Quitter

My parents used to call me a quitter.

• After a year or so of Campfire Girls, I didn't go back. It wasn't any fun and I have some very bad memories of it.
• I was in Honor Choir in 5th grade and I quit it to play softball. Because our lives revolved around my brother's sports, I thought I'd get some of the attention if I played a sport. (There is a whole, ugly story around this, but now isn't the time.) I wish I hadn't done this. I'd have been happier in Choir. But I was only 10 or 11.
• In 6th grade, I joined Girl Scouts. After about five months, all we had done were a handful of crafts. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. I had joined with two other girls, and they were also bored and unhappy. They made me the spokesman to tell the leader we were quitting. She cried. I was 11. My folk began calling me a quitter to my face.
• I was forced to join Job's Daughters when I was in 7th grade. Didn't want to, but the family had promised my dying grandfather (and given several things, I certainly felt no compulsion to follow that promise). I stayed for a year and a half before being able to leave it. My parents again accused me of quitting, of never being able to stick with a thing.

Pecked to Death By Chickens

A good friend of mine has a plaque on one of the walls of her house that says "Having children is like being pecked to death by chickens." (The sign hasn't seemed to have done any lasting harm to her children.) They all understood the concept: they had chickens.

Readers of this blog have some idea of how my life has gone in the past year and some. I haven't blogged much in the last couple of months, what with dealing with the estate, having surgery, finding work that is low-paying but gratifying (and anxiety-producing), and now getting a fairly solid respiratory infection that may have also endangered or even ended another work situation before it started. In fact, it feels a lot like being pecked to death by chickens, Universe-style.

I'm just trying to make progress. All I want is a life of health, financial stability, and the chance to pursue my happiness and my dreams. Given all my fortunate advantages — white, from a middle-class family, well-educated, and highly experienced in my field of endeavor — getting the life I want shouldn't be so hard. But every time I think I have my feet under me, things beyond my control knock them out from under me again: Mom, overwhelming grief and depression, unemployment, emergency surgery for god's sake!, illness, and timing.

Good things have happened: friends have helped and supported me in some places, I found a great therapist (and a mediocre psychiatric nurse), I got the one project. I know that life is hard. I also know that life was simpler and easier for my parents; it wasn't a painful struggle. We were all very happy and content (until my dad died and our lives completely fell apart, but that's a separate story). I just think that continually having to try and shovel myself out of a hole full of mud is harder than it needs to be. Add to that the continuous and uneven peck-peck-peck of my life's disasters — small and large — prevents me from making progress. And it wears me out completely.

You'll notice I haven't given up. I keep trying through some, potentially foolish, belief that I can grasp that life I want, one where I can withstand the difficulties because I have enough of the good to cushion my falls. Or maybe I keep on because, really, what else is there to do?

Only keep trying to dig myself out of the mud and avoid the damned chickens at the same time.

I'm not that fond of chicken.

A More Civilized Pace — Please!

Change. I know life is full of it, but I do remember when the changes in my life were more leisurely, when they weren't falling over each other in their eagerness to meet me, when they weren't pulling me along at rocket-speed and dangling me behind them like a toy on a tether.

I complain about everything, right? But my life seems to be on a bullet-train of change. I'm half a century old: change should slow down! Just let me catch my breath, at least. And how about balancing things out with some positive changes, such as financial independence (or at least security), and love and friendship (close on a geographic scale, please)?

I'm not a jet-setter. I'm not an adrenaline-junkie (but there are a couple of things I wouldn't mind trying again). I may walk briskly, but I also like to "stroll about, lookin' at the shops."* I love spending long, slow hours with friends and family, telling stories and laughing, taking long and scenic drives, playing games, and watching children play. I love spending time with someone special, curled up at opposite ends of the couch, and reading news articles, comics, and book passages to each other. I like to savor.

Mind you, I'm not only slow. I enjoy fast-paced movies and books. I love to watch MythBusters and the more explosions the better! I like fast rides and short lines. There's nothing like running and laughing with children until everyone collapses with exhaustion and giggles.

My social life at home is too slow: it's dead. With no work, my days drag. If I weren't paralyzed with fear over my impending complete brokeness, I could at least write. On the other hand, there have been jobs, Mom's cancer and death and all the many months of follow-up to that (that are speeding up now), and changes in my social life that brought it to death, freelance gigs, meeting people professionally — it's cocaine one one side and pot on the other, but not balanced and neither healthy nor fun.

Do you know what I want? 

1. Financial independence, or at least financial security, so I don't worry all the time, expending my energy fruitlessly.
2. Friends with whom I spend time with frequently.
3. Enough to do without it being too much. If I work for pay, then less than 40 hours a week and little or no commute: why spend my life on things that don't add to it? If I don't need to work for pay, then enough volunteer work and activities to keep me interested and interesting but that leaves me with plenty of time and energy to spend in other ways.
4. Someone special to spend that time with on the couch.
5. Two cats.
6. An office and studio that is full of light and comfort and that inspires creativity. In fact, an entire house like that. My house.

I know life is full of change, and that you cannot control all of it, or even most of it. I know change comes at all speeds, but lately I've felt exhausted by it. I want some good change in my life, and for my vehicle of change to move a bit slower. I don't need to ride in a stealth bomber.

*Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed