rainy morning. desire to smell pine trees when i woke up. there must be a better way to do this than wrench ourselves out of bed and face days filled with things we do not like. unsettling dreams leave me feeling uneasy, unwell when i wake up. i look out the window into the yard with its beautiful palms trees and wish i was there, in it. it's not the outside that needs to change so much, it's the inside. it's like a relationship that is crumbling and no one wants to admit it: one day i convince myself it'll make me stronger to stay, the next i'm posting a resume and feeling humiliated, angry and ugly. if i can find better money, a newer challenge, a better way to give back, be happier, have more respect, then i will. it's been a good run, so far. it'd be nice to move on, soon, to better and happier things.
transition
my heart hurts for the family and colleagues of heath ledger. what a tragedy; he has a baby and so many people love him dearly; he was iconic. he will be missed.

End of January, a cold Florida morning. Sleep interrupted by the drumming of the rain outside, followed by the crack of the windows being closed and an icy elbow draped across my body. Waking, the sky is tired, exhausted from its evening. Quiet now, except the whispery breath of the computer and the tick tick tick of the keys.
For days now my stomach has been in knots. I no longer feel as though I've swallowed an apple whole, but it still lingers, that nausea, sickened. It's tied to so much I can't let go right now. People ask, how are you? And the answer, in truth, is great! BUSY! I wonder how much of that really is true, though.
I've always been a junky for stress and activity and do do do. Especially since I moved to Sarasota a year and a half ago. In fact, in August I shook things way, way up just because I didn't feel as though I was sucking every last drop of life from its limpid body. And now, now I don't have a free evening to go to the Y. I feel as though I haven't seen my boyfriend in three days because either one of us or the other is late coming home.
In the middle of the days without a lunch break, then dashing to Bradenton to attend class till 10 pm, and the evenings driving around the Meadows, presumably looking for an errant cat, and the nights just staring vacantly ahead, mind spinning too fast to collect the thoughts--in the middle of all this is meaning. What I am doing seems, it must be, to have meaning. I work for a good, if poorly funded, cause. I go to school so I can find better, well-funded, causes. I rush to feed homebound cats because that's what friends do. These are the stories we hear told, "Why, I remember in my twenties,I worked like a dog, was broke all the time, tired, but man I had a great time and it's all paid off." That's my stray hope in all of this, that I'm not working towards an invisible end.
The payoff. That's what it is.
The big difference lies in not attending anymore. That absence in my life is tangible some days, when it feels my prayers aren't as strong, or I feel a little silly standing in the kitchen, asking God to comfort a family I have only read about in the news. I miss God talk, really.
When I focus on it, make a "gratitude list," there is so much I feel genuine gratitude for. I'd like an outlet for it. So in my way, God, I am talking to you. I don't always directly address you, but what you do for me is so good. So good.