Yesterday, I bought a new pair of running shoes.  I don’t run, or, I should say I rarely run.  I asked the salesman (a cutie) to show me their walking shoes (I went to the New Balance store), but the walking shoes were very business casual in look and feel.  I really wanted athletic shoes, hence the running style.

I have to buy insoles that give me extra arch support, and of course I had to buy some new socks while I was there, so my total came to $215.  Yeah.  Go live in L.A.  When I was a kid, $215 would buy a really decent used car!

My head is swimming today.  I am feeling the very beginnings of inspiration and, all the while, I’m wishing to get away from it all.  I can’t wait until my vacation at the end of this month and beginning of August.  I really don’t want to work professionally right now.  I think I’ll clean something today.  I just feel like cleaning or doing some other kind of drudge work, and by that I mean that I feel like getting into the nitty gritty of something.  I want the kind of activity that makes me forget the time, and then I look up after what feels like minutes and realize that four hours have passed.  I want to be in a different zone where my normal life is blotted out.  I need a break.  I’m mentally very tired.

I worked 11 days in a row over the past two weeks.  It wasn’t all toil and sweat, but not having a break takes its toll on me.  Well, that’s about it.  I’m not really into writing right now.  I guess that profundity will have to wait for another day.

I considered naming this post “Me today” or “Musings” or some other such highly original and very descriptive teaser.  However, Hubby and I had a little “chat” yesterday about me and my proclivity to inaction, therefore I chose to be more revealing and honest in announcing the post.  Honeychild must reconcile, resolve, control…whatever…this unhealthy way of coping with stress and anxiety that she has come to know and love.  Don’t ya just hate changin’ habits?  I do.  When it comes to hating or disliking things and concepts, Honeychild is never indolent.

In avoidance of today’s topic, I’ll awkwardly divert to mentioning that this morning I started reading Bob Smith’s first book, Openly Bob.  It’s a fast easy read and a complete escape that I really need right now.  Escape, you see, is the first love of the indolent.  Come to think of it, Honeychild is never indolent when it comes to identifying likes and loves either.

OK. Focus focus focus. Ahem.  What Hubby said about me yesterday is true.  I can’t deny it.  There is some kind of erosion of my core self that I have been experiencing for the past few years.  Although I’ve recognized it, I’ve not yet been successful in finding a way to combat, resolve, work through it…whatever…to the point that I would feel completely in charge of myself.  I’m not living consciously, except at work.  At work, I have the de facto artifice of the establishment and other foils to bounce my self off of.  I am continually resetting boundaries and finding my best creative work within assessing limitations and exploring options.  Thinking outside the box is not hard for me when the box is made of thin cardboard and isn’t even taped together well.

Why is the prospect of exercising such efforts on myself so much more daunting?  Hmmmm?  Don’t take my reflections to mean that I am down on myself or that I’m feeling inadequate.  What I am doing is clarifying how fuzzy my life really is.  UGH!!  How did this happen?

I’ve let my eating habits go to pot for about the 800th time in my life.  I’ve been eating sweets like a madman lately.  I haven’t exercised since before my car accident.  I’ve let my yoga go.  I’ve stopped taking walks.  I’ve quit drawing in my graphic journal.  I’ve let my drawing class enthusiasm fall by the wayside.  Let’s face it.  I am in the throes of a very long and very bad episode of analysis paralysis. It’s time to take action and I feel weird, awkward, and scared to make a choice.  What the fuck?  I feel inspired to do 100 things and nothing all at the same time.  I have no idea what is really important to me.  I feel that if I can’t do everything then I will just do none of it.  Pretty stupid, eh?

Am I that afraid that my life will be judged harshly by whatever avocations I choose?  If so, why do I care about that?  Am I afraid that if I make the choices, I’ll look back on my life at death and think that I wasted it all?  Again, I must pose the philosophically astute question, “What the fuck???”

Am I scared to make the right choice and be successful?  Am I scared my life will change?  Ugh. It’s making me tired to write about it.  Gotta go escape!!

Even though I’m really pressed for time this morning, I feel a completely uncontrollable urge to sit down and write a post in here.  I’m almost taken over by the need to dump my brain, so don’t expect this to flow well.  Think of the Seth Material…yeah.

Just before I went on the trip where I had my accident, I decided that I was going to tackle Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.   You might wonder why I decided to torture myself in this manner.  Since it is touted as the most personally influential book next to the Bible, and it is the longest novel ever written (ca. 640K words), and Ayn Rand is so controversial and hated/adored, I just felt that I have been excluded from cultural secret that I really need to be in on.  Although I don’t fancy myself to be someone who gives a crap about other peoples’ secrets, where Ayn Rand is concerned I have always felt dumb.  For years and years I have heard about her, but have had no first hand knowledge.  I just decided to get over myself and dive in.

Yes, I do not cotton to her philosophy on the whole.  She does make some good points and she is very thought provoking.  What I dislike is how she seeks to control human perspective.  She seems to adore and venerate creativity, but controlling perspective kills creativity.  The flaws, cracks, holes and incongruities in her thinking are too numerous to mention.  Although the book offers a bête-noire enjoyability—unpolished though her writing style may be—I see it more as an exercise in how not to think and live.  I’m one of those people who thinks that it’s really important to fully understand the “enemy,”  but I don’t believe that the opposite of Rand is automatically good.  As I said, she does make some points worth soul searching.  She knows how to make a person face their prejudices and she seductively offers very enticing and empowering, almost erotic, solutions.  The other day I told my physical therapist that I believe that she and Anton LeVay have a lot in common.  To unabashedly and completely wield one’s own personal power with only single-minded and self-serving purposes is very liberating.  In that regard, I liken it to having the attitude of a 3½ year-old for an entire lifetime.  Stay tuned for more further developed insights.

Today I am going to some fiber arts event at The Huntington.  The outing has been arranged by a coworker, so all I have to do is show up.  I’m not really planning to buy any yarn, but if they have a nicer stitch counter than the one I use, I’ll buy one of those.  It should be a nice day.  The Huntington gardens are gorgeous.  I need to get away from things and this will suit just fine.  I need t get the car washed and go buy sunscreen, so that’s why I’m in a rush this morning.

I am feeling much better and I’ve been released from physical therapy and from the doctor’s care.  My wrist still hurts, but I see incremental improvement all the time.  Things at work are unbelievably stressful.  I’m nearly compressed to my breaking point.  After this week is over, I am looking forward to decompressing.  It will take a while, but just knowing that the worst is over is a big help.

All of the job situation stuff that I wrote about in previous entries is really going to happen.  I will be taking over the cataloging operation next month.  My friend will also be taking over the operation that, heretofore, I believed he would not.  The word is out, so now the fun really begins.  I’m feeling tired and tapped out.  I don’t want to think about it for a while.  I’m beginning to formulate the take-over, as it were, but I’m not ready.  My boss has committed to moving slowly through it with me, so I’m just hoping that the rest of the world will allow it.  Ready or not, here they come!

Gotta go. TTFN.