. 

“Back in the day …” when the kids were little, a night shift was followed sometimes by a hot shower (in place of sleep), lots of coffee, diet Pepsi, peanut butter & jelly toast, and maybe a nap when it was Ali’s nap time/the mid90s, but my young adult 20s-30s-wayyyyyyyyyyy into my 40s body and brain have always found the sleep around the edges. 

Maybe it’s something you grab hold of, like helium, when you have kids, that ability to stay afloat, on little sleep, laughing on the crazy side just some of the time, really not scaring anyone, while on the always (IN ALL WAYS), you are spot on where everyone needs you, and you feel so very real even though your Velveteen life has rubbed your eyes right off! 

Or, maybe it’s just your circadian rhythm and you better just dance to it, and get to it when your body and mind feel the getting is reallllllllllllly, realllllllllllly good.  Whatever it is, it’s like a drug, that lack of sleep.  Then,  later in life you realize, oh my gods and goddesses, on the flipside of this unslept drug is yet another drug, and it’s called SLEEP.  --A double-edged sword and a happy little pill all balled up in one, and the prescribed dosage of sleep versus the abstinence from same, it’s this amazing little tight-roped walk you do, backwards with your shirt on inside out!!!

The science of it, will they ever figure it out, Mr. Sandman and his crew of neurologists?

Ending a night, finding the new day starting on the immediate, after a rub of the eyes, and a quick orientation to time, place and where the hell is my person, well, it was a fantastical FANTASIA-astic, slap-spastic time! 

All those years will remain smeared in my memory banks as some of the best of life stores/stories ever!

I not only survived, back in those hair-raising and hardly ever bed-headed days, but I thrived, and I have 17 or 18 notebooks of scrawling to prove it!  Those odd-ass hours … before the kids were awake, or before they were due to be up, when there was no “real work” or house/handmaid work to be done, I would not sleep, perchance to live out some of my dreams.

So when I night-shifty behaviorally act out now, and then go to bed for seven hours, it feels like a loss of a sort.  I’m all, “What the hell did I miss, and was it worth it to have this tremendously puffy face, and why does a person look better (wired yes but better) when they go without sleep?” 

This morning, after the “real work,” I stayed up and chatted with Mark, crocheting (hopefully even rows), talking (probably rambling) and watching the news.  About an hour in, I felt my brain do that sideways sweep across my inner forehead.  It was that early warning bell, “Hey, if you just hold on for a second, your brain will bounce right back and there you have it, your second wind!”  I know this feeling, I STILL LOVE THIS FEELING.

I really, really wanted to stay up, long after Mark’s car pulled out of the driveway.  I wanted that cup of coffee, the bagel … the day to start.

But I went to bed instead, slept ‘til noon when someone had to pee (not me/a furry someone), and in my bleary-eyed glance out the door at the new snow, I wanted to “stay up” then too.  I wanted to steady and re-ready myself, but went back for 2-1/2 hours of more sleep, knowing it will make the nightshift easier on my brain tonight, the one that a person should take care of NOW THAT THEY’RE AGING, OMG!!!  And knowing that I’d be more capable of perhaps a little conversation, prior to work tonight, before Mark says, “Shhh, I just want to hear this …” (when AMERICAN IDOL IS ON … yes, we have both thrown each other under that fucked up touring music bus!!!)

Going back to bed, though, I felt I was missing the day, including the emails of what was coming next (which will—you will find—wait!).  I had stuff on the DVR, music I wanted to hear, Etsy listings to work on, three packages to get to the PO, cookies to bake, a pantry to clean, laundry to do, YARN, dogs, etc. 

I was missing the snowy day in daylight, and therein will always be a little lost feeling.  However, I’ve also learned in the last almost two years, that if you actually stay in bed for a lot, a verily lot of prescribed hours, holy manhole cover, the dreams!!!!! 

These dreams, they have been A-MAZING this last two years, and even the tiny one I had before waking the second time today … I dreamt Mark was standing there with a triangular cut of a sandwich, with one bite out of it.  I could see cheese, ham and turkey and mayo (which is weird because MARK HATES MAYO), and then he thrust the sandwich at me and said, “Here, it’s ham and turkey,” and then I woke up, FOR REALS, opened my eyes, and he was standing there, home from his workday, and the dogs were there, and they were licking my face, and it was a BRAND NEW DAY AGAIN.

See what I mean, this sleep shit is fantastic!!

I’m worried about the dogs, however.  When Mark is home-base, which he is this week, the dogs sleep both at night, and then of course they sleep with me during the day, and they take nine or ten naps in-between!  If I’m night shifty and “home alone” the dogs are on my schedule, and while they nap, their awake and play and wrestle and wanna-be-outside-right-now!!!! cycle is based on my movements, or stumbling.

I find it ASTOUNDING that a dog can sleep for 55 hours in one day!!!  I feel like that’s what’s been going on since Friday.   It’s an Olympic event for them.  They are stellar at, sweet and cute and have that “oh, I’ve only just dropped off for a cat nap” look about them, when in reality they’ve been in a coma for HOURS!!!!!!  Or, they will look, up heavy sigh and LITERALLY roll over, backs to us and GO.BACK.TO.SLEEP!!! like, HOW DARE WE?!

And how daring I … really, how daring I … and loving it … all of it … including the real life-ass SLEEP!!!!

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
— Ernest Hemingway   ... mayhaps in another installment, after another 8 hours of "real" sleep, I'll talk about that "other kind of sleep," the kind I love to hate, the kind I "use and abuse" when my brain is trapped between a rock and a bipolar/brain-damaged state, where there are dreams yes, but ... well, another time on that one ...

[what later became] Work In Progress [d.b.a.]

 

I am doing a new client startup today, while also having “Friday with the Little Girls” which was going to be at the Little Girls’ house, but I woke up to snow, and a pile of stuff to do for my startup, so the Little Girls are coming here, the dogs are running ‘round and about and M is due home this afternoon, wherein we also like to f’ with each other, punch each other in the arm and try to “keep our relationship alive” while planning for the weekend (my new startup involves weekend hours, as many startups do, and as many transcription projects do … there really are no 7 days in the week, it’s more like one day that just runs together.) 

When I reached in a basket this morning in my office/sunroom/sanitarium for a new client folder, I came across this calendar that I’ve saved FOR.YEARS!!!!  It depicts this BRILLIANT ASS IDEA, which I had back in the start of 1998, well into the separation of my second marriage and single-parenthood (again, OMG … yes, I try hard but often fail), and still yet a full year-plus more before papers were finalized.  I was flying by the seat of my pants, and this was still back in the days of dialup and multiple phone lines, and screeching LOUD MODEMS … slow uploads and downloads, and car runs (with Alice in hear car seat and Carol and Beks at school) for CASSETTE TAPES!!!! 

We were still printing and delivering things, in person!!!!!! 

There was the internet, so to speak, but there were also tapes, and paper and cords everywhere!!!!  There was, and always has been a dollhouse and toys in whatever office space I’ve used, and I did more than once (especially during 9-11, which came years later, fell asleep on my office floor—many people did not work their shifts and IC work during that time because they were locked in front of their TV sets).  A very much of my life in those years WAS.A.BLUR, but a fun blur, an amazing TECHNICOLOR DREAM-COATED BLUR!!!!!

 
I had devised this calendar wherein I designated highlighter colors for activities.   On this one, orange was for one of my accounts, yellow was for sleep and pink was for the other account.  While I had some notations in there of events and such with the girls, etc., I also had a separate calendar attached to the back of each monthly form for “extras”, and a wipe-off board, magnets holding shit all over the front of the fridge … and we ALWAYS USED WIPE-OFF MARKERS ON THE BATHROOM MIRROR for stuff we might forget. 

Every Tuesday morning when I got up, or before I went to bed, if I went to bed that wee hour in the morning, I was met with green wipe-off marker and the word TRASH … and/or recycling, depending on what kind of Tuesday it was.

 
I love this calendar for the simplicity of it’s chaotic facts, and I love (to hate) how when it got towards the middle of the month there were no hours for sleep notated in the yellow spaces designated for catty naps.  I’ve always had that “I can catch up on that sleep later, if I can just …” mentality, which has gotten me through a lot of things (and terror and …), and when I take a nap, now years later, and/or stay in bed for eight uninterrupted hours, I just think HOW FANTASTIC IS THIS?!?!?!? 

The calendar and notes attached to this page are AMAZING to look at, and I will never, ever throw this calendar away, or any of my other journals, note scrapes and date books, though I’ve often told myself, a good barn burning of personal books would be a fantastic idea.

 
The jury is still out there on whether or not my stroke, the year after 9-11, and ten years almost 11 now ago, was caused by sleep deprivation and clear chaotic craziness (not possible … lol, how can chaotic craziness be clear?!?!?!) … but I jest … my stroke was more hereditary in nature, and was compounded by the fact that I’d been pounded by lesion-building migraines for years and also had a head injury the year Alice was born. 

 

I don’t blame my game of sleepy cards for my stroke (though I wonder of late with my way-too-many hours of Kindle reading and Spider Solitaire, if I might be irritating my lesion’d skull). 

In addition, when I look back at this crazy paperwork, and forward to yet another new client startup today, which keeps my work interesting, because every project is DIFFERENT AND INTERESTING AND AMAZING AND SOMETIMES ALTOGETHER ANNOYING, BUT I ABSOLUTELY.LOVE.WHAT.I.DO---I feel lucky!!!  Lucky as hell and all get out and shut the front door behind you!!!!!

I’m lucky to live in beautiful surroundings with a man who drives me just as crazy as my schedule and two dogs that are both our “babies” and our freaked out rolling balls of amazement and humor, which a person needs in this life, amazement and humor!!!!!  I was lucky enough to leave home base a year or so ago and take a sabbatical in a “Little Yellow House” by the lakeshore, and though sabbatical was cut short this summer, it netted me reunification with my mother and father … so, really, what goes around and around and around, does come around again.

And I’m lucky beyond lucky, I realize when I’m able to call my daughter and switch the playdate with the girls from her house to my house, and Brad easily can manage same, and Carol will be here after work for their retrieval and to catch up on things with me before the weekend.

All of this rolling around in my brain and off the pages of my calendar today and I remain, IN STOCKING FEET, this beautiful (fresh-fallen new snow day), going TGIF (as if that makes a difference in my work world) and feeling lucky that the career path I chose really did turn out to be something incredible!!!!

I feel all gushy and happy and only slightly stressed … which RHYMES WITH BLESSED!

… she said, realizing, the girls will be here in 1-/12 hours, Mark will be here in 2pm, I must start work on new client stuff at 4pm, Carol arrives at 5pm, wherein there’s already a break in the new spin, and then once everyone is gone and settled into their nights, I get to keep on going like the energized freaked out manic bunny that I am.  Sweet!!!!

 

 

"You can discover the secret of a dew drop while drowing in the sea!"