During our dark first year in Minnesota, a very good friend of mine died. I was in Minnesota, and he was far away in California, and he died.
I spent a little tiny bit of time in denial. Then I moved on to anger and stayed there for a while. Then I moseyed on in to the deep valley of depression, where I’ve spent large chunks of my life anyway. I just walked in a lot farther than I’d been in quite a while, and I set up housekeeping, with no particular intention of ever walking back out.
I was not wallowing in grief. I was mainly too numb to bother with grief. Flashes of rage aside, mostly I simply put away the fact he is dead in a box in the back of the closet. It isn’t the same as denial. I know he is dead. On a day to day basis, I long ago stopped needing to remind myself I couldn’t call him. It just wasn’t fully integrated into my world either. Like everything else from my old life, my real life, it was just on hold.
Which leaves me in an interesting position now that I am back “home” because I am drinking in all the sights and sounds and smells of my old stomping grounds, and there is always something there to remind me.
Which means the box has come out of the closet and I am needing to deal with the full blown reality that he will never go to any of our favorite restaurants with me again. He’ll never annoy the shit out of me with his bizarre ordering quirks again. We’ll never be sneaking the back way between the valleys to avoid the freeway traffic, spending the whole drive deeply engaged in meaningful and meaningless conversation again.
Yeah. Turns out I’m still really pissed off about him dying.
We finally made it to the motel, with all the humans and cats still alive, and an hour later were ready to go to sleep. Another problem with this motel, besides the fact they had a firm check in deadline, was they had a very early check out deadline too. I signed up for this and agreed to it when I reserved the room, but because of the detour, it was a major pain in the ass. The next morning arrived way too soon.
Still, we hit the road again, and had a very easy 400 and change miles planned, to get us into Vegas. The drive went pretty well, for a pleasant change. Getting back to more familiar vistas was very welcome. I could feel myself getting more comfortable as we got closer.
Really nice to see some desert.
We made it to the La Quinta Inn & Suites Las Vegas Airport South. Unfortunately, and hour after arriving, we were still not settled into our rooms. As a serious chronic pain sufferer, the move and road trip had been taking a toll. Our rooms were kind of midway from all exits, and not at all convenient. In the 140 room, 3 story inn, they had exactly 3 luggage carts. All of them had been taken and squirreled away inside guest rooms. The staff tried to ignore my repeated requests for help locating the carts. I found out from a long term guest that this is constant problem, and yet, they had not instituted any kind of check out process for the carts. I walked all the floors, but the carts were not to be found in any public areas. After a lot of my annoying presence the staff made a half-assed attempt at finding the carts and also failed. We finally moved into our rooms by using the rolling office chairs to load our stuff up and take it into the rooms. I know that the staff thought we should just get off our asses and carry shit to our rooms, but we really had a very large amount of stuff that wasn’t a good idea to leave outside in the parking lot at that location, and we were really not in any condition to carry it in piece by piece.
By the time we managed to be in our rooms, it was getting pretty late. I needed to hit a grocery store because Indy had not been very pleased with the on the road meals I’d been preparing for her, and her general state of stress wasn’t doing well for her health. Also, the cats were not doing spectacularly. I wanted to get them all something special food wise to entice them to eating a really good sized meal. Then I arranged for the kid and my mother to eat dinner in their room and watch the dogs, while the husband and I went out and enjoyed Vegas a little. My first several restaurant choices were closing, so we ended up just driving down the strip to look for something. We decided to stop at The Cosmopolitan since their flash sign indicated a lot of late night dining options, and we’d never been to that hotel. The hotel has a very popular night club, and the hotel was crawling with young hip people and people who wanted to pretend to be young and hip. We went to The Henry for dinner and people watching. (Is it really a dress if it is so short you crotch is visible?) The meal was enjoyable. Husband had a Midtown Manhattan (Bacon Infused Makers Mark Cinnamon and Fig Infused Sweet Vermouth, Angostura, Fee’s Aztec Chocolate Bitters) which was very tasty, and prime rib. I had a Mambo Italiano (Garlic Roasted Vodka, House Made Bloody Mary Mix, Basil) which was also very good, and an excellent burger. We shared the
Millionaire’s Deviled Eggs (lump crab & truffle stuffing, thousand island dressing & caviar) to start. The next time I’m in Vegas, I think I’ll go try Holsteins. The menu made me drool, but it was way too noisy and crowded for me to venture into on a Saturday night.
The next day we got a late start. We were pretty wrecked from our trip so far, and the time zone changes had not been in our favor for getting on the road early. We headed out of town and soon were reminded why it is important to leave really early on Sunday morning. The traffic from Vegas to L.A. on Sundays is pretty nasty, often further hosed due to accidents or road work.
We dragged our butts into our house later than we expected when we first packed up the car, but we made it. It was really good to be home. We unloaded the crap from our car, and wandered over to a friend’s house for dinner. It was so good to spend some time with them, although in hindsight, probably a mistake. By the time we made it home we were exhausted, and then discovered that the movers had put our bed together wrong, so we couldn’t sleep on it without finding tools to fix it. We were way too tired to find the tools. So, our first night home we couldn’t sleep properly.
The cats were thrilled to be out of the damn car for good, at it was clear that they knew exactly where they were. They settled in immediately, although they were (and remain) annoyed by all the boxes in the way. Indy also recognized the place, I was wondering about that, since she was already had CCD before we left, but we did move into the house when she was “all here”. She even remembered that she isn’t allowed into the kitchen and dining room. Watson, of course, had no such memory of rules against entering the kitchen, which is the land where all good things come from. After a couple of corrections, he was going great.
Ahh, home, sweet home… for about 10 seconds, and then the overwhelming To Do list of getting our shit in order here comes crashing down on my shoulders. Lots and lots of stress, but really, it is good to be home.
Seriously, the damn breakfast room attendant was too busy chatting with another employee to keep the food stocked and when she wasn’t doing that, she was watching the TV, which was on way too loud.
Anyhow, the husband and I chatted and debated between drive two harder days, or three easier days. We opted for the 3 easier days, so I picked a stopping point in 460 miles. We got on the road with a plan of being at the Robbers Roost Motel by about 8:30 PM.
We stopped in Idaho Springs for a late lunch at Smokin Yard’s BBQ. This was good. Surprisingly good. This was, I’d enjoy eating there for dinner good, and random stop mid-roadtrip it was totally amazing.
While we were sitting next to the window stuffing our faces full of barbecued beast, we noticed all this white stuff blowing sideways past the window. Ash? What? Snow?! Yes, snow. When we finished up and got back outside, it had stopped. We took the dogs down by the river behind the restaurant, and gave them some time to stretch their legs.
Watson checking out the river near our BBQ lunch stop.
Then we loaded our stuffed selves back into the cars and began driving.
Within a couple of miles we were driving in a little bit of snow. A few more miles rolled by and we were driving in a full on snow storm.
This was not part of the plan.
Then, the plan exploded like Alderaan. You didn’t need to have any damn midi-chlorians to sense my spike in frustration levels. They closed the highway we were on, with no estimate of when they would reopen it. Our choices were to look for a room where we were, that would take two cats and two dogs, and eat the cost of the two rooms booked in Utah, or to take a long detour.
We took the long detour. It only added an extra 100 miles to our drive, but it was 100 difficult miles through two lane winding roads. Our rate of progress was much slower. Plus, the place we were booked to stay had a cut-off time for check in, and we were racing the clock, very slowly, while trying to avoid hitting large herds of deer and elk.
We finally made it back to Interstate 70 from our painfully scenic detour, and we were exhausted. Seriously, I had reached that state where I needed my passenger to talk to me about what was ahead on the road, because sometimes I could see two roads, and they weren’t going the same direction. I needed a bit of help following the one that was in the same reality that our vehicle was traveling in. Then it started snowing again. Hard. Snowing with big gusts of wind. The snow was mainly blowing straight into the windshield, but then the wind would send it swirling. It was like driving through a Star Tours hyperdrive special effect, and it was making me nauseous. It was at that moment that the cats decided they had truly had enough of each other, the car, and everything. They began screaming and hissing and trying to kill each other, right behind my head.
So, a lot has been happening, and none of that has been blogging.
I moved. I don’t live in Minnesota any longer. We moved back to Los Angeles.
It has been pure hell, but all in all, it is a very good thing. I am glad we made the decision that we did. I’m glad we moved. It’s just that moving sucks.
We knew for a while. My husband gave a month’s notice at work, but they didn’t want him to share the news right away, and while they can’t enforce that, we decided to give them some breathing room, and we kept it quiet for a reasonable amount of time. By the time it became more public, I was simply too busy to blog about it.
Leaving Minnesota was difficult. It was emotionally difficult and physically difficult. I wanted to move back to California, but in the two and a half years we spent in Minnesota, we’d made some good friends. I’d also put a lot of time and heart into working with ACT V. Friends that I made, I can keep. That is what the internet is for. It’s very difficult to continue fostering for an organization I was very happy to be volunteering for, from 2000 miles away.
To start things off, when we took the cars in for an oil change and a quick checkup, the mechanic discovered stuff wrong with one of them. Stuff that should be fixed before the road trip, and stuff that cost a bunch of dollars, because it always costs a bunch of dollars when the mechanic says “Well, we found…”
This got us on our road trip later than originally planned.
That, and our own insanity, but that’s another issue.
Seriously, we left our rental house at 11:30 PM. I know, I know, logically it seems like it would make more sense to just sleep there one more night, but it we just needed to go, or we’d find more reasons to linger the next morning.
So, we left our former home a total mess (because we knew that a wonderful friend had our back on dealing with the MN end), and we drove by the house of one of the ACT V people to deposit a final donation of blankets and detergent on their doorstep (much to the suspicion of some neighbors that saw us).
Then we headed out of town…
In a snow storm.
I’m not kidding. It snowed on us on the way out of Minnesota. We pushed ourselves to the point of exhaustion and got our butts to Iowa, so that we had left the state. There we stayed at Microtel Inn in Clear Lake that didn’t charge us any extra fees for the pets, and had a very nice and accommodating staff. Unfortunately it was also snowing and hailing on us in Clear Lake as we tried to unload the cars and get our butts into the room. In order to have enough space in the cars (because we needed room for 4 people, 2 traumatized cats, 1 large kitty litter, 1 cranky old dog, 1 puppy, food for all the critters, and a disturbing amount of wine, not for road trip consumption), we’d purchased a giant duffel bag to keep luggage in.
It turns out it takes about an hour to get 4 people, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and all the stuff the 8 of them need for one stupid night, settled into a motel room.
Did I mention the snowing and hailing? Oh, well also there was horrible biting, bitter, nasty, COLD wind. It was late April. We were dressed (and packed) for early spring. My husband got himself a minor case of frost bite on his fingers unloading the car that first night. Good times.
The next morning I set out our plan for the day by finding a motel that would take the pets and plotting our route. I’d been planning originally on aiming for 500 miles a day, but decided that day to stretch and reserve us a room just over 600 miles away, because of our late start and our race to get to California before we got charged extra by the movers for not being able to meet them on time to get our ginormous amount of stuff back.
So, we were aiming for Sterling, CO and Best Western Sundowner, which charged us an extra $20 to let our pets stay there ($12 for one animal, $20 for two or more), but had a larger room for the price than our other options, and after the first night, I knew we’d do better with a little extra space.
We got on the road planning to be in our room by about 10:30 PM. Unfortunately, it was an extremely windy day, and we hadn’t really perfected our strapping the giant duffel bag to the top of the car technique yet. It took all day to get that technique down. In total, about 3 hours was spent in various parking lots, rest areas (BTW, Iowa has the nicest rest areas I have ever seen.), and wide shoulders, working on that technique. This meant we got to the motel about 1:30 AM.
Watson at one of the rest area stops in Iowa.
Remember the one hour to get everybody settled in the room thing? It takes even longer when you are on the second floor of a Best Western that doesn’t have an elevator. WTF? Also, their free wireless internet sucked frozen possum testicles, or as I like to call them, possnutsicles. I needed internet in order to send a very detailed email to a friend, including floorplans of our house that I’d edited to map out the placement of all of our furniture. The movers had made amazingly good (not good for us) time getting the load to CA, and the path of least resistance for dealing with that, was to have a friend manage the unloading of the stuff. Between the battling with the internet, the super slow connection, and the occasionally drifting off between keystrokes, I finally hit send and got to sleep at 5:30 AM. Then up early to battle the internet again in order to find the right stopping place for the night. By the time we were ready to head out, I was 31 flavors of cranky.
Now we’ll pause for a message from our sponsors. Actually, we’ll pause so I can sleep. You’ll have to wait for another day to find out more about our road trip.
Darby was the last of my trio to attract the attention of an appropriate applicant. I was a little offended, because I sure thought she was adorable. At first she had no applicants at all, not even inappropriate ones. Luckily the phone eventually started ringing, and this past weekend she had a date and it went very well. Timing being what it is, she is the first to leave. Webster will leave on Saturday and Mindy on Sunday.
This family seems like a great match for Darby. They have another dog, which I thought was really important for Darby. They have a large fenced backyard. They had a dog in the past who caused a bit of trouble, so I know that even if she turns out to be as clever as I suspect she will (I warned them) they will be willing and able to deal with it. They even have a relative who is a vet, so they always have somebody to call for health advice.
Not only that, but they have also agreed to try taking in a foster! There was a dog that needed a place, and everyone was full.
So, I was really happy about it, right up until the phone conversation last night when I needed to schedule Darby’s pick-up time. At that point I just wanted to scream, “Mine. Mine! MINE!!”
I’m still happy about it. I know I don’t really want to keep her. We are not the right family for her. It’s just my life the past few weeks has been completely wrapped up in these puppies. They needed me desperately when they first got here, so I opened up and gave them everything they needed. They are now starting to get independent and really fun (and troublesome) and I just so want to see how they turn out. I am attached. It is a very different kind of attachment than I’ve felt to any of the other foster dogs, and different from my intense attachment to Bear. I suspect it is a watered down version of how I will feel when my daughter moves out. It is a proper and natural leaving of the nest, and I am glad Darby is ready. Except Darby will never come back to visit for Thanksgiving, and that makes me a little sniffly. Or maybe it is allergies.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have noticed that I talk about shit a lot.
I don’t have a fetish or anything, (and now I am horrified by the possible search terms that will lead people to this entry) but a large chunk of my mental and physical energy is taken up by these foster puppies, and crap features a lot in this matter.
So, as I last mentioned, there was magic powder and all the poo stopped.
This is kind of awesome, because at the height (the depth?) of the poofest, I was thinking that duct tape or a cork might be in order.
However, in reality, I understand that waste must exit the body as a part of general good health. Two of the puppies were not doing their #2 business, and this was worrisome, both for health reasons, and for assplosive possibilities when it finally happened.
So, after 24 hours of lack of puppy bowel movements, I contacted the vet AGAIN.
The vet gave me some advice, which I was already aware of in general, but wasn’t sure if it was okay on such young puppies. So, I followed that advice, and Webster began doing his doody, but Mindy was still a no go.
Which eventually led me to calling the vet again.
I’ve spoken with this poor vet every single day since the puppies arrived, and seen her most of those days. Yes, I do a lot of work for the rescue by caring for these puppies, but it is nothing compared to the time and energy she puts in. She is very busy, and yet I am talking to her damn near every day, mostly about SHIT.
So, I made her a bedtime story comic, because… Well, mostly because I am totally fucking delirious at this point.
Now, I’ll share it with you too.
And there you have it. I have lost my mind.
Time to go feed the puppies again, and hope for more puppy poop.
So, here’s where I tell you I kind of lied in my previous post.
Although, there is also a strong argument for it just proving my point.
Yesterday two of our fosters went to their forever homes.
Laney went off to live with a young couple and two cats. She was doing great, making advances on her housebreaking. She was learning important simple commands like ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘drop it’, ‘go potty’, and ‘stay’. It was time for her to find her family and go to them and settle in, before she got more settled in here. Such a good, smart, rambunctious, girl.
Bear also went to his home.
Now, here’s the thing. I love Bear. I’m crazy about him. It is totally different than how I feel about any of the other fosters. We clicked. He could have stayed forever. When he put his giant fuzzy paw on my leg to ask for attention, I felt at peace.
So, why not keep him?
I’m doing this for the dogs. I’m not claiming it is altruistic. I do it because I choose to, because I get something positive out of it, but my goal is about making things better for the dogs.
We currently have a GSD/Husky mix that will turn 16 years old this summer. We also have two cats who turn 12 this summer. When we brought these animals home, we had a very young child who would be part of the household for many years. We also lived in a house we owned, and had every expectation to be in that situation long term.
Things are very different now. Our kid is now in high school. Maybe she’ll be with us all through college, or maybe she is gone in a couple of years. We live in a house we rent, in a state we don’t have roots in. When I try to look five years into the future, I cannot see a single damn thing through the fog. We’re here because work brought us here, and work could send us elsewhere. I don’t feel in a good strong stable place to make a 15+ year commitment to a pet. Because of this, I am not looking for a pet.
Yet, Bear came into my life and the idea of him leaving it made me feel sad. It made me feel a loss.
These people came to meet him. They have a small farm. They have land they are settled on long term. They have roots. They have cows and alpaca. They have a couple of other dogs on the property. They’ll let Bear on the furniture. They were searching for a Chow or Chow mix. They’ve had them in the past. They know they are strong and stubborn. The most recent one died a while back, and there was a long period of mourning when they were not ready for a new dog. When they decided they were ready for a new dog, they searched and found Bear’s photo and they wanted to know more about him and meet him.
Of course, once they met him, they wanted him. Who could not want him? He is wonderful.
They both wanted him, AND they wanted a new pet. They were looking to take on that commitment again, to care for a dog for his or her entire life. The rescue makes people fill out detailed applications. They ask them a lot of questions to get a feel for the kind of owners they will be. They go do a home visit and make sure that things are as described in the application, so I know the farm and the lifestyle aren’t just a made up story.
To me, all that trumped me just loving having Bear around. I don’t know what I have to offer, really. Do we end up back in California? That was brought up as a serious possibility in the summer of 2010. Back in California with a tiny yard and no room to run around? He’s not really a dog park kind of dog, because of his history. Yes, I’d work to get him stable enough for such things, but there is no guaranty. Plus, I’m unsure that we would ever reach a place where he’d be reliable alone around Xander. He was fine about Willow, and great about the clinic cat, but kind of a dick to Xander. Bear crazy loves playing in the snow, is just filled with joy at it. Do I take him and his gigantic, heavy fur coat to 100+ degree days? Yes. I could do that. It would be okay. People in Southern California have big super furry dogs who don’t get a chance to run free on an acre and never play in the snow. I know. We lived there and had two dogs like that. It’s doable, and the dogs were happy. He’d have been happy and cared for with us, I’d have made sure of it.
But, I just believe that he’d be overall happier on a farm with people who actively were looking to adopt a dog. With people who had other dogs for him to play with. He so totally loved playing with Laney. I knew that even if I kept him, I certainly wouldn’t be looking for ANOTHER dog. I really hope he is as happy there as I believe he will be. I hope that I am right and they are a better family for him than we are.
Emotionally, I wanted to keep him, but logically, it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, yesterday we said goodbye. I cried. I hugged him tight and told him that if he got too lonely for us, he could eat an alpaca, and they’d probably send him back.
And today, I am crying as I type this. I miss him. He is a very good dog. But, Xander is happy. I think Bear is happy too.
People are generally supportive and nice about the fact I foster dogs. Some people clearly just think I am some sort of nutty dog person, or a hoarder, but most make positive comments. They talk about how nice I must be. They say they couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring a dog in and then let it go. That I must be a special (I suspect they mean short bus) kind of person.
It’s interesting, because it seems to me that the reason I can do it, might well be that I am not particularly nice or warm-hearted. They are not my dogs. They are fosters. I am goal oriented. They are supposed to find homes, so when they do, I feel I have achieved my goal.
I’m not saying I have zero feelings for them. I enjoy them. I snuggle them and train them. I try to teach them to trust people (some of them don’t when they get here). I want them to feel safe and loved and comfortable. I want them to be better pets at the end of their stay with us, than they are at the beginning, so that they are more adoptable. That requires time and attention, and I give them both.
Like, Laney, the puppy right now. She takes a lot of time and attention. I could just feed her and keep her healthy and prevent her from tearing up the house. It makes more sense to put in a little extra time and start her on some basic training. She is a lot of work, but I enjoy her, and I will miss her when she goes. I’ll also be very happy whens she goes. I hope her family raises her to be the dog that fits in just right with their family, and they are all very happy together for her entire life. I’ll be very glad to sleep in a little, and get up and go get coffee before I have to stumble outside in the freezing cold so the puppy can go to the bathroom.
So, perhaps, for me, being good at fostering is more about having some sort of emotional defect. Now, before you go thinking that is your cue to tell me how nice I am, this is not a plea for validation. Also, I am not saying that everybody who fosters animals has an emotional defect. I’m just musing upon my own aptitudes and incapacities.
In other very tangentially related news, tonight I had lamb tartare for the first time. Why? I don’t know. Let me be clear, I don’t mean why did I try it, I mean, why the fuck didn’t somebody serve me that before? I did develop an intense, but one sided, emotional bond with it, but then I ate it all, and the relationship was over.
There is nothing I specifically want to do as a man. I don’t want to be me, with my whole history, simply transformed into a male body for the day. I don’t find that idea intriguing to me at all. I’m sure if it happened, it would be interesting, but it just isn’t an idea that I find particularly fascinating.
However, I’d absolutely be interested in waking up one day as a man, who had whole history of being male, and spending that day just doing whatever that man’s regular routine was, wherever the path of being male had led me to, and then still carrying that memory of what it felt like to be a male me, back as regular female me again.
I am deeply interested in what it would be like to have lived a lifetime never having had anybody stare at my tits, or make comments about them. I’d like to know what it feels like to walk down a street when I’ve never had vans pull up beside me and ominously slide open the door. When I’d never heard people inside a car, shouting, wanting a fuck, and making it clear that my wanting or lack of wanting, was of no concern to them.
I’m totally intrigued by what it would be like to not carry around the suffocating weight of thousands of vague and not so vague reminders that more than half the population is physically stronger than me – that reminder that only vigilance and willingness to do battle gives me some hope of maintaining my personal space at more than their whim.
Because, I really don’t know. I don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t a woman. I don’t know if the constant suspicion and wariness I feel is just my inherent personality, or if it is because of all I have experienced as a female human. All of the looks, the words, the “compliments” I “should” feel “flattered” by, and all the cruel words spoken when I was “less” of a “woman” than I “should be“, that have made me loathe almost all references to my physical appearance.
Would I hit on a woman at a party, unaware that I was standing too close for her comfort, and be totally baffled and even indignant when she politely declined?
Would regular female me be more comfortable and confident in my own skin the next day, or would I carry the same fears along with a new heaping dose of resentment?
I keep asking myself that question. I’ve typed it into google too, to see why other people do. I don’t really give a shit why other people do, but I was interested in reading it to see if anything they said sparked anything in me. It didn’t.
I understand the value in writing things out. I am very textual. Writing helps me think. Writing helps me remember. Writing helps me get over and around and through. Words are my connection to myself, hiding somewhere inside the noise. Words are also my enemy, as it is so hard to find any silence.
So yeah, I totally get keeping a journal. And by “get it” I don’t me that I understand the idea behind it or get why some people do it. I GET IT. It makes sense to me, intrinsically. Blogging, sharing this stuff publicly, I don’t “get”. Again, I am not asking anyone else to defend or explain themselves. I’m just talking about me.
I know why is started blogging, not here, elsewhere. I started blogging just to get unstuck. I had writers block and being as textual as I am, writers block is a mentally fatal disease. So writing something, anything, it didn’t matter what, became important. And writing something unimportant, that I was willing to just toss out there in a casual manner, was easier than writing something important. I had a reason to blog.
Then I kept blogging, past my set goal date. Why did I do that? I had a reason for that to. I did it because it had become a convenient way to pass some information along to people that I already knew. Those people were interested in what I had to say, at least some vague value of interested. It was a way to keep in touch.
Then I met some new people through blogging, and I made a couple of important connections. That was surprising and it was nice and it was important. I shall always be grateful for blogging because of that.
But now? Well, I’ve met them. I don’t need blogging to meet them. I don’t need blogging to keep in touch with them. As a form of communication, I’m not find blogging very fulfilling, I’d rather gtalk or email for communication.
Why does it matter? It doesn’t really. I could just not blog. The problem is, I have a blog, or several. I have all these things out there. I am a packrat to my core, and I am a total digital packrat too, and sometimes all the having puts pressure on me to do something with it, which makes it seem more like I just have a lot of stuff because I use a lot of stuff, and not just because I have a mental problem.
So then, I look at this blog, or that one, or the other one down the block, just sitting there, unblogged upon, and I feel stress. I’m already all filled up on stress. So, at the moment I am feeling a bit of a use it or lose it push, an internal push. Something in me saying “Blog or delete the fuck out of it.”
So, I wonder, “Why blog?” The answer is, “I don’t know.”
That is the answer after all this typing. The typing was good. The typing helped me think, even though it didn’t give me a strongly actionable answer. But typing this is not blogging. It isn’t blogging until I put it out there for other people to see, or maybe, it isn’t blogging until somebody else actual does read it. If I put this out there, and somebody reads it, will that answer my question? Will somebody else reading it be a positive experience for me, or a negative one? Will it encourage me to post again, or delete everything? Will it just continue to leave me with a general sense of limbo (not the dance)?
