Time Away Makes a Heart Grow Fonder

In a rush to reinvent, I tried to start a new blog that would be about... hell, I don't know, whatever I wanted (http://littlefishgambolasgladascanbe.blogspot.com/). But it didn't work out.

So I'm returning, all Luddite-style, to the paper journal. Maybe I'll write something later, maybe a little life-in-Panama blog or whatever, but until then...

This blog is The Quitting Experience, which derailed around the topic of my quitting smoking. There might be a handful of interesting archives if you're interested. Thanks for stopping by!

The Amber

Truth: This month has been themed around my jewellry, which I attempted to connect with something or some part of my personality that goes with smoking, that keeps me smoking. The thoughts that lead me to smoke. Wasn't a popular month. So here's the kip:

1) I also spent this month logging back into my empty MySpace profile to fuck with Angela and prove she was still stalking me, Ky, and B. I was right, it's somewhat humiliating to admit, but I'm so damn depressed and angry all the time and I know that I can poke the dead jellyfish and get result. I needed an outlet. And I felt like fucking with her again, on my terms and schedule, could make me own the hurt that I felt after she fuct over a lot of people I care(d) about. I'm sorry it bothered me so much that I had to keep writing about it. I'm not going to anymore, because I'm not blogging anymore.

2) After hitting a manic swing that beget a diet and exercise obsession and a whole slew of productivity and travel, I crashed. I'm back in the deep, I don't care about sharing my thoughts anymore or trying to entertain some percieved audience. I'm boring, I read all the time, and I don't want to nor can I seem to stop smoking. I feel hateful and horrible; this is bipolar disorder. I'm sorry that I have it because it makes me feel that my blogging is vain, indulgent, and masturbatory. So I want to shut up.

There's too much under my surface to make for an interesting, objective blog. My Quitting Experience is entirely empty of real stuff amusing and fun blogs are made of, pitches on the patch or Chantix, instead it became a confessional meandering spot for a person who went through a whole bunch of life and yapped about it because she was lonely. I don't want be that person anymore, so I'm pulling the plug. I can tell you that, in terms of behavior modification and habit changing, it can be very difficult and we tend to be our own worst critcs, and we are a product of our culture of immediacy - we must learn to be patient.

Words don't function anymore in the public sphere and my comfort zone. Thanks for reading, good night and good luck. And don't forget to be kind to smokers - They are people too.

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The Mood Ring

I've owned several mood rings in my time; I worked in an arcade and gained a pleathora that way, but they were cool at certain points. I still have one, a pink ring procured at Keith Street Pub in Clemson. My "wife" Justine bought it for me:) I still have our "wedding" ring too - it's a plastic ring with two googly eyes. Neon yellow. Very cool.

I always was confused by the mood ring - it's entirely based on body temperature, but my mood color never seemed to accurately reflect my mood, thus I would wonder if I knew what mood I was in. Ha. Anyway, they're groovy little rings, but they don't do much in terms of really telling me how I'm doing. I can check out a cigarette pack and figure that out with much more ease - nervous, anxious, bored - lotsa smokes smoked. Very little, busy, impatient. Rarely is there a happy, languid cigarette anymore. Mostly these are disrupted by work or coughing people or boyfriends who seem to attract it no matter where I stand. I hate feeling self-concious about smoking.

With prices escalating, however, and my recent purchase of BASIC ultra lights(!!) the habit may wane due to financial strain before mental health. But onto mood, which mine is apparently in the "disorder" category. They cut back the happy meds, and it seemed cool and the gang for a couple of weeks, but I'm back to the worthless. While Courtney Love points out "you can have over a million bucks in the bank and be at a fucking five star hotel in Paris surrounded by couture dresses in sample sizes and still be bawling your eyes out." You can be fine but not, apparently. Finances are like giant looming wasp, ready to strike if I veer off the tightrope a litle. But I asked for what I'm paying for. I knew that I'd have to settle debt and live coin-to-coin in order to go to Panama AND fly down to Florida to see my friends, not to mention getting my computer refurbished. I know about these expenses, and how that means no little treats, no magazines, no nothing. Even my travel budget is like shoestring poor for this weekend, but am going to see friends, going to relax at beach. The therapist says not to make everything into a moral issue, but I keep arguing with myself whether or not I am a piece of shit for being broke and still taking a vacation.

Never mind the power bill going down almost $60 bucks from frugal use of heat, never mind endless juggling of bank accounts and having to ask for ANOTHER loan in order to cover Panama (we're at $50k now and soaring), nevermind that credit is fuct, that cannot get accepted into conference in Germany, get travel award from World Affairs Council, nor can work for John's Hopkins Youth Program in CA or HI this summer due to economy sucking, I want a vacation, I have a birthday this month, and I know goddamn well how much I will not "get" or "want" in order to do the things I want to do so much, like get a bamboo yoga mat or new clothes or new whatever - I know I want to go to Panama and get my grad certificate in Latin American Studies/Latino studies all the more than those THINGS. And it's just stuff. It's going to come out sooner or later, it always does unravel itself into something manageable. I'm working my ass off even if there is no reward to reap. I'm doing this because I want to, because I can, and because I chose to. Weeping in the bathroom will not solve problems of debt, sanity, academic clout, publishing, power bill - I can give myself a lot more to cry about if I take this hardstuff stupidly. It can always get worse, and sometimes has to before it gets better. That's the crux of the mood ring; why do you need a piece of plastic to tell you how you are, nevermind how you feel?

"Failure is not an option." - my dad, a manufacturing saint and the man who hung the moon

Some
Jolly Stuff
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Purely Gratuitious, just to keep up with the pop gossip like I know you wanna;)

The Sapphire

Sometimes you have to use
other people's
words to say
your own

The Gaspeite

Being an Aries with an Aries rising, Capricorn Moon, I feel that some of my complexities or strange bits are explained through the stars that should be forgiven. I cannot help that I am stubborn, mean, quick, and impatient. It is the way of the cosmos, my friends. And that Capricorn moon? She's a fickle bitch - cardinal earth - the sea goat - it can't make it's mind up what kind of animal it is, and its signal is a nautilus chamber. Jesus. How can you expect me to be anything but an angry RamSeaGoat.

If there is any appeal about me, it's the dry mellow, the slow laugh. I have cultivated this. Cigarettes have helped this. There's the undercurrent of grrl, which I try to uphold with my penchant for black, clingy sweaters. I know that there is a power I posess, but I chose to hone others. But I feel odd in v-necks. Exposed. I like the malice implied in the hidden. I love my ink. I cuss real well and can get anybody to smile. I still try everything, I go broke to explore, I do not cease and desist despite obstacles.

Women all over the world salute. (Who knows the book reference here?)

At ease (still workin' it) sisters. But this edge that I wanted, that I like in others, has come with a lot of stuff that creates anger and tastes for photographs of dead-looking trees or other "depressing" things. That's my mom's opinion, anyway. She likes flowers. I like that about her. I just like my flowers a little gnarly.

Thus the appeal of the gaspeite ring. It was a "I technically have the money (on my credit card)" purchases that follow me in a trail of overdraft slips. Workin on it. But the ring - I got it in Asheville, and it was more than I really wanted to spend, but I was very happy (the quad took a field trip in the forests then decided to just head to asheville) and I'd just started dating my man. I knew he was in an awkward spot where his new girlfriend was gooey over jewelry (a ring) that's pretty expensive for a grad student budget ($68). This is a move a man should make with caution in early stages. Plastic Penny over here just whipped out the WaMu without a flinch. I was so happy - new relationship, independance - intact.

It's a curious ring, all green stone but wrapped in a little cage of wire, and the band is wrapped with wire, so it looks twisted and trapped all at once. It's not tiny either, and it catches your hair a lot. Anyway, it fits me real well in all ways. How very trapped of an individual I feel, how we all must feel in our own little worlds. I've always liked solitude, nature, healing by the peaceful wood, and smokes make that a frequent (and cold) reality. But in other ways, that ring shows me how bound I am to all sorts of old thoughts and habits and whatnot, and my pretty green stone (my pretty little idea about myself and what others think) might not be true. Better to keep things the same so as not to blow cover.

This was actually the most honest thing I've ever written here. Hope you didn't feel trapped into reading it. Tee Hee.

More Honesty
Really, This is Brutal
It's Not Even Good, Erin
Shut up, haters.

The Wood

I love cedar trees, they might be my favorite type of wood. They smell good, you can get good posts, beams, and logs out of 'em, and they burn longer than pine. They get blue berries, they are ever-green; bugs don't dig 'em and the bark is cool. They can grow into huge giants or can remain compact.

I wish I could smell some cedar right now. I wish I could smell. I am always annoyed to be sidelined by illness, and this little coldy-fluy thing is taking time away from yoga and walking, nevermind breathing. But usually cedar (and, oddly, gasoline) can knock through my most stuffed of sinuses. Not today; my precious cedar Tibetan prayer beads, the first optimistic and glorious "I'm out on my own" in Asheville gift that wasn't an illegal substance. I cannot smell my bracelet. It is stretched out I can't bear to re-do it - it could be an anklet now, but then I'd have to yank my foot to my nose to smell the cedar, which would be most likely overpowered by my rank feet stink.

The bracelet represents things to me, as English majors are wont to assign value and symbolism to random things, and this bracelet reminds me a of a gal who was into taking chances, into going with the wind, talking to strangers. This was a girl in love with the world, making new friends, starting college, and suddenly juggling dudes as if she were more than what her boyfriend made her out to be. And I'd been studying yoga for three years at that point, and I longed for a rosary but couldn't claim any agency on Catholicism. I like to chant the four chords of the universe, with an "om nama savaya" and an "om" when running the beads through my fingers. It calms me, OCD picker/plucker/ripper that I am. The smell enhanced this effect, and so I'm grumpy and can't smell.

What an awful lot to complain about, eh? I know. I guess I'm just miffed because my nip-o-Quil tactic didn't work on this season change, I have a guest to entertain, and I've been out-healthing myself really consistently. To have period and time change and just-now-settling-in-from-ABQ time is just some pits. But there are cherries, like the memories I can tack on to these beads, and the idea that if I quit smoking I'd miraculously be healed. Non-smokers get sick too, and I get sick less frequently than everybody; most of my sick days are "mental refreshment" days.
I guess I'll just lay back and enjoy some thoughts of cedar. Come to think of it, I have to re-evaluate the "what sense would I be willing to part with" question. I usually say smell, but perhaps... Ooh, it's a toughy.

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The Turquoise

In my early 20s, all I wanted was a turquoise ring. It was kinda bohemian, funky, and I was very into large, chunky rings. A boyfriend got me one for my birthday, and it garnered the title "the pimp ring" through a comment made by one of the Black Ink Monks at Johnson C. Smith University. It fit perfectly on my index finger, it made me feel mystical.

Have I ever reminded you that I'm one of the dumbest people on Earth? Sure, I can read a lot at once, but there's not much else I can do, at least in the realm of common sense. I am so innerly immature (week of the child Aries, but why blame the stars); I hang on to stupid topics like ex-friends and ex-boyfriends and old experiences and realize how utterly boring and maturity-lacking that I am. I have thin blood, as my friend Chase says, but I also have thin skin. Everything sticks in it. I make crappy conversations with people about possible names for a future dog. I am prepared to talk about the housing market, Paulson, Obama, the stimulus package, veterans, even fucking dental floss, but I prefer to live in fantasy land bingo world. I am not bound to reality in a very dumb way. The blonde stereotype may be true - I just need to buy into it.

I envy people with self-esteem; it must do wonders when faced with adversity. A really loathsome cretin could make a statement about me on a MySpace status and I'll spend all day in my head trying to defend it. I just read "The Death of Ivan Illych," by Tolstoy, and I should be mulling over it, or the Tennessee Williams play I watched last night, or the art I saw in the Georgia O'Keefe museum. Or anything else, death, life, love, family... But I fantasize about dogs and manipulating worthless things.

The turqouise does not make me look mystical, it makes me look like another poseur. I need to figure out how not to kid myself; my ego is not something that should ever poke its head into the light of day.

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