For as long as I can remember I have always gotten along with boys better than with girls. It started when I was young. There were never many girls in any of the neighbourhoods where I grew up. I always remember having boys as neighbours, and we would hang out building forts or playing hide&seek in the bush across the road from our duplex. When my younger brother got old enough he joined us. Since my parents had a cabin 30 minutes from town we spent many weekends there and most of the summer holidays. There were no other kids nearby, so my brother and I used to make up games and hang out.
I had a few girls as friends in public school but never anyone who I considered my very best friend. The one girl that I considered to be my closest friend had many other friends in our class so she never hung out with me exclusively. As we got older the girls in my class would have Barbie parties. I remember two or three girls bringing Barbie outfits over to another girl’s house, and they would dress up their dolls and swap outfits. I used to take my Barbie outside and make her ride around the back yard in GI Joe’s Jeep with his army guy friends. While the girls were plotting ways to make Ken like their dolls, my Barbie was going on jungle adventures.
Around men I never worry about competition because men and women traditionally compete on different levels. (And as I wrote in a previous blog entry, the person I most love competing with is myself.) I ran a small town half marathon a few years back and at about the half way point I began leap-frogging with another woman on the course. I would ease ahead of her and then she would come from behind and pass me. This kept me on pace for the second half of the race but as we got closer to the finish line she kept looking over her shoulder nervously. Then when the finish line approached, she took off like a bat out of hell. I didn’t give it another thought as I was racing my own race and assumed she was too. Later on in the washrooms I was changing before the awards ceremony and I overheard a woman’s voice saying, “I HAD to pass her! I was going to be fourth…There was NO way I was going to be fourth female!!” I emerged from the washroom stall to see her look up at me. She instantly turned red and shut up. I turned and left the washroom, secretly thrilled that I had placed fourth female overall and oddly confused about why she was more concerned with what didn’t happen than with her own placement.
I also don’t have to worry about a guy vying with me for another guy’s attention, or trying to outdo me by showing up in a fancier more stylish outfit. Throughout the years this still hasn’t changed. I am intimidated by stylish women. I don’t have a fashion sense worth beans and couldn’t pick out an original outfit without seeing something on a store model and trying to emulate it. Some women look as if they don’t even try. No matter what I do I always feel like a clumsy wallflower lacking grace around other women.
I’ve tried to determine the source of why I don’t feel nearly as comfortable around women as I do around men. Looking back into my past there was never a defining moment that changed things but I guess there were lots of little things – for example one winter when I was in grade four I’d had a fight with the girl who lived down the road from me and the next day at recess she rallied our friends around her and they followed me at recess “erasing my footprints so I wouldn’t exist” giggling and whispering behind my back the entire time. That symbolic gesture has remained with me over the years because it hurt me so deeply. I remember going home and crying.
It can be argued that boys can be just as hurtful as girls, and they often were, yet I forgave them quicker. Maybe I assumed that boys didn’t mean to be hurtful, but the girls knew exactly what they were doing. I had too many secrets revealed by girls I’d trusted. (To be fair, I do have some very strong relationships with women today, and there are some women in my life who I will always be close to and able to talk to about just about anything. But these relationships have been carefully nurtured and are a subject for another post.) Boys didn’t really care about my secrets. If they thought I was being silly they would tell me. They also told me when they thought I was being smart. The girls I knew seemed to have a secret language that I wasn’t privy to. I’ve never been big on the subtleties of the female psyche, or perhaps I am just extremely naïve, but I continue to remain wary. I think when it comes down to it most of the men I’ve known have always told it like it is. I never have to try to read between what they are saying to figure out what they are saying.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Competitive Spirit or Competitive Nature?
We, as humans, are a competitive species. It stems back to early days of man when one literally had to fight for food, for shelter and ultimately for survival. As humans evolved, the need to fight for the basics requirements of life began to subside. We had homes, we had jobs, and we had clothes on our back. We didn’t need to get up in the morning and wonder if we would live to see another day.
But the need to compete remained. It is a rare person who can honestly say that they are completely fulfilled and lack nothing in their lives. We all want something, and more often than not, that something needs to be fought for – in the way of competing for a better job, bidding more money for a home in a desirable neighbourhood, or sometimes even finding the perfect mate. Competition exists in some form in nearly every facet of our lives.
My own biggest competitor is myself. As long as I am achieving as much or more than I am personally capable of, I am usually happy. This drive to better myself is what motivates me on a daily basis. I don’t need to use another person’s achievements as a benchmark as long as I have my own. But that’s not necessarily true of everyone. Anthony Garcia in his article Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy says, “Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by ‘rewards’ — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.”
Some people compete ferociously and will stop at nothing to try to win. I’ve seen soccer coaches push their young players to tears for the sake of the win. The losing team feels inferior and the players begin to believe that winning is the only outcome worth playing for. I’ve seen this intense competitive nature in my youngest son. He is very good at Wii Sports and will challenge me every chance he gets. He practices and plays more often than I do, so understandably, he is better. But there are the odd times when we play that I beat him. When my points begin to creep up he’ll pause the game and ask if we can start over stating: “My hand slipped”, “I didn’t mean to do that” or some other pretext. I refuse. He always has an excuse for why I beat him and none of them are because I played better. Some people may think this is cruel, but I believe in teaching my children the honest (and simple) facts of life, that you can’t win all the time, and that if you only play to win, no one will want to play with you anymore. Already his brother is hesitant to play against him for this very reason, and even less so when he rubs it in. This is a stain that takes a long time to wash out.
I try to instill in him the sportsmanship that I was taught in school years ago, which seems to be slowly fading in today’s society. It always seems to be about the win. For me, because I am not overly competitive, it’s more about the game, and sharing the experience with others: it’s hard for me to weigh in on why some people need to be first and/or best. I am a runner and there is competition at every race I have ever run in. I have never won a race, and yet I am not at all discouraged or disappointed by this. Simply put, I don’t expect to win. On the rare occasions when I have unexpectedly placed in my age category I am pleasantly surprised. An unknown author sums it up perfectly: “The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” A little competitive spirit is good for the soul. Like I wrote earlier, it’s part of what makes us human.
But the need to compete remained. It is a rare person who can honestly say that they are completely fulfilled and lack nothing in their lives. We all want something, and more often than not, that something needs to be fought for – in the way of competing for a better job, bidding more money for a home in a desirable neighbourhood, or sometimes even finding the perfect mate. Competition exists in some form in nearly every facet of our lives.
My own biggest competitor is myself. As long as I am achieving as much or more than I am personally capable of, I am usually happy. This drive to better myself is what motivates me on a daily basis. I don’t need to use another person’s achievements as a benchmark as long as I have my own. But that’s not necessarily true of everyone. Anthony Garcia in his article Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy says, “Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by ‘rewards’ — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.”
Some people compete ferociously and will stop at nothing to try to win. I’ve seen soccer coaches push their young players to tears for the sake of the win. The losing team feels inferior and the players begin to believe that winning is the only outcome worth playing for. I’ve seen this intense competitive nature in my youngest son. He is very good at Wii Sports and will challenge me every chance he gets. He practices and plays more often than I do, so understandably, he is better. But there are the odd times when we play that I beat him. When my points begin to creep up he’ll pause the game and ask if we can start over stating: “My hand slipped”, “I didn’t mean to do that” or some other pretext. I refuse. He always has an excuse for why I beat him and none of them are because I played better. Some people may think this is cruel, but I believe in teaching my children the honest (and simple) facts of life, that you can’t win all the time, and that if you only play to win, no one will want to play with you anymore. Already his brother is hesitant to play against him for this very reason, and even less so when he rubs it in. This is a stain that takes a long time to wash out.
I try to instill in him the sportsmanship that I was taught in school years ago, which seems to be slowly fading in today’s society. It always seems to be about the win. For me, because I am not overly competitive, it’s more about the game, and sharing the experience with others: it’s hard for me to weigh in on why some people need to be first and/or best. I am a runner and there is competition at every race I have ever run in. I have never won a race, and yet I am not at all discouraged or disappointed by this. Simply put, I don’t expect to win. On the rare occasions when I have unexpectedly placed in my age category I am pleasantly surprised. An unknown author sums it up perfectly: “The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” A little competitive spirit is good for the soul. Like I wrote earlier, it’s part of what makes us human.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Being Grateful
Years ago Oprah introduced what she called a Gratitude Journal. I, along with many others, jumped on that bandwagon and began to religiously write down 4 or 5 things each day that I was thankful for. It was easy – I had two wonderful boys who were changing and growing daily. I found there were many things I could write about including how fortunate I was to have healthy and happy children. As these things tend to go I found myself slipping as it became harder and harder to not duplicate the same things day after day. I would pick up the journal and jot a few items down. Then I would forget about it for a few months and find it in my bedside table and pick it up again. The entries began to look like this: “I’m thankful for not feeling guilty about not writing for so long”. Not long after this my marriage ended and the book got packed away somewhere. I forgot about it.
(As an aside: Sometimes I feel the same way about this blog. I know I have a few followers, but don’t really know how often they check in, and if they even notice that it may be weeks between entries. So I am grateful to those of you who check in regularly and don’t lose hope in me.)
I found my old “gratitude journal” when I moved for the second time in 4 years. I flipped through it and found that not a lot had changed. I am not rich. I am not beautiful. I am not famous. I am not spectacularly good at any one thing. But I am still thankful for the health that I, and those close to me, enjoy. I’m thankful the writing muse deems me important enough to visit on occasion. I’m thankful for a great run on a cool morning. I’m thankful for having someone in my life to share things with. And though I don’t feel the need to write things down on a daily/weekly/monthly basis I still consider myself very fortunate in the general scheme of things.
Whenever I get upset at something that isn’t going quite as planned, for example finding myself hopelessly stuck in traffic, I try to halt briefly for a moment before I let it get to me. There are people in cities all over the world who have worse traffic woes than three cycles of a traffic light before getting through an intersection. I am fortunate that I don’t HAVE to use my car to commute on a daily basis. And perhaps that is why I get frustrated. I can usually walk faster than my car is going on some stretches. Those days I wish that I could just get out of my car, fold it up and put it in my pocket and then walk until the traffic volume spreads out and then just unfold the car and get back in and drive. In an ideal world…Instead, I plop in a CD or tune into a top-40 radio station (one of my guilty pleasures) and sing at the top of my voice. By the time a couple songs have played the traffic jam is usually behind me. Music gets me through (as you may have noticed in the last two posts) and I’m thankful for that in my life.
I think the trick is to stop and pause before you immediately assume something is going to be bad. There is a lot more to be grateful for than to be anxious about. I have wasted a lot of emotion in the past on dread that never materialized. A very wise person always tells me, “Everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes I have to search for that reason, but it is always there. And I am always grateful for it.
(As an aside: Sometimes I feel the same way about this blog. I know I have a few followers, but don’t really know how often they check in, and if they even notice that it may be weeks between entries. So I am grateful to those of you who check in regularly and don’t lose hope in me.)
I found my old “gratitude journal” when I moved for the second time in 4 years. I flipped through it and found that not a lot had changed. I am not rich. I am not beautiful. I am not famous. I am not spectacularly good at any one thing. But I am still thankful for the health that I, and those close to me, enjoy. I’m thankful the writing muse deems me important enough to visit on occasion. I’m thankful for a great run on a cool morning. I’m thankful for having someone in my life to share things with. And though I don’t feel the need to write things down on a daily/weekly/monthly basis I still consider myself very fortunate in the general scheme of things.
Whenever I get upset at something that isn’t going quite as planned, for example finding myself hopelessly stuck in traffic, I try to halt briefly for a moment before I let it get to me. There are people in cities all over the world who have worse traffic woes than three cycles of a traffic light before getting through an intersection. I am fortunate that I don’t HAVE to use my car to commute on a daily basis. And perhaps that is why I get frustrated. I can usually walk faster than my car is going on some stretches. Those days I wish that I could just get out of my car, fold it up and put it in my pocket and then walk until the traffic volume spreads out and then just unfold the car and get back in and drive. In an ideal world…Instead, I plop in a CD or tune into a top-40 radio station (one of my guilty pleasures) and sing at the top of my voice. By the time a couple songs have played the traffic jam is usually behind me. Music gets me through (as you may have noticed in the last two posts) and I’m thankful for that in my life.
I think the trick is to stop and pause before you immediately assume something is going to be bad. There is a lot more to be grateful for than to be anxious about. I have wasted a lot of emotion in the past on dread that never materialized. A very wise person always tells me, “Everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes I have to search for that reason, but it is always there. And I am always grateful for it.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
The one that ran away… (part II)
You know I don't even know what I'm hoping to find
Running into the sun but I'm running behind
Running on Empty – Jackson Browne
As I continue to explore this theme, I’m a little stunned and a lot ashamed of my reasons for running.
I met David one Halloween at the bar. I didn’t dress up. Neither did he. I was wearing a red hoodie so we pretended we had come as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. He growled and I laughed. After a few dates I noticed that he had an aversion to wearing deodorant; he said that it attracted bugs in the bush – he was a forest firefighter. Then I found out that he was so homophobic that he wouldn’t use a pink towel or drink from a pink coffee mug. There were some things I just couldn’t ignore. We lived and worked in different towns so I thought it would be easy to let this fade away by not calling him. But a week later, after not hearing from me, and finding out from my parents where I was staying, he decided to come and visit. By sheer coincidence I had chosen that very day to drive to my parents place for a visit. As I rounded a tight corner on the highway I spotted David’s truck going in the opposite direction. Thinking maybe he hadn’t seen me I glanced in my rear view mirror to see brake lights go on. That was my cue to hit the gas. It took him over 10 miles to catch up to me. I pretended to be surprised to see him “behind” me. Soon after that I ran away for a month-long trip to Europe and when I returned there was little left to hang onto.
And then there’s the most superficial reason yet. I’d met Stan at the wedding of my University roommate. After chatting for most of the evening and learning that we both enjoyed biking, he asked me out on a biking date. We met up and headed off side by side down a quiet little street in the city. We heard a car behind us and Stan pulled up ahead of me so we were riding single file. I looked up to see a black matt of back hair curling out over the neck of his t-shirt. I suddenly developed a ‘stomach ache’ and with apologies to Stan headed home. The next time he called I told him that I’d gotten back together with an old boyfriend. (Coward that I was.)
Sometimes, it's harder to face myself than face the world
But there's nowhere to run girl
There's nowhere to run
No Place to Run – Gym Class Heroes
When I got married I thought I was finished with running. I’d found a place where I felt safe. Years went by and the urge to run never arose, until a few years after my children were born. But this time it was a different kind of running. I began to run for fitness. As I look back on it now, from a completely detached viewpoint, I can see that the physical running was only thinly disguised as running away. Each time I laced up my shoes and headed out the door I suddenly felt free of all encumbrances. But it was like I pushed the pause button - there were no phones ringing, no children to feed, no house to clean, no dinner to cook – I knew it would all be there when I returned, but for the time being, there was nothing but me, the feel of my shoes padding the gravel path and the sound of my breathing and heartbeat as I found my internal rhythm.
I’ve never been able to explain it succinctly except to say that life happens.
I want to live
I want to run through the jungle
The wind in my hair and the sand at my feet
Animal Song – Savage Garden
I know I wasn’t running away from responsibility. I loved being a mom to my children. I loved keeping a home. But there were obviously things that I didn’t love, and it was those things that were easier to run from, and hope they went away, than to deal with face to face. (For further dissection of this topic see Continual Evolvement.) I used to wonder if I was just being spineless and taking the easy way out, but I know that it would have been easier to stay than it was to run. People who know me know that I am very non-confrontational. In most cases I will choose the path of least resistance. So when they found out that I had run/walked away from a 12-year marriage many people were a little surprised, but said they could see it coming.
'Cause goodbye's on the tip of my tongue
Tell me there's a reason to stay
Cause I'm about to get up and run
Tip of My Tongue – Kelly Clarkson
As I further delve into my motives and dissect each of the situations I’ve outlined, there is a common theme, but one my readers wouldn’t have seen. In each of these situations - Nick, Kevin, George, David, Stan, my ex – I vaguely recall feeling slight trepidation during the initial bonding to these individuals. In all cases I also remember sloughing it off as “cold feet” and that I would get over it, or perhaps, used to it. Obviously I never did. That observation, quite frankly, frightened me. Was I destined to be a runner? Were all my future relationships doomed from the start? And then I thought about the ones from whom I didn’t run. I realized there was never that gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right. And in those situations, including the one I’m currently in, there is a feeling of just knowing it is right for me. If I’ve learned anything from this exercise it’s that my gut instinct is usually accurate. Although that’s small consolation for the people I ran from, some of whom had true and deep feelings for me, I’m somewhat bolstered by this insight.
“You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger, you have no courage. You're confusing courage with wisdom.”
-Frank Morgan as the Wizard of Oz
Thursday, 9 September 2010
The one that ran away… (part I)
As seems to be the pattern these days a conversation with a friend got me thinking about this. She’d mentioned that she’d recently reconnected with an old boyfriend, and had always thought of him as “the one that got away”. And I wondered to myself, “Did I have someone in my past that ‘got away’?” I couldn’t think of any old boyfriends from my past with whom I wished I could have had a do-over. Quite the opposite - in fact more often than not I remember being “the one who ran away”.
You run away / You could turn and stay / But you run away / From me
You Run Away -The Barenaked Ladies
I started running away in Grade One… There was a boy, Nick, in my class upon whom everyone had the requisite ‘crush’. Every day at recess the teacher had us line up at the classroom door, boys on one side girls on the other, before we could file outside for our 15 minutes of energy release. If you, as a girl, were fortunate enough to find yourself first in line, and Nick was first for the boys, you were considered an item, at least for the duration of recess. Nick had the cutest smile and eyes that seemed to sparkle with mischief. All the girls wanted to be first in line when Nick was there. And then one day I got my chance. He made some cute comments about “going out” with me at recess and I blushed. The bell ran and out we went with my two friends, Eve and Donna. We started chasing Nick around the school yard – back then it showed you liked someone. We ended up at the front of the school behind some lilac bushes. Nick looked conspiratorially at all three of us and told us that he’d show us ‘his’ if we showed him ‘ours’. Eve and Donna immediately said OK and looked at me. I took off running before I could answer. Three minutes later the three of them emerged from behind the bushes smiling and laughing and when they saw me they turned and walked the other way. I was wounded. I made sure I was never first in line in Grade One again.
And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn’t get away.
I Ran – A Flock of Seagulls
I ran throughout junior high school. At the time I assumed it was just because I was so shy. Forward boys made me nervous, cute-looking forward boys petrified me. I remember thinking that the only reason a cute-looking boy was showing interest in me was because he wanted something – something that I wasn’t willing to give. “But all the other girls are doing it” they would say, and I would think that there was something wrong with me that I just wasn’t ready to do that with anyone, whatever “that” was.
Once, the junior high schools had a joint dance with all the schools invited. I met Kevin at one of these dances. We locked gazes across the darkened gymnasium and he courageously walked over to me, through the throngs of girls on my side of the gym and asked me to dance the last slow dance. I’d thought he was cute and said yes. As we swayed back and forth to an ABBA song I vividly recall smelling his cologne. He’d borrowed his dad’s Old Spice. My friends told me later that he was playing with my long hair as we danced, twirling it around his finger. After the dance we exchanged phone numbers and met every now and then after school to skate-board down St. Charles Ave. It was a very long street that didn’t usually have a lot of traffic on it. Kevin and I never held hands and we definitely never kissed. Being naïve as I was I didn’t know that it would bother him, so when he made the obvious overtures I did the obvious thing; I turned the opposite way on my skateboard and ran away. I guess it shouldn’t have come as any surprise when he sent a friend to tell me that he didn’t want to “go out” with me anymore.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
Time - Pink Floyd
I was just out of University. I’d taken a job in the Forestry Office in town after graduation while I looked for a permanent job. I met George there one weekend when some friends and I attended a curling bonspiel that he was competing in. He asked me out shortly after that and we went on a few dates. He seemed nice and we grew close enough that he felt he was ready to confess a few things to me. He’d been in an accident years earlier and had injured his spine. Since that time he’d had “performance issues” and things weren’t that reliable anymore. He thought I should know. I said the only thing I could think of to say, “It didn’t matter.” But I lied. It did. Not long after that we were at a social. I’d had a couple too many drinks, something snapped and I ran. I left the social, in the middle of a very chilly March evening, without my coat or purse, and found myself running. I had nowhere to go. His house was locked, but the car out front wasn’t. So I hunkered down in the back seat not quite sure what I was going to do. He was understandably freaking out by my disappearance from the social (I heard this later of course) but eventually had to leave and come home where I sheepishly emerged from the car. He never asked why I had run away. I think he was afraid to because he didn’t want to know the answer. He forgave me instantly, and held me through the rest of the night, but it was the last night we spent together. I felt like a shallow fake and not worthy of him.
And so I lay here awake
As all the clouds fall away
Then fast asleep in your arms
Wake up wonder where we are
Try to freeze frame the day
Then the light starts to fade
I will scream at the sky
'til we drink the oceans dry
And so we run
And So We Run – David Usher
…to be continued
You run away / You could turn and stay / But you run away / From me
You Run Away -The Barenaked Ladies
I started running away in Grade One… There was a boy, Nick, in my class upon whom everyone had the requisite ‘crush’. Every day at recess the teacher had us line up at the classroom door, boys on one side girls on the other, before we could file outside for our 15 minutes of energy release. If you, as a girl, were fortunate enough to find yourself first in line, and Nick was first for the boys, you were considered an item, at least for the duration of recess. Nick had the cutest smile and eyes that seemed to sparkle with mischief. All the girls wanted to be first in line when Nick was there. And then one day I got my chance. He made some cute comments about “going out” with me at recess and I blushed. The bell ran and out we went with my two friends, Eve and Donna. We started chasing Nick around the school yard – back then it showed you liked someone. We ended up at the front of the school behind some lilac bushes. Nick looked conspiratorially at all three of us and told us that he’d show us ‘his’ if we showed him ‘ours’. Eve and Donna immediately said OK and looked at me. I took off running before I could answer. Three minutes later the three of them emerged from behind the bushes smiling and laughing and when they saw me they turned and walked the other way. I was wounded. I made sure I was never first in line in Grade One again.
And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn’t get away.
I Ran – A Flock of Seagulls
I ran throughout junior high school. At the time I assumed it was just because I was so shy. Forward boys made me nervous, cute-looking forward boys petrified me. I remember thinking that the only reason a cute-looking boy was showing interest in me was because he wanted something – something that I wasn’t willing to give. “But all the other girls are doing it” they would say, and I would think that there was something wrong with me that I just wasn’t ready to do that with anyone, whatever “that” was.
Once, the junior high schools had a joint dance with all the schools invited. I met Kevin at one of these dances. We locked gazes across the darkened gymnasium and he courageously walked over to me, through the throngs of girls on my side of the gym and asked me to dance the last slow dance. I’d thought he was cute and said yes. As we swayed back and forth to an ABBA song I vividly recall smelling his cologne. He’d borrowed his dad’s Old Spice. My friends told me later that he was playing with my long hair as we danced, twirling it around his finger. After the dance we exchanged phone numbers and met every now and then after school to skate-board down St. Charles Ave. It was a very long street that didn’t usually have a lot of traffic on it. Kevin and I never held hands and we definitely never kissed. Being naïve as I was I didn’t know that it would bother him, so when he made the obvious overtures I did the obvious thing; I turned the opposite way on my skateboard and ran away. I guess it shouldn’t have come as any surprise when he sent a friend to tell me that he didn’t want to “go out” with me anymore.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
Time - Pink Floyd
I was just out of University. I’d taken a job in the Forestry Office in town after graduation while I looked for a permanent job. I met George there one weekend when some friends and I attended a curling bonspiel that he was competing in. He asked me out shortly after that and we went on a few dates. He seemed nice and we grew close enough that he felt he was ready to confess a few things to me. He’d been in an accident years earlier and had injured his spine. Since that time he’d had “performance issues” and things weren’t that reliable anymore. He thought I should know. I said the only thing I could think of to say, “It didn’t matter.” But I lied. It did. Not long after that we were at a social. I’d had a couple too many drinks, something snapped and I ran. I left the social, in the middle of a very chilly March evening, without my coat or purse, and found myself running. I had nowhere to go. His house was locked, but the car out front wasn’t. So I hunkered down in the back seat not quite sure what I was going to do. He was understandably freaking out by my disappearance from the social (I heard this later of course) but eventually had to leave and come home where I sheepishly emerged from the car. He never asked why I had run away. I think he was afraid to because he didn’t want to know the answer. He forgave me instantly, and held me through the rest of the night, but it was the last night we spent together. I felt like a shallow fake and not worthy of him.
And so I lay here awake
As all the clouds fall away
Then fast asleep in your arms
Wake up wonder where we are
Try to freeze frame the day
Then the light starts to fade
I will scream at the sky
'til we drink the oceans dry
And so we run
And So We Run – David Usher
…to be continued
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Continual Evolvement
This is more of a stream of consciousness entry than a carefully researched topic. This is not like me at all. I’m usually more wont to meticulously write and re-write topics until they are as near perfect as I can be satisfied with. This time things just flooded out and for kicks I left things as they sat.
We are in a continual state of evolvement. I foolishly thought at age 30 that I had reached “maturation” and “ the end of personal evolution” and when I got married I was quite secure in the fact that I was done and that my new marriage with my husband would continue on along parallel pathways. Turns out our paths were never parallel at all and that they only crossed briefly for that time and began diverging. By the time 12 years had passed I barely recognized the person I was, or who he was for that matter. I had different interests, beliefs and passions in my life. He accused me of changing. I called it evolving.
Change is to alter or modify, to transform. Evolve is to grow, progress, move forward. Subtle differences, but differences nonetheless. Yes I had changed but in the process I had also evolved into someone I felt more comfortable living with. A kind of “new and improved” me. Or “me, only better”. Well, you get my point…
My taste in movies has evolved, so has my wine preference and the books I like to read and the activities in which I participate, to name only a few. Watching, drinking, reading and doing the same things all the time would frankly be boring. Even my circle of friends is different. University friends have gone their separate ways, and although I still keep in touch with many of them, we have very little in common these days aside from the memories of school and residence.
I do have my days where I like being in a rut. It’s comforting and I don’t have to think much, and the old stand-bys are always there. But that does get old quickly and eventually I yearn for some kind of change.
We are hard-wired to evolve. If everything stayed the same we would all still be wearing bell-bottomed jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts with the same hairstyle (well ok…some people still are) or worse, one celled organisms swimming around a murky pond. It would be very boring. I think the moment we stop evolving in life is the moment we stop living life.
We are in a continual state of evolvement. I foolishly thought at age 30 that I had reached “maturation” and “ the end of personal evolution” and when I got married I was quite secure in the fact that I was done and that my new marriage with my husband would continue on along parallel pathways. Turns out our paths were never parallel at all and that they only crossed briefly for that time and began diverging. By the time 12 years had passed I barely recognized the person I was, or who he was for that matter. I had different interests, beliefs and passions in my life. He accused me of changing. I called it evolving.
Change is to alter or modify, to transform. Evolve is to grow, progress, move forward. Subtle differences, but differences nonetheless. Yes I had changed but in the process I had also evolved into someone I felt more comfortable living with. A kind of “new and improved” me. Or “me, only better”. Well, you get my point…
My taste in movies has evolved, so has my wine preference and the books I like to read and the activities in which I participate, to name only a few. Watching, drinking, reading and doing the same things all the time would frankly be boring. Even my circle of friends is different. University friends have gone their separate ways, and although I still keep in touch with many of them, we have very little in common these days aside from the memories of school and residence.
I do have my days where I like being in a rut. It’s comforting and I don’t have to think much, and the old stand-bys are always there. But that does get old quickly and eventually I yearn for some kind of change.
We are hard-wired to evolve. If everything stayed the same we would all still be wearing bell-bottomed jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts with the same hairstyle (well ok…some people still are) or worse, one celled organisms swimming around a murky pond. It would be very boring. I think the moment we stop evolving in life is the moment we stop living life.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Someone Likes Me...:)
Being the curious sort I am, I decided to research the origin of this award. After pages and pages of blog links with the same designate I’ve come to the conclusion that if there is an origin, it is lost somewhere in the multitude of cyberspace bloggers. My personal take is that this was invented by another blogger as a cool way of promoting other people’s blogs, many of whom wouldn’t get the exposure if not for this award. I know just from linking to Kim’s awards I have added new “Blogs I Follow” to my favourites. And when it comes down to it, there is nothing in the world more satisifying that a peer-bestowed award.
I started blogging as a method of releasing frustration and stress, and it morphed into a way of sharing thoughts and ideas with friends and strangers alike. There are no common themes to what I write, or why I write it. Thoughts come to me and suddenly an idea for a blog is blooming in my brain. Down it goes. One day I’m talking about clotheslines and the next I’m delving deeply into the personal. I never started writing because I hoped everyone would read and hang on my next word…in fact, I know I have very few readers. The few people who comment are usually the same people, and they have been tipped off (usually by me) that a new posting has gone up. If others are reading, then they certainly aren’t letting me know. I did try the stats link that Kim mentioned and it was interesting in that after the big two (Canada and the United States) my next largest “following” – I use the term loosely, comes from the Netherlands. I’ve also had a few hits from China , Germany and Denmark.( I’m assuming the last three were just accidental hits and when they realized what they got, closed the link immediately ;)
So, to accept the “Versatile Blogger Award” I have to do the following four things:
1. Thank the one who gave me this award.
Thank you Kim. In the short year we have known each other we have discovered a closeness that normally takes years to nurture and cultivate. If people want to know what Kim is like, they just have to read her blog. http://spo-r-tinglife.blogspot.com/ She is like that in real life. She doesn’t hide behind polished words and carefully rearranged paragraphs. She isn’t afraid to talk about anything and this makes many of her postings so real, and sometimes very raw, and more than once a blog entry of mine has been directly related to something she wrote that got me thinking.
2. Share seven things about myself.
These are random and in no particular order:
1. I am a mother, a lover, a friend and a dreamer.
2. I hate sitting idle and therefore carry a crossword book and a notebook with me almost everywhere I go.
3. At 46 I am happier, fitter, more fulfilled and loved than I have been at any other time in my life.
4. I have a secret crush on the Old Spice Man (but not secret anymore).
5. I hesitate over the “publish post” button each time I write about something new. I never know when someone is going to misconstrue what I write and attack me for it (it’s happened before).
6. I like to play like a boy, but smell like a girl.
7. Aside from the necessities in life I could not live without books…My Kingdom for a book!
3. Present this honour onto 15 ( I don’t have time to read that many – here’s seven, though not new in the sense of the word, I try to follow on a fairly regular basis as well as Kim’s which I’ve linked to above) newly discovered bloggers.
http://goseeruneatdrink.blogspot.com/ --> Pam blogs/blogged about travelling the world. If anyone is at all inclined to travel anywhere, chances are Pam’s been there and has written quirkily about it. She has a huge following and writes with a flair I can only dream of.
http://startinglines.blog.com/ --> Cathy’s tongue-in-cheek relentless pursuit of excellence in running. She is loyally dedicated to her sport and to the beverages that are consumed after a long run.
http://winnipegcyclechick.blogspot.com/ --> Andrea is a strong, brave, classy and enduring cyclist. I want to be like her when I grow up.
http://clickspring.blogspot.com/ --> Ian writes an eclectic mix - the simple and not-so-simple life in rural Manitoba, breeding all sorts of living creatures, fixing things that most people would have long given up on. His perspective on life is unique and I love the ‘randomness’ of his blog. You never know what you are going to get next!
http://kelodie.blogspot.com/ --> Kelodie is unwavering in her quest to become a better runner and triathlete. She is tough stuff and reading her training and race reports inspires me to no end.
http://dalesblogaboutnothing.blogspot.com/ --> Dale is a new father and aspiring ultra runner who has just completed his first 50 miler. He juggles family, training and work and still manages to retain a sense of humour.
http://downtownpeggy.wordpress.com/ --> ”Peggy” lives and works in downtown Winnipeg and writes about the latest happening, the places to shop, eat, listen and to be seen.
4. Drop by and let my fifteen new friends know I love them.
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