This summer has been pretty slow going for me. It seems every time I wander out I end up coming home and paying for it for up to three days afterwards with a migraine or the usual stomach complaints. For me it’s been hard to figure out if this is due to the fact I am living in a house that’s killing me, or if it’s my mood making little crashes into bigger ones. Quite frankly I have grown mentally and physically fatigued from having to deal with the aforementioned house even though it is now almost to the point I can say it looks halfway decent. It’s taken me over a year but I have de-hoarded and deep cleaned most of it – all that’s left is the bathroom and the extra room I plan to set my sewing machines up in. From there I honestly I have to focus on fixing things up and making it my own – so it’s not all as bad as I make it seem. I just needed a break.
So I am up in Maine for a couple weeks hoping to reset myself. I have decided that next winter I shall make arrangements to be here in the darkest time of the year for me – after the holidays when my various ailments usually keep me in the house except for one excursion to the grocery store or Wal-Mart once every 1-3 weeks. I’m hoping by allowing myself to be isolated somewhere else I won’t fall as hard. Perhaps I can even use it to my advantage and use it as a writer’s retreat. Maybe actually finish one of these books I am working on rather than just saying I am going to. Or work on my sculpting! Or just fucking sleep it off. It’s all a good plan.
I have noticed that balance is a very hard thing to maintain. Whenever my physical health fails my mental health suffers because of the isolation and then my physical health gets even worse because of that. Lately I have been pushing myself to be more outgoing and social as I seem to have retreated back into my former super introverted self – but this is not good for me and I know it. I need people around no matter how much I pretend I don’t. But they have to be the right people. I no longer have any tolerance whatsoever for drama or self-imposed misery of any sort. Those people suck the life out of me.
I find myself craving and needing more and more these days. As I return to reading, something I haven’t done in years, my brain whirls, a bottomless pit just sucking in every story like a sponge. I am loving watching documentaries, another past time I had long forgotten, and the outside intellectual stimulation that keeps me going has gotten pretty intense. I need to go places I have never been, learn something new every day, and the new people I find… well, they’re often as intense as I am, something that apparently is causing alarm in my family. My desire to fill my life with other creative, intense, intelligent individuals has made my mother lament, “This is how you get in trouble. Your taste in men! You always like the ones who are a little extreme!” As usual she had a hard time figuring out the right words for her sentiment, I cleaned up the idea of it. I told her people could easily say the same of me and illustrated to her all I have done in the past year despite vast challenges to do so. She grew quiet. I think everyone was hoping I would find some super relaxed gent to settle down with but… I get bored too easily. I can’t see myself ever being satisfied with that sort of life for long. I need creative outbursts, goals to achieve, new things to stimulate my never ending mind. What I don’t need is drama. However I do not see these two things as being two opposing ideas. Surely there is such a thing as a purposeful driven life without any ongoing drama or toxicity.
The conversation got me thinking. First it sort of made me laugh because I have kept my taste in men very much hidden from my mother in particular since…. well birth. I have my reasons (she’s a worrier.) Though it did make me wonder. Years ago I always seemed to form crushes on a very specific kind of individual – depressive ones. I purposely did not pursue any, knowing this is not socially a great trait to find attractive, but then as I thought about it longer I realized it wasn’t the depression I found so alluring, it was the cause of the depression – I adored individuals who saw the injustices of the world and broke a little inside. But you know what that is? Empathy. It was the empathy I was attracted to. And that’s not a bad thing by any means!
So here I sit, trying to get everything just right, working on at least a dozen different projects, hoping someday maybe I will find a little peace. With that being said I am pretty happy as I write this, content to continue my journey, excited to see what may be around the corner. As usual I have decorated this little blog entry with photos I have taken as of late. Photography has been…. oddly healing to me in the past few days.