march snippets
march was spent going through the motions. this year is blending together even though i’ve been traveling, reading, doing, seeing. i want to write, but there are no poems in limbo.
these are parentheticals that might have been posts if i had the energy:
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life’s tough lately. there’s a dull undercurrent of anxiety in everything. i send my emails and attend my meetings and wonder how long we can all keep doing this.
when i was a teenager, my aunt called me a “rule follower” as a compliment and i’ve never gotten over it. at the time, i felt indignant and thought that she must be clueless; as i get older, i’m realizing it got under my skin so much because she’s right.
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my baby sister has been staying with me this week. there’s more than a decade between us, so i was a fully prefrontal cortex’d adult by the time she was thirteen – however, cycles are cycles and the biggest difference between my teen years and hers is that i liked alcohol the first time i tried it.
we hear each other differently. what i feel when i’m with her is relief.
today we visited the local colleges. she talked to an advisor and i pointed out all the things i regret not taking advantage of when i was in school.
the one bedroom apartment she’s looking at in the most inconvenient part of town costs $120 less per month than my 3/2 house closer to both campuses.
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it’s been a day. this morning actually started with a “fireside chat” featuring david allen. i’m a longtime GTD fan and it was fun to see that we get mildly exasperated at similar things.
the host of the event brought up the book’s argument that time is a constraint, not something to manage. “if we’re not managing time,” he asked, “what are we managing?”
david allen just kind of looked at him for a second. “ourselves.”
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writing is difficult again. most of my me-things are, so i’ve been working a lot, although i’m not sure what the chicken / egg situation is there. i worked late last night and this evening because i don’t really feel like doing anything else. maybe i’ll take tomorrow off and get out of the house.
i also cancelled therapy this week, we’ll see how that goes. i started seeing a new therapist in january and i’m not sure they’re a good fit; they come across kind of aloof? and i need someone to meet me at, like, level 7, while they’re stuck on making sure i know how to breathe when i’m anxious. why even have intake paperwork?
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raw photos from this weekend came in. i never recognize myself in pictures, and these aren’t different. i most often see my dad – the furrowed brow of our neutral faces, the still too-big two front teeth; sometimes i see one of my siblings. sometimes it’s just a strange woman who must have also done that thing in that place wearing that same outfit.
once in a blue moon, someone will capture me within a moment accurately. even then, when i see myself there, i don’t recognize myself the way i do in the mirror.
she got a couple of those frames this session: one with my hair in front of my face, one where i’m mostly out of focus.
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i want to say that i haven’t always been so preoccupied with, like, contemplation of the body, but i think i have been. i feel that one of the great nuisances of my life is not being able to see myself as a fully three-dimensional person. where my body begins and ends. the scope of me. it’s been too much of a theme; i suspect there will eventually be some grand life-altering lesson to finally and for-all sever me from the comforts of the illusory control i keep over my physical self.