After that last whiny pity party of a post, I didn’t even want to look at this eff­ing blog any­more.  (My hand still hurts, by the way, but it’s no longer pur­ple or ginor­mous.) I decided to just wait until things felt right again, because I felt like it has been a plat­form for so much mis­ery that it is painful even for ME to come out here.  I know that peo­ple might be wor­ried about me, writ­ing a post like that and drop­ping off.  I was so down in Decem­ber.   The hol­i­days were bru­tal.  So, Dear Read­ers, I fig­ure it’s time to update you, and let you know that for the first time in a good while, I’m truly feel­ing great.  I’m not just smil­ing in the mir­ror and wait­ing for the mood to match it, then see­ing my own face and start­ing to cry.  I’m actu­ally for­get­ting about the damn mir­ror and liv­ing my own life again, and when I catch a glimpse of myself, it tends to be smirk­ing or mis­chevi­ous or in thought.  That’s more hon­est than just a smile any­way, at least for me.

Right now I’m focused on a job search and get­ting some things in order, so it’s going to be spotty, but I feel so much more like ME and I want to express some of that again.  So, here I am.  Time for another reboot.  I know many peo­ple hate New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions and the like, but it’s a nat­ural time to reeval­u­ate for me.  My birth­day, my wed­ding anniver­sary, and the New Year all come within three weeks of each other. It’s a time of look­ing over the past year, see­ing what has hap­pened, and how to con­tinue that path if it’s work­ing, or to change it, if it’s not.  I didn’t really con­sciously decide to change my atti­tude, though I’ve been try­ing to work on it steadily, but a switch seemed to flip for me on the last day of the year.  The emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance on mak­ing it through the year strength­ened me, and all the whin­ing and mis­ery kind of dropped off.  Yeah, since then I’ve had bad moments, but mostly I’ve felt con­fi­dent and opti­mistic again.

I wanted to start 2010 off with a bang, and I really man­aged to do most of what I wanted.  No fire­works, but there was a gor­geous round full moon the night of New Year’s Eve. It was a blue moon and an eclipse was vis­i­ble on the other side of the world, to boot.  My year would be start­ing with beauty.

On New Year’s Day, we had the tra­di­tional col­lards, black eyed peas, and I even added cab­bage in this year for good mea­sure. I wore a pretty new sweater, to show I wanted more of the same.  I didn’t do any clean­ing at all — so as not to sweep the good luck out, and also not to spend the rest of the year clean­ing up messes.  I had friends over, and we had a good time. The luck and money gods have not been slighted this year.  Hope­fully they will reward me with heaps of green stuff and luck in my endeavors.

I think there really is some­thing to start­ing the year off like that.   While the charms and tokens might not in and of them­selves bring the good luck, the atti­tude will, I truly believe.  If I start out think­ing, “2010 is going to suck as hard as 2009 did” — a Face­Book sta­tus I’d already read twice by noon Jan­u­ary first — then the prophecy might be self-fulfilled.  Yes, I know that the arena of uncon­trol­lables is out there, wait­ing to zap me.  I’m all too aware.  But I’ve sus­tained a good half a month of really good days.  I expect more to come.

As I was mak­ing my morn­ing cof­fee, I real­ized that I’d for­got­ten to post at all last night.  Red Chief was puny, and I was dis­tracted with try­ing to cheer him up.  Both of the boys and I watched Moose and Squir­rel in bed together until we fell asleep.  Did you know that Rocky and Bull­win­kle was around in 1959?  I didn’t, but when I real­ized that they were spec­u­lat­ing on the exis­tence of moon men, I had Chris wiki it for me real quick.

In the midst of all of that, I just for­got all about the blog.  I was furi­ous at myself when I real­ized, though.  I railed about how if some­one else had asked me to promise to post every day, I’d have done it.  But since it was a promise to myself, I broke it. Didn’t do the novel, no, so I’m going to stick with blog­ging, and still I don’t even make that. I’ve no idea why I don’t treat myself with the respect I’d treat oth­ers, but this is just another exam­ple, and typ­i­cal.  So close to being fin­ished, and I blow it. Even now, look­ing at the clock, I wanted to just say “screw it” and go on, not blog­ging for the rest of the month.

I guess I’m pretty burnt out of blog­ging right now, if I tell the truth.  I’m also strug­gling with other issues, and won­der­ing where the line between utterly stressed out and griev­ing and truly depressed lies.  Of course, if I decide I need more help, then I have to decide how to get it, what with the lack of income and all.  One day at a time.  I’m seri­ously sleep­ing too much. I sup­pose I should be proud of how well I have done, given the month, but all I saw was one more bro­ken promise.

I’m aggra­vated at myself, but I am not allow­ing the typ­i­cal “well, I blew it, let’s go the whole dis­tance” tantrum that I’d nor­mally throw to fully pun­ish myself.  I’m work­ing on that self-forgiveness thing.  It really isn’t that big a deal, if I look at it as if I’m another per­son.  When it’s me,“good enough” doesn’t seem to exist.  Right now tiny fail­ures ter­rify me any­how.  I need to work past that, because the only cure for that is inac­tiv­ity, which is unacceptable.

While I think this pic­ture is self explana­tory, I guess there’s some peo­ple who won’t get it. The Iron Bowl was a great game, and Auburn really played well, but Alabama did win in the end.  We found this poor Auburn fan half-heartedly yelling “Roll Tide Roll” at the top of her lungs in the mid­dle of nowhere at an Exxon sta­tion. We assume that’s as close to civ­i­liza­tion and true pub­lic humil­i­a­tion that her fam­ily could come up with. I did ask her per­mis­sion before tak­ing the pic­ture.  She sighed, “Yes, I have to do that, too.”

Bless her heart.

After swear­ing for 15 years I would never ever do it, I played Axis and Allies today. The Spousal Unit to Be set up on the extra bed in my dorm room bed once, and after about an hour of try­ing to parse the rules I got exas­per­ated, sat down on the bed beside it, destroyed Asia and half of Europe, and declared vic­tory. I wasn’t going to play that game ever ever ever. I also never have suc­combed to Risk or almost any other war games of the board sort. Chess and check­ers notwith­stand­ing, of course.

Any­way, my friends are over, and peer pres­sure does work on me on rare occa­sions, depend­ing on the peers. And, dar­nit, of course I had a lit­tle bit of fun at it, too, after my brain stopped hurt­ing from so many rules all at once. Sooo many rules! We stopped after about 6 hours of game­play or so, because my atten­tion span had enough, but maybe it wouldn’t be incred­i­bly awful later now that I know the rules. Or… maaaaaybe I’d deign to play Risk. If Jared didn’t bring any blue decks over. I’m not promis­ing any­thing though.