cindy's world

Today, I wish for…

easy longevity…

…restfulness and peace…

…enlightenment…

…and a beautiful journey.

As always, captions are obtained by resting your mouse pointer on the photo. And yes, these are more photos from Lake Shrine.

I got pulled into the periphery of some drama with some friends today. I wasn’t physically around the drama, and I wasn’t a part of it. So in the detached place I was, the whole thing looked almost laughable. But having been inside of the murk, too, I know how hard it is to be clear-headed and calm when you’re confused as to what’s going on with someone you’re emotionally tied to. I’m glad I never carried my paranoia as far as this person did, and the fact that the drama is in the rare position of not being mine, made me feel really good. And then I felt bad for feeling glad it’s not me. The fact is, it still sucks and others go thru it all the time.

It’s really nice to wake up, look at the person sleeping with a small unconscious smile next to you with his arm around your waist and his leg draped over your knee, and know that your life is better than the dream you just had. It’s really nice to take a nap on a hammock together in the middle of the workday. It’s really nice to leave someone with a smile on your lips and calm contentment in your heart.

In an email conversation with Vanessa earlier about how I’d been perhaps erroneously defining “life” as beginning with the start of marriage and a family, she replies (posted with her express permission):

“I think you are right, starting a family is not the beginning of life, just a piece of the entire journey. I think we live in the times were our “life” role model growing up was for women to be schooled, have a career, have a husband, kids and the house with the white picket fence and then as we matured society’s views were changing, too. Especially, in California. It’s a liberating time of breaking the mold (i.e.. having kids out of wedlock is more common, adoption vs. your own blood, and the choice to not have kids, etc). Which can be a confusing, frustrating and sensitive time for many women? I always think where do I fit in the new mold. Especially, if you are making a decision, and your family wants something else. My Mom and sisters freaked out when I told them I was seriously considering adoption. My Mom said “that’s nice honey and you can have a few of your own.” I guess in the end you need to figure out what makes you happy and go for it. Do you ever notice when someone makes a decision that’s not in the old paradigm of thinking, sure the family’s feature get roughed up, but they eventually get over it and accept whatever decision you make.

One of the best advice I ever received was from [martial arts trainer] when [boyfriend] was being wishy-washy. He told me to stop thinking about the journey (i.e. when it will end, how, etc) and just enjoy the journey.”

Dwaine is holding me personally accountable to him to report back to him my research in switching career paths. Man, the excuses were plenty for not jobhunting earlier. “I’m gonna keep this job for the steady pay and benefits while I write.” “I’m trying to decide whether to go to law school by exposing myself to the battlefield.” “The job market is unstable right now, and if I work for a private company, I’ll probably be laid off.” “I have a mortgage to think about, I need the steady paycheck.” But he’s right, I’m ambitious by nature and I just got lost in where to set my next goal and have become frustrated from my lack of direction. Just taking a small step in the direction of my dream like looking online for information makes me feel good, like a small weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. The guilt of complacency is now eased somewhat. It truly is a luxury that I’m not in a rush and that my financial burdens are tiny, thanks to lucky timing and cautious care early and throughout.

Anyway, I looked online and turns out my problem is that I don’t know what search words to put in. People want technical writers, underwriters. The closest I can get to is copywriting, which is confined at an office and I don’t think I’m into doing that again. Small advertising companies tend to not hire enough people so they deadline like mad to overwork their few exhausted underpaid employees. I think what I really want is just freelance work, which means I may as well start writing on my own time on my own topics wherever I want to bring my laptop and send stuff out.

Even writing that feels good.

Between the two phone conversations I had with my friend Dwaine (whom I’ve known since junior high) today, we talked in depth for 2.5 hours. We don’t talk often, but when we do it’s major catch-up and we’re on the phone forever. He’s a bit tough on me sometimes, but that’s okay, I believe him when he tells me that he just wants to see me happy, that my happiness is what he truly desires for me. With the assistance of his tough love, I realized something potentially monumental. He’s damn right that I’m generally unhappy right now. But here’s the twist: what I think I’m unhappy about is not what I’m actually unhappy about, but rather the symptom of a more deeply-rooted discontent on a larger scale that is so huge that I’d formerly just pushed it back, pushed it back, not dealt with it even in thought. Every time it began to rear its head in my mind, I’d hammer it down out of sight like those plastic gophers you slam with a padded mallet at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

My life is not fulfilling. My life is stagnant. It is in the exact same place today as it was when I was 23, 24. That was the last major thing I did for myself — I bought real estate. It may have been a great accomplishment in my early 20s, but now that I’m approaching 30, everyone else has caught up and surpassed me, and what does it really matter that I’ve had this house for this long already? Only that the years on the mortgage are less. My low expectations for myself when I was in high school was “college, then job, then marriage and kids.” Well, the marriage and kids ain’t jumpin on silver platters and sliding themselves over to me, so here’s the real ideal: a career that I’m passionate about, that truly taps my talents and benefits others. Nothing neutral like the job I have now, which position is by law required to be exactly that — neutral. I want to make my mark and I want to contribute. My want my handprint on Planet Earth to truly matter and mean something to the future inhabitants of this planet. I want to write. I have been writing since I was 6 in the nonsensical limitations of a language I was just learning and forcing to fit around the shapes of my limitless imagination. I’ve been fooling myself when I’d tell myself, “My life is great, it’s low-maintenance, I can do and can afford to do whatever I want, it’s stable, it’s great, it’s everyone’s envy.” That is not me. I don’t like complacency. I got lazy somehow, or maybe I lost direction. This was supposed to be a temporary job while I figured out what to do next. I’m restless and antsy as a hermit crab (I AM a Cancer, ya know) in a shell that I know I’ve already outgrown. I also fooled myself when I said this job is gonna be the low-maintenance, easy money, great benefits provider as I do what I really want to do, which is produce The Great Asian American Novel. Have I written one short story since I’ve been hired on in 1999? No. The thing that fuels my poetry is the need to write for emotional therapy, and I’ve published one poem since I’ve been out of school. Who am I?!

Who I want to be is someone proud of her career because she knows it’s a good fit. Creative advertising, copywriting, writing a regular column or contributing wide-range articles and features to different publications, commercials, TV shows, counseling/advice columns, short stories, novels. That’s me. Anyone who has known me awhile knows that’s me. Since day 1 of my hire in the job I have now, I have been told by peers, supervisors, managers, that I’m too good for this job and they don’t know what I’m doing here, and now what they’re saying is that they’re surprised I’m still here and I need to get out and do better for myself, because I can. I love most of the people I work with and respect them immensely, and I in no way think I’m better than they are and therefore need to get out of “the rat race,” as one retired coworker had always put it. But I don’t think this job is a fit that maximizes on my fortes.

And perhaps I obsess over minute details of a bland life as a distraction so that I could continue to blind myself to my lazy complacency. Perhaps I nit-pick and overdramatize on non-problems because there is nothing else to feel anything about. Idle hands are the devil’s playground, right? I focus on stupid shit because I can’t step up to the big shit.

Everywhere I look around me, people are coming into their own. Diana, the young lawyer just tapping into her potency in an area that’s new but that she’d always felt an internal gravitation toward. Vicky, the doctor pharmacist with her interest in medicine and talent toward sense and order. Karen, who just passed the bar exam (congrats!). Other ex-classmates of college, in prestigious positions that inspire them to rise to new heights and challenges. A security guard buddy downstairs who just passed the sheriff’s department exam and is finally on his way to realizing his current goal of becoming a deputy sheriff. Brad, who just bought a new house. Dwaine, in his recently-purchased new house, in a relatively new career in which he’s climbing the success ladder so fast he’s skipping rungs, with eyes still on totally different and higher ladders in the near future. The list is endless. Even other women who are newly engaged or planning their weddings, they are on their way to their own dreams. Each time I hear of wonderful news of people around me, I’m happy for them while pushing away a feeling in myself that can only be described as feeling left behind. And I have never been left behind before. I led the pack. I used to always have a next goal. Get the class, get the grade, get the college applications nice and juicy, get into the college I want, get the grades there, get the job, get the house, get the financial security. Now that I’m there, I’ve stopped reaching because I’ve stopped dreaming.

When I turn on my cell phone, you know what it says? It says “Peace is being calm in your heart.” It used to say “NEVER stop daydreaming.” When I was in elementary school, every open house in school my parents went to, the teacher would say what a well-behaved kid I was, if only I could curb my bad habit of “daydreaming too much.” First grade, second grade, third grade, all the same thing. In indignance a few years ago, I celebrated dreaming. And now, focus on the dreams have been replaced with focus on emotional recovery from the recent trauma. I began this blog in therapy, hoping that I could achieve inner peace and stability again. I think it’s time to start dreaming again.

I had an amazing, long and therapeutic conversation last nite with Vanessa’s boyfriend over dinner (the three of us went to Bobby McGee’s in Brea), and the best thing I’m taking away from that conversation is that as much as I feel that I’m emotionally tangled right now, I need to give myself a break because traumatic things have lasting effects and it really wasn’t that long ago, and I am progressing in my recovery very nicely. And that I should not let “should” be my guideline. Just because I or anyone else feels I “should” be over certain things by now or “should not” let other things bother me, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the fact that I am still not over certain things, other things are residual effects of past trauma, and certain things will still bother me. And all that’s okay, it’s not a failure. Also, that I’m a good person because I know “the value of a soul.” I didn’t sell out for a title. I have looked at something and said, “Gee, that’s a really nice thing, and I’d really like to have it, but not for the price of my self-respect and my soul. So I am walking away.” The way her boyfriend put it, having a nice car, security, money, material things provided for you may be nice, but at what price? Once you have agreed to an unkosher bargain, no amount of jewelry, money, possessions can ever fill the void that bartering your self-worth away will create. And one day, everyone who shortcuts it by selling out will realize they are miserable and maybe be enlightened enough to figure out why. I, on the other hand, trusted my gut and sidestepped the brokerage. If a particular material thing is that desirable to me, I will earn it myself and acquire it the right way. Altho all 3 of us were a bit stressed going into dinner, we all walked out feeling much better emotionally.

I just deleted 120+ spam links made on my comments since last night and as I was doing that, more came in! TWO JUST CAME IN AS I WAS TYPING THAT SENTENCE! This is ridiculous. Mike! MIIIIIIIIKE!

But on the happier front, I’m delighted to report that last nite, I did indeed get all my 4 wishes in my prayer.
[another spam comment comes in here] A friend called me back, I got lots of supportive talks and hugs and inappropriate comments in jujitsu, Mr. W even called me at 10p, an hour after his usual bedtime, and didn’t seem to have a reason for calling (I was SHOCKED to get a call from him) and Vanessa was home when I got home so we got to hang out until I fell asleep in front of the TV and decided to go up to bed. Oh, and I also changed my bedsheets to my soothing mint-colored summer sateen, so that may have something to do with the fact that I feel less gnawing in my guts today. It’s too bad [another spam comment comes in here] that moments [another spam comment comes in here] of internal peace like this are so limited these days. I’m tired from always being at the edge of depression and having to grit my teeth through the nausea [another spam comment comes in here] [another spam comment comes in here] in order to fight myself out of it. [5 more spam comments come in here!! The spam filter’s not catching even 10% of them!]

MIKE!!!!!!!

This evening, as I continue my day-long search to find where I belong, what puzzle my odd shape fits into to make a picture that would finally make sense to me, I wish for…

…friendship…

…different perspectives…

…personal growth…

…and a faithful partnership.

I’ve been pulled out of my courtroom to handle a specialized courtroom down the hall that the floater clerks either can’t or aren’t willing to do. So they’ve put a very qualified criminal clerk in my courtroom to handle the child molestation/rape trial that started yesterday. I’ve been haywire for a couple of days now, and all I can do to try to pull myself out is constantly talking myself out of feeling bad. ‘My life is fine, it’s only one aspect that’s uncomfortable, the negative drama stuff is out of my control and not about me, and I can always take some drastic measures if I see the need, everything else is fine,’ etc. Logic has not been dictating my emotions. I’m miserable. I’m lost. I’m scared. I’m nauseated and exhausted.

And then earlier, a law clerk in this department brought her two new calico kittens to visit us. She’d gone home early to pick them up from the groomer’s who was getting the kitties ready for their adoption today, and their new mommy decided to swing back and introduce “Scout” and “Gabby” to us first. They are the cutest tiny things! Scout seems to be a runt, and I picked her up and held her. She purred immediately and curled into my arm, against my body. As she got braver, she put two tiny pink-padded paws on my chest and pushed herself up from my forearm and as I delighted in her curiosity, she touched the tip of her small pink and brown nose to mine in a little kitty kiss. Everyone started cooing and awwwing. “She really likes you!” the court reporter said, as she held the slightly older and furrier Gabby. Gabby was clearly favored as she was prettier, and Scout’s aquamarine eyes seem to protrude a little from her small triangular face. I think she’s just young and still has a bit of the less-attractive infant cat alien look.

For a few minutes there, as I was cuddling the warm furry kitty who was poking her little head around and purring in my arms, my mind was off of my emotional issues and I was happily charmed. I’d hug Dodo like that, but he doesn’t like to be picked up and he won’t stay still when you’re petting him. I’ll give it another try later when I get home. Haha, Scout’s only the size of Dodo’s head.

I’m having an online conversation with someone about “makeup sex” and its definition. He says that “make up sex is hot rough or very slow passionate sex to make the other person either get their anger out or mellow them out.” I didn’t think of makeup sex like that. I’d always thought of it as sex you have after you make up, not sex to get someone to make up with you. I don’t think I could have sex in the middle of a fight; I’d be focused on other stuff. But after a fight I’m feeling a bit sad and lost, and I need him to show me it’s gonna be okay. I need to reconnect with him. When that person doesn’t want to reconnect with me, it makes me suddenly insecure and more lost and now I’m really, really sad.

I think I just figured out a large chunk of myself. It’s like I need closure to a fight to make sure the ugly stuff’s really gone.