We Can Stand a Half Mile Away From Each Other and Wave Enthusiastically

While in the throes of hysterical jealousy and sadness (mostly internal) while my tribe deploys to the Ice without me, I realized that I had made a choice not to go back, so while it's okay to feel some pain around not being able to go with them, to act like a whiny assed toddler was just stupid and childish.

My new life hasn't been that great. I feel like I've had to WORK so HARD for just a scraping of happiness or joy when that stuff just floods over me on Ice. I've tried to force myself to recreate the same sorts of things in Austin here in Portland, and even tried the same sort of work I did Way Down Under...but I haven't hit the magic button. When Winfly started this year I was flattened. I was heartbroken. And what I've had to really take a hard look at and turn the corner on is acceptance. Stone cold acceptance of Reality. I was not truly accepting the decision I myself had made to take care of the doggie in his geriatric years. In the back of my mind I knew there was the escape hatch of begging my mom to take my pet so I could go back. But this would not be respecting her wishes of being free of that chore. As a former therapist said about me, I always have my hand on the doorknob. I need an escape hatch.

I have spent almost every day of the past 16 months with my dog. This is the longest time I've spent with him in over seven years. I gallivanted around the globe, taking for granted that I had a dog sitter that loved this little guy as much as I did. Probably more. Because now that I am missing a second season in a row on Ice, I see how much I have loved my career more than him.  I loved my career more than any man or job or house or stateside routine. And I might still love it more, but I feel it is the right thing to do to commit to an ancient pet. I mean, it won't kill me will it, to miss several seasons of deployment? Won't it mean something in the end that I took care of this little guy in his final years. Ultimately, I don't know. I'm so nutso over this that I am having to listen and replay the words of a wise friend "you will never regret spending his last few years with him..." I have to keep replaying that in my head because my selfish, massively Ice-stroked ego keeps raging at me. He bullies me day and night calling me a loser for living this cosseted, easy lifestyle of long languorous unbusy days and endless mornings of coffee drinking followed by endless hours of waiting for the sun to go down. He was built and empowered by my gradual ascent into Bad-Assness on the Ice and now he is starving and angry and really pissed off at me for taking his big yellow tractor away. He says fuck it to the dog I'm fucking going back I don't fucking care how much she doesn't want to take care of him or how much fucking money it costs to get out of this lease or how logistically difficult it will be to get everything in place to go - I don't fucking care because I have to fucking go back. I have to go back to fucking survive, because if I don't I'm a big pussy loser who took the easier, softer way so fucking fuck it! It took me so long to find this gig  and explode it into the awesomeness it became - and now I can't have it? WTF!

Wow, I guess I really needed to get that out of my system. Underneath this Ice-stroked bully (therapy mode on) was a terrified child who was clueless on how to direct her life now that everything that defined her was gone. The hardest thing in the world for me to do was to be kind and loving with this terrified child. It is so much more in my nature to go with the ego..the one that Wants and Rants and Judges and Refuses to by Happy until he Gets what he Wants. Just like a two year old. Life would not bring me here to drop me on my ass (or maybe it did). Is it really as I hard as I'm making it to make a happy life here? I mean, I have a living situation that I LOVE, a smattering of pals and maybe even a close friend here. My deep, deep interactions are with oldest and dearest spattered around the country.

If I really think on it, I had joy in my life before the Ice: there were coffee shops and bands and yoga and trips and juicy good hangs with friends. I still get to travel. And I even don't have to work (though I'm better off if I do). I could sign up for classes. I can go on dog-friendly road trips. I can make more friends. I can do just about anything BUT go to the Ice...and by the time I stop freaking out about it, the precious pet may be on the other side of the dirt. G'bless him, he's an angel.

Maybe I'm just justifying why I'm not following the deepest yearning of my heart. Maybe I just really suck and figuring out what to do with loads of free time. But I think it's really important for me to remember the words of my Wise Friend: you will never regret spending his last few years with him...

The fact that I had to write that down twice (and even once in squiggly writing so I could find it easier) shows what a stone cold bitch I am at wanting the dirty-black-carhartt-wearin'-tractor-drivin' Me back, and saying "fuck it" to dog sitting.

I guess it's okay to just miss it. To miss the life I had for the last seven years that I can probably get back when I'm pet free someday. It's just getting through the days themselves that are the hard part. I just need to keep the little broken hearted girl whose dream came true and then she had to give it up contained and soothed until that time rolls around again. And then there's the little dog - so precious, so full of love and loyalty, and me, his assigned caretaker. It's the only thing I have to do.

Hello From Crone-ville p.III

this post was written over a year ago, cleaning out my drafts folder, enjoy!

Now that I'm entrenched in my 50s (OMG) I feel the burgeoning of some sort of wisdom but I also can spiral into obsessing over my trouble free and "luxury problem" filled life. I listened to a friend today while he talked about the troubles he was having around eating too much food & an hour into his sharing I was struck by the empty void that needs filling by the child free life - it must be filled with the babies of creativity! We, who have nothing we HAVE to take care of outside of ourselves, nothing depending on us for sustenance, can create "worries" and "problems" out of some pretty banal stuff. We, who sit in coffees shops wearing shorts we bought for two dollars in 1987 at the army surplus store, with our identical Mac laptops surfing sites that fill our brains with information so we'll have something to talk about...think about.

I only write postings like this when I am off Ice and my mind is skittering about over 10,000 things I could do with my life. 10,000 things before breakfast. I live in a small country town outside of Portland where I don't know a soul and live a cloistered life in the most wonderful domicile I've ever lived in. I knit and watch movies and play with my dog and feel very content. But the old excitement-craving me is bubbling under the surface...

I thrive on excitement, travel, an unknown future - I could never do the 9-5 again...not for an extended time period at least. I feel stuck...like I can't decide which way to go, like life is just waiting & brimming for me..holding out it's giant earthy hands swirling with lions & tigers & death & joy & sadness & living on the knife edge of reality.

Hello From Crone-ville p.II

If I could speak to young girls in an auditorium (assuming someone asked me to) I feel like I would have something to say to them. I would tell them that there will always be boys and men and dating and sex so just accept it as part of life but put YOURself as the person most important in your life. I never had a desire for a family or children and I know that this puts me in a minority of women, but if there is one girl who goes into that lifestyle who doesn't want it (do that many girls really want that?), and if I could reach out to that one girl and tell her her deepest dreams and desires could, would actually, come true if she was driven and committed to them as we women of my generation and before were told we were to be to men and our children. Say a 12 year old girl dreams of travelling the world. She doesn't come from a wealthy family or know if she can get into college but that is her dream in her heart. Her heart starts racing when she sees travel shows or brochures, and studies maps and globes as some girls study fashion magazines. Her family and friends may tell her to focus on a practical job and their may be subtle or unspoken generations pressure or programming for her to find a man to "take care of her," but if she takes that dream seriously and starts to take action towards it, however small, the dream will grow and expand and she may find herself doing things she'd never even considered or thought of...but she will be travelling. That is actually my story. I saw throughout my life that anytime I'd try to compromise that dream I would be miserable. Sure I found ways to jam some travel into my life...but it was not until I took some really big risks and made some big changes in my life that that dream became bigger than travel, bigger than anything I could have imagined. I talk to people my age, some younger, and even some kids about what their dreams are and they either say they never had any or filed it away as unattainable so many years ago that they can't remember what it was. I was driven by a hunger. I was clueless when I started out in life and didn't know what I wanted. I only knew I wanted to live in New York City. So I moved there and adult life overwhelmed me so I fed my hunger in self-destructive ways. I had very low self esteem, and saw very quickly that I wanted nothing to do with the corporate world. The dream that burned in me seemed at times to be my tormenter too - it wanted to be satisfied but I didn't feel I had the tools or maturity to address it. It took many years to get on a track of loving my life and my work, and I took a lot of action to prepare me for the life that I had pursued: I quit being self destructive with alcohol and chemicals, I went to a therapist, I employed a life coach, I did all kinds of workshops on finding one's passion, and read every book out there on the color of my parachute...and I think all that stuff helped. I was blessed with not having a family that pressured me for grandbabies (whenever I hear of such nonsense being played out today it seems surreal) or pressure me in anything at all. And I've seen how my "defects" have helped me to pursue my dreams: I'm so bad at romantic relationships that they don't last long enough to take me off my track. My fear of rootedness, domesticity and stasis has kept me on the run and externally and internally and I've always thought of "settling down" as a "settling" in general. If someone's hearts desire is to be utterly rooted and domesticated for their entire life and they can obtain that that is awesome. That is their success!

I see homeless people everywhere around me as I live downtown. When I do this feeding mission in the park I get to engage with hundreds of them. I make eye contact and smile and make chitchat with a lot of them and they are great folks for the most part. Many or mentally ill and drug addicted and some seem like they just got on the streets. When I leave this gig on Sunday I have this very strong sense that I am not one bit different than these people except for one thing: I am luckier. It is so sad that this country throws mentally ill people out on the streets; it is heartbreaking to see the elderly sleeping out in the rain, and it reminds me to not kvetch about whatever problems I might perceive that I have. But I have always felt very connected with these people on the streets. I wonder what dreams these people had and how they got to a place where their life was just about survival. When I was first out of college and working I could not for the life of me figure out how people made enough money to buy houses, cars, etc. I could never find jobs that paid much more than minimum wage, and always felt like I was one hair away from living on the streets. It was an extremely stressful time in my life..and with all my intelligence and independence and a bit of help from my family it was still very very hard. I can see why people pair off as it is very expensive to live alone. I have been able to afford living alone for 15 years now and don't know if I could ever give up that luxury.

This is a long rambling mass of a post that has no new or important information. I'm doing this just to practice writing, and to keep reminding myself that even though most of my dreams have come true, I still have more clambering for attention. Whoever said it was about the journey and not the destination was right - the second I reach my destination I see that the joy was in the dreaming, planning and action phases. I am having a bit of rootedness right now, but it's not the trapped style, it's more a pause to see what is going to happen next...or what it is I'm going to have to make happen next...stay tuned!