cindy's world

Guys! I just bought, as a total impulse purchase, a La-Z-Boy Airspa (R) massage recliner with heat and 10 motors! It has self-inflating and -deflating lumbar pillows, different modes of massage; it reclines and rocks; it fits me vertically and horizontally; and the fabric is oh-so-soft cream chenille! I had been playing with the idea of getting a recliner for my living room (it needs more seating) and when Vanessa moves out and takes a dining room set with her as she promised to do, I’ll have a nice space for a recliner or a loveseat that faces the living room and bigscreen TV as well as the dining area and kitchen. I meant to just look in the La-Z-Boy store to get some ideas when Mr. W and I walked by it on our way back to the car after breakfast, but then, there that chair was. Softer than anything (except Dodo, and parts of my lower abdomen), it rocks (in the colloquial and literal definitions), and it massages! I’ve always loved overstuffed furniture I could curl up in. And here’s the kicker. It was 50% off because that cream chenille fabric is being discontinued (the other models in different fabrics are still original priced at $1600), and this weekend’s sale is THE STORE PAYS SALES TAX! Woohoo! Mr. W has a truck, so I don’t even pay delivery. I was nervous about my cat perhaps taking a liking to the chair, but the salesperson said just to turn it on when the cat’s around and once Dodo sees that it vibrates, makes noise, and rocks, he won’t come near it. That’s true. Dodo hates the vacuum for the same reason. YAY!!

Mr. W was napping laying on his right side over his bed with the bedroom windows (directly behind the head of his bed) open. After finishing my last blog entry, I gently laid down in front of him, curled into a ball so that I’d fit neatly into the S-curve in front of his body, my back to his front. He woke up anyway. A breeze lifted a few strands of my hair along with the gauzy antique gold curtains. “I love laying here with the breeze coming in,” he murmured.
“And the curtains flapping,” I added and he agreed. I continued, “Like the gentle fluttering of a mosquito’s wings as it flies away from –”
“– a fly swatter,” we said simultaneously.
“…and my OFF! spray,” he concluded.
I giggled at the analogy. “I wanna go write this down,” I said. Without opening his eyes, he lifted his left elbow up, away from my ribs, and I slid out from underneath his left arm to write this post.

The first thing Mr. W and I did this morning was run about 4 miles and then walk another mile to complete a 5-mile course. I just got back into running again this week, and this is my 3rd run. I’m optimistic about completing 12 miles (no stopping) before the half-marathon. I just gotta figure out when, between jujitsu, work and my weekends, I would have time to train. I suppose if I drag Mr. W with me, I can train with some company on the weekends for long runs.

This is the entry I would’ve posted yesterday had the site been up and running.

There is something about watching X-Men Friday night, then X-2 on Saturday afternoon, and then the newly released third X-Men movie in the theatre yesterday evening that just makes me feel so…ordinary. This imperfect affliction they call homo sapien. When I was a little girl, I fantasized about having special powers. Making water shoot out of my fingertips, communicating with animals, psychically locating lost objects. I think I most often wished I could turn into a spider and disappear around a table leg so that I could be there without people knowing I was there. I don’t know why I’d never wanted to be actually invisible. Also, something about watching Halle Berry in a tight bodysuit and Rebecca Romjin naked except for some blue body paint and scales inspires me to lose weight.

The continuity between the 3 movies was great, very entertaining.

I’m actually kind of excited for lunch today. Earlier this week, my gym trainee for the first time got on the treadmill. She can’t run distance yet, but her goal is to get into good enough cardiovascular shape where she can do 3 miles w/o stopping. When I first started training with her, she was too loose and heavy to run on the treadmill at all. But on Tuesday(?), after a minute-long brisk walk, she started with a 30-second jog, then brought it back down to a brisk walk, and then 45 seconds, then walk, and so on with me monitoring her heartrate and recovery time until she got up to a 2 min 15 sec jog in her final increment. We were on the treadmill for a total of 30 mins (I did a 3-mile run next to her while monitoring her and yelling encouragement and instruction) and her total distance was just over 2 miles. I’m so proud of her, and she was surprised at herself. I was actually surprised at myself, too, since I hadn’t run in probably over a month. I suppose I can’t keep procastinating on the training forever. There IS that expensive half-marathon in September I’m committed to.

So yeah, today at lunch we’re hitting the treadmill again.

Oh, yesterday at lunch I went to the other gym I belong to that I hadn’t been to in months. I was on the elliptical trainer and this guy walked up and stood in front of me, looking at the empty elliptical machines around me and at me. I refused to make eye contact, as usual. He stood there for what seemed like 3 minutes, while I thought at him, “Don’t stand so close to me! Leave! Go away!” Finally he spoke to me and asked me questions about the elliptical trainer, what muscles it works, whether the machine next to me is the same as the one I’m on, etc, and since he’s talking workout, I got friendly and talked to him and answered his questions. Soon, a district attorney in the building got on the elliptical trainer to my right and said very pointedly, “Hi, Cindy.” I said hello to him, noticed he did not put his usual headset on. The guy and I finished off our conversation about the machine, he thanked me and then took off. “What was THAT?” demanded the DA. I said he was asking about the machine. He shook his head. “Yeah right! I’ve seen him in here and he’s NEVER on these machines.” I said, “Oh. Well, maybe he’d like to start.” The DA said, “The way to START is to get ON one.” Good point. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said. I said, “So I gave him a trainer’s pep talk for 3 minutes for nothing?” “Yeah!” It’s sad when someone needs to come over to cock-block cuz I don’t know when I’m being hit on. Later, when I was doing freeweights, I heard my name being called from behind. I turned and it was a guy that I’d met and gotten friendly with at that gym, whom I hadn’t seen in months. He’s back to the gym after 8, 9 months of being away, he said, and shook my hand and gave me a big encouraging smile. (This is the guy who complimented my personality before. Haha.) Then he was off. And then I saw 2 of my female coworkers working out together and chatting, and we said hello across the weight floor. They said they just joined a few weeks ago. So it turned out to be a strange social hour for me, despite the fact that I usually never socialize at the gym.

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.”

Does anyone else find it a bit absurd that in last night’s season 5 finale of “American Idol”, the show received just under 64 million votes for who should be America’s next reality-show-made singing star, which is a bigger voting participation than any presidential election in this country? Do we as a country care who wins a telecast singing contest more than we care who’s representing the nation to the world? (I was gonna write “running the nation” but I’m not sure that’d be an entirely accurate characterization, but I’m not gonna go there.)

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.