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  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

My life is so different than it was a month ago, in so many good ways. You’d think I’d be proud.

Ironically, as much as my office job degraded me and made me feel bad about myself, it seems like my self-confidence has taken a hit since I left. I feel this burning need for people to understand that I work for a living—three articles a day, not including other freelance assignments! (See? How I couldn’t stop myself from saying that?)—and why is that, exactly? Why does it matter? God, but it does. I can’t seem to let it go.

I feel like everything I’ve been doing lately sounds so lame. Look at what a joke I am, I keep saying. Cooking! Cleaning! Homeschooling! Look, I made three scrapbook pages, next I’ll wear a bonnet and french-braid my pubic hair while picking my own gherkins HA HA I AM UNCOMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF.

I’ve had a couple people write me to say they don’t identify with me any more. I get that. Some of you know me by surface only, by words and pictures. I could say, well, I’m the same foul-mouthed insecure motherfucker I always have been, but it doesn’t matter, the subject matter has changed and I know that can be reason to move on. It’s hard, though, when you’re looking at yourself and feeling worried that you’ve become less interesting or less relevant somehow, and someone chimes in and says, well yeah dude, you pretty much have.

And it’s so stupid, because goddamn, I’m so much happier. I am so much happier than I was. I am so glad to have kicked that soul-sucking job to the curb, to be spending more time with my boys, to work for myself, and to try new things like CrossFit and yeah, sitting around glueing little annoying-ass pieces of paper. That should be enough. That should be plenty. I don’t know why I get so hung up on what other people think.

I had this awful, awful gym class last night where for the very first time a coach was totally condescending and basically treated me like an idiot for being a newbie, and I could feel myself starting to cry. Like right there in front of everyone. (Terrible. Oh god.) I barely managed to keep it at bay until I got out to my car where I just sat there in the dark and sobbed in total hysterics for maybe fifteen straight minutes. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with being new and unsure and still learning, but because someone else did.

Or maybe I did think there was something wrong with it, with me, maybe I thought I was a giant loser trying to fit in somewhere I didn’t belong, and some gym guy just confirmed it for me. I don’t know. How do you know, really?

I quit my job and it was the best thing that ever happened to me but I lost some sense of identity I didn’t know I needed so badly. I miss it, like a ratty security blanket that I could drag out in order to square my shoulders, paint a picture of myself that was never really true in the first place.

I was attempting to clean out a bookshelf in our office recently and was struck by a feeling similar to what I suppose grips those poor bastards on Hoarders: the realization that everything has meaning.

From a notebook in which I scribbled notes while interviewing our non-denominational wedding officiant:

Formal greeting . . . statement about marriage . . . homily on love
what love is not (possession, not to change, not to make a responsibility)
Virtues of the heart, courage to recognize, vulnerability. never take each other for granted
courtesy to listen
Forgiveness

From a pile of paperbacks:

Hiking Zion & Bryce Canyon
Hiking the Grand Staircase-Escalante & the Glen Canyon Region
The Rough Guide to Thailand
Oregon’s Cascade Lakes
Hiking the North Cascades
Snowshoe Routes in Washington
Traveling with Your Pet: the AAA Guide
Taking Charge of Your Fertility
20,0001 Names for Baby
Nature Walks In & Around Seattle

Like a portrait of our marriage, in broad strokes. (Note how adventurous exotic travel and hiking dwindles to “nature walks.”) Man, I can’t get rid of that stuff. Even though the books are dusty and they smell and the only charge I want to take of my fertility is to smash it into submission until menopause.

Now, if I start talking about the sentimental value of giant piles of cat feces and 54 broken vacuums and a ceiling-high stack of newspapers, send help.

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