Myself

Accepted in spite of my oddities
Failed in spite of my strengths
Forgiven in spite of my sins

Cautious to protect my Self
But when Self is destroyed
What am I scared of?

Was my Self ever whole in the first place?

And what will I do with the pieces?

"If you could just get me out of this one, I promise not to run off again!"

I've been having a rough time lately, and haven't really wanted to blog about it. And since I am unable to NOT think about things that stress me out, I really haven't been able to blog about anything else.

Kind of like when I go to donate plasma and my pulse is too high. So they have me sit for like five to ten minutes for it to go back down, but guess what? It goes UP. Because all I can do is think about my pulse being to high and I try to concentrate on relaxing, which makes me incapable of relaxing. Only time recently I was able to get it down enough to donate was when I was reading the last book of the Wheel of Time series which was probably sufficiently distracting to take my mind off of my pulse.

If I'm ever unemployed again, I rather doubt I'll be able to make money on Biolife. Shame.

But, as always, having a bad time gives me more chance for reflection than not. So what did I learn today? I might actually be able to live a "quiet life."

My rough time has involved some drama, so mentally push back by wanting the opposite of whatever it is that makes life difficult. Also, I get in one of those repentant moods so often characterized in children's books and stories and comics, the "God, if you just get rid of whatever is bothering me, I'll do all my chores without complaining forever!" If I get out of this, maybe I could resign myself to a quiet life.

I sing that bit from Beauty and the Beast that goes, "There must be more than this provincial life... I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can say. And for once it might be grand to have someone understand I want so much more than they've got planned." I've felt like that all my life.

But if I can get back to a point where I am happy... or at least not stressed... I can think about the good things about that. Say it's in Ames. My parents are still here and I could see them. Mom will have potentially more time and we could spend it together. I'll be able to bike. Maybe as the years go by, I could get into a groove of going on RAGBRAI every year. I could garden in the backyard. Write (I know, far fetched). Go to local events, like Ames in the Halfshell, Parks and Recreation classes. Join a fitness place. Get a pool pass. I still don't know what I'd do in the winter. Get my own snowboard and a season's pass at Seven Oaks? Have a child, raise a family? Actually sew those curtains?

Could I live like that, quietly? David is convinced we're meant for something greater and this is just setting the stage, but who knows what that will entail?

Oh God, I want out so bad it scares me. Please give me strength to go on!

I dream of a summer forest...

I believe I've spoken about this before, but for a practical person, I am extremely susceptible to dreams, fancies, and ideas. Somebody mentions ONE THING and all of a sudden I have my whole life planned out as a pilot, a writer, an ecologist, whatever.

I think I wrote about it semi-recently along the lines that if I get a job, I can see the next 20 years or whatever at that job. It's really a rather depressing way to look at things like jobs.

So, my most recent flight of fancy which is probably entirely not an option and I wouldn't like it anyway because the word research makes me cringe up inside... ecology/forestry.

Granted it was Mom's idea originally. The Story County Conservation group would take her school kids out to tramp around the woods and point out interesting things and basically do those fun things that get kids interested in nature until other less-fun classes beat it out of them. I'm looking at you, Biology 212. But anyway, she mentioned that it would be a great job for me because I love tramping around in woods and picking up rocks to see what lives under them and I liked science back when science was fun.

I looked into it and realized I would need another degree and dismissed it.

So there are two things that made me dream again. One is a friend of ours named Shane. Shane currently sells cell phones at Target, but he just finished getting a degree in something like IT and will be getting a job working with computers, which he likes. And why not go back to school or do school part time if it leads to what you want to do?

And the second was an actual dream where basically, my grandparents were selling us their home in Kansas and David was actually accepting because it was a really good deal and David is an opportunistic buying and we were going to relocate to Kansas and I would have to quit my job, but there were rolling hills covered in trees that still had beautiful leaves even though it was winter that I could tramp through to my heart's delight... I should note that the house, outbuildings, and Kansas as shown in my dream look nothing like the actual house, outbuildings, or Kansas. I mean, rolling hills? For some reason I was freaking out in the dream because I didn't want to live in Kansas and when I woke up, I'm like, "What is wrong with me? Rolling hills with trees!"

And then I moped around a bit because I wanted a forest that wasn't freezing. Seriously, it's so cold around here I could cry... and then my tears would freeze.

And so then I'm like, "Hey, if I really wanted to be an ecologist, maybe I could go back to school part time and in a few years, I could get a job with Story County Conservation and tramp around in the woods!"

Which, I am sure that it doesn't work like that. I bet there isn't as much wood-tramping as I envision. And I would have to work more in the summer, which is precisely what I don't want to do... because I like being outside in nature in the summer... maybe that part would work out. And maybe (I haven't quite figured it out yet), I would need a graduate degree and if there is one thing that scares me more than research itself, it's dissertations. I wouldn't get a graduate degree in cookies or biking or World of Warcraft if I had to write a dissertation.

Queue David coming in and saying, "You should be a writer! It would be perfect for you!"

Oh well. Maybe this dream can't happen, just like the airplane pilot dream. Or puppy dream. Or living in Colorado dream. But it might amuse me for a little bit. And let me think of warm summer woods. And I can add "ecologist dream" to the list of dreams that didn't work out next time I need to trot out the proof of my own unreasonable whimsical emotions.

I bet Mom saw this coming.

Continuing Drama of the Post Office

Have I complained about post offices before? Maybe. I find them seriously confusing, having not grown up around them.

So I need to pick up a package. I go in and see four desk/window opening things and a long line of people holding boxes. I exam the signs. U.S. Shipping. International Shipping. Upgrade Services. Information/Bulk Mailings/Claims & Inquiries. And in case you forget, all desks are labeled "All items must be properly packaged & addressed when presented @ the window."

Well, I am not shipping. I don't care about shipping.

So I wade over to Information. I suppose I should have suspected I wasn't supposed to do that because of several displays in my pathway. But I don't necessarily attribute poor interior design to a purposeful plan to keep people out. So I stand behind a woman heaping praises on the post office service... I wonder how often one has to go to the post office to get such a high opinion of them. Maybe she sells things on Etsy? Maybe she doesn't have an email account? Maybe she's lived in Ames for 46 years? Actually, that one is true.

Anyway, after the woman leaves, the employee looks at me like I'm a dirty hobo tracking mud in and asks, "were you next in line?"

"No, I just want to know where to pick up a package. All the signs are for shipping."

"Well, the best way is just to stay in line." Trespasser, her voice seemed to say.

Well, I wasn't ever in line, but whatever. I go to the end. The lady who had been in front of me tells me that I should stand in line, in a very friendly way, and sometimes someone will come up from the back and ask if anybody is just picking anything up.

"Are you from Ames?" she asks cheerfully. Ugh, not that question. Probably brought on by my clear cluelessness when it comes to post offices.

"My parents are from Iowa," I hedge, ending up revealing my family origins before she bids me good luck and goes on her way.

A man drags a display of holiday packaging material in front of a door. Another interior design error, this one probably meaning they're closed.

How am I supposed to know how this place functions? Are normal American school kids given a class in package shipping? A lesson on how to navigate an archaic place with misleading signage? I suppose it could be that part of the class where they write letters to someone and if they're lucky, that someone is a video game manufacturer who is charmed by the letter and sends the kid free limited edition stuff...

In the end, my little slip that proclaimed my package was "(check mark) At the Post Office" was lying and my package is still in a truck somewhere. The guy was nice, but still told me that like I should have known it. And to be honest, I did wonder about that detail, but I don't know how late those guys stay out.

How was I supposed to know? And when will they invent teleportation so I can ship things straight from the internet?

Tech Arts

Here is a little bit of backstage insight. I have a minor history of running camera. I took an internship at the Iowa Cubs and worked for minimum wage all baseball season home games running camera, switcher, directing, playbacks, etc. It was a pretty good summer gig, even though it was more for broadcasting emphasis than print. But I got to watch baseball all summer and get paid for it. There are worse fates.

Anyway, I learned camera and I learned that camera is actually pretty simple. The point and shoot part. The only finesse you can get at entry level is learning what shots your director wants, what shots look good, and how to zoom and focus smoothly.

So with my expertise and experience, I volunteered for running camera at church. It's fun and it gets me backstage. I like being backstage. In the theater of life, I never want to be center stage. I'd rather be behind the camera than in front of it. One of the stagehands all dressed in black. My biggest acting aspiration is that of an extra. No lines. Dreadlocks.

So, I am somewhat mystified as to the "talent." They are a different breed. We talk about them like objects as we have to capture this angle or that. And I avoid them.

Until recently, when the worship team made the pre-service meetings mandatory for all members. Previously, the cameras crew would lurk in the video room and the worship team in the green room and the lighting and audio crew... well, I don't know where they lurked.

We also got a new name. Instead of video team, I am now a part of "Tech Arts." New name tag too.

But those meetings I find baffling. We all tromp out of the video room through the amp room to the green room. The worship team is already there, draped over the chairs, so I usually take up a wallflower position. In the room I thought was the bathroom, it sounds like some of them are practicing a three part harmony. Russell is talking transitions, "...and after that, it goes into a boom boom budum budum psh..." with the appropriate drum motions. They talk like old friends until about time. Derek had to get them to let us camera people out early so we could be in position on time. And occasionally, they go over things that we might actually need to know, like a prayer in between songs, who's leading, etc. Things that could be covered by a good itinerary.

I don't think these meetings help us as much as they think they help us.

But camaraderie and inclusiveness! Maybe I'm an elitist, maybe I'm just a recluse, but I could do without. Oh well, I can spend my time studying that strange species, The Musician.

I'm a Jedi, like my father before me.

Achievement

Earlier this year, maybe March, I finally looked into the mirror and I'm like, "I hate myself." Particularly the highly misnamed "love handles." I've never considered myself slim or skinny or anything like that and for a while I was decently happy at what I considered a heavier weight. I had a big butt, but I had figure!

The love handles effectively destroyed the figure and I hated how much my stomach poked out, how big my thighs were.

I was still ok with my butt.

And I've never had problems with my boobs being too big...

Anyway, I said, "No more." I started on the Sonoma diet which morphed somewhat into an avoidance of most carbs and a focus on fresh veggies and low-fat foods. I raged. The pounds seemed to creep off so slowly it could have been fluctuations in water weight, the normal pound more or less you see on scales. I started biking in the summer. I did RAGBRAI and didn't lose a pound, probably because I was eating every two hours while biking. Lost a bit more the week after.

And the funny thing is, even though it took me months and months, it crept off.

I haven't lost anything real significant. I was at around 167 at my heaviest and I'm down to 142, so about 25 pounds. Biggest Loser wouldn't be interested and if any magazine is like, "They lost 25 pounds!" I'm like, no big deal. But that 25 pounds was a big deal to me. I lost my love handles. My stomach is a lot flatter, to the point it doesn't poke out of shirts. My size 12 jeans bag around my butt. My face is even slimmer, which I wasn't expecting, but I'm pretty happy about. And my bras still fit. Win.

Another thing I wasn't expecting was to have other people notice. I figured what was obvious to me in the mirror while dressing was safely hidden under fitted shirts and large sweatshirts. Apparently, I was wrong. Steve from Bike World noticed and asked my mom. This is a guy I don't even see once a month, and not at all during the winter.

So about two years ago now, I purchased a shirt I liked from Threadless.com. It was one of those that had fallen out of print and come back in and I requested it and when it was back in print, they sent it to me. I had picked size medium, but when I tried it on, it was just depressing. It was so awful I couldn't wear it. So I stuck it back in the bag thinking I'd send it back, but I never got around to it.

A few weeks ago, I pulled it out of a box while looking for something else and tried it on again. And it fit.

I call it my achievement shirt.

My original goal was 135, just so I had a number to work toward, but in reality I think that's about as low as I want to be. My other goals included getting below the BMI overweight threshold (yes, I was above it), and getting low enough that when I stepped on scales fully clothed with food in my stomach, I'd be below 149, cause that's the lowest threshold for plasma donation, as in I keep more of my plasma. If only I could donate it.

I'm not really trying right now. I've been around 142 for a while and I'm just trying to make sure I don't go back up.

And man, I feel sexy.