I feel like the little bird (was it a bird?) in that book Are You My Mother who is walking around all the animals and politely asking, "Are you my mother?"  I know who my mom is, she does a good job of that.  But I feel like I'm asking that question of everything else in my life.  "Are you my career?"  "Are you my home?" "Are you my husband?" walking around not knowing what kind I am and therefore unable to recognize my match when I see it.  The career is the biggest one.  Although I've tried to retrain my brain to stop thinking in absolutes, it keeps doggedly insisting that there must be some perfect career and if it can just sniff out the clues the answer will be there.  So far that dog won't hunt.  

I know I sound like a broken record.  I feel like a wind up toy who does the same song and dance and then just putters out and crashes, only to be wound up again.  I was hoping that my stint in California would be enough of a change of scene to alter these thought patterns, but it turns out the acting troupe in my head is quite flexible, "no problem," they say, "we can set up our stage anywhere to play out this little drama."  

I went rock climbing with my friend Steve last night and he was encouraging me to try grunting.  Tanya, another one of our climbing friends, said that sometimes you can't get past a move without letting out a yell.  I told them I think I have some pent up anger that I'd like to get out while working on the overhang of a 5.10.  My one attempt at a grunt was mostly choked, I didn't make it over the roof.

I have many more analogies to describe my "stuckness," and many explanations for why I think I am stuck.  None of them stick.  I'll save those for later.

She's alive and living in California...at least for now

I guess that about says it.  I was motivated to post to my blog after reading my friend Anne's blog, and a posting which referenced the writing I used to do.  I can't even think where to start after two years of not posting and hardly writing.  I will have to go through notebooks and try to post some of the stuff I wrote.  I've spent much of the last two years worrying, standing on the end of the diving board knowing that I had stepped up, but unsure if I should jump, and if I jumped if there would be water, and if there was water if would I be able to swim, and if I could swim, if would I know where to swim to.  I have many analogies and metaphors for my life.  Spinning my wheels, a hamster on a wheel.  Just plain stuck or truncated.  I was worrying last night over the ever present question of whether or not Shawn and I will get married.  I was asking him why he gets to live without the worry of this question and take things as they come.  He said he didn't know why, but that he just figured he would know when it was time to move on (from his job that is).  He said that it sounds like I've never known anything for sure in my life.  I responded that in that case I would just wait for him to get the confident go ahead and trust his decision, since I apparently would never know.  He laughed at this.  I was only partially kidding.  I've tried to get other people to make decisions for me frequently.  I suppose it's good I don't have overbearing parents who are pushing their dreams on me, otherwise I might have done whatever they told me to.  I still believe that there is some vocation that will make me come alive.  I've given up on the idea that love is quite like this.  Mostly to accommodate the one I am with.  I love him and he makes me happy, but it's not quite the earth shattering experience given in the movies.  I threw out the romantic mold rather than the boyfriend.  I think I do still feel a perfectionist tendency to get it exactly right.  I'm still waiting for God to say "this is the right choice."  It feels like a lot of pressure to just get one chance at life and I often feel like I'm blowing it.  Or if not blowing it, then really under playing it.

I've become really interested in the mind lately.  I just read a book entitled The Female Brain, which discusses how the fluctuation of hormones in women throughout the month affects their emotions, which in turn affect their perception of reality.  It's fascinating to me that my perception of life at any given moment is affected by the chemical make-up of my brain.  Any moment cannot be any greater than the amount of happy or pleasure hormones present in my brain at that moment.  More on this later...