Scattered Thoughts- Please Pardon the Mess

My mind is so jumbled right now. I am overwhelmed by the past and the present. No matter where you go and what you do, there are things that follow you and stand in your path until you address them or find a new way to avoid them. As much as I like to believe that I possess enough self-awareness to not be sidetracked by these events, I am so very wrong. At times like this, I find myself almost incapacitated by all the thoughts crowding my mind at the same time. Even my notes that I make almost every day don’t seem to help me make sense of everything I am trying to process and keep in order. So here I am, starting on a blank page and just writing whatever comes to mind that I can (hopefully) fashion into some sort of cohesive thought. You can all judge me later on my success or failure. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I switch topics in mid-sentence. Try and keep up.

Bad moods happen to everyone. Sometimes you can try to head it off by occupying your mind with trivial things like grocery shopping or paying bills, or cleaning your closet or whatever you think is going to give you some relief by the sheer mundaneness of the task. (That’s not even getting in to other escapes like drugs and/or alcohol, but those never were my things, thank goodness) Eventually you find that everything is clean, you have plenty of food, your kids are clean and asleep and you are still left with the thoughts you work so hard to forget. I’d like to think that being alone gives me the luxury of wallowing in the moment rather than attempting to bottle it up or push it aside until “later”. I try to look at it the same way I would look at a good mood. As much as you want to hold on to those, you know eventually, they will pass too. As sure as Monday follows Sunday, bad moods and good moods follow one another and sometimes with almost the same regularity.

Before you can go about the business of getting what you want, you need to recognize what it is that you need. It is always so much easier to do this kind of armchair analysis for others than it is to do for yourself. Lately, I have been swamped by family drama. As much as I would like to go into details, I find that I am too tired to do so and certainly not with any real objectivity. Besides, my drama is no more special than anyone else’s. I often find it difficult to really come clean and state what is bothering me and more importantly, to actually voice what I need. This is part of my pattern, I guess. This is part of the private side that through this outlet is slowly (think molasses running uphill in winter) starting to spill out. Maybe it’s the feeling of being able to tell it my way with no need for anyone to see my expression as I tell it, or for me to modify the telling based on the expressions I see in my audience.

When I started this site, I’m not sure exactly what I had in mind. I wanted an opportunity to describe the world around me and inside me that I may not always do in person. I had intentions of making these entries much more revealing than they have been. I think once I started to realize how many people were reading this, it was far safer and easier to switch to a more entertaining mode than a revealing one. This is another part of me, I suppose. In my mind I believe that the people I know have come to expect certain behaviors from me and therefore I “give them what they want.” Isn’t it nice that I have made that decision for all of you? I have given myself an “out” before I ever even let you in. Granted, there have certainly been some personal entries here. I think of it as sticking a toe in the water to see what happens. So far, everything about this experience has been positive, making it clear to me that all of us are indeed our own worst enemies.

And now that I have revealed even this much, I find myself wanting to go find mundane tasks to do. In the light of day tomorrow, I will probably cringe over this entry, but for tonight it’s where I am so I’d better post it now. Besides, I will probably be in a better mood tomorrow.