Intentions and Expectations

I am reading an article from Psychology Today entitled "The Perils of Intentions and Expectations." This sums up every day off for me, every diet, every career goal, every everything.

Part of it is that the author references the fact that she wrote a novel then uses that throughout to illustrate terms. It's weird to feel guilty before you even read something, so I'm going to play the Blame Game. I blame the fact that I drank coffee and that I did it so late in the day. It's totally not helping me accomplish my goals, mainly because it's a hot beverage and not a personal trainer. Of course, if I HAD a personal trainer here yelling at me, first, I'd wonder and probably say aloud, "Whyyyyy are you in my house?" Then, I'd say, "GET OUT AND STOP YELLING AT ME!"

To quote Tardy the Turtle, "You are doing lots of things!" which is what I told myself when I realized around 1pm that I don't want to leave the house without pajamas, I don't want to go out IN my pajamas, and I don't really want to go anywhere at all. I made a ton of phone calls to acquire information and make plans that I should've done last week, last month, and a few years ago. Yet, that still leaves me with the guilt that I haven't done any of the errands and chores I needed to do today. Now, this wouldn't bother me, except it means that I have to do EVERYTHING I didn't do tomorrow. If I were single, I'd be like, "Sweet, another day to relax. Inside. On the couch. In my comfort zone."

Being married means several things, but one thing it especially means is that if you don't complete tasks, you let down the person you love (hopefully, or at least top 2?) most in the world. When I got married, it's like someone plunked down next to me and handed me a package.

"What's this?" I asked, turning over the cleverly disguised, brown paper wrapped package. It looked like a giant, cool ball was inside.
"Oh that!" the Emotional Postal Delivery Service replied, lightly. "This is your guilt."
"I...I don't want this. I won't sign for it," I said, holding it back up.
EPDS shook its head. "You can't refuse it. It's your inheritance. It's not all about you anymore. Now you have someone else you have to consider in all this. Soooo congratulations, and have fun with this!"

It occurs to me instead of writing about all this, I could just go out and get things done. Uhhhh goodbye!

Update: My husband thought I was doing laundry tomorrow. Score! He didn't care that I didn't do it today. Although, now there are a bunch of things I have to tackle tomorrow instead of today, plus we ran errands when he came home. Silver lining (and it's raining so that saying is more amusing), I don't have to do laundry.

"You and me could write a bad romance"

Chuck Klosterman once said, "Do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music'? That actually means they like no kinds of music." I read this line one summer in between college, and even though I like him, I felt personally affronted by this statement. My ex-boyfriend read it, laughed, and said, "Yeup, that's you."

Up until that point, I'd emphatically insisted I liked "all kinds of music." I didn't, but I didn't know that. College taught me several things and combined with dating, I learned that I could care less about, even downright despise, most music. It took twenty-something years to figure this out, but I realized it. Something I'd feared all along.

I liked sappy, foot tapping pop music with occasional interruptions by bands cool people would actually pay to see.

"Bad Romance" has all sorts of interpretations, but to me, it's my cd collection. When I watched an episode of The League where André listens to music that no one can stand, I thought, "Oh no, I am André!" When Taco referred to André's car as a "musical armageddon," I nodded, sadly and knowingly. I have some redemption among my collection, but I will still always be the girl sitting in my car when I heard "See You Again," for the first time, and I thought, "I LOVE this song. Shit, this is probably that Miley Cyrus song everyone hates so much!" After that, I could pretty much guarantee that if someone was making fun of it, I was going to end up falling in love with it. I wouldn't see every artist I like in concert, but that doesn't mean I won't screech along to one of their songs at a moderate volume in my car (yeah, I'm particular about it not being too loud, you see where I'm going with this?).

My husband and my's first concert was Presidents of the United States of America, a concert my friends refused to join me at in the past. He's the first person I've ever dated where I actually love most of his music collection. We don't usually ride in my car, and when we do, he gets a little confused. The bulk of my cds aren't one band, but compilations, so passengers are forced to take a chance. Abba or Weezer? Amy Winehouse or "Call Me Maybe?" I am still the only person I know who likes James Blunt, or possibly the only one who will admit it. No, I'm definitely the only one who likes him, because I bought a copy at the Dollar Store. True story. Pretty sure someone hid or chucked it out my window, because I haven't been able to find it in years. And you know what? I miss it!

My ex co-workers used to love to quiz me on music, because I'd like half of a band or some songs of a certain musical artist but hate others. When I expressed a hate for James Taylor, my co-worker put up a picture of him at my desk which prompted ALL of our customers to inquire into my love of James Taylor which never ceased to amuse us all. Yet, these days, I feel sentimentality towards James Taylor. It could be that my mom made me watch a special on him or because too many older women were reliving the best moments of their lives when his concert rolled into town, and somewhere along the lines I realized someday I'd become a version of this.

I went to a Train concert, and my friends just shook their heads. Some of the bolder ones outright made fun of me. One of them said, "You can like them, you don't have to live with them," since he hates their flaunting of San Francisco, his hometown. However, when I told my co-worker who got us the Train tickets in the car that I'd been to bands like Everclear, Barenaked Ladies, and Eve 6, she said, "I wish I'd been a teenager in the '90's. I would've seen some really awesome bands."

And that made me feel old, albeit cool. I didn't tell her I'd also seen Shania Twain.

Inside Out

There are a lot of decorations and furniture in this world. A lot of it isn't inherently fancy or impressive, but people have projects for that. Many of those projects take something boring and make it look downright awful. Which is like shopping at a thrift store and going out of your way to pick out clothing that looks worn, old, and like you bought it at a thrift store. Or worse, going to a resale shop that specializes in "retro" clothing and buying something used AND horrific looking for too much money. There's nothing wrong with buying inexpensive clothes (thrift stores, sales, outlet stores) or decorating boring furniture, but it baffles me how people think these things look good.

I used to want to be an interior decorator. The way I saw it, I had what I needed--artistic sense of style, ideas for budgeting, I could work for myself, and I had been walking into rooms thinking about making them fancy my whole life.

I realized that this career move would be a mistake. The main reason was that I began to realize that everyone's taste is different. Everyone thinks their taste is best, and sucking up my opinions to somehow meet the needs of my clients made me feel like I was compromising a code of ethics. I was something holy, and I refused the idea of letting complete strangers make a mockery of their homes. Also the reason I generally hate the show Trading Spaces.

The house I grew up in was beautiful, but it was that way because my mom kept its charm and transformed each room. She also spent a lot of time at the hardware store where I'd stand in the paint sample section and stare at all the gorgeous colors. I don't know what my mom saw when she walked into an open house with a "for sale" sign, but I saw curtains, pictures, furniture, and the works. I loved our house though, so it took a long time for us to really pull up our roots.

What made me truly comprehend this was my mom.

She's an eclectic decorator, but not in the same way I am. Years of putting up drywall, finding stained glass, and texturizing the ceiling took its toll on her. When we moved into the house she currently lives in, the previous owners had gone about making it homey. To me, homey, is another term for homely or dorky. The kitchen had hokey tiles. The den was the color of dying dandelions. I ended up with the baby room, which meant that I had sponge painted fish on my wall. Not overtaking the room, just on one or two walls. Enough to get under my skin.

My mom hates painting, so when I begged her to let me paint the room, I was told I wouldn't get any help and that I'd have to move out all my furniture. Where!? We'd just moved so there was no place to put anything. My room was my sanctuary. I didn't have any out of the ordinary ideas to change it without paint. I had to hide the fish, so as a teenager, I covered the majority of the fish with whatever looked cool--magazine ads (I also wanted to do that), comics, calendar pictures, mirrors, stickers, and free posters (I used to get a LOT of those). Now everything is pretty much taken down. The fish are still in mid-swim.

Meanwhile, my mom decided that anything she liked could go in the backyard. When we went to Mexico, we acquired a metal, turquoise sun. It looks FANTASTIC. She put it on the wall in the backyard. Then she added a bust of Ceasar to conquer the other side of the yard, metal drink holders, an angel bird bath, a wooden carved plant holder that looks like Gandalf the Gray, and cement stepping stones.

My biggest complaint was that Ceasar and the Mexican sun existed in the same backyard universe. "This does NOT go together!" I exclaimed. "Especially with the lattice right next to it!" However, my mom is not keen on being told how to do things, so her response was that when I moved out, I could decorate however I wanted.

It didn't matter to her that the house looked hodge podge. She wanted cool things, but she wanted them to live in chaos like a Picasso, Van Gogh, M.C. Escher, Frieda Kahlo, and Keith Harring pictures all in one. While all these artists are interesting individually, I think they would riot if they knew they all had to live in the same space without some sort of interesting/artsy way to keep the peace.

My husband will vouch that incongruent decorating sends me into freak out mode. I wish there was a better word for my style, because I feel like eclectic has a bad connotation connected to what I mentioned above.

I troll the architecture, design websites, and magazines. It's just something I love to do. Some people read, but I look up homes and decorating ideas. Occasionally, I yell at the internet, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THAT LOOKS TERRIBLE! YOUR WALLS ARE GRAY, PROBABLY LIKE YOUR SOUL!" Or "Really?? Frame upon frame with NOTHING inside? Yeah, that looks awesome. Because frames were made to be stripped or glued in a weird collage!" But the web didn't make it. It's merely a messenger. Thus, it's adept at being in zen neutral and ignoring your request. Don Draper is right, the universe is indifferent.

Someday, I will have the house of my dreams and probably a child that has an aversion to my taste. At which point, I will tell them to go live with Grandma.

Is it too Late for a Mission Statement? Naaaah!

While everyone with a blog has at least some hubris, I've checked out blogs on the internet, and I feel there is an abundance of this showy, dazzling, holier-than-thou attitude. There isn't anything wrong with this on the surface. People are attracted to fine, expensive things. However, I'm talking about snobs. In addition to blogs that hold themselves in high self-esteem, I find that Pinterest greatly contributes to this problem. Don't misunderstand, I LOVE Pinterest and it had something for everyone. That's what makes it great. 'Merica! The fantastic houses, the simple home projects, all the beautiful pictures. I am addicted to it, most likely because I'm not middle/upper-class (I say both, because upper class think they're middle class more often than not). In order to keep up with the obsessive qualities that are my legacy, I have to, as one pin so accurately assessed, internet hoard. You won't see me on any reality shows, but the characteristics are there. If I had the funds, I would probably wake up with giant shopping bags flooding my gloriously decorated and exalted living room and realize that I'd blacked out while shopping. I've never done this, but I could foresee it going down in an alternate universe.

Although I love nice things, I am primarily a window shopper. My co-workers and friends go shopping, to concerts, wine tastings, and jet set around the U.S...and I can't relate to that. It has nothing to do with cutting back on what I DO spend money on, because there is no opportunity at this point in time for me to save. That's just fact.

The point of this blog is to not only relate my thoughts to the public, but also to provide a balance to the blogs where the bloggers "make it rain," and then encourage you to do the same. Don't worry, this isn't a "financial" blog, nor will I try to provide helpful tips to the poor like "Take a walk!" or "hold hands with a loved one" or weird shit like that. I'm here to say that I'm not better than you, cooler than you, or more important than you. I am fun, interesting, and a complete weirdo--hence the current blog title. I'll try to convey that as much as possible.

Okay, now that's out of the way, we can move on to more pressing topics.

Another Brick in the Novel Wall

I wanted to say something awe-inspiring the other day, but I was consumed with medication and mind fog from the double plague. Hence, I ditched any attempt at explaining myself so I could produce substantial thought later.

Writing.

Currently, I have a couple of projects in utero. They're top secret, although I will tell you that neither of them is a human baby. However, because I'm working on two things at the same time, and they're lengthy, mind you, I keep running into walls of segueing my outlined ideas into stories. I want to keep both projects separate in their paths and goals. In case I were ever to go the extra mile of publishing them, interviewers could compare and contrast my works without glomping them into one big long story. Or I could do it alone with my single copy that I paid for and bought :-P). Dissecting my own work can be fun in an educating, masochistic, time machine manner.

Now that I'm coming back out of the pain and torture that is winter sinus infection time, I'm focusing in on being creative.

I'm watching my favorite shows with commentary, but I've found that the BEST shows are the ones that talk about the process of writing while continuing to be witty onscreen. I understand why and how commentary becomes dull and lax, but I wish that weren't the case.

Goals for writing

Watch favorite films/tv show, and use the commentary if necessary for tools
Read (I have problems with this due to my short attention span--it's not ADD, I just...don't enjoy reading due to my finicky feelings on how novels SHOULD be)
Think character based
Take stock of writing tips/prompts