Faith.

I freaking hate it because I have this urge, no need, to write all day but by the time I get home, I’m too tired/stressed/depressed/feeling sorry for myself that I hop into bed and distract my brain. When I’m at work, I’m constantly living in my head, letting it spin and swirl and take me where it needs to. I wish I could take notes while it does this – I would have a lot of material by now. But instead, I sit and stew until I go into a mind coma. It gets so bad I do stupid stuff like take my stapler to the kitchen thinking it's my coffee mug. Or I forget how to load labels in the printer I've used 34878932408976 times (approx.) It’s hard for me to focus on people, even talk to them, because it takes a lot of effort for me to pull my consciousness out of itself. I eventually do though, just in time to drive home and complain about it.

I experience the world by peering out of my brain, when I should be living it with my whole body, mind and soul. I feel like I’m just working through this hour to get to the next hour to get to the next hour. I’m waiting, biding time, wasting time… I think I’m waiting for my real life to start. The problem is that I don’t know what that real life is, where to look for it, or if it even exists for me. Isn’t the present my real life?

I find comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one experiencing this. At the same time, it’s nice to feel original. Originality is pretty much extinct; we merely copy everyone before us, but do it from our own perspective. Somehow this makes it original, when really it’s just a fresh spin on something that’s been done before. Well, I guess that is one definition of original. Whatever.

I’m tired of feeling trapped. I feel trapped at work. I feel trapped in this tiny room at my family’s home. I feel trapped within my own loneliness and doubt. Usually when I go outside, the relief is overwhelming. Sometimes I cry. Okay, a lot of times I cry. At church yesterday, the priest talked about faith. He said, “We need to move from our minds to our hearts, from understanding to believing.” That really struck a chord with me. I realized that I am so full of doubt, wariness and suspicion, that I have no room for faith and love! What happened to me?

Maybe if I held on to my faith, if I gave it reason to stick around, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so suffocated. Faith, and belief in God and all that He is, is an instant mood stablizer. Having faith implies having love, patience, acceptance and peace. I must have faith. I must.

Works well under pressure.

Instead of studying for my final in two days, I'm sitting in a study lounge listening to a woman discuss how disappointing soy cheese is. I do this every time: procrastinate until my test anxiety rises so high that I buckle down with a week's worth of coffee, and study until my eyeballs fall out. Sometimes I even have the audacity to complain that, 'Ugh... this teacher requires too much! I don't have time for this!'

Oh, but I have had time. Plenty of time, in fact. Yes, I'm working. Yes, I have hobbies and other activities that take up my time. And yes, I am quite capable of rearranging my priorities to accommodate my studies. But I don't.

Blame it on my work load, blame it on my teachers, blame it on our increasingly electronic society for providing endless amounts of distraction. Blame on anything, really, but the truth is, I'm just plain ol' procrastinating. Others, namely older people who are holding me accountable, may assume that I'm unmotivated, uninterested, lazy, undeserving, blah blah blah.

I am actually none of those. I think I'm just overwhelmed. And not just with my studies, but life in general. It has a tendency to blow by with such speed and ferocity that I have to distract myself from watching it pass me by. I procrastinate to keep myself from working towards a potentially unsuccessful end, and thus just more lost time. Besides, it's too depressing to wave at that time and those lost possibilities. 'Bye back-packing across Europe! So long novel-length manuscript! Take care kick-ass job opportunity! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!' See what I mean? Oh but wait. I'm ruminating, aren't I? And I'm making excuses, too? Well, hell. I'm fairly certain that's another form of procrastination.

Alright, alright. Fine! I get it. What's life without living in the moment and taking chances? Why let test anxiety represent not just school failure, but the ultimate fear of failing at life? Why the hell am I wasting time being such a baby, forever looking backwards and ignoring the beauty of the present? Time to buck up, Holan. Get up and get moving!

Sigh.

Procrastination is a huge waste of time. But yet... there is something comforting in being pressed uncomfortably against a deadline. I've gotten accustomed to working well under pressure. Call it a defense mechanism, but hey, it's gotten me this far.

Once I find some coffee, it's business time, baby.

Oh, bother...

There are lots of things that bother me: Squirrels. People who eat crunchy food in a quiet room. Scrunchies. Odd numbers. The words 'squat' and 'munch'. The list goes on and if I were to exhaust it, I'd most likely fall into a fit of manic self-analysis. No thanks. Lately, I've only been noticing the things that bother me about myself. Where did all of this super self-criticism come from? That was rhetorical because, believe you me, I know EXACTLY where it came from.

Top 5 Culprits:

1. Mirrors
2. Books on dating advice for women
3. Singleness
4. Men (or my ideas of them)
5. Seeing people I knew in high school

My stupid, freaking, constant inner dialogue takes all of these and uses them to fuel it's bitter tirades. I'm too pale/fat/short/bossy/stupid/overwhelming/annoying et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This isn't self-deprication - this is honestly what runs through my head on a constant loop. The volume varies depending on where I am, or who I am with. The longer I'm alone, the worse it gets. If there are no distractions or people in my midst, my inner idiot uses these to reinforce all the self blame and hatred. It's really depressing if you think about it. And I know I'm not the only one who does this. And I also know that most of the inner dialogue I entertain is maladaptive, distracting and most importantly, exaggerated. I am aware that I'm not as horrible as my conscious claims. I have my faults of course, but if I truly embodied the traits my mind thinks I have, I'd be living in a remote hermit colony in some distant cave. Or I'd be clinically insane. I'm not sure which would be worse.

Moral of the blog is, don't always trust your inner critic. It usually doesn't have a healthy perspective, nor does it display the real truth. It serves a purpose on some level, but unless it's helping you be a better person to yourself and those around you, it should be listened to with uber massive filters.

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." ~G.K. Chesterton

Bunnies and Loneliness.

I have never made the connection between bunnies and loneliness until today...

Today at work I processed a book called 'Emmaline' or something. It was a kid's book about a little girl who finds a gray bunny and tries to keep him. She tells him, "If you let me, I'll take care of you and protect you forever." This girl doesn't have any friends - at least no human ones. After looking at that I laughed, then immediately thought of John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' which then made me think of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he meets the Abominable Snowman (that was a long-ass sentence). In both the book and cartoon, there is a lonely, unique creature who finds comfort in a furry companion. They both make promises to take care of them... if only the little bunnies don't leave them all alone.

Are bunnies drawn to lonely people?

If that wasn't enough weirdness, I recently read a book that has bunnies, the Abominable Snowman, loneliness, and Jesus. It was a fictional comedy by Christopher Moore about the part of Jesus' life that's not in the Bible (i.e. his teenage, young adult years). Jesus goes to train with some Buddhist monks in India (did I say this was fiction?) when he encounters the Abominable Snowman. Jesus takes an instant liking to the lonely guy, and befriends him. He keeps him company until the creature dies. The book highlighted the idea that both Jesus and the Snowman were experiencing the loneliness that comes with being one-of-a-kind. Where are the bunnies, you ask? Just wait. Later on in the book, Jesus is chillin' after turning water into wine, when this little girl hands him a fluffy white rabbit. Jesus gently takes the animal and is fascinated with its vulnerability and softness. He carries it around for awhile, being comforted by it and keeping it safe.

What is with the bunnies and the loneliness??? Bunnies represent new life and springtime, but how does that connect with lonely people? I can't figure it out! It's so weird.

Perhaps I'll just chalk it up to coincidence and go back to reading my 'Neverwhere' book. Because that makes total sense (not).

Fortunes of Candlelight

I got a fortune cookie last week. I don't like the cookie part - I imagine they taste an awful lot like a cereal box would if you were so inclined to chew on one. Though I don't like to eat fortune cookies, I will bite them just so I can get the ever-so-helpful words of wisdom that are supposed to be inside. Most of the time I don't get anything other than a laugh when I read them, and that's only because I add "in bed" to the end of them (I am totally, like, mature and stuff). I once got a fortune that read:
"You will get a fortune cookie." Uh, ya think?

My fortune cookie last week read:

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."

My first thought was, "What the hell does that even mean?" So I pocketed it to ask someone about it later. That night I gave to my little brother and asked him to read it out loud. He did, and when I asked him what it meant he simply said, "You should light 2 big candles, not just one little one."

Hmmm... he has a point.

Justification Station

I realized that I hadn't updated my blog in 6 months. Holy crap. While I would like to start new and fresh with a long entry, I have to write a paper instead. So, I'm posting old stuff until I can get around to writing for realz.

Just thought you should know that I'm airing laundry from last year that has been long gone. Go ahead and have a look at the clutter and mush otherwise known as my brain, circa 2008.

Literary Love

This is what happens. You’re in a library on a Monday night, wandering around half-heartedly, wondering how long you’re going to put off your homework, when suddenly you see a gorgeous guy browsing in the nonfiction. Before you know it, your staring at him stupidly while a fantasy bursts to life in your head without your consent… You, him, a castle or maybe a cottage or beach house, love, happiness, whispered promises of forever…

Okay, at least that is what happens to me. I have these fantasies about how romance should be, about how I want it to happen for me. Most of these fantasies are a jumbled reincarnation of all the romantic comedies I’ve seen or romance novels I’ve read. I have found that if you were to throw together all of these movies and books, you’d find only two different scenarios, only with different names and varying degrees of charming character flaws.

In scenario number one, you have the beautiful but slightly damaged woman in need of rescuing, usually with a name like Shanna or Rebecca, who can’t help but fall prey to the cold, self-centered men who make them weak and weepy. Then you’ve got your aggressive, roughish man, Drake or Jonathan, who’s brooding good looks go unnoticed by him and he can’t imagine why women collectively sigh and swoon whenever he’s rescuing babies or fighting crime. Drake too is misunderstood, and he’s jaded by women who only want him for the good looks he still has yet to admit he has. But wait! Here comes Shanna who notices his good looks but looks beyond them to the misunderstood man beneath, and finally – FINALLY – they each have found someone who understands them, who looks beyond all the physical beauty, into the beauty of their souls, of their minds, the things that truly matter.

In scenario number two, the woman is confident (still beautiful, of course) and self-sufficient, with a name like Charlie or Sam (something befitting of a woman who defies traditional gender roles) who is still damaged, but not as weepy as Shanna, and who hates men until she meets the one who’s witty enough and sensitive enough to make her feel again. And that’s where quirky, artsy, and always funny man number two (let’s call him Remy) comes in, whose heart has been broken by carbon-copy blondes who can’t appreciate his love of art or passion for playing the guitar. He happens to run into Sam, spilling coffee on her high powered low-cut suit or something equally choreographed, and he sees the real woman underneath, the woman who, as a little girl, had dreams of making pottery or helping orphans, and doesn’t really care about her 6 figure paycheck. Remy helps Sam loosen up and Sam in turn helps Remy see his potential and in the end they both succeed and fall in love.

Happily ever after. The end. Lights out.

I fall victim to these scenarios all the time, whether they play out in a book, on a screen or in my head. Then as soon as I’m done dreaming, watching or reading these scenarios, the blinding lights of reality send my mind crashing back to where I really am: single, lonely, and wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life. Or as it happened last Monday, standing in a library, clutching a math book, and still staring at Mr. Gorgeous.

I don’t know who he was, but he reminded me of why I hate being single. Before I could stop myself, I started envisioning how cool it would be to date someone who loved reading as much as I did; who would understand my obsession with David Sedaris and my love of the way new books smell.

For so long I have been hiding and pretending, all the while waiting, for this person. Not for library boy specifically, but what he represents. It’s such an awful feeling sometimes, this waiting. It’s not that I think about it all the time or that I’ve stopped living just to wait for it. I live my life and have fun, but the feeling is always there in the back of my mind. Like the old leaky faucet, drip drip dripping a reminder that I’m still alone no matter how many people I surround myself with. Usually, I ignore it enough to enjoy my life anyway. Because really, I don’t need a significant other right this second to make life worth living.

Still…

I hope and pray that there is someone out there for me. I live for hope. That’s all I have. It’s the only thing I have the power to possess or destroy. No one can take it from me. At the end of the day when I’m mulling over everything my life has become and everything it will never be, hope is what gets me through.