Monday, June 26, 2017

what I meant to say was..

So, honestly, I know how unlikely it is that someone wants to find a random blog with someone's life complaints spewed all over it. But I think this blog is kind of good for me, in that it isn't for you. It is for me.
As a matter of fact, if you know me personally, it might be best for me if you did not tell me you stumbled upon my blog. I'm realizing that this has become my new "scream into a pillow" therapy.

I used to keep a journal (which might be a smarter option, but then I felt weird throwing those away. I still have them, but I don't know what their fate will be). Journal-writing was my outlet for all of the things I wanted to say, but didn't/couldn't at the time. Everything that I wanted to rant about, obsess unnecessarily about, fawn over, and say for the mere satisfaction of saying it, was put into those journals.
Now, with this blog, I feel as though I'm putting my thoughts out in the universe (perhaps there's someone out there who would be mildly entertained by the quirky cynicism and overly-emotional blah blah blah that has been my persona here). Maybe they'll (my thoughts) reach someone, maybe they won't. And that feels mildly adventurous, the not knowing. The assumption I'm laboring under is that no one I know reads this, which is incredibly freeing, since I tend to be too careful around pretty much everyone I know.
This lets me feel like I have a voice in the world, particularly during times when I feel like my real voice is too weak to be heard. So, if you know me, by all means read it, but please do so with a grain of salt, knowing that I tend to write while emotions and confusion are high. And I'd really rather not know if anyone I know reads this. Unless there's something remarkably troubling about it and you feel that something between us needs to be resolved in some other way (other than me ranting about my emotions until they're out of my system and I can truly look at them objectively, albeit possibly embarrassed). That was a lot of words. But they need to go somewhere, and here they will be.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

whirlwind spat me out

Almost a year later, and now I'm not sure what the journey is going to be.

It was almost comforting, that year of separation from my husband and busting my ass in school, because I knew what it was I had gotten myself into. As difficult and crazy as it was, we always knew what our biggest problems were, and could deal with them because we were aware of them before they happened (that also happens to be the reason I haven't posted since February, things just got way too busy). Now that that's over, I have no idea what my next steps need to be. I feel like I just tumbled out of a whirlwind and I'm trying to steady myself, I just have no idea which direction to face once I can stand steady.

And maybe that whirlwind was inside of another whirlwind, which was inside of another whirlwind. For instance, this is the first summer I haven't been in or working on a show since 2005 (that's a lot of shows, and a lot of time spent not centering myself when I could have been). I also just finished a year of school where I took 19 credits during Fall Semester and 22 credits during Spring Semester (and humble brag, I almost graduated Magna Cum Laude... the 22 credits took their toll and it wound up being Cum Laude, but I was still proud of that). My husband and I have spent less than one year of the past 2.5 years living together with just the two of us. It's a lot to process mentally, and emotionally.

Having grown up as a member of the LDS church (which I no longer attend, though I have not removed my records), my life as I currently live it looks wrong. The very strict, very simple lifestyle of the LDS church is something that sometimes I weirdly mourn. I never quite fit in there; I felt like I never learned how to pray correctly, or I simply didn't understand how to feel a prayer's answer. If/when I relied on the spirit to guide me, I inevitably felt lost and stuck at a crossroads (much like I feel now, I guess). But I knew where I was. I knew what to expect. And I grew up being taught that that lifestyle is how it "should be." My philosophy wound up being that whatever path I picked, I'd just find the silver lining in whatever situation became mine. My eldest sister once told me "If you look for the bad or for the good, either way you'll find what you're looking for. You might as well look for the good you can find." That's been the aim, and that's been the survival tactic through whatever sort of trouble I've found in life (in or outside of church).

I feel lost rather often, though, and finding the beauty in that can sometimes feel tiresome. I've been quite literally lost (physically) a few times lately, now that I've finally moved. I'm in a new place, and outside of the Mo-Mo bubble I often struggled with, but there are always new struggles that crop up. Like getting at least a little lost every time I leave our apartment (usually not by choice, but by accident because the freeways here are quite different from what I'm used to). The "what in the world are you even doing with your life?" struggle is very real these days, too. I don't, as a matter of fact, have a significant reason to live where I live now. My husband did, but his goals are in a transitional state these days; our reason for initially heading this way is gone, and the general state of things is currently a huge, overwhelming "now what?"

Neither of us knows what our life is now. Everytime a friend or relative asks what we're up to I feel immediately defensive (I have always, [and unfortunately probably will always] cared far too much about the opinions of others). We're kind artists, he and I, which means we will not be cut-throat about achieving things, we won't purposefully mistreat others for our own personal gain, and in this scary world that seems to mean that we are dooming ourselves to "failure." I suppose "failure" is in the eye of the beholder, though. I don't really want to know the kind of people who would think of us as failures for being "the nice guys." But honestly, how do we succeed as "nice guys?" Or can we? Will we be in student loan debt forever and always (because again, this world...) and will we ever be living in a place where we both feel centered, happy, and purposeful?

Gosh I hope so.