we like to boogie

Hello again!

I wanted to thank you all for your input and comments on the last post. I really wish there were (was?) a way to contact each of you directly to respond via blogger but I can only do that if I have your email address and I would love to do so, so shoot me an email (jekinthebox) anytime, really (on the google system)!

That said I was thinking again how perception is so weird and wonky even when you think you are being clear. See, everytime I write a post like the previous one, I get lovely, wonderful, song-singy messages and then I feel awful-awful. Not that YOU make me feel awful, goodness no! I tend to lean towards extreme self-doubt and panic that those posts sound like I NEED a pat on the back, like I am pleading for one or two or three when that isn't my intention AT ALL! I just like to think out loud, to wonder and to make connections. I know I tend to trap myself into a comparison game when I'm feeling poorly in the noggin and I thought maybe other people do as well. There was a lot more I wanted to "correct" regarding that post but I let too much time pass as I usually do when I am in a tizzy and now there are other bits of anxiousness clouding my thoughts (like a new part-time job). All kinds of yay and yikes in there!

So when I ramble on and on about insecurities and collectiveness I am really rambling in an out loud voice about the assumed singularity of a person versus the community that is out there. With this new social media age thing going on, we find ourselves tied more and more to gadgetry which may lead some of us (ahem...me) to isolate themselves yet feel connected. Does that make sense? I'm not very good in physical social situations. At least I don't FEEL like I do very well in those situations. I get nervous and extremely chatty and begin telling stories and anecdotes that are all me, me, ME. While at the same time berating myself internally for NOT just shutting up already. It's a nervous thing and I know I do it and I don't mean to sound like it is all about me, the nervousness packs a wallop while the tongue-tied-i-ness strikes and BAM! Story-mode. SO, rather than put myself into such a situation, I happily type away and read the blogs of those I feel connected to while safely tucked away at home in my happy bubble. It is comforting and comfortable and no one cares that I may or may not be in the same jeans and t-shirt from yesterday. No one sees me tear up when  I read something completely moving or has to hear me wheeze away with asthma when my allergies get the best of me. I can read and interact at my comfort level and I feel safe until I feel overwhelmed which may sound like it is often but only because that is when I feel compelled to write more. I mean really, can you imagine if every post I wrote was about how awesome I felt or how content and happy I was? Most of the time I simply feel okay. Things aren't fantastic but they aren't deviating either. I drink my coffee or my tea, talk to the cat, watch the birds, bake or maybe make something. The sky might be gorgeous or the mister and I went on a hike or...or...or? Good stuff. Solid stuff. Stuff I should write about and do but just not every day.

I am rambling again but want to thank you, all of you for your input and your lurking and your emails and such. You make me smile or laugh or nod my head and want to hug you. I want to make you a smoothie or bake you a poundcake and play you a new favorite song and just sit and talk the day away. I wasn't kidding about emailing me, please do. I like this bubble and I like my other bubbles, I think there is time and room for them to mix and mingle and most of all, I like that we all have our own bubbles (or two, or three) and that when it comes down to it, we  all probably make for a pretty great dance party.

p-p-perception

I had a bad attack of dysmorphic perception last night. It was epic. It usually is.

Back in the days before internet, we (well, I) culled and pulled our self-ideals from the small world around us. In school it was our friends and peers. What they had that you didn't. How they looked and how you didn't. Whether or not you were one of the popular elite, I am certain you wished for different or perceived betterness based on those who passed you by in their up-to-date fashions and convertible Rabbits. Or in my case, those few who could really knock an individual style clear out of the ballpark AND simply oozed creativity.

If you went to college, your perception(s) opened a smidge. Your bubble expanded and you were exposed to new ideas and persons of interest. If you did not go to college and immediately jumped into a work-place your bubble expanded even more due to the collected exposure of people outside your immediate social circle. People of different social-economic backgrounds, education, cultures, ages...the bigger your bubble got the more you (or at least I) compared yourself to others.

I don't know about you but as I aged and ahem...matured I grew more concerned with status of a sorts. I wanted a nice place to live in and call my own, a car that didn't break down ALL THE TIME, money to pay my bills and hopefully have some left over for fun stuff. For the most part, I was content. But...

Change happened. As it happened, the feeling of being content would shift and change. Thank goodness for BUST magazine. In my late 20s and early 30s I would swear there was something wrong with me as I didn't find the ideals of those around me appealing. I had never been a follower of the mainstream and felt more and more an outcast as Cosmo and the like were so ready to inform me. BUST saved me from myself and reassured me that I wasn't alone that there were other women like me out there. Once the internet began clicking around I immediately found a core group of fantastic women on the BUST boards. I have lost touch with most of them but that community and sense of belonging still sings in my heart. They were smart, witty and funny as hell and gosh I adored them all.

Now that the internet is what it is and our bubbles are virtually, universally ENORMOUS, I find that my small world of non-mainstreamers has become mainstream in a sense. I no longer feel alone in my wonky-dorkiness but now I feel lacking even in my comfort zone. Not anyone else's fault but my own. My perceptions of who I thought I would be by now just have not become concrete and with so many talented, creative folk out there taking the blogging/crafting world by storm, the once small fishbowl I felt kinda big in has become a full blown aquarium with tunnels and rooms and I feel lost and unnoticeable. So now not only am I dancing with a dysmorphic dance partner of perception, my wallflower ego is clinging to the sidelines toes-tapping to the rhythm hope, hope, hoping someone asks me dance.

I don't really know where I am going with this but the developmental side of me, the part that thoroughly enjoys studying human nature cannot help wonder how we all fit in. I've been blogging since 2003 and I think so much has changed since I began. The tools out there, the platforms, the business side of it all. It is amazing what one can do and I still feel that it is out of my grasp. Not in a woe-is-me sense more like a huh? I'm baffled by how it works and feel like my brain is too old or I'm too old fashioned or who knows what but how do you do it? And do I want to do it? Should I do it and if not, what then?

This may seem all over the place but I think I just want to say that I think even the most productive or accomplished of us slips and plays the comparison game and wonders where they failed or what they NEED to be valid. Validity, yes, that's it. I need a bit of validation that I AM someone. That I matter. That I am a part of something wonderful. My reality knows this but my perception is so skewed I'm feeling anything but. I know what it is (the reason), but that's a book I'm not ready to open just yet or at least read in public. So I hope that you know that YOU are valid and important and that you do indeed matter, more than you know and if we all took the time to let someone know they inspired us (not via a blogging award or huge public announcement, not that those are bad but make it more personal) I think that our hearts could sing a little louder.

So...wanna dance?

ick

today there is a wee beastie demon camping out on my shoulder whispering horrific taunts in my ear. it is almost, but not quite drowning out my own taunty-taunts that are swirling about my head. sigh. i suppose this is what happens when there is a casa to clean and purge, a deadline looming over your head and a night where you slept most fitfully. double sigh.

at least, i am not alone...(read her confession. that is what i'm talkin' 'bout yo...though to be honest there is a bit more muck lurking about in my brain. aack.

quick, look at the pretty picture and think happy thoughts...

wrapping my head around it all

aka darn my brain!
i have an attachment to things. be they pretty, colorful, quirky, old, or odd. i can't seem to let go of so many objects because they hold something in them, some memory or some idea or some insight to someone i have loved.

attempting to purge this tiny casa will be a wonderful relief but at th same time i am having the hardest time wrapping my head around the possibilities of things tossed. that said, i don't want to be tossing anything. at least tossing as in putting it into the ugly black plastic bins that get picked up by the growly turquoise garbage trucks only to be hauled off to someplace no too far and dumped into a giant hole only to then be covered with more crap. this, appalls me. and i sit on this thought and i think it and it sinks in and i feel a little ill and i look around the tiny casa and wonder what to do. at some point that gnawing little knot fades enough for me to forget and my day continues on in any number of normal ways.

until, it hits me again like a stealth attack from the witch-baby when she scratches out and lunges for no reason that we can think of. she may be pretty but she packs a mean scratch. and okay, here is where i get all tangly wordy and circular and gobbled and such. it's just me trying to wrap my head around it and it is just me acknowledging how conditioned i am to buy more, to become a magpie when pretty things bat their wispy lashes at me. and how much i struggle with it because i like pretty things but to what end?

saturday morning i ran off to the enormous mall to return an impulse buy before the crowds got there. i'm not a mall shopper anymore save for my target and the jc penneys which are a almost neighbors in the brick behemoth. i park the car near the target and run to the penneys to return the two tops that reminded me of thinner days. from there, i walk the short walk through the mall to the target to get some toothpaste. as i walk the short distance i spy the hallmark shop has its holiday stuff up and wander in for a look and as i'm looking at this tiny store that is crammed to the gills with...crap...my heart sinks and that gnawing triffid of a thought starts bouncing around my belly. there are clever looking things, nicely packaged things, things that compel my hand to reach out and touch and things that make me think "i can make that". there are things upon things upon things and it hits me. they are temporary. they are things people will spend their hard earned money on, enjoy for a mere moment and then discard...i may see many multiples crowding the aisles at the thrift or i may see them broken up and left to die in the middle of the street or i may never see them at all because they will be dumped into a land fill that crappy, shoddy houses will built on.

i continue on my walk and i'm thinking how i am in a mall. a single mall full of stores full of temporary things full of people buying these things that will soon be discarded. i feel like a light begins to flash above my head mocking me...for all my want of simplicity and sustainability, i am a consumer in the most regular icky kind of way. and this happens to me all the time. not this realization of temporary products but of this cape of consumerism that i like to stylishly think i can alter. we are all consumers, i get that. that is how our world works but we are consumers without purpose or without intent (at least i am) and i need to change this. i know i do but do you see the shoes they have here or the mugs they sell here or this or that? aack! make it stop!

i have a tendency to think about how commercials don't make me want to run out and buy products (well except for the titan peeler...i jest...sort of) but the packaging (which is why the orla kiely stuff from target was such a success). the other thing is for me, if it is out of sight it is out out of mind. if i don't see it, i don't need it. which only works if you remove yourself from pretty products. what i need to do, what i want to do is to make more of those purposeful choices i rambled on about here. i think i need to work towards my goal of the handmade pledge. i do a lot of handmade items, i shop at a loft of thrifts but i don't do it exclusively therefore i cannot take the pledge. i make every effort i can muster at this point in my life to shop etsy and other crafty folk but still there are Threadless shirts to be worn or rubber chickens to be sent to the nephew in college. little steps, baby steps. that's my mantra and i'm sticking to it.

you never know

i was at my local big chain supermarket today to round out the Trader Joe's shop earlier this week. i'm not sure if it is the same at every one of these markets, but my branch tends to be overly helpful. i come from a long background of customer service. it's very important to me. what customer service means to me is to be acknowledged and helpful to the degree that you are needed. some people prefer a nod, others a smile and others a verbal greeting. some people want to get in and get out with no help at all while others need a little point in the right direction. my supermarket staff appears to be on happy pills. one cannot walk through without notice. every single employee that passes gives a greeting and asks if you need help. some start reciting the specials in various departments. sell! sell! sell! it's a bit of an overkill really and i find it quite trying to not throw my arms up and scream. really, it's a delightful change...even when the best intentions are soooo wrong.

in the produce section i am encouraged to try all sorts of sale produce. i don't try it but i do make the produce guy pick out my cantaloup. it's hard to pick a good one when you can't smell a darn thing. in the deli department they wave slices of turkey my way and i can't help but laugh because what if i was someone who found it offensive to have meat dangling within reach? i think about these things that i know people think are easy, every day questions. i wonder about those things that people can't see, the things inside...our experiences, spiritual beliefs, cultural upbringings, etc.

i've always been a bit of an overthinker. i've been misunderstood because of it. i can be odd when i word things and ask questions that some find bizarre. i don't play mind games and don't like them played on me. if i feel like i'm being played, i may ask outright or i may just walk away, it all depends on a number of things. too often we assume things about others when really, we have no clue. even those we know we don't know thoroughly. i don't even know myself one hundred percent, ya know? as i was walking through the market i was thinking of all the interactions that must go on and the assumptions that miss the mark...or not. i thought about the person pushing the bread on someone who may be celiac and how the meat waving may offend a vegetarian. i passed by the fish counter and thought i would get some fish and the young man, ever so eager to help started chat chat chatting away about a number of things. he saw my purse, my lobster purse and immediately tried to sell me some lobster tail (i don't eat lobster). when i told him no thank you, he tried to get me to sample some shrimp, um, no thank you and i smiled and laughed to myself and then he asked me if i was ready for father's day and i had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. he doesn't know. he has no clue that i haven't seen my father since i was three years old. he doesn't know that my dad walked out on my family and stole my sister away to another state. he doesn't know that the man who fathered me never paid a penny towards my or my brother's upbringing and he doesn't know that i'm totally okay with him asking about my father's day. he tells me that ball park franks are on sale and i nod and say "too bad it's not the fourth of july" and i take my fish and thank him. i walk away thinking, poor guy asked me all the wrong things and i chuckle. we don't know anything about those around us. nothing at all.

i get home to find a message on the answering machine. it's my sister. she says that what with father's day around the corner and air fare on the low end, our brother and i should fly on out to meet her so we can go teepee our dad's house. the young man at the fish counter was very sweet and helpful, should i go back and tell him i need a super sized pack of charmin?

**$17 got me all that is in the picture plus an iced coffee and a $2 donation to prostate cancer. not bad at all, not bad...
*quart of mint chip ice cream
*4 ears of white corn, organic
*head of cabbage
*broccoli
*bag of brown rice
*sponges
*organic tomato
*2 pieces of tilapia
(and a cookie...shhh)