This or That?

This or That? 

1.  Meat and potatoes or pasta?  Potatoes. Just potatoes. I LOVE potatoes!  

2.  Do you prefer Apple or Android?  I think I'm one of the few that doesn't really care about this issue. I do have an iPhone though.

3.  Do you kiss and tell, or do you keep it private?  A little of both ;)

4. If you had to choose one, would you choose Facebook or Twitter?  I'm not on Twitter so Facebook by default.

5.  Christmas or Valentine’s Day?   Can there be a "neither" option? Really...just not into either. I like the message of Christmas, but there's usually far too much family drama for my tastes.

6.  If you joined a band, would you prefer to do vocals or play an instrument? Ummm, you probably don't want to hear either from me. :)

7.  Hot weather or cold weather?  COLD!

8.  Yoga or kickboxing?  Kickboxing. I don't do well in a stationary position for long. I get antsy.

9.  East Coast or West Coast?  Born East Coast, but I'm really a West Coast gal at heart.

Loner

I am a loner.

I can blame genetics. Both of my parents are/were loners. Actually, compared to my parents, you would probably call me outgoing. My mom has ONE friend. I define "friend" as someone you call up on the phone and you go out and do things with. My dad...I'm not even sure he had one long-term friend. He went through people, if that makes any sense.

I can blame my upbringing for being a loner. My mom moved around a lot. I didn't have any siblings. So it was basically me home alone after school. During summers, it was me by myself almost 24 hours a day. We moved so often that I knew whatever friends I had would disappear once we moved. I wasn't a complete hermit. I talked with other kids at school, I had sleepovers occasionally, and I had a few close friends over the years. But I never had those really deep friendships as a kid and grew up closely with anyone due to moving so often.

I can also blame my personality for being a loner. My personality is probably a hybrid of genetics and upbringing. I don't really "need" people like a lot of other people seem to. I don't need to go into the minutia of my day with anyone. I can go long amounts of time without needing human interaction. I get annoyed by clingy people. I like my space. I like to do my own thing on my own terms. I don't like going anywhere in a large group because groups can only move as fast as their slowest member.

I realize that I'm an anomaly. I know that humans want to feel part of a group. They want to be wanted. I do too to a certain extent. I love when people trust me enough to confide in me. I like to problem solve OTHER people's problems with them.  But when push comes to shove, I like being by myself.

Especially after becoming a parent, I feel that I've lost part of myself. Believe me, you gain other things when you're a parent, but you can lose track of yourself for a while if you don't keep yourself in check. With a demanding schedule, I crave time alone where I can just...be. And every morsel that's taken away (whether it is for work, child's activities, parties, various meetings, etc.) makes me a bit resentful on the inside.

When I was a kid, I had so much time to just be. I think back fondly to summers as a kid, and I spent the vast majority of it by myself doing whatever I wanted. As much as I prefer being an adult over a kid any day, I miss the endless chain of lazy days doing whatever I felt like.

I worry that my child is going to be a loner like me. She must pick up on the fact that I prefer to be alone. Genetically, with two parents who are loners, she's biologically predisposed to being a loner.

After knowing my child for 5 years, I see that she's well on her way to becoming a loner. She doesn't crave bonding and friendships like other kids her age. It's not to an alarming degree. It's more that she's the kid who observes, she won't initiate contact, but rather she'll wait for others to approach her. She might play for a little bit with a new kid, but if she finds the new playmate too loud/obnoxious/irritating, she'll just walk away and not play with the kid again. She'd rather play by herself instead of with someone she doesn't like.

I feel my own issues come to light in these instances. I should urge her to play with kids even if she doesn't like them because to refuse them is snooty, right? I don't want the snooty, aloof kid. (Although I'm an aloof adult. It's not purposeful. I'm just shy and not very outgoing unless I try really hard and then I probably come across as overbearing.)  Pushing her to act differently than I myself want to/would act is so counterintuitive, but I don't want her to end up like me. I don't want her to dread invitations to do things like I do. I want her to seek out others, to form bonds. Of course, it would probably be best if I role modeled that versus just told her what to do.

It's so difficult for me to disguise the dread to her when I have to go to a party. Most of the time it's just another (uncomfortable) thing to check off the list.

I am a loner.

Vulnerability

I have been blogging since early 2007. I find it a fairly easy way to reflect and express myself without the tedium of writing by hand. Even more than I enjoy blogging, I really like keeping up with people. I’ve followed people over the years who blogged when blogging was cool and then dropped it when they moved onto the next fad. I have followed specialized blogs that follow my interests. I’ve followed some that I can’t recall by what path I got to them (some were very winding paths).

Of all of them, I really enjoy those people that I have gotten to know over the years: the consistent bloggers who have really showed themselves. Some of the specialized/business blogs have been consistent but haven’t been as deep. I desire to really get to know people—what makes them tick, what they value, what experiences they have had that have made them the people they are. The main deficit of the specialized/business blogs is that it’s usually hard to get to know the author beyond a superficial level. I find that frustrating because I want to go a few layers deeper than I’m being shown. 

I have a different blogging perspective than most. I don’t really want people to go to my blog who don’t want to go or who only go because they feel obligated to. I tend not to comment much on other people’s blogs because I don’t want them to feel obligated to read mine. I’m not interesting. And I’d feel stressed if I thought people were waiting for me to have something interesting to say. I like the absence of pressure and obligation as it has been and is now. And when someone I know asks me for my blog address if the subject ever comes up, I try to steer them away. I like my un-interesting corner of the internet that I can do whatever I want.

It's surprising how well you can know a person over several years of reading their blog. If it is a blogger that reveals more than the superficial, you can probably know more about that person than even a good friend.

A few years ago I started reading someone's blog. I came across it by way of a winding path that I can't recall. I enjoyed the writer and the self-disclosure. After a few months, something seemed off. One small thing didn't corroborate with something that was said previously. Because I'm a freak of nature and remember even the tiniest details, something jostled in me and then I went back through the archives and said, "Aha!" when I found the contradiction. I kept reading the blogger, but I put the writer in the category of being a novelty. Don't get emotionally invested or even care about anything this person writes because something is not right. So I kept on for the entertainment value (and I couldn't figure out how to un-follow someone). As time went on, my initial assessment remained. I didn't look for inconsistencies anymore because my faith had already dissipated. When I'm continually told that 4 + 4 = 7 when I know it's 8, I just tell myself "yeah yeah yeah" and go on believing what I believe even if someone keeps saying that it's 7.

After a few years of steady blogging, a month or two ago the blogger has finally confessed that there was a Great Deception that has been going on for a few years. The readers are shocked but supportive. So supportive. I am amazed by how supportive people who have been lied to for years can be. I'm not necessarily shocked because I figured things out a long time ago (and everyone else might be in that camp with me). I'm not necessarily supportive, other than I think it's good that the weight of the deception is off the blogger's mind. That had to be difficult for the person to keep up the charade, and now there must be some more inner peace.

Sometimes I wish I was less cynical and more supportive. The downside is that I would have to be more vulnerable to pull that off. I hate feeling vulnerable.

Passage of Time

Coming to you live at 1am after a few hours of sleep, but I know I won't be able to get back to sleep for a few hours, which will put me at approximately a 1-2 hour nap before I get up for the day. (sigh)

I woke up to my daughter sniffling. Cue my thoughts of her being allergic to the house. Or her bedroom. She  always sneezes and sniffles in there. Outside of taking all her stuffed animals out of there and vacuuming regularly, I'm not sure what else I can do. :/

Then I heard a weird trickle. Is something leaking? What could it be? Maybe it's just rain. Let me lift my head and look outside from the bed. Eh, it looks gray outside, the same it always looks at 1am. Do I have enough energy to get up and look closer? Not really.

At that point, I gave up getting back to sleep. I decided to move into the bathroom. Lest you think I'm a weirdo (which I am, but that's beside the point), I'm less likely to disrupt my husband being an insomniac in the bathroom. AND I have a big bathroom. There's approximately 90 sq ft of carpeted floor space in there. So I'm lounging on the floor in front of the bathtub in my pajamas. The bathroom is really like a sitting room--with closer proximity to plumbing. Now I'm hearing an occasional pitter patter on the skylight in here. Rain, drizzle, mist, showers, sprinkling. That solves the trickle mystery.

I do love my middle-of-the-night blogging/reading time. Quality "me" time.

It's my husband's 20 year high school reunion time. 20 years. Of course he's a couple years ahead of me, so I'm not to that big milestone yet. I'm just vicariously panicking. I remember panicking when I was 25, thinking how I had "lost" so much time, and here I am another decade into my life. This time it's not as much "what have I done with my life?" It's that to a certain degree. It's more like "where has time gone?" It feels like I've been on a path for a while, and I'm turning around to see how much of the path I've already walked.

I started at a four-year university at 17 years old. Now I'm 35. That was more than half my life ago. I met my husband when I was 18. That's almost half my life ago. I got married at 22--a good chunk of my life has passed since then.

Another thing swirling around in my head right now is that I spent some time with my mother this past weekend, and I had the realization that there is only a very slim chance that we're ever going to have a reasonable relationship. I had been holding out hope that things could turn around, that we could have the kind of relationship my aunt and I have. But it's just not going to happen. I can only do so much. She would have to change her mindset. The chance of that is slim. I find it sad because I like to feel in charge of my destiny, but I only have the power to change myself/my thoughts/my attitudes.

I think I'll read a few pages of my book before attempting to go back to bed.

G'night!

August By The Numbers

Sorry it's been a while. I've felt "off" lately. Work's been busy, I had jury duty, but there's something else - something's "off." I don't precisely know what it is, or it could be recovering from a weirdly disjointed month.

Anyway, it's been a good month for everything but exercising. August has been hot and muggy, both deterrents to me going outside much. I went to a fancy schmancy hotel with free food for a few days in mid-August AND had many meals out in mid-August (like 8 meals out in one week). Less exercise and eating out could have set me up for gaining even more after Julypalooza. However, I kept it in check and actually lost weight. I'm practically back to where I was at the beginning of July, in fact. I've been trying to be more diligent in knowing what I'm eating. I had 8 clean days, my record thus far in one month. I don't think I've EVER lost this much in a month. (Although it's not a real loss, it's just shedding what I gained last month.)

I had a great reading month too: 16 books. Jury duty helped with that. For five days, I was holed up in a jury room. There's only so much work I can do with just my phone. That was nice that I could get something done while sitting sitting sitting.

Determined to make it a good September even though it's going to be odd with J starting school, I have to testify at a court case, I'm giving a training, I'm starting a high-profile work project, etc. Yeah, September's going to be kind of crazy; I'm glad I have here as an outlet.