Things About That Time of the Year

Call it Spring Fever. Call it Cabin Fever. Call it discontent. It's that time of year again. The time when it's too warm for boots and too cold for flip flops and everything I try to wear is Exactly the Wrong Thing. The weather is having an identity crisis just like I am. The house is too stuffy and the yard is too mucky and the only thing that feels good is being in the car and cruising down the road to anywhere, slightly over the speed limit with loud music and somebody that doesn't annoy me. Or a dog.

Unfortunately it's also that time of year when it seems more important than ever that I remain gainfully employed and so I find myself cruising up the road to places I'd rather not go, slightly under the speed limit behind a chip truck (if you have to ask, then you've never been on HWY 25 to the Canadian border) that has just thrown a rock the size of a golf ball into my already cracked windshield. It's ok, I didn't like that windshield anyway.

Seems like of All the Years that I've been complaining, this one should be the least complain-worthy. I've got a brand new-to-me house, living in the "Big City," and all-in-all, thing are looking mighty upwards for me. And yet, here I am, with complaints to register in spite of it.

I was reminded the other day, while talking to Someone Amazing, that this is part of my cycle, something I go through every. single. year. Like in 2017, and in 2016  and again in 2016 , and in 2014, and a lot of other times in between and before and probably ever afterward. It's just part of my year. Part of appreciating the other seasons when I am happy to be home and snuggled in, waiting anxiously for the first snowfall of the year and getting Christmas Trees. Or escaping the sweltering heat with a cold beer in a shady hammock. Spring is a restless season for me. And that's ok. It makes me re-examine and re-evaluate where I am at and what I am doing. Sometimes I come out knowing I am on the right path, and sometimes I get to re-adjust. Discontent isn't bad if it moves us to the next step, or the next phase, or the next level of commitment to the thing that we have been dragging our feet about, like a retirement plan, or a book to write, or Someone Amazing.

The good news is I get to bust out soon. In a few days I will be on my way to sunshiney and oceany things in Mexico with people that don't annoy me. And then it will be time to get to work. Time to travel and be busy and be homesick and discontent that I don't have endless hour to kill in my stuffy house and mucky yard with somebodies that do annoy me. And dogs.



Things About the Whelm

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be - whelmed?" - Chastity, 10 Things I Hate About You 

it's a long road to... somewhere. 


I am some level of whelmed right now.  I am overwhelmed with the amount of mental and emotional energy that I'm supposed to be putting into a lot of things right now, but I am underwhelmed with the payoff of said things in the near future. Sure, they're investments in the bright and beautiful down-the-road, or whatnot, but being an instant gratification kind of a girl, I find myself making up for the over and the under whelming by avoiding it all and throwing tantrums. Does being caught right in the middle make me just whelmed? Or is it cabin fever? I feel bad calling it that since I get out to do more cool things than a lot of people I know, and I really can't complain. Even so, here I am, discontent as always, complaining.

All the energy goes out, nothing comes back in except some piddly paychecks and well meaning criticism. It's frustrating. I'm not even sure what to look forward to because nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed. It's Friday. For some people, the weekend means a break. For me it means more work and instability than the other days. I've grown to distrust weekends with their shiny attractiveness and poor followthrough. They're just like every other day of the week. Disappointing. They just keep coming and going and I am stuck running in place on the slimy log of time as it rolls in the sludge, trying not to fall off into the pit of despair.

The problem I have, according to some of the self-help books I am reading, is two fold. 1) I give too many f***s about things I shouldn't (i.e. everything), and 2) I bought into the bull crap that life is supposed to be good, or pleasant, or that happiness actually matters. I'm trying hard to give less f***s. But I still can't understand why we're here if we spend the few years we have just being miserable so that we can die. And here we circle back to the meaning of life and ages-old rhetoric of "bringing glory to god" "being a good person" "making a difference" "earning a mansion in heaven along streets paved with gold and choruses of angels lining them - but no dogs because animals don't have souls" kicks in. Blagh. Meh. Poop the duck.

I want a life full of happiness like warm crusty sourdough bread with way too much butter and swirling glasses of dry red wine. I want dogs. I don't want to be a 'good' person. I want to make people laugh. I want to be a memorable person.  I want to be making moments that make the meh days manageable.

For awhile, I was on the 'no bad days' band wagon. But I've realized that that ideal is just as unrealistic as streets of gold or being a good person. There are bad days. And bad weeks and bad months and bad years. Like my brilliant baby brother says, if all days were perfect, there would be no perfect days. It's ok that some days are bad. As long as some days aren't. I am trying to focus more on the 'no wrong turns' philosophy, that tells me that even meh days are serving some purpose down the road. Even if it takes EONS of suffering to get there. Meanwhile, here I sit, in The Whelm, with my bad days and my misguided ideals and misplaced f***s, waiting for something that I haven't quite identified yet. Probably sourdough bread.