photo credit: jaeWALK

In the past, the arrival of Labor Day was always a sad time for me.

When I was little, it signaled the end of summer vacation, the end of paradise, and the onset of school. Even after I learned that school was the only place where I received much validation or praise, I still dreaded the arrival of September, because kids can be very cruel and school can be deadly boring.

Nowadays, school can start well before Labor Day, and besides, now that I live in the D.C. area, I have to remember that summer starts in May and ends in October. Still, I look forward to fall with dread.

The combination of being sick for several months last fall and then being trapped indoors for even more days by the blizzard really made me miserable, and I did a lot of thinking about my life.

As a result, I knew that I would have to make some changes if I didn’t want to get that sick every fall. To strengthen my immune system, I started walking five days a week.

Even though I’ve been doing it now long enough to have formed a habit, I still feel urges to give it up, but that small change has made a big difference in my health.

My mood has improved as my pain level has lowered, and I’ve been able to enjoy my job a lot more. I have more energy, I’m happier, and I have more hope. I also have a new medication plan, which helps short-circuit fibromyalgia flare-ups.

One of the attorneys at work said to me, “The change in you since you started walking is great, and it’s been really nice to see.”

Another thing I learned from all those days at home is that I don’t want to be home all the time. There isn’t enough stimulation or enough of a social life available to keep me from becoming lonely. So, I now plan to work as long as I’m able to.

So, it seems I have no reasons left to dread what happens after Labor Day!

I learned last week that my ex-husband died back in May of this year. Typically, I gained this information from a recorded message, left repeatedly on my answering machine, from one of his creditors seeking to collect on a bad debt. Despite the fact that our divorce was finalized twenty years ago, creditors are still hoping I can somehow help make good on his debts.

Those of you who have read my series on spouse abuse (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4), will know that my feelings about his death are mixed, to say the least. What’s the meaning of a life such as his?

In this photo, taken in a few years ago, he actually looks older than I am now, despite the fact that he was nine years younger than I. Note the eyes.

By the time of his death, he had become grossly overweight. His death of a heart attack was not surprising, but his age, 54, was.

Death, even the death of someone who tormented me and made me crazy, brings me up short. Yes, the world is now rid of a tyrant, but I’m well aware that my own death is looming on the horizon as well.

Will it be a year from now or twenty or thirty? I don’t know, but I know it’s coming to me, as to us all. And what’s the meaning of a life such as mine?

Death sure makes you stop and think.

Paul McCartney and George Harrison photo credit: gui.tavares

One of the things that happened this summer is that, like a lovesick teenager, I developed an infatuation with an unavailable man. I’m not going to talk about who it is or how we met. Suffice it to say that I was barking up the wrong tree.

As if that wasn’t enough, I told him how I felt and put him in the very awkward position of having to deal with my confession.

This used to be a frequent pattern of mine, pursuing unavailable men, back when I was in my thirties and dating. Since I haven’t dated in twenty years, it hasn’t been a problem. But apparently I still haven’t overcome it, because it’s back.

According to my therapist, when you lose your father to divorce and abandonment at a specific, vulnerable age for a little girl (I was 6), you learn a pattern of longing for the love of the unavailable Daddy, and this affects your love life as an adult, until you work through your father abandonment issues.

In the meantime, I’ve wasted countless hours thinking about and fantasizing about this man, this smart, sexy, successful and unobtainable man, probably to avoid spending those countless hours thinking about my humdrum, boring existence and the absence of so many things from my life that I wish were there.

Accepting the fact that the fantasy can never come true brings up all the feelings of my childhood abandonment, which is very painful and hard to endure.

Eric Clapton in 1975 photo credit: ultomatt

I just finished reading Wonderful Tonight, Pattie Boyd’s story of her marriages to George Harrison and Eric Clapton. She was the “Layla” of Clapton’s famous song. He became so obsessed with her, despite the fact that she was married to his friend George Harrison, that he finally told Harrison he was in love with Harrison’s wife, and then seduced her away from him.

I gravitated to this story because of my own infatuation. While it’s not an obsession like Clapton’s, it’s still an unrealistic fantasy. Even though I didn’t learn much about it by reading the interesting story of these two rock stars, I did learn that Clapton’s life was at least as painful as mine when he was going through his obsession.

It’s far easier to latch your emotions onto someone, no matter how unattainable, who accidentally comes into your life, than it is to seek out and wait for the right kind of person, the person who can give you what you need and be there for you. This is something I’ve never been able to do and am still learning about.

Until I work through my father issues, apparently I will inevitably repeat the pattern and somehow manage to find the unavailable man among the available ones, so at this point there’s no point in looking.

First I’ve got to deal with the past by exploring the joyful and painful feelings of my brief relationship with my biological father.

I hope those of you in the U.S. have a great Labor Day weekend!

photo credit: tanakawho

These flowers are for you.

I’ve missed you guys. Not that I haven’t seen you on your own blogs and seen comments you’ve written elsewhere and even here when I posted briefly, but I’ve missed writing for you and hearing from you here. That’s the fun part of this blog.

For an introvert like myself, blogging is also fun because I don’t get drowned out by others in the room. I remember so many times in various conversations where I’d go to make a point and repeatedly get talked over, usually, but not always, by men. After two or three false starts, I’d give up and then feel invisible. Not here. I can say what I want without fear of interruption.

Here I can compose at my leisure, rather than trying to write witty comments on the fly, which is hard. I can wait for inspiration, not have to come up with something quickly. I can speak about my deeper issues and know that I’ll be supported and understood. I know I won’t be jumped on, challenged to prove myself, ignored or shouted down.

And it’s you guys who have provided that safe audience for me.

You guys are great!

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Dear Abby,

I have a strange request for you.

Another of the things I realized while on vacation from my blog in order to devote more time to my “real” life is that I’m very lonely. I need more friends. My existing non-work friends are pretty much involved in things I’m not interested in and vice versa. I’ve been left with one good friend, a secretary at work.

Part of the problem is my job. Being a legal secretary who almost completed a Ph.D., I’m unlikely to meet similarly-situated people at work. The secretary I’m friends with is highly intelligent and a good conversationalist, so we enjoy lots of good talk. But she isn’t enough.

The attorneys are well-educated, of course, but most are married and socialize as couples. Besides, the vast income disparity doesn’t lend itself easily to friendship.

I’ve tried high-IQ organizations, but those people really have nothing in common except one measurement and a desire to demonstrate it.

Now that I have more energy, I’ve been thinking about getting out more and trying to make new friends. I just don’t know where to go, even leaving aside the fact that I can’t drive and I can’t see well at night.

My strange request is this: What suggestions do you have for someone my age to meet highly intelligent people who would be suitable as friends?

Faithfully yours,
Friendless in Washington

photo credit: Wonderlane

What I’ve known all along and what I rediscovered when I took the summer off from blogging is that I want to write blog posts, but I don’t want to be a blogger. There’s a big difference.

A blogger writes a blog post and then does a zillion other things I didn’t want to do: tweets, creates a summary and puts it on Facebook, visits other blogs, leaves lots of comments, joins groups, goes to conferences, etc. All part of the “business” of blogging.

Maybe I’m lazy, but I only like the parts that are fun. I even hate having to make links. I hate having to upload photos.

Authenticity is also important to me, and to me, leaving comments on blogs just to woo new readers, or retain existing readers, was inauthentic.

I never really signed on for being a creative or prolific commenter. So I stopped commenting. I barely commented all summer. I read the blogs I like to read, but unless there was something that grabbed me, I had no comment. Much more fun.

Sure, these things are considered necessary to build a readership, not to mention a community. I did them all when I could, but my sporadic posting and lack of a cohesive topic pretty much ensured that I wouldn’t build a large readership anyway.

Surprisingly, my subscribers have actually increased slightly since I went on vacation, so perhaps those things aren’t necessary after all? Or perhaps that’s telling me that my silence is worth more than my writing?

As time goes on, perhaps I’ll get back into the swing of blogging, not just posting, but for now, not. This is a hobby, and as I said in a comment here, why knock yourself out promoting something that isn’t for sale?

It shouldn’t have to be so much work. I’m determined that it will be fun instead.

photo credit: Incase.

For the three of you still reading, I’m back from vacation early and I’ve decided to keep on blogging.

This post will fill you in on some odds and ends that happened since I decided to take a vacation for the entire summer.

My mother’s house sold very quickly this past spring, but it took the estate attorney until the end of July to distribute the proceeds. I expect to pay off my condo mortgage within the next two weeks! My very first purchase:

photo credit: Brianfit

FYI, I’ve deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Facebook just doesn’t deserve my patronage (or yours) and that keeps becoming clearer as time goes on. As for social media in general, when you write a non-commercial blog, it’s kind of like going on a national book-signing tour when you’re not selling a book – what’s the point?

We’ve had almost sixty 90-degree (30 C) days this summer (days 90 degrees or over). Sixty of them is the record. We’ve also had some very frightening, sudden, brief, violent storms that are almost like tornados in their violence, but the winds are under 75 mph (121 kph).

A recent storm caused a power outage for 400,000 homes, including the White House. The outage lasted from one to five days, three days for me – just long enough to spoil a refrigerator full of food. Lots of people were very angry at the power company for not fixing things faster. That was just two weeks ago. Yesterday’s storm left me without power for eight hours.

More than a year after our Metro crash that killed 9 people, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board)issued its report, which found the cause of the accident to be negligence. They noted that the Metro had not implemented safety measures it had been told to implement in previous years. It still hasn’t.

photo credit: karpov the wrecked train

The same unsafe metro cars that were part of the severe accident are still being used, because the Metro system can’t afford to replace them. They’ve raised fares to the point that it costs me over $10 a day to commute to work, but they can’t afford to make that commute safe.

My walking has ranged from 6 to 14 miles a week, depending on the heat and how I feel. I don’t like activities that depend on the weather, because the weather around here, well, obviously, is weird.

In order to go from zero miles a week to ten or more in less than several years, given that I have fibromyalgia, I’ve been depending on Percocet for the flare-ups that inevitably occur if I overdo in the slightest.

I could easily take Percocet everyday just for the recreational benefits, and I’ve never been a druggie, so I have to watch myself, but it certainly helps.

photo credit: Alun Salt

My study of philosophy has stalled a bit after reading two books – one on the history of an idea, and the other a kind of “philosophy for dummies” in the form of a novel. I now have a rough idea of the history of philosophy and I know that I’m mostly only interested in contemporary philosophy. Definitely NOT Plato’s Socrates, admirable though he was.

As I wrote in a previous post, two sets of plans to have a beach vacation fell through this year, and I ended up staying home.

In order to make it seem like more fun, I decided to pretend I had gone to a beautiful, peaceful resort. Here’s what it looked like:

While I was “away,” I shopped in the resort gift shop. I bought three necklace and earrings sets, plus a dragonfly pin. (Actually a fair trade craft store in Town Center.) I also “brought back” small gifts for two of my friends at work.

While in Town Center, I watched the little ones splashing in the fountain. They were so funny, I just sat and smiled. I read my book in the sunshine. The walk to Town Center is two miles, so I had lunch and did some shopping before walking back.

One of the restaurants had this flowerbox. The petunias cascading over the edge caught my eye. Walking home, drinking ice water, I breathed the pungent fragrance of the pines and juniper as they baked in the hot sun.

Back indoors, next came a cool, refreshing shower. Then a nap, and later on, a trip down to the lake to swim and bask in the sunshine. Here’s the fabulous Lake Hage at 8 am, before the crowds arrived –

The whole thing was completely relaxing! I had no idea how burned out I was until I finally had 9 whole days off in a row. Maybe next year, I can take two weeks instead of one. And now I feel so refreshed. What a great resort!

photo credit: Lida Rose

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

What to say? The summer is going by so fast, I can hardly reach out and grab onto any of it.

After being sick all of fall and half of winter, and then shut in by the blizzard, I’ve been living a hedonistic life — other than the essentials, doing nothing that doesn’t bring pleasure. If the weather permits, I walk two miles to the metro, walk a mile and a half at lunchtime on the treadmill, or walk two miles home from the metro. I’m getting addicted to endorphins. Patricia, I had no idea the amount of effort you were talking about when you said you walked five miles a day!

In two weeks, I get a week’s vacation. My various plans to get to the beach have all fallen through, so I’m planning to camp out at the condo pool, read lots of good books, plus walk every day, of course, and visit the tastiest restaurants I can find locally. The farmer’s market has opened on weekends, so I can get super-fresh fruits and vegetables.

So, I’m living a very physical life. It would be even more physical if I could find myself a boyfriend, but that will come. eHarmony has sent me 28 “matches” so far, but I’m not ready to meet anyone yet. First I need to get a medical checkup and also to get my condo into a bit better shape so that I’m not ashamed to invite anyone to my home.

As you may have guessed by now, I’m not sure I’m going to continue blogging. I told my story in bits and pieces, now consolidated in the My Story category, and said a lot of other things along the way. I’m not sure I have much more to say and don’t want to keep repeating the same things in different ways.

I’ve been studying philosophy, which is probably what I should have studied in the first place instead of linguistics. Specifically, I’ve been reading about the history of ideas, which is a method of tracing a given idea from the first philosophers down to the present, noting how it changes and twists and turns. I find it very interesting, but it’s not for everyone.

Life is good!