It’s the pits

It’s been a long long time I have felt this defeated. I feel well and truly licked, totally out of it, completely overwhelmed and just plain pants. I can muster a smile and carry on conversations, but at various intervals in the day, I just want to burst into tears and curl up into a ball in a dark room somewhere, with “do not disturb” plastered all over the door.

Usually, when I feel this way, I get some comfort from the fact that its hormones, it’s a cyclical thing and it will pass as soon as nature takes its course, but it doesn’t seem like it this time and there have been no weird and wacky happenings to testify the goodness and kindness and generosity of the universe.  Boo hiss at it all.

It must be emotional fatigue, I need a break and I haven’t had one in a long time; I need a change, a really good belly laugh and not just for a couple hours. I need for the future to look bright, more bearable even; I need more stability, more security but is that asking for a lot?

My mom recently said recounted what she was told by some doctor; he said that whilst the human body can survive a week without food, 3 days without water, 3 minutes, or something like that without air, it can only muster a few seconds without hope. This makes sense because how can you live if there is nothing to live for? I suppose this is why suicide victims take that leap, literarily. The cynic in me thinks that there are few people who are totally hopeless but for the majority of us, hope is dangled in front of us, just to keep us alive until the poor human body physically gives up or we realise indeed that we are never going to touch that bright light that shimmers ever so slightly out of our reach. This is all very positive for a lovely spring afternoon. I sigh!

Lose a pair, gain a pair

Last summer, or two summers ago, I joined the crowds of sun worshipers and got myself a couple of sunglasses; they were the kinds of glasses that everyone else was wearing and I got a pretty decent deal for two pairs instead of a single one, I could interchange them I thought, two is always better than one isn’t it. As it turns out, I didn’t interchange them much, I wore only one of the pairs; it happened to be the convenient to do, and it served me well, not just in the summer either, the winter sun can also be quite harsh.

As the summer wore on, so did the reasonably priced accessory and it soon fell apart. Shame that, I was getting really used to it. Where is the other pair I wondered, I searched everywhere, all the places I thought I would leave a pair of glasses. It didn’t help that I had moved over the summer and most things were not where they should be.  I eventually resigned myself to get another pair, or two, the days were getting longer and the sun was out in force.

I have a pair of hair pins I use in my hair on bad hair days which is practically every day, I leave them on my dresser with the rest of my cosmetics but this day, I could not find them anywhere. The kids are often in my room and my younger son is like a magpie, anything shiny and/or metallic gets taken away in his beak to his nest of wonders. I’d ask him if he took them but he was at school and I needed them now. I concluded that the hair pins will eventually show up but to solve the problem at hand, I decided I would get another pair from the bunch the original pair came from.

I opened the top draw looking for the rest of the bobbins, what’s in the grey plastic bag I wonder, I picked it up and dipped into it and surprise, surprise, the second pair of glasses were pulled out. They were still brand new as I hadn’t worn them since the day they were bought. Fancy that I thought, just when I least expected it, a brand new pair of decent looking sunglasses! And it was perfect timing too as it was a brilliantly sunny day. I also found the extra pair of hair pins I was looking for, result.

On the brink

It just seems that everything is just about to happen, but it isn’t happening just quite yet. On all fronts, there seems to be a tentative pause; it’s like a bit of a tease, so close but yet, not quite there. It is truly frustrating. Is it better than a pregnant pause I wonder? Rather than a restless feeling, it’s more a numbness which I think I actually prefer because it is generally calmer. This I take it is another lesson in patience, one I am exhaustively fed up of!

Thankfully, when all else fails, I have my music to soothe me. I would really rather have my solitude but that is one more thing on the brink and not quite all there, not yet though I can but taste it.

Setting fire to rain

That’s Adel’s gift to 2011 and certainly one of my favourite of her songs. Though I like the song for the emotion in it, I interpret the phrase entirely differently; for me it means doing the impossible. You cannot set fire to the water, never mind droplets of water falling from the sky, where do you start. 

The year has finally kicked off and there are a lot of decisions to be made as a result of imminent opportunities. It is the making of decisions and managing feelings and expectations that has led me to feel that I am setting fire to rain. I don’t want to lose this opportunity as the saying “opportunity knocks but once”, looms ominously at the back of my mind. The thing is, I actually don’t believe that you only have one shot, I do think opportunity comes pretty often but we are not always in a position to act on it; we would be lucky to even recognise it; another saying declares that “Opportunities always look bigger going than coming” which explains why we don’t always see it or perhaps see it all too clearly in hindsight. Perhaps they are often disguised as problems, and any wise man worth his salt knows that for every problem there is an opportunity.

It seems like the opposite is the case here, the taking of this opportunity comes with its problems. The biggest problem of all is the risk of missing out on it. If opportunities look bigger going than coming, then I will be trounced by this one leaving; it is as clear as day to anyone  the magnitude of this one a-coming.

Hitting a blank

The calm before the storm maybe? It’s been quiet, calm, uninspiring and altogether dull, like coming to a decided stop at a block wall that cannot be navigated or moved. Normally, this sort of lull is weathered uneventfully, not necessarily easily; but something seems to be amiss this time, something making it all very uneasy and pregnant with anxiety. It’s as though when the lull eventually breaks, there will be a great big explosion, splattering messy goo everywhere. Or to put it in context, it’s like a writer with a deadline but plagued with writers block or an expectant mother in her final trimester, with just days to go before the birth. There isn’t much you can do but wait for events to unfold, the length of wait is completely unknown and the outcome even more mysterious. It is a maddening interlude because there is no way around it, this big blank block wall.

Whatever happens though, it is understood that the time will pass and there will be actions to follow outcomes. The thing is, when things start to happen, it is all go and you forget how fretful the relatively short wait was. With the new mother, there are sleepless nights to look forward to; it is much the same with the writer. But as demanding as things get, you never miss the quiet lull, and all the activity usually means progress. Still, looking at the solid, blank block wall is maddening, surely nothing a good book, good music, or lunch with a friend cannot cure I should think.

sigh!

Just reading through my old posts has cheered me up a bit, just a tiny bit, not by miles but I don’t feel as downhearted as I did this morning. Perhaps I should have just written as I felt instead of reviewing my old posts, I am sure the outcome would have been very different. I wasn’t looking for inspiration from my old post, in fact, I didn’t realise how cheery they are until I read them today through gloomy eyes; I was simply trying to navigate the constantly changing blog site.

It doesn’t help that I am aching all over, as a result of an impending cold/man flu, or maybe it is as a result of sharing my bed with my two growing sons, who are the worst bedfellows in the world; I spend all night getting them off me, recovering the covers and generally not getting a lot of sleep. I am also nursing a sore throat. Since I have a very low pain threshold , I don’t do very well when I am ill, coupled with the really crappy last few days I have had and the cold grey and muddy weather, I feel pretty sh*t and that is putting it lightly.

I was going to spew negative, self pitying sentiments but I don’t feel as pathetic as I did earlier. This is partly as a result of watching a bit of tennis, the only sport I can get stuck into and it always brings out the cheerleader (or tennis thug maybe) in me. All the fist pumping and screaming, coupled with a very serious juvenile crush on one of the leading men, I was as right as rain before even embarking on anything remotely melancholic. But I will try none the less because I have had this idea stuck in my head for a while now.

I had seen a Hollywood movie the other day with the kids; I mention it is Hollywood because not a lot of religious material comes from that direction. To be fair, it was meant to be one of these inspirational things but was deeply rooted in the Christian beliefs and quoted a particular scripture from the bible. I suppose Hollywood would produce anything if it meant somebody somewhere stood to gain something out of it, and so far, or at least at the time the movie was made, it wasn’t (yet) politically incorrect.

The movie involved the main character saying a seemingly simple prayer one night after gentle ribbing from his wife; and who knew, God was listening. The very next day, the answer to his prayer started in full force. I say started as it was not answered straight away; it has to make sense to the requester I suppose and since an immediate response would go largely unnoticed, it has to work itself out. First lesson here is that nothing good comes easy.

A series of events followed that left the poor main character desperately confused. And when he eventually got to grips with everything that was happening, he was completely out of sync with his friends, family, employers and co workers. Confusion ensued as is to be expected with these things to mostly comedic effects.

The part that got to me was where the wife of the leading character had had enough of his bizarre behaviour and decided to take the kids to her mom while her bewildered hubby tried to sort himself out. On their way, they stopped at a diner for lunch and while there, she met with God, who her husband was now in regular contact with. It may have been far easier for God to tell her exactly what was going on, but perhaps she would not have believed him, instead, he asked her what was wrong and emphasised with her. He told her if she prayed to be closer as a family, how did she think God would answer her prayer, certainly not in the way she expected. Isn’t it more likely the family would go through something together that would bring them closer together? At this, she turned the car around and took the kids back home to start being the closer family unit that they had now become as a result of recent events

All the confusion was a means to an end, and the end for these characters was that all their prayers were answered (note: none of them prayed for material things) but not in the way any of them expected. Sometimes, what we expect is not always what we get; and what we get is not what we always expect. The adversity makes the victory more meaningful and far more appreciated. So are we to embrace hardship? Maybe, because as they say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Year of the Dragon

It is the Chinese New Year; the Year of the Dragon specifically. Without giving away my age, it is my year again as I was born in the Year of the Dragon. It seems to make sense really. I have had a good feeling for a long time now and all signs point to things coming to a head in February. It could be wishful thinking, it could be a gut feel, certainly, there is no reason to it. The past few weeks have seen a lull in this abundant optimism but hope still burns bright.

In Eastern philosophy, the Dragon is said to be a deliverer of good fortune and a master of authority. Therefore, those people born in Dragon years are to be honoured and respected. One website states “...Because they are confident, fearless in the face of challenge, they are almost inevitably successful...” well I am most certainly confident, definitely fearless to new challenges so it should follow that I should be accomplished. It also says Dragons are conceited, again not far wrong. No ying without a yang I suppose.

So anyway, all the planets seem to be aligning to the right positions, waiting for the greatness to strike, and strike it will. Here’s hoping for really big things in 2012