Get a F$%*^&% life.

1. I made a list. And I went. And I listened. Because it was PAINFUL. And necessary. And important.
2. I’m not going to talk about the list that I made that was painful. And necessary. And important. I will talk about the other list. The list of lies.

Here’s that list:

- You shouldn’t compare yourself to others.
- You should do exactly what you want to do
- You should go easy on yourself
- You shouldn’t work too hard
The litany goes on

It’s time to shut that off. If I really love myself, if I REALLY believe in myself, if I REALLY am as good as I say I am, and as I know that I am, and as I think that I am … I need to stop WHINING.

I need to get angry. It’s time to get angry. It’s time to stop screwing around. It’s time to decide what I want, and do it. If I’m not doing what I want, I need to make it be what I want, and do that.

I am thirty-six years old. oh, and more than a half on top of that. That’s more than to almost forty. Time’s a’wastin,’ sister.

No comments please, about being easy on myself, I have a lot of time, I can do it.

-I know I can do it. If I get off my ass and do it, it will get done.
-If I stop being distracted by bright shiny things, it might get done.

Look at me. I don’t really look like I want it… do I?

No. That’s not what I’m talking about. I look like I’m hungry for attention, sure. I didn’t used to. Ironically, I was much more attractive when I was a hermit chained to my piano. I wasn’t really even writing songs then. I was playing the same four bars. Over and over. I was playing the same phrase in four different modes through the circle of fifths. I was making up chord progressions to do things through. I was trying to write five new solos for rhythm changes and put them in major keys (and do rhythm changes inverted!).

I used to not give a rats ass. I don’t know if I could do those things anymore.

I used to do “useless” stuff too. Who needs to know more than four Chopin etudes when they aren’t concertizing? It’s good for your speed and technique, that’s why! No one wants to hear me play these things when they can go get a recording of someone else playing Bach fugues faster and cleaner. But it’s good for my brain. It’s good for me.

But no. I whine and cry and jerk around all day. I blog. I write REALLY insipid poetry. I wish I was a DIFFERENT PERSON.

That’s when I knew. When I started wishing I was a different person. When I started feeling inadequate. When I started thinking that I wasn’t creative.

The phrase that popped into my head… the very first phrase was something from my childhood. When you have snuck out the window in the middle of the night for the last time to smoke cigarettes, drink, have premarital sex, whatever. They’ve found the beer bottles in the creek, the butts in the flower bed … whatever else. You don’t clean up real nice.

There’s not much to say. You hang your head in shame.

“You’re grounded.”

You pout. You know it’s for your own good though. Because you want to graduate, and go to a good school. You don’t want to end up stuck in this one-horse town, just like the rest of them. Whining about your life.

So go. Be different.

Because I Must

I’m having a bad day. My mind feels like it has tiny bugs crawling around inside it. I’m going to speak in metaphors, because it’s the only thing I can do. It really is.

1. I am an ant farm.
2. I would like to scream, but I’m holding it in. It is as if I screamed, the megaphone wouldn’t reach over the walls of the insane asylum. If I screamed, the only effect it would have is to increase the dosage and make sure I was still safe and sound in ward 8. It’s for my own good, really. And I’m thankful I have the insurance.
3. The therapist that works in Metaphorical Ward 8 thinks there is something wrong with me. She thinks that my refusal to scream is indicitave of pathological behavior. She suggests upping the dosage.
4. I’m thinking of being non-compliant.
5. This is all really just a metaphor. I am not crazy. I desperately feel the need to not censor myself anymore. The preceeding sentence was not a metaphor. I don’t want to censor myself.
6. I am very secretive, with a lot of secrets. I’ve lost a lot.
7. I probably need to go out tonight, a LOT, but I probably; once again, can’t.

I am not sure whether or not to discuss this.

Flying WAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY below the radar, so much so that every force-ful act of being pointlessly and effortlessly ignored in a way that was so unintentional it feels like a calculated SLAP! actually has its perks … but it hurts. I’m too repulsed by schmearyness to discuss specific imagined slights or beg for attention. I imagine myself magnanimously and graciously extending the finger of kindness (it’s not even the middle one!), and only INTERNALLY thinking “where were you when” and “you didn’t even CARE about me during” and “yeah, you say this NOW…” and “sure, you’re putting me in this group of folks TODAY…” and “you like me now that I’ve …” because I know the specific reasons that I am here and others are… there. I can describe them in vivid, bitter sounding, boring detail. In a nasally whiny voice that no one is interested in. Least of all me. I don’t have time for that crap.

But I am THAT kind! I wouldn’t do the i-told-you-so. I was brought up THAT right! I sure would wear a pungent cloud o’ smug though. And that doesn’t make it any cleaner.

8. I do have my friends. Loved ones. People who take a bother. Who give a rat’s posterior. People who are surprising. It’s nice. I like to notice them on my own, a lot of the time. The best way is when I see these little gems poking out of the water and I can process them in my own time – rather than it being a “see! people DO like you!” type of thing. I know people should like me. It doesn’t surprise me when people do. It makes me happy when people are nice and it makes me feel warm to be so loved and it makes me feel connected to be thought of. But I know who I am.

I do dislike being misunderstood. And the thing that has been happening has been that I am no longer getting my point across in my music.

My next entry will be about my song that I wrote for the contest.

monday list time

1. don’t worry. I still do lists at other places. I’m ADDICTED to lists. I’m a frickkin ADDICT these days.
2. That’s why I’m going with my sister in law Liz-O (her whole nickname is “Delayed Reaction Liz-O” and she is the person along with the Proper Way of doing the “Whatever Monkey” signal.
3. I am learning more and more every day that I don’t get and can’t play well with the humans. I am a strange little dampandemotional swamp creature that needs to sit submerged in her bog and mellow out on her little creepy planet. I don’t like cold, robotic change. I don’t like politic. I don’t like weird rules. I DO like the routine of the seasons. I DO like to slither and hide under a rock.

Like I said, I hide the pretty things in the walls. I know… I sound like a troll. Of course, when *I* say troll, I’m thinking of fairy tales and bridges, and not creepy internet crap. I only just found out what a troll was in the last two months. Sheesh. I don’t “get” anything. It’s like I was born last century.

4. All is not lost, somehow though, for the dork within. Maybe someday I will tell you my story about me geeking out and Peter Mayhew at a certain … place. But not today. I won’t live it down, I’m afraid. I have a reputation. And secrets.
5. I am still proud of my Elfquest comic books. The will never be sold.
6. The meal is over, and I did NOT drink a diet soda. I’m gettin’ there people, I’m gettin’ there.

A Short Letter to My Macbook

Dear Knight in White Shiny Plastic Stuff:

I need you to work for me today please. That was a bitchin’ viola line I needed you to lay down just then. But you snapcracklepop like cereal. I’m tired of tweaking you, and adjusting you. I’m tired of the words buffer and engine and all that. I don’t want to parse through my sample ditching the wondrous bits of things that make you flow like sonic gelatin over a landscape of orgasmic delight (I don’t even know what that means).

I would like us to reach some level of understanding on this. Can ya WORK with me here? Can we make some beautiful music together? It’d be realreal SWELL!

Love,
RangerD

everything falls apart …

It’s all in a complete mess.  There’s no stability, no excuse.  No center.

I try to do the right things.  Try to move on.  I don’t understand why she gets to behave as she does.  Gets to do whatever she pleases.  It’s completely untoward.  God only knows what else she is doing …

Is she trying to reactivate the little social group that got her into trouble in the first place and ruined things for me?  Does she really think that it’s going to all just be fine, fine, fine?  It was bad enough with EXT sending stupid update emails to my husband – but there was really nothing that we could do about that.  I hadn’t decided what to do about his mother’s birthday card.  None of this makes any sense to anyone but me.

He’s not allowed to talk to me.  I’m a huge threat.

So what on earth is going on with emailing my husband.  Who does this?  Are the rules just changed somehow.  I just want to write a stupid email or something:

“Dear Clueless Wad of Denial - 

Things are good with me.  Had a birthday.  Yeah, the Denise lot’s actually slowly improving … although one thing that hasn’t changed is that I still talk to my husband all the time, every day … about every little thing.

The All Knowing, All Seeing, 

Not Really.

PS.  What’s in your wallet?

PPS.  If your mail is still being screened, my husband actually comes with baggage; and thusly cannot be an object of nostalgia for anyone …”

Now wouldn’t that be lover-ley? {evil smile}