#30daychallenge Day 30: highs and lows of this month

this month has been one of those months where everything happens. there's been a bit of a run of bad things this week, but i'd prefer to keep them to myself- the people who need to know have my list.

i've been mentally preparing for this post the last few days, but today it doesn't seem right to write another bullet-pointed expose into my life. i've been thinking a lot of my online life vs. my real time life, and how well someone who is connected to me online actually knows me.

i've been thinking about this in part because my ex observed to me in an email on the weekend that it looks like things are going really well for me. they are, in the grand scheme, but it really drives the fact home to me that my Facebook life (and even my blog life) are really not representative of a whole life. you can't read between the lines and know everything about me from these things. the real life friends have sat down with me over coffee, wine, beer, breakfast and talked to me. asked me questions. listened to my wandering rantings.

 it makes me wonder though, just what place angst has on the internet. i certainly don't go out of my way to read it, and try not to write it anymore than necessary; angst balanced out with humour is probably the most acceptable form, i think. tavi gevinson (yep, her) talked in her opera house appearance about how negative emotions are glorified as a creative force, and how she struggled with creating anything at all when she was having some personal battles. i think she's right, in the face of all my processes. it's harder to write the sort of thing a person might like to read when your heart is very very heavy.

how to be a writer, and explore the scope of humanity, without putting you all off with ALL of the feelings?

how to be an online presence, a Facebook bookfacer, and be honest? it's weird. it's very weird.

i have enjoyed putting myself through this 30 day challenge, for everywhere i go it seems the advice for writers from other more successful writers is to write every day. so write i have, and have been rewarded with your interest. thanks for reading, for dropping by, for your comments. that's certainly been one of the highs of this month.

big love to all.

#30daychallenge Day 28: something i miss

i miss my whistler family. the thing with travel is, you make friends elsewhere, in other countries, from other countries. and it's wonderful, and magical, and your connections are real and genuine and quite special, being that time of your young adult life before the big decisions have been made. then you have to leave these people, or they leave you, and sometimes, your heart just aches and aches with the missing of them all. and it's harder to keep in touch than you thought it would be, and you sometimes find yourself having daydreams about buying a ticket and getting out of here.

i have been looking at photos; here are some.

treasure: one art, by elizabeth bishop

perhaps if losing is an art, then humankind is an artist.

I'll be perfectly honest with you- this poem is one I know from the movie 'In Her Shoes' starring Toni Colette and Cameron Diaz. Seeing as I only ever heard it in the scene when Cameron Diaz' character is learning to read, I have to say I didn't really take the poem in, as such. Possibly partly because I felt weirdly victorious about the fact that I could read, and this hot blonde leggy fictional character couldn't. Yeah, I get my kicks where I can.

I have been thinking quite a lot about this idea, that many things in life are intended to be lost, and that that's ok. It's hard not to get caught up in the fury of having lost something you felt was important, something you assumed you'd have for a long time.

So, poem, I'm not meant to expect or want to hold onto anything forever? Forever is, after all, a very long time, and my hands are only very small and not always strong enough for holding. If you clasp a peach too tightly with your pointy fingers, there will be bruised flesh, and the peach won't be so sweet. If you hold a hand too tight, or a whole person, eventually there's discomfort, and they have to wriggle away from you. It's not cool to be the one who holds on.

I've hated letting go of lots of things in my life, and I'm certain I've left some bruises where I clung too tightly, hoping and wishing for a repreive, a change of heart, another chance. I've been the one to escape, sometimes by leaving a whole country, sometimes by leaving silence when someone's demanding answers.

But then I think, loss is what makes us want to create; to create art, to refill our senses with something. To fill that gap left after a loss. I have all the time in the world at the moment. I have plentiful space to fill, lots of time stretching empty. I've been filling it with different things: whole seasons of Californication (because my bad decisions don't look so bad when compared with Duchovny's Hank Moody), letters to my friends all over the world (alternating between sugar-coated and brutally honest, optimistic and heartbroken), whisky (because), situpsandchinupsandsquatsandrowingandsweat (distraction with hidden benefits like fitting back into your pants), and here, this, writing.

I spent a few months struck silent, but I've decided that I do want things in my life that I could lose at any time. How else would there be any words to say? What would I write about?

I'd like to write a bit more about loss; in manner of Elizabeth Bishop, all those little things you lose throughout your life. Maybe I'll get to it; I'll add it to the list of things I want to say.

secret: things i hate

today, the things i hate the most include these:

1. the bad mood that makes me hate things i normally laugh about
2. waiting for the results of a brain scan
3. the way my mum makes me feel when she decides said brain scan will reveal tumours and aneurysms all over the place, my brain riddled with failures
4. not having someone in my life that will kiss me and tell me i don't have an aneurysm after my mum is off the phone
5. my headache that necessitated the brain scan
6. the way i put my back out last night by sleeping. SLEEPING. as Kate J very fairly pointed out, "It's meant to be relaxing! You're doing it wrong!".
7. appointments
8. a general lack of painkillers, besides the bottle of wine i fully intend to finish when i get home
9. the fact that the heater is broken in our office... by broken i mean permanently set to hot.
10. the need i felt to write this post. i'd like to be putting some positivity out there, but today is not the day for that hippy nonsense.