Big Top Me

I have been wasting time on social networks lately because my creativity has been getting lost in the couch cushions.

I will go ahead and be honest, and admit that it’s because there are a couple people and read-y things who/that have kind of knocked me off kilter lately and I have been less than confident. It’s been pretty specific and easy to do. I’m pretty easy to drive crazy. I’m a pathetically easy target with a high yield of ego-building attention.

I’ve pinpointed the problem. Apparently, it’s when I feel really well at ease in a relationship, artistically (or otherwise). I will hop to for pretty much anyone – often at the expense of people who are not demandy or pushy with me. Many of my relationships have suffered for this – artistically and personally. I have a husband in particular who doesn’t ask for much at all and so he kind of sits around whistling and staring into space sometimes. I’m starting to use him as an excuse more and more and it’s not really an excuse; I’ve found it’s really more of a need and it should have been a deep-seated need that I stuck to long ago. To be a wife and to have a bit of Private, Don’t-@#$(-with-this, family time. Other people are certainly not shy about closing the white-picket-curtain. Boundaries are clearly defined. Perhaps the Mike and I need to go back to Family School. I’m just so congenial I will bend over backwards out of my very own kitchen to make a stranger feel better. until my life falls apart. And that’s not sane. That’s what crazy people do.

So anyway. If you make me feel safe, I’ll let my guard down. Then if you knock me off my secure perch a little bit I will scramble and dance and do anything to get my happy equilibrium I had back. Much Attention will be paid and No Work will get done. Hell, I’ll get my whole circle involved in your cause. I’ll talk to Mike about where he thinks I might have gone wrong in the problems I’m having currently with “you” or “them” or “that-terrible-thing-*I*-did-wrong.” I think possibly the key here is that before I was thinking about myself and getting my work done; and that after being knocked senseless with something that makes no… sense … I’m thinking about how to FIX the situation. Calling in all my extra resources. Trying to build Rome in a torn up paper cup…

And it’s usually a situation that can’t be fixed. I try and try, and everything I try just gets casually knocked over with a feather. I set the house of cards back up on the table only for it to get blown over in front of my face! “Why did you DO that?!?” I rage, metaphorically! “It was the wind!” is my reply; with the added crazy making “What are you talking about? What does a house of cards have to do with ANYTHING we are even talking about right now …?” I hang my head, feeling guilty and burdensome for bringing my problematic paranoia to our fragile relationship. Gah! I mess up everything! This is why I can’t stay in jobs, relationships, bands (despite a 13year marriage many people admire and many people wanting to work with me even though I’m flaky as hell). This is why no one likes my work (despite an odd popularity happening with little pr and a non-existant core fanbase set-up. My 8-12 fans are really starting to buy into this…).

I’m just being real emo here about all this. It’s not really that bad. But rejection is killing me so I’m thinking in black-and-blue. #haha

Soon I am confused. I live my life increasingly on guard and I become paranoid and shaky, more and more. Creativity is squeezed and I become a useless, shivering thing. The back of my hand is glued to my forehead. I want to talk about it, but you are screening your networks and your emails and your phone calls and your texts and you have moved out of state and changed your name. Yesterday you were wondering why on earth you couldn’t get me to text you back. I’d coldly replied I had a life and said something Societally Shaming.

I can’t have this go on anymore. I’m glad I have the self-possession to know that I repeat patterns with each new person I let into my life; that I continue to attract the SAME sort of person, that I do have an artistic “type,” and that now that I have found hope I need to do whatever I can to stick to the healthy bits of all my healthy situations by taking good care of myself and saying “no thank you” to insanity when it rears its ugly head.

not go running toward it like a chicken with its head cut off.

So I slowly pull away from conflict and from things that make me look too insane. Realizing that that in and of itself is making me look a little bit insane but figuring that I will end up okay in the end. I know I have something important in my favor, which is that I am admitting that I am riddled with the crazy. This gives me an edge over people who slap the label on me and then deny the wacko in themselves. Only to be surprised and overcome by it later. While I zip by on my silly-tricycle…quite used to being heckled like the circus freak that I am.

Why is it so easy to infantilize women, but so hard to lay the blame at the feet of the Man-Boys it so often belongs to. I know I’m generalizing right now, trapped in my own experience. It’s my blog. Deal.

But why do I find it difficult to be a strong woman? And why do women go to war with one another? I have this conversation with my husband, who I don’t talk about a lot because thankfully he is a boring grown-up.

I think sometimes or perhaps on tricky days, “silly” girls are easily controlled and flummoxed. Regardless of age, position, status, or station.

And if you don’t believe me, later on this weekend I will post some of the scary stuff I’ve read, but haven’t had the brass Ovs to post. That will really fry your blood!

You Aren’t, Actually

so this is it
last straw
rock bottom
sweet oily nadir
the last best stand of slander
and nothing more to fear

my ears burned all the
scraping way
down
slippery dark
dissatisfied walls
responded happily
to odd routines
of poky
little birdcalls

not aware was I
the last rites were to be
a burial alive!
but get this, ducky,
phoenixes have wings!
-and I have come too far
to fall
and Un-Survive

WHY THIS WEEK SUCKS

1. I do believe I have finally hit my last, last, last straw.

someone was so shockingly, horribly rude to me this week I feel like I got slapped. It cured me. Of all the other times I haven’t stood up. Of all my mouseyness. Of everything I cower on. Of all I don’t say.

No, I won’t get specific. For many Classy reasons.

But mostly because, it’s stupid. Yep.

It’s a waste of my time.
Moving along…

2. I got clawed and bit by an insane old cat who I am administering IV fluids to at home. He does this every night. I am exhausted.
3. I’m dropping weight and being unhealthy. If I don’t watch it, I’ll start losing my hair again and that would suck because it’s pink now!
4. I am not believing in or enjoying my successes, but am short-changing myself and thinking the things I do are no big deal. This stops now.
5. I’m not writing in an organized way.
6. My beautiful cousin is gone and Sunday is her memorial
7. I feel like a bad niece and an absent cousin and friend, like I was sitting around on the Internet waiting for answers when I should have been participating in life all along because the answers were wrong.
8. I am not a good enough sister to keep my family happy and okay. I also don’t know if this is true, or my responsibility. I do know I’d like to get a little closer in and figure out who I am as a person with skin and bones and breath and a family and plans.
9. I am Not That Great a Friend. a + b = €^#* YOU!!!!
But I am, and there are lots of people who think it and forgive me a multitude of sins real and imagine;, conscious, sane, or insane.
10. I have less than four days to get over this silly pity party (except six. One is allowed to grieve for one’s cousin. Also I can work on 7 and 8). then I need to get back on the ball.
11. I need to finish Nur Ein, and go as far as I can. I need to get my things organized and stop just saying I’m going to and stop getting into friendships with backstabbing people who judge me for my flaws and undermine and blow things out of proportion. I need to be classy. I need to rise above. I need to go pro again. It CAN be done. I have been it before, I can do it again. I will NOT add another voice to the collection in my head.

I am too old for that!

12. So lies are told about me, and to my face. I was raised better than this. So I’d better hop to it. I’m stronger and faster and smarter and better for every kick in the teeth. And thank god for it.

Thanks for reading a cryptic rant. I needed to do it. To nip bad self-talk in the bud before it got out of control.

Everything not for me is against me and therefore dead to me. Yes. It’s that serious. So the boundary-fence-sitters should pick sides. I’ve had enough chain yanking. My last straw was small and barely noticeable; but it was, indeed, my last, personal-secret, straw.

firm foundations

1. I haven’t been sleeping real well. I haven’t been feeling super great about myself.
2. I’m not taking the best care of myself. I will try to improve this tomorrow.
3. I haven’t been as communicative lately because I feel stupid. I feel stupid because, without getting into it, I allowed myself to get psyched out by a person who doesn’t really like me.
4. I don’t feel like my domains are mine. I don’t own my space. I feel betrayed and attacked. I feel poked and picked on. Worst, I feel like what I do isn’t worthwhile and that I’m a dilettante who isn’t enriching myself with real practice working toward professional goals in a logical setting -based on years in …. a professional setting knowing I needed to slow down and hone some skills if I was going to change direction.
5. This is disastrous during a time like Nur Ein – which is like a pilgrimage for me and like songwriting boot camp. Rather than honing skills I’ve elected to pile issues on my personal life; and this is unprofessional and dilettante-y in the extreme.
6. This can be salvaged because if I step outside myself it is easy to see and hear the ridiculousness of my situation. But my very ears get warped when I am sucked into silly minutiae and start actually believing I’m not as good as I know I am. Because when I second guess myself – it wastes time and I make mediocre work and of course it’s not going to stand out as some great thing.
But I mistake insults sometimes for critique. They arent the same thing – and are not motivated by the same place in the heart.
And learning to recognize mean people from afar is probably the next skill to practice.

Nur Ein Whine

Am having TERRIBLE week. Miraculously made it into round 2 of Nur Ein. How do I reward my mostly-Quite-high-percentage-of-brethren-and-Unspoken-dude-code-respecting-women-friends? By TALKING about the ICKY stuff. Yep. I whined. This is because:
1. “iiiiiitttsssss HOTTTTTTT” (eh, eh, eeh, EHH…)
2. “I’m TIRRRRRRED…..”
3. “I’m mooooooooooodyyyyyy”
4. I have CRAAAAAMPSSSS
5. I can’t tag my MP3 and its a CONSPIRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. My kitty is sick (this is a legitimate concern, not a euphemism. He’s fine and lives in the house now.).
7. This is not a vagina monoblog.

Already having promised to write music that is more accessible, I cannot make recompense and write a song about Thor.

More later. Aren’t you thrilled?!?

********

-am waiting in line for a movie. Talking via interwebz to fellow contestant. He says there is some rule against discussing lady topics on the El Forums. Great. I guess I just got tired of suffering in silence while my household and family rolls their eyes and I compete with guitar crushing mass producers of unfailing consistency. Me and my glockenspiels and excessive reverbs.

At a free screening of a Judy Dench movie. So I’m going out in a blaze of feminine glory if they decide to eject me for a Gal Foul.

Unrelatedly, I just found out, in public, that it is pronounced “Tusk-KEE-gee” and not “TUSK, kuh-gee.” I feel as though I have been lied to my whole life. Meanwhile my friend I eat sushi with Teri calmly eats cheese and makes cracks. Brilliant