What I'm thinking about today

I've been thinking a lot lately about how sites like Facebook really stretch the word "friend" to include people I consider only acquaintances. Likewise there are people in my life who I was considering my friends, but may only really be acquaintances.

To me a friend is around and supportive in good times and in bad. These people can be counted on, even if it's for nothing else other than a kind ear and maybe some advice. They realize that things aren't always good, but are willing to be there when it's not because they really like who you are. They care for your feelings, and when there's a disagreement they try to repair the breach because you're important to them.

Then there are acquaintances. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with acquaintances. They can be good to celebrate occasions and occasionally get together with. They are also good for networking purposes and a laugh. Acquaintances are like the hearty stock in a stew: On their own they are lacking, but they fill in and enrich the spaces in your life. They also give your friends a break from time to time. However, they are not the people you turn to in crisis or when things get rough. They aren't there when it really matters. That's what your friends are for. Also, the loss of acquaintances isn't a big deal.

Facebook is like a picture of your social stew. Friends and acquaintances and family all jumbled together, like your real life. These are all the people you know.

Regarding the people mentioned in the first paragraph. I think if they aren't really there in good times and only really act like acquaintances, then I should really treat and regard them as such. Now that leaves a lot of empty spaces in the "friends" category, but those spaces will be filled if there are people who really want to fill them. If they remain empty then more of my energy is devoted to those who remain.

Maybe this is like spring cleaning of the soul. I'm gathering up my love and figuring out where it should go.

Crossposted to Facebook

But what do you really want...

My entries all start out the same: as entries in my personal journal where I keep my private thoughts. There are many that are too private to post publicly, and some that have had to be edited to make the cut. I almost didn't post this entry. Then I thought that if I really want the things I say I do, I need to give a little away. I need to show more than I have. I need to have the courage to be a little vulnerable from time to time.


Without further ado:



Instead of wishing that I lived in a world where my desire to create and my desire to make a living were not mutually exclusive, I have decided to make that world a reality on some level. 

My idea is to not quit my day job, but to make my hobbies somehow, someway, my the most important aspect of my life. I wish to have the bravery to not only pursue my interests, but to present my labors as well.

I have considered myself first and foremost an artist (of various mediums) for a long time. I suppose I should remain true to that instead of turning my back on it. After all, art is the only thing that has really been good to me.


However, doubts linger and I’m afraid this will go the way it all goes. And deep down I hope that it will bring me the acceptance I’ve craved my entire life but always somehow fell short of. I may continue to fall short, but creating gets me closer to acceptance than any other thing I’ve done.


I really want to be a kinetic force in the universe. I wish to do things that are interesting and thought provoking. I wish to amuse myself and others.


I wish to push past the wall of apathy I’ve built between myself and the rest of the world over the years, because it has brought me nothing but sorrow.


I want change so badly, but I’m afraid I’m not good enough to achieve it. I fear that somehow I’m not worth being better, or having more. I’m afraid that when it comes right down to it I won’t be able to follow through and really fix what has gone so wrong.


I need strength, not a short burst, but the kind that lasts. The kind of strength that you see on the faces of those who have persevered and made something, however small, out of nothing.


I need friends, old and new, and the kind of inspiration that comes from the open exchange of ideas.


Most of all, I need faith in myself and the courage to finally see it through.


Crossposted to facebook.

A Story

Did you know that I draw too?

Over the years, some of my friends have been surprised to learn that I can draw at all, because I don’t do it that much anymore. In my room hangs one of my paintings, and there is a book tucked away somewhere with the best of what survived my tumultuous teenage years, but there has hardly been anything in the visual art range from me in some time.

I’m thinking about this because recently I began drawing again and what has come out of me is surprising. Mostly I’ve been doing rough drawn cartoons, but they have become an outlet of creativity that I haven’t been able to express otherwise. So drawing is my latest thing.

I didn’t really begin drawing in earnest until I went to high school and not until my junior year. I was surrounded by a mass of extremely talented and creative people. Everyone sort of had their thing and mine was acting, some could sing, some played instruments and one or two could draw. Many of us dabbled in more than one thing.

My defining trait then and now is I have an unrelenting need to express myself creatively and any way I can. The medium changes over the years and sometimes it lapses entirely, but the need is there and I assume it always will be.

However, in high school I suffered from a massive inferiority complex. Aside from acting, I didn’t feel that anything else I did was worth shit. It didn’t help that I was surrounded by people that I thought could do it better and usually did. For that reason I doodled but that was about it.

In my junior year, I had to take a visual arts class to complete my arts sequence and get my diploma. I took the initiative to show my teacher, Ms. Jordan, some of my rough sketches. I still don’t know why, but she decided to take me under her wing. She gave me my first real sketchbook, a bunch of different pencils and a book of classic art and told me to draw at least 15 minutes a day 30 on weekends and show her the results. She told me to draw anything, pictures from magazines or stuff I see around me. She gave me tips and told me about shading techniques, lighting sources, lead densities, and anything else she could think of. She told me not to worry about what my friends were drawing, to not even show them if I didn’t want to.

After a short while, something really weird happened: I started to get pretty decent, and Ms. Jordan started to encourage me to show my work. She gave my final project a spot in the art show downtown without ever seeing it. I think I almost cried when I saw she put my painting with the projects for the advanced class even though I wasn’t in it. There’s still a picture somewhere of me standing in front of that painting, and aside from being on stage it was my proudest moment in high school. It was the first time I really felt like an artist. I don’t think any of those friends of mine went to the show, but that’s okay. This was something that I genuinely felt was just about me and I was finding I liked being on my own.

I continued to draw even after high school. I only stopped when I got into my first real relationship with a guy who I considered a better artist than I, and who also left little room for me in our relationship. The irony is the inferiority complex that kept me from drawing in the first place made me stop.

I may have taken a long road back here, but you don’t stop being an artist, and so I pick up the pencil again. We’ll see where it takes me this time. I am the true jack of all trades, and if enough time goes by I might just get good at everything.

A silly picture.

Because I decided that it would be a good idea to walk four miles in the blistering sunlight, I now have a sunburn.

However I did see this on a traffic light control box, so it was worth it.

"Now I'll not have things getting silly...."

Early Wonder Woman wore a skirt!

This morning I made the comment on Faceyspace that I only seem to be attractive to the Serial Killer demographic. That I was a specialty item that has only one use that no one ever needs. I then said that the one use is probably being dressed in a wonder woman costume and stuffed under a porch.

I then decided to do an artists rendition.

Rebel Yell

Every time I relapse on my health and fitness I learn something about myself. Every time I try again I lose and keep a little more off. The journey, and my desire to find compromise between loving myself and changing myself, is emotional at best and I am on fire to succeed.

To the casual observer it may look like I’m on again, off again. Every idea I have may seem like another scheme that will not work. To me it is as if I must climb the tallest and most daunting of mountains. I make progress and sometimes I slip back a little. I try again and I hope I don’t make the same mistake because I learned what made me slip last time. To me it’s slow, it’s agonizing, and I feel as if I have sweat out and cried out every single one of these pounds. Every one of them takes everything I have because it’s hard, but it proves I’m human. If I am simply an animal I would just succumb to my base urges. In this toxic environment I would surely eat myself to death, as I have seen many others do. My primate brain wants fat and sugar and salt and it wants it all the time. My humanity allows me to decide to not give in to my desires and do what is best for me. That is why I will eventually succeed.

But I was born starving. Starving for food. Starving for love. Starving for joy. That primate feels it and she wants and she screams so loud that sometimes I can hear nothing else. If I don’t eat enough, if I don’t love enough, if I train too much she screams and I lose my footing while I just shut her up. While I try to find a little temporary peace.

So please forgive my setbacks, my renewed efforts, while I try to be a better me. I have to learn to live with the animal inside me. I have to learn how to keep her quiet or how to ignore her when she bellows about needs. She doesn’t understand that it’s a slow road to fulfill them.


It’s a good thing that I am human after all…

The Young Woman and the Sea

When I am seeking peace from my stress I want to visualize myself standing on top of Skytop at Mohonk Mountain house. However, I find myself instead on a beach with a glass jar. The water is warm and it washes over my feet. As I walk I collect seashells, putting them in the jar.

I figured this had something to do with my mother. She loved the ocean, and she used to collect seashells and put them in jars all over the house. I don’t think this is entirely inaccurate; I think my subconscious is putting this in terms that I understand on some level. However, I think it is not really about my mother, but what those images invoke in me. They brought peace to my mother, who was almost never at peace, and so I associate them thusly.

Today I had a revelation. The beach is my mind, the shells are my duties and responsibilities, and the ocean is the restless current of my emotions and emotional needs, pulling my attention away from my tasks. The waves promise serenity, but serenity only comes when the jar is full.

Today would have been my mother’s 65th birthday. What a fitting day for revelations about the shells, the beach, and the sea.