i feel my grief in every bone
joy as a radiance around me
anger brings tension
and frustration more anger
yet i live and am them all

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There has certainly been a pause in my writing.

This is my little note to say that I will be back.

Partly I have been going through the transition of working nights on a full-time and regular basis. Oddly enough – from the girl who always falls asleep halfway through movies – I love it. It’s afforded awesome little features to my life like time to go to the gym and two weekends off a month with no one calling mid-Saturday afternoon trying to get me into work.

And partly I have needed a break from having all my insides draped over the web, a break from being so serious and a break from reading in order to write reviews and learn deep life lessons. At present, I’m neck deep in a stack of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics from the late nineties and am revelling in simple entertainment. Why do I read Buffy comics? I have no idea. I’ve never read comics before. I just like them. And I’m not analyzing it any further than that.

So peace to you and yours. You have blessed my life, all my friends old and new, this year. I’ll never forget nor could thank you enough. I’m only storing up all sorts of goodies in my heart and letting myself life well, so that I am even more of myself when I am with you again.

Affectionately yours,

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I’m overhauling all the ecosystems of our life. Freshening up the actual files to de-folderizing the computer files, digitizing old photos and learning an online task manager, and some time this winter I’ve promised myself that I will complete my recipe archive in Living Cookbook. Sometimes I think I’m a freak. And what in the world would I do if Google ever goes under?!

Partly this is the fault of Gina’s book, but I will admit to always being an organizer. There were weekends when I was a teen where all my free time was spent rearranging my upstairs bedroom to meet some new need or wild hair. The trend continues. Tonight is my weekend off, and Husband wanted to play Halo and I actually said… No. I really did. And I LOVE Halo. (p.s. We beat ODST together on Heroic. Oh man, that was sweet.)

So far tonight, I’ve checked two big tasks off my to-do list over @ Remember the Milk and I feel rosy-cheeked and invigorated. I adore this process. I’m going for two more completions. Wow. And yet, what the hell is wrong with me?

Nothing. I think I am metamorphosic. We are changing. I am changing. Priorities are different and I am allowing myself to let old values go and forcing myself to pay attention to values I still hold dear. Hobbies have come and gone. Most of all, I am a working mom with many demands on my free time and yet still I want it all.

But I think now, today, I have a better idea than ever of what I want most. As if I’m more alive somehow and now I finally thankfully amazingly have control over my own life. I don’t feel muffled anymore or unsure or clueless. I get ideas. I follow through instead of putting them down. Occasionally they don’t work, but even if that’s true, they are always a stepping stone. Gaining confidence. Walking with my head up. I feel in control. Not that life is playdough, but the way I play with it is my decision, my choice. loving, loving, loving it.

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I’ve just crossed out of my twenties and into my thirties. It’s a very strange place to be. I still feel 19, but a much much smarter 19. My girlfriends all say the same thing. How come we’ve all *just* come to the place where we feel like our life has begun?

For me, I thought it was due to moving back and forth from the US to Canada a couple of times and only now being settled in one place, but they haven’t done any such thing, so maybe that’s simply what your thirties are for?

ps. Lol! this whole post is a mistake. I meant to hit “save to draft” and flesh it out later but hit “post” instead. I think I’ll just leave it now. Wisdom, indeed.

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Continuing on my graphic novel parade, I picked up 300 last time I was at the library. The stand the Spartans took never ceases to interest me, and Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire on the same topic is one of my all time faves.

The movie is accurate, frame by frame, to the novel. It’s really a matter of do you prefer still images of scantily clad figures or moving ones. Under those criteria, I put this book as one of the very few in my “The movie was better than the book” category. Though I do feel an obligation to mention that there is even less leather in the book on those already scantily clad figures, if you know what I mean.

The page of single most interest to me was when Leonidas speaks the word hubris, naming it as the fatal weakness of his opponent Xerxes. I had to google it to get the full meaning. A mostly unrelated matter made me google the word humility this morning. I found this article and really enjoyed it.

“We often confuse humility with timidity. Humility is not clothing ourselves in an attitude of self-abasement or self-denigration. Humility is all about maintaining our pride about who we are, about our achievements, about our worth – but without arrogance – it is the antithesis of hubris, that excessive, arrogant pride which often leads to the derailment of some corporate heroes, as it does with the downfall of the tragic hero in Greek drama. It’s about a quiet confidence without the need for a meretricious selling of our wares. It’s about being content to let others discover the layers of our talents without having to boast about them. It’s a lack of arrogance, not a lack of aggressiveness in the pursuit of achievement.”

In my heart, I’ve gone from quiet mouse to putting myself out there (and feeling terribly uncomfortable about it) to settling into what I am good at and enjoying the confidence I have in myself and others have in me. I thought, with my religious definition of humility in mind, that getting to this place in myself meant that I had lost humility. This article gave me a fuller appreciation and the ability to see this particular virtue not as a hinderance or a roadblock but as a key to all that lies beyond today.

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