All posts by ginaleepalmer

LJ vs FB

I have been neglecting LJ in favor of FB. I figure LJ is for big thoughts, FB is for fun and light thoughts and such. But FB is easier. The UI is set up for quicker easier interaction, It is easier to constrict a big thought into a smaller space than it is to do a good job in a larger space (especially when one has a tendency towards over explaining and being verbose), and there are loads of distractions lurking in FB to grab you and take you away (which happened even as I was looking something up for this session on LJ)?

I am going to try to download my big thoughts here and run FB and LJ at the same time again. We will see how well I do.

feeling out of step and not wanting to hide it

A couple of things have come up that in my friend circles that have made me feel like I don’t quite belong or am on the wrong side. Since I am not being social, I sort of feel like I am hiding these things instead of owning them so I get to admit to them here. With LJ, I feel that people know this is only a small slice of life and not to assume what is seen here is the entire story. For some reason, I don’t get the same feeling from FB. Also FB is much more open and LJ has always been more exclusive even though I pretty much limit both to people I know IRL.

#1. I didn’t vote. I take voting seriously and there were many posts reminding people to vote. But I didn’t have a horse in this race so it didn’t feel worthwhile to put the effort in to get the correct info to base decisions on. I figure if I am not going to make an informed decision, I shouldn’t vote. I will only be following the sheep and if I am going that way anyway, the rest of the sheep can do the voting, my vote isn’t needed. I didn’t care one way or the other about the measures on the ballot. I had some leanings but they weren’t based on real reasons, just wanting to go against where the money is being spent, which is pretty much the same as voting because of what commercials are telling you (which I don’t like). This was a primary so it just gets to choose who is going to run in Nov and I will vote then. It is hard to get information on a candidate and have them lose because you get invested in the process. I will do it but will avoid it as much as I can. So I didn’t vote but for very specific reasons as well as I was lazy. I did thing about it all day.

#2. I made no effort to view the transit of Venus. I just don’t care. I was working for NOAA when we had a solar eclipse in CO many years ago. I got involved and went out and watched. In those days we could use floppy discs to view the sun safely. I was bored by it. The most interesting thing to me was when I went back inside, there were little crescents all over the floor from the sun shining through the holes in the blinds. That was neat. I didn’t view the last eclipse and don’t have much interest to view a little black dot crossing in front of the sun. It doesn’t matter. It happens, it doesn’t happen, whatever. I don’t know if this lack luster attitude is from turning my back on space when the shuttle blew up in ’86 or if it is more than that. I do wonder if my head thinks it is boring but my emotions would kick in and I would find it valuable at the time.

#3. I don’t care that Ray Bradbury is dead. It has been coming and expected for a long time. I like some of his stories. The Velt has its hooks into me very deeply. But he just isn’t that big a deal for me. He is like Steven King to me, some of his stuff is my genre but I don’t consider him a genre writer. A factor in this might be the professor of a college class I had called Intro to Science Fiction. It was a lit class and was treated as such. We spend half of once class on Heinlein and half of one on Asimov. These are iconic sci-fi writers to me and I feel they were short changed. We reviewed their pulp work and called it high literature. Oh come on, it was written for the price per word for an audience’s titillation. Yes it had science and it was fiction. It contained novel ideas and an alternative view on issues but that is what science fiction is about. The writing itself was not “high quality” soaked with layers and layers of meaning which is how it seems to be treated in lit classes. If we covered it like it was the pulp/lowest common denominator it was and how this other stuff still came through it, that would be great. It would be like discussing how much character development there is in Sailor Moon with all of the stock footage and monster of the week in a half hour format with commercials. That is rather amazing. But treating Sailor Moon as quality drama is pathetic. Well, this prof was writing a book on Ray Bradbury so we spent two weeks on him. Since I consider him only marginally a science fiction writer it was very aggravating to spend so much more time on him than on those I considered to be architects of the genre. This might have helped put Ray Bradbury into the spot in my head that he has enough people being impressed with him that there is no need for me to join the bandwagon. Not to say he isn’t an important writer and the world has lost someone that has made a difference. Just that I don’t much care beyond it bothering others that are important to me.

So those are the current three areas that seem to be big things to people I like and I care about. I sort of feel like I do when I am a bad fan. The definition of a bad fan is when you aren’t a fan of something that all your fan friends love. It feels sort of like maybe I don’t share as much with these people as I think I do. There, now maybe I can get rid of the feeling that I am hiding these things just so I can fit in.

connection and the lack there of.

According to Brene Brown, people deny themselves connection because they feel they don’t deserve connection.

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

I keenly feel my lack of connection and I do feel like I am not worthy. Not because I am a bad person but because of many other things.
I don’t feel like I have the oomph to reach out and make the connections.
I don’t think I handle other people initiating connections.
I have gotten really bad when it comes to being dependable.
I don’t think it is fair for others to keep putting energy into me and have me not put energy into them.
This has been going on so long that I imagine that others are tired of it, I know I am.
Connections are hard work and it is so much easier to sleep.

I think I have a lot to offer and am worthy of connection, it is the GUI that is really messed up and I need to fix it. And I don’t know how.

I know a few people that have habits/traits that would drive many people nuts but people like them, a lot. One aspect of it is they seem to own their habits, good and bad, and not make excuses. They appear larger than themselves and don’t seem to worry about people liking them. They are how they are take it or leave it. I find myself enjoying these sorts of people even though I don’t like some of the stuff they do. I don’t know if this is how others feel about them or if they have their own draws. For me it might be because there is a limit with how far a friendship would go. There is a sort of feeling of relief/relaxation when dealing with these “annoying” people, like I don’t have to watch out and be ready for something. I am sure that is my issue that most others wouldn’t share.

When I think about all the things I do that would/could annoy other people and how they couldn’t possibly like me, I think of these individuals with annoying behaviors. If I can feel as drawn to them, even with the things I really don’t like, and others are evidently drawn to them, then I can be like them and my bad habits/behaviors wouldn’t keep people away. (within reason of course). This is something to work on once my ability to connect isn’t a one way drain of energy.

Better to not eat before going grocery shopping (wired backwards)

Tonight was an example of why is it a bad idea for me to eat before going grocery shopping (wired backwards). I had a meal from Boston Market and went to Safeway on a full stomach. I was there to get ice cream and whatever else I could that I would eat. The sale I was expecting was over and I wasn’t interested enough to work out what flavor I would want with the other ice cream on sale. After wandering around the store, I found nothing enticing and I didn’t want any of it. I could come up with arguments against everything I know I have bought in the past and liked. I had no interest in any food.

If I shop when I am hungry, then I buy food I will probably eat when I need to eat.

I love my President

I am so very happy with my President. I was not that impressed with Obama when he was running and I could have been convinced to vote for McCain until Sarah Palin got added. In fact, Obama got my vote more as an anti-Palin vote than any belief I had in him. Now I am tickled pink to have him as my Prez. He has worked hard to follow through on his campaign promises. He has gotten so much done he as scared half the country so I don’t have a problem with him not getting everything. I am disgusted with the GOP and their entire focus to bring him down instead of working towards the betterment of the country. My attitude is whoever is best should run the country. If your party isn’t in power then you should show how you are better, not do everything to drag that other guy down. Rise from the shoulders of eagles rather than pulling people off of pedestals. I smile when I see pictures of him. Every now and then I get reminded that he is the first Black President and I am weirded out for a moment. To me he is a first President. The first one I feel is moving in a direction I approve of, the first one to make me proud to be an American, the first one that has made me interested in politics. He is first in so many things, being Black is very far down the list. I see me and my ideals when I look at him, so much so that it takes me a moment to realize that my skin color isn’t as dark as his.

I liked Clinton and was upset at how the GOP never stopped harping on him after the election. I know he lied but I feel he was put in a position that he never should have been put as an acting President and it makes sense that he lied. I am grateful to him for breaking the attitude about politicians needing to step down because of affairs. But I was never as pleased with him as I am with Obama.

The sad thing I find now is how hard it is to identify with and appreciate other people that don’t like him as president, that are part of the country that is scared or see him as a disgrace. I didn’t like Bush and was sad he was the president for 8 years. But I did respect him as the president of my country. I realized that he was doing the best he felt he could and that his ideas and mine weren’t the same and I was ok with that. (I will admit Chesney scared/scares me and I am so glad he is no longer in power). I get a strong feeling that those that don’t like Obama and don’t agree with the job he is doing don’t respect him as president. So when I run into someone who has a lot of attributes I like or I might disagree with but still admire their difference and then find out they don’t like Obama, it seems to stain everything about them. I know it shouldn’t but I am noticing it does. I try to forget about their political leanings so I can still enjoy the other bits of them. Politics is such an emotional issue that doesn’t seem to have viable ties to the emotions they manipulate.

Turning points, revelations, meds

Sticking this hear so I have a time stamp on it.
I will be upping my meds today. Didn’t take any yesterday, not morning not evening dose.
But something seems to have shifted in me before the meds.
Noticed a pattern about a friend who puts what she does for others as a higher priority than what she does for herself. How she abuses herself to fulfil a commitment to herself, doesn’t give herself room so as not to abuse herself and how I have gotten abused as part of the process because I am willing to show up and help putting me on the same level as herself. No judgement, just the beginning of seeing a pattern that I suspect will show light on similarities in how I have set up my life.

How making changes as an adult doesn’t work because they require demanding your own way and that only works as a child. Trying to grow the tropical plant version of yourself after being planted in a desert for years surrounded by things that work for cactus but not for orchids. Trying to bring in tropical influences and watching them fail because the rest of the support structure isn’t there. How to bring new blossoms into a life without totally transplanting oneself. The value of making space for what you want to arrive in your life instead of collecting it first and making room later. Or collecting it first to get enough that it can support itself when it does arrive. ???

Partial thoughts that need work. But still before the med change. Don’t want one to be credited for the other if that isn’t the case. It might just be time and the thoughts and the meds showed up together to support one another.

wired backwards – nightmare vs dream

I rarely get nightmares and things that should frighten me in dreams rarely do. I woke up and had to work at not going back to sleep and tell myself that zombies and tigers that could float and escape were not real over and over and over. I was really afraid of that the zombie floating tigers were real and what could happen.

Friends betraying me was just a story and no big deal.

The zombie tigers that can float and contaminate dogs and people with a bite escaping the US Capitol building and as a team, the solution might mean going in, sealing all the windows and exits, killing all of them and then ourselves so that nothing can escape into the world to lead to its destruction might have been the closes thing to a nightmare I can remember. I could replay it with different possible solutions and each time it ended up with it being best to seal up everything and destroy ourselves. I woke up and had to work at not going back to sleep and telling myself that zombies and tigers that could float and escape were not real over and over and over. I was really afraid of the zombies and needing to deal with them and being bit.

Being very groggy, I did fall back to sleep very quickly and my next dream was set in the same place but I was a tech in Ops cleaning up problems and trying to stay out of the public eye. The zombies and tigers that could float didn’t exist and the problems included bombs and explosions,treachery and intrigue. We were good at hiding the fact that there were problems and were at risk of being blown up instead of the original targets.

Working ops for the President/US Capital and almost being killed multiple times by attempts to hurt the government and then being betrayed by my partner and having my father and myself rigged with a series of deadly booby traps was dealable. Turns out he was working with a long time family friend and a new friend setting me up for my demise. Each person’s reason was the opposite extreme from their actions and the same for my response. In the end, it even made sense.

I could replay this and watch what happened to me over and over and it happened the same way every time. So my partner who did all the work planting bombs on me but seemed to actually care for me, was killed. Because we were Ops, we face death all the time as that was no big deal for him. It was quick and painless but very dangerous for me to do. The long time family friend who planned and staged it all as well as manipulated everyone into doing the work, was sent on her way with warnings that I knew what she was doing and she should stop. She was angry with me over some imagined slight her lover (which turned out to be my partner) had done because he was busy working with me. We (my father and another friend) brought a law suit against her for some completely unrelated issue. Some land she inherited and how she presented herself. Turns out her heart, her life, and the image she has of herself was really connected to that land and the story she tells herself about her connection. Death would be bad for her but taking this connection away and having her live with that would be devastating. There was little risk to me.

Writer’s Block: Leave a Message After the Beep

Hi, this is the refrigerator. No one can make it to the phone right now but if you leave a message with me, I will write it down and stick it to myself with a magnate.

I have had the same message for over 15 years because I have friends and family that like hearing and talking to my refrigerator and I get messages with giggles from new people like work clients, job possibilities, and businesses. One person at an agency used to say he was Prince Philip in a can when he talked to my refrigerator. Too many people seem to enjoy it and I haven’t seen any negative reactions so it has become as part of me as my rat tail. If I change it, people will be concerned for me.

The Bloggess and depression

The Bloggess posted a serious post about depression (http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-fight-goes-on/). I felt the need to comment and I wanted to keep a copy of what I said.

I have been fighting bouts of depression for almost 30 years. It has defined about a third to half my life. I hide it really well, this is how I handle getting through it. I can seem very upbeat and energetic and enthusiastic in the middle of deep depressions. People don’t have a clue. I have been openly talking about it for at least a decade. I am working hard to learn new ways to cope, to actually not have it define my life. But with learning new things I am not very good at them so I am not escaping my depression as well. My big problem right now is knowing when I am actually depressed and it is a mountain to move so I shouldn’t try to force it because the cost is days of inability to move afterwards or when I am just being lazy and don’t want to get up and if I actually do push past the resistance, the day brightens up and gets better.

I have disconnected from a lot of friends and events because it has been hard to keep up on them and I am tired of disappointing people and flaking. I have stopped asking for help as often because the help I have gotten was good at the moment but hasn’t had lasting effect and is losing its ability to even do that much anymore. I have been stuck in this bout for at least 3 years. Intellectually I know I have gotten better but I feel like I am in the same place and I am coming up on a pit. But I keep trying. Sometimes I give in and wallow and rest and the next time I push I have more strength. But I have loads of self-hate for what I feel I should be able to do even though I know better.

There is a blogger on LJ called theferrett who wrote about his struggle and I found the post to be very inspiring (http://theferrett.livejournal.com/298424.html). He puts forth that those that face depression and suicide and come out the other side are Heroes. They have gone through mighty battles and survived. I think your post and his work together well. Thank you for sharing your ideas and bring this sort of thing into the light for so many people. ,/i>

series of dreams

bohemianbanshee asked me if I remembered my dreams from Tuesday night. I was too full of the details that morning to be able to write them out. Trying to push them through the logic filter to put them into words and then spell the words in the right order would have killed them. But thinking about it now I have some of them. I wrote them out for her in a comment and decided that it was too long and should probably be a post of its own. They are lodged with my real memories and sometimes float up as real so it is probably a good idea to get some anchor to remind me of them being dreams.

Back in 1987, I was in a state to opt out of Halloween (I read a book that night in my dorm room) but the night before I had some really vivid dreams. I had three dreams that were linked together. I woke up between them, rolled over and went back to sleep not wanting to continue the dream and it was like commercial breaks. I even had credits rolling at the end. They creeped me out because they were like a cross between Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. They all had to do with a boy named Jason and his father killing him. Three different fathers, three different sons, but they were all Jason. The first dream, the boy was reanimated, I don’t remember anymore what happen in the second, in the third the bloody body was in the trunk when his father takes the car to the shop. The father gets in an elevator with another man who turns out to be the first father and they ride up together. When the doors open they are faced with sand from horizon to horizon (mountains are in the distance) and a straight vertical drop outside the doors. They are on some type of structure that is very flat and has a texture similar to sandpaper. They have to work themselves off this structure to the flat land and see if there is something in the mountains. As they are trying to get off the structure, the camera pans back (this is when I found out I was a camera) and it turns out the structure is the name Jason and the credits start to roll. The mountains are probably where the first kid died while camping with his dad and brother. I always wished I had a camera in my head for this.

So here is the babble about Tuesday’s dreams:

Do I remember them all? Lets see…
There was one where I had to pass through a series of gates to get out of somewhere (there is a lot more detail here but not sure how to describe it) and there were gate guardians of the Egyptian flavor. I (and those with me) would be almost through whatever they were making us do and another god would show up and take over and we would have to start over. After a number of these transitions (more detail) I had to get out so I expanded and floated up and skipped the gate system. I was yelled at because I was quitting (like when you are playing D&D) but I couldn’t waste my time going though the process any more. (This is an example of one of them).

There was the one where my brother was trying to kill me out on the ocean but the water was fresh water and I could fly/swim like a bat ray.

The one where people joined a community focused on being happy and making life worth living. This had an air of paper cutouts and run by a short ompa-lumpa type character that was very charismatic. It was a world contained in an egg shape and at the end we were able to float to the top (this was the first in the series of dream and the least remembered. It made much more sense when I could remember more of the rules of that world).

Shoot, I only remember the floating dreams. And they were the ones at the beginning. The other dreams followed and I kept mistaking them for memories.

Then after falling asleep again I had the dream where I was a doctorate candidate and had done a research job on corn and was preparing my big presentation. It included cleaning my room at the farmer’s house where I stayed while working on it. It was a big deal to make the bed and pin a banner on the bottom and put out a tapestry/rug that had been knitted by the community onto the bed. It was like the bedroom was the stage. The dream had loads of history that showed up about how corn was used for paint and there was a former President (of the US) that was there and he was known as a supporter of farmers and corn crops. My hosts (the farm family) apologized to him because my findings went against what was formally believed about how good corn was for what it had been used for and they felt that they might be seen as supporting the destruction of what he worked for. He told them that it was fine. (there is more detail)

Oh yeah, another dream was about wandering around London and some school of New Teensomething or other. I couldn’t get the name right after I woke up but I felt that I really wanted to study in London for the summer. I was thinking about how I didn’t have much keeping me here and how it could be perfectly reasonable for me to move there for a semester and what a good idea it would be right now. This was my last dream before waking up.

Before that it was about how there are trains that weave through the streets and people live on them. This is how more people are added to already cramped cities. People sleep in rows of cots/beds and in the dream we were taking orders for the fast food restaraunts we were passing by. They were the same places as now (McDonalds, Wendy’s, Subway, etc) but the food was in smaller portions. Just bite size. And because there were so many of us showing up at once, it took a long time to get your order. We were at an entire block of fast food and I couldn’t decide what I wanted. Then we rolled past an Arby’s and that was just perfect. I got off and went to order. I could get a large version of the sandwich (which is like a real one) but they wouldn’t let me have only one potato cake. I had to order those in pairs which made no sense (and it was difficult to get them to admit to that). It was a bit of an argument/discussion. There was also this thing were some people were called up for duty and they were required to show up all at the same time. It didn’t matter if you were so far back in the line that it would be all day until they got to you, attendance kept being taken so they would know if you went and did something else while the line was still moving. The character I was following there was a guy that was married but had to hide it becuase he couldn’t be part of whatever this thing was and be married. And he was required to be part of it. Sort of catch 22.

Another dream was about my mom and I touring in Italy but this Italy was nothing like the real Italy we really did visit. There was one leather store that I found that I remembered seeing on the internet. I looked at all these cool vintage type bags (something that would go on a motorcycle rather than a handbag) and knowing that I could ponder it and order it from his online store which I could refind when I got home. Mom and I ate at a japanesse/chinese place where there were language issues. They showed us the food individually in leu menues and we each chose something different so we could try out what the other got. When we got our food, we found out that they showed us the raw food and it was cooked which was fine but it looked completely different. When we got the bill it was way too high. After arguing with them we found out they charged us for two of each because it had to be cooked as a set of two even though they only served us one. My character decided to pay them one forth for the meal and walk off. Something about only paying half of what was served because of being misled. I think we only ate a few bites of it. There were partks and little stores and plays. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get my mom around on a scooter.

There was one part where I had gotten lost because I thought a turn off of a store was a straight turn and the right one was more angled. This is the part that led to the living trains in the city streets dream.

There were transitions between dreams but each dream had different characters, worldsand rule sets. I think the sequence went happy world to Egyptian gates, to fresh water ocean, to trip with mom, to street trains, to studying in london. There was also one that was an office I worked in. This one is very vague. I have some details that I think might be from a different dream from months ago so I am not counting those. I think this office dream lead to the happy world dream. There might have been one between happy world and the gates.

Well it looks like a last minute job showed up for today. Time to play in Reality. At an ad agency. *snerk*