Intersecting Lives

Today a student blurted out in class that the only time the people around her were happy was when she isn't. Then she abruptly left the room. I knew what she was feeling. It is not that the people in my life wish me unhappy, it is that I don't seem to be able to grasp the happiness for myself.

My student doesn't recognize her worth. She has embraced an attitude of worthlessness and doesn't seem to be able to see her value. Surprise! I'm right there with her.

I am afraid of success. I don't know it even when I achieve it. I can't value my accomplishments because I made them. What's the old Groucho Marx quote? "I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me."

Now don't feel sorry for me. I do that enough for myself. Besides, I'm learning to recognize my value bit by bit. It is mainly when I see a student with ability sabotage herself and cut herself off from help that my own demons raise their ugly heads and hiss at me. They taunt me with my failures, my limitations, my mistakes. They know I embrace failure because I know how to deal with it. It is success I don't know how to work with.

After sixty-one years, you might think I'd have a clue. But I'm clueless. Maybe by the time I'm seventy-one I'll get a glimmer.

Learning to Float

I am a doer. When things are difficult, I make a plan and full steam ahead to solutions. Sometimes, making plans is not the right tactic. Sometimes, you just have to float.

What do I mean by float? Floating is when you allow the circumstances to play out without trying to push a solution. Floating is seeing what happens naturally. Floating is allowing the universe to decide on the proper action. Floating is just floating.

I learned to float when I went through some financial hard times. I couldn't figure a way out. I looked for solutions and couldn't find any. I was stuck. It was a new sensation. I usually am very focused. I know my path and I follow it. This time I was pathless. I kept begging the universe, "Send me a sign! A big neon sign! I can't find my way." And the universe was silent. There were no signs, not even tiny little scratchings on a piece of scrap paper. I didn't know what to do.

Into this empty, silent, signless black hole came an image, a remembrance of being in the ocean and floating. The sea would take me wherever it wanted. I would bob like a piece of flotsam on the tide. It was a peaceful, liberating feeling to be going nowhere, to be a part of the ebb and flow of the water. There was no stress to make shore, no need to drive in any direction.

This memory became my mantra. "Just float Royce," I'd admonish myself when I became anxious over a lack of goals. "Just float, enjoy the ride. No need to make plans. They will eventually emerge. The tide eternally rolls into shore. You will find your way."

It took me six months to learn to embrace floating. At first, I struggled. You can drown when you struggle in the water. I almost did a couple of times. But as the floating took hold, I learned to love the weightlessness and peace of floating. I could sit and let life rush around me without anxiety. And mercifully, I floated into shore and onto the path of my graduate education.

Well, I'm at that point again--directionless, without a goal. I have to begin again to float. I thought the second time would be easier, but I'm a fighter--I want to blaze away. So I have to learn to float again.

Good things come out of floating. I try to remember that as I thrash in the water. A time at sea makes port much more appreciated when you arrive. One must remember that it is in the journey not the destination where the adventure lies.

Okay Royce, just float. Let the water take you where it will. Just float until you find your way.

Just Nothing

I really have nothing to say tonight. But in the pursuit of discipline, I sit here before this screen and put a few words down to start the week with.

This will be a fractured week. YO takes Wednesday as the Veterans Day holiday and GCC takes Friday, so basically I don't get Veterans Day off. I'm not really whining, I'm just gritching.

At any rate, here are my few words, my homage to writing discipline. Maybe I'll actually have something to say tomorrow night.

Rambling

This is my space to practice. Practice the discipline of writing. I don't have any followers and that's okay. I have enough strangers following me on Twitter for God only knows what reason. I don't even tweet. So a lot of people I don't know are looking at empty space if they are looking for me.

So here I am blogging to empty space. No one's listening but me and that's just okay. I like what I'm writing. I'm just rambling, sending the words out into space to see if anything comes back. If I continue to write a few words, just a little each night, maybe I'll find the courage to write pages at some time in the future. There are pages stored up inside me, hordes of words looking for a way out. Perhaps this blog will be an escape tunnel for the imprisoned words.

In the meantime, it is a release to let the words flow and see where they go. It's practice and practice makes...well not perfect, but maybe better.

The Other Side of Lonely

For the most part, living alone is lovely. I get full custody of the remote control. No one's socks but mine are on the floor. If there are dishes in the sink, I put them there.

Sometimes, however, not often, but sometimes the solitude gets so quiet that the internal voices emerge just to fill the vacuum. It's then that regrets and dashed dreams surface like the mist on a bog and hide the path to contentment.

Tonight is such a night.

The woulda, shoulda, couldas have come out to play. They taunt and tease with "the road less travelled." The "why didn't Is" play tag with the "why did Is" scattering crumbs of dissatisfaction and despair in their wake.

On a night like this, I revert to old habits. Movies, books, food. Escape. I cuddle into someone else's story to evade the reality of mine. I plug the soul holes with carbohydrates knowing that it's, at best, a temporary fix.

The problem with old habits is that once we acknowledge their existence they no longer work as escape. Someone else's story is no longer a shelter and carbohydrate mortar is like toothpaste in picture holes decomposing as we watch. The discomfort is still there. It must be addressed, it must dealt with.

Sometimes you have to just ride through the loneliness and come out the other side. Embrace it as a friend. Look it in the face and call it what it is. My reality is that my aloneness is a choice. Most of the time, I am content with my solitude. Just some nights, like tonight, it would be nice to have someone else to talk to besides my demons.

Nobody is not a bad word

Some may think that by calling myself a nobody, I'm being self-deprecating. Not at all. I am a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying, proud nobody. Given our celebrity oriented society, our "I've got to be somebody or I'm nothing" mentality, it isn't easy to allow yourself to be a nobody, but I'm working at making it acceptable.

I wasn't always happy being nobody. When I was younger, I craved to be a somebody. I thought I wanted fame. But through the years, I've watched the unfortunate toll that fame has taken on people I have admired and I came to embrace being a nobody.

Nobody-hood allows me so much freedom. I don't have strangers wondering about my life. I can walk through the world without anyone invading my privacy. I can sit and enjoy a moment of silent contemplation in a public place without intrusion. No one wants to know what I'm eating, where I buy my clothes, or who I'm hanging out with. I can make a mistake without the world press creating banner headlines out of my embarrassment.

The people I love and who love me know what's going on in my life. They let me know I'm important. To them, I am a valued nobody. And being a valued nobody is really being a somebody.

Hurrah for nobody-hood and happy anonymity. I love being a nobody.

Getting Started

I've been needing to write for sometime. Lacking the discipline to sit down and actually put a story together, I thought I might jump into the 21st century technology and try blogging. With the thought that you can teach an old dog new tricks, I want to share some of the conclusions I've come to in my 61 years of being a confirmed nobody. I don't know if you can call it wisdom, but it is a way of life that has lead me to a relative contentment. If anyone reads these words and finds something that resonates, I'll consider that a bonus. For actually, I'm just looking for a place to let the words flow--hopefully with sense...and maybe some wisdom.