Awesome Light

I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Just blurt it out. Unleash it into the blogosphere. Let it explode out of me the way occasional bouts of introspective verbal diarrhea have a way of doing at the most embarrasing times.

And, wow… There just is not enough “ew!” in the world for the mental picture THAT just conjured, I tell you what, but that is neither here nor there so I will persevere.

See, sometimes? I believe I am awesome. Chock full of the awesomeness. So awesome I can barely stand it! Chuck Bass awesome! I think, “Hey! How is it that I am THIS awesome?!” I write! I sing! I play my guitar! I make vidcasts! I enter contests! I jump out of planes! I swing on the trapeze! I teach my kids awesome things to do and say! And I post videos such as this in which I totally bestow my awesomeness on an unsuspecting, yet obviously pleasantly surprised, public! Because I am AWESOME! I mean, have you SEEN all my friends on Facebook?! I’m only saying.

And then it all falls apart.

I wake up one morning, fire up the iMac, click to my YouTube page to watch my awesome Dr. Horrible Evil League of Evil application one more time, confident in the knowledge that I WILL be chosen for the once-in-lifetime opportunity to be included in the special features section of the super awesome Dr. Horrible DVD. The video starts up, the intro music sends shivers of– what? excitement?– up my spine, but when my face pops up on the screen, my heart drops, freaking plummets, I tell you, and I think, “Oh. My. GOSH. What have I DONE?” I panic. I wish I could take it back. Take it all BACK. I’m not awesome! I’m a fraud! A loser! I made a music video while wearing pink goggles on my forehead! PINK GOGGLES! On my FOREHEAD! And I can’t SING! Or write MUSIC! What the HELL was I THINKING?! OH! EM! GEE! What if Joss Whedon actually SEES this?! I suck I suck I SUCK! (I totally suck.) Not to mention that OTHER people have, like, tens of hundreds of friends on Facebook! Which is a LOT!

And then I think of that quote from “When Harry Met Sally” when Sally tells Harry, “…AND I’m going to be forty!” and when he asks, “When?” she sobs, “Someday!” and I totally get it. Oh, I SO get it. Because it’s there. It’s just sitting there, like some big dead end. And time is passing and what am I doing? Really? Twittering? Jumping out of perfectly good airplanes? Playing around with my guitar? Filming myself acting the fool, not to even mention sporting pink goggles that totally clash with a blue-accented black rash guard? When I’m not even at the POOL?! Right?! There is no WATER for the pink goggles, people! How is that awesome? Do I really think I’m funny? Do I truly believe I have anything to offer? That I will ever write the great American novel or even have any kind of future as an observational humorist? Well?! DO I?!

At this point, no amount of affirmation, self or otherwise, can penetrate the gloom. My heart hurts and I wish I could crawl away and hide. I stop writing. I stop creating. I lose myself in (quality!) television and (totally awesome!) DS video games. I avoid novels because they make me believe that– perhaps!– I could write something even better and why set myself up like that? Do I really want to be That Person? The one who deludes herself? Like those super horrible American Idol contestants who no one ever had the cajones to grab by the shoulders, give ‘em a shake, and sternly say, “Seriously? I love you, but you SUCK at the singing. For real! Even Paula thinks you suck, which HELLO?! Now cut that shit out!”

On one level, the rational one, I understand this is a phase. A mood. A momentary lapse of confidence in my utter awesomeness. But on another level, I just feel sad. Weary. Depressed. So totally lacking in the awesomeness. Awesomeless. Awesome light.

It’s moments such as this that I need to drag myself up off the floor of my I’m SO Not Awesome At ALL pity party, give myself a figurative “Pull it together, fool!” slap across the face, and look around. Take an interest in those who weren’t on the invite list to my party of one. TGIM. My kiddos. My family. My friends. Because even in the depths of self-pity, yes, even then! I understand that they don’t need any kind of proof of my awesomeness. They see it in me, the awesomeness, or see the lack thereof, yet they love me. Unconditionally. Yup. Pink goggles and all.

And that? Is totally awesome.

Well, Tweet it to hell!

Twitter is sucking my will to blog.

Twitter is the Devil and must be destroyed. Also, Pokemon Diamond. Because ADDICTING?!

I’m only saying.

NaNoWriMo is ON!

But what geniuses planned a novel writing month RIGHT during prime tv-watching season?! Huh?! It’s almost as if they don’t WANT us watching television in our free time… Honestly. There’s only so many hours in a DAY, people! Good LORD.

See, it’s all about priorities…

*UPDATED I’m Thinking!

There are thoughts being thunk. I promise! But I’m in a funk. Not to mention the fact there are, unfortunately, not enough hours in my day to plunk out said thoughts being thunk…

Aaaaaand now I’ve gone all Theodor Seuss Geisel on your ass– er, bootays. How incredibly lame.

I need a vacation.

That being said, I have a story. It’s a good one. It involves six impatiently eager children, six gaily wrapped presents, one tinsel-covered Christmas tree, and a dream. Oh, and Uncle Ron. We can’t forget him. This story spans years and years and has recently come to a rather interesting conclusion. Or beginning. I don’t know…

When I gather the thoughts I’ve thunk, the keys I will plunk.

Oh, dear lord. I’m LAAAAAAAAAME.

Until I get my blog on, feel free to click over to TechnoGeekery for my latest shows:

TechnoGeekery Show #29: What the Widget?!

*TechnoGeekery Show #30: Send Videos…One Click!

Seriously. What the widget?! Did anyone ELSE know a person with Safari and Leopard could DO this?! SWEET.

* Plus, to prove people watch, I need your videos now! Send whatever you want, except porn ain’t allowed! (Hey, that sounds like a song…)

Leap of Faith… Redux

I recently stumbled across the following post, which I wrote way, waaaay back in May of ’05. In all honesty, it made my heart hurt a little to re-read it. Who knew I could be introspective and poignant? Sometimes? Okay, I may have even teared up a bit. Just a little! I know, right? Me? BIG BABY. Deal with it. Re-reading the post also inspired in me a wicked craving for a donut. Go figure.

In any event, I thought I would share. Or, rather, re-share. Share again? Whatev. You know what I’m saying.

_______________________________

I have no desire to be enigmatic.

But it is a scary place, my mind. Crowded with jumbled imagery and intricate stories and trivial pop culture references, with nowhere to go. All of the craziness shuffles and scuffles to be forefront in my mind, to be most important. To be first. “Let me out!” it all screams, because it has to go somewhere, right?

Sometimes, when I read a book or I see a movie, I catch the mood of the piece, and I cannot shake it. I am there, and woe unto any who try to break in, to find me. I am in it, and only I can find my way back out. I am not even sure if that makes sense, but it is most definitely the case.

I mean, I know other people can read a book and put it down. Me? I read the fifth Harry Potter book in one night. ONE NIGHT! That freaking book is over 800 pages long! Honestly. It can take me literally hours to stop worrying about the characters in which I have invested my time. I feel their pain, their joy, their despair, their triumphs. If the book is particularly well-done, if the characters are alive, if the mood is fully realized, then it can take me hours to stop feeling the book. To let go of it.

Other people can watch a particularly riveting television show or movie and walk away thinking, “Huh. Good show! What’s for dinner?” Me? I become emotionally invested in the characters. I will obsess about their lives and the “what if’s” for days on end. Weeks, even. Now do not misunderstand. This is not to say I cannot separate the fictional characters from reality. No worries. I absolutely can. What I cannot do, not right away, anyway, is to stop thinking about their stories. Taking them in new directions. I will spend hours weaving new stories for them. Sometimes I even dream new stories. But Leonardo da Vinci said, The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. Dude was a wise Renaissance man, yo?

Which leads me to this: when I write stories? Oh BOY. I am SO living them. And it is so exciting! I get to be someone else! Well, for a little while, anyway. I become Goddess of the Story Universe! Bow to me! Then, inevitably, my characters begin growing and acting out in ways I had not intended, and I just get to go with it, and it is GOOD. Of course, I think this is why I enjoy happy ending so much, formulaic cliche be damned. I need them, or I am lost. Then again, my endings are not always happy. And I absolutely hate that, because I ache for my characters. But I love it, too.

For a long time I thought this craziness had a name. I HAD to give it a name. I was surely bipolar. Manically depressed. Obviously. It was the only explanation for the mood swings, the black days, the deep-rooted dark despair that settled into my mind and would not let go. Right? And what sane, happy person loses herself in television and books? Huh? Normal people with three beautiful kids and TGIM don’t act this way, right? Am I RIGHT?! I hated my career choice, my living situation, my life, and I could not shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly WRONG with me, because everyone I knew insisted I should be happy, that I should be thankful, that I should just STOP wallowing and get on with living. And I wanted to. I WANTED TO. But I was stuck. So I turned to the happy pills. But the drugs? They did not help. Dispassionateness, for me, was not a cure. It was a bandage.

“You are just like my ex-husband,” my sister said to me. “You can be anything you want to be. Anything but happy.”

Oh, no she DIDN’T.

So I ripped it off that bandage. And I made CHANGES.

I found a job writing and quit my teaching job. I packed up and moved all the way across the United States, not sure when and if TGIM would follow, but sure it was the right thing to do. I began expressing the jumbled imagery, intricate ideas, and trivial pop culture references swirling about in my mind through the magical world of blogging. I made new friends. I discovered the words “job satisfaction” were not mutually exclusive. I pulled myself out of the rut of complacency and fear in which I was trapped and made some personally earth-shattering decisions regarding what I wanted out of life. And, yes, I hurt TGIM and others close to me in the process and, yes, almost lost everything. I know that. I OWN that. But these days? I’m starting to feel as if despite the excruciating pain I caused myself and others, I have gained everything.

TGIM thinks this is The Crazy in me. Sometimes he loves me for it, sometimes… not so much. Me? I am starting to believe The Crazy is simply the artistic temperament in me. And, slowly, oh so slowly, I am learning to embrace it. I am learning how to USE it, to hone it, to bend it to my infinite megalomaniacal will, mwah ha ha ha!…

Sorry.

The other day I stumbled across a quote by Edvard Munch, the artist formerly known as the man who painted The Scream. Okay, he is still known as that, I just like the allusion to Prince. Because Prince ROCKS. Anywhos, Munch wrote of the experience he had which triggered the creation of this masterpiece:

I was out walking with two friends – the sun began to set – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature.

As I read this I realized, hey, sometimes I sense that Endless Scream, too. I hear it! I KNOW it. And, slowly, I am learning to embrace it. I am learning how to USE it. I know, I know. Inscrutable, much? Talk to my family. But, then again, if I did not see the world this way, if I did not feel the world this way, how could I write? And writing? Makes me feel complete. Utterly, dizzyingly complete.

Well, writing, and a big ol’ cinnamon cake donut. Yummmmmm.

Take that, big sister. I CAN be happy.

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