Ponderings

Today, I have been pondering two things: Sparkle and Consequences

When you have a really great time, your regular life appears dull/tired/dreary/empty. There is a feeling of loss. Not only is this wonderful thing no longer available, what use to be good in your life is lacking in comparison. You notice the things lacking and even the good things in life just don’t seem to matter as much. There is a readjustment to “normal” where the memories of the wonderful time fade so the time you are in can become good again. It almost makes it seem like it is better to not search out those wonderful times because the price you pay — having what you have to live with being not enough — is more that you want to pay.

This pondering comes from having a fabulous time this weekend. I was living on the edge and found I could do it without needing to deal with emergencies (as in being sent to the emergency room). I was flying high. I gave myself an entire day of recovery. Traveled home on one day, took the next day off just for me. I am finding that while I don’t really want to go back to that wonderful time, I don’t really like the time I am in either. In writing all this out, I also realized that this description covers a lot of things, love, drugs, weekends away, gatherings of friends. These wonderful things add the sparkle to life but they will go away. And then not only are you missing the sparkle, what you have looks so much less than before. It is sad that to avoid the dullness, you have to not have the sparkle.

The other thing I am pondering is consequences. In the past when I have broken up with someone, I have given myself a time period of “screw the consequences” do whatever I want just because I want to and let the consequences take care of themselves. Life hurts enough as it is so I don’t care what happens to me. This is actually rather safe for me to do because I can’t seem to get myself into real trouble. I just don’t like things that actually would lead to serious problems. A beautiful example of how this has worked for me in the past is when I came back to the States in ’90. I had broken up with my fiance in Belgium and gotten a job working at a department store. I gave myself six months of “screw the consequences.” Four months later, I quit the department store job at $5.17/hour to work at the Tattered Cover Book Store for $4.75/hour for Christmas help, basically two months. There was nothing smart about this decision, I just wanted to do it. I feel it is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I loved the experience I had at the Tattered Cover. I still have all my training paperwork and if I ever start a business of my own, I will pattern it after that one.

This time around, things in my life are such that I haven’t felt I could afford to “screw the consequences.” I am working on dealing with the consequences from a lot of my past and how I deal with things. It is something I feel I really need to be here for and can’t just let loose and come what may. I can do some letting go but not wholesale, mostly it is to follow others. I have noticed some things come up that have really stalled me out. I am interested but am working out all the permutations of the consequences, trying to decide if I should follow up on it or not. I have ended up being very hesitant about taking up some options presented to me and feel I have lost out on these options. Whether they weren’t really options that would have worked, or I hesitated and didn’t act fast enough or interested enough that the options past me by, I can’t say. Some other things where I didn’t need to be enthusiastic, just willing, have come through nicely. Other things have fizzled but that is ok, I wasn’t invested.

It seems like these two things are somewhat related but I am not sure how. I might even be going in two different directions with these. Gee, look at me. I am being philosophical. Somehow, I figure this isn’t something people would expect from me. It isn’t all stories.

4 thoughts on “Ponderings

  1. I’m not surprised that you are being philosophical. You do it from time to time (fairly regularly, from what I have seen), you just may not notice when you are.

    I understand what you mean about the sparkle. I just came back from a vacation where I stopped and said “I’m the happiest that I have been in at least three years.” Coming back off of that has sucked beyond the describing. Thing is, no matter how much coming back has sucked, I wouldn’t trade the sparkle of the vacation for the world. So for me, yeah, the not-happy hurts. But the happy far outweighed it.

    I guess for me part of why the sparkles hurt so much is that everything in general is so blah. So the way I look at it, it’s not so much a problem that the sparkles are bad, it’s that the blah needs to improve. If that makes any sense?

    1. This totally makes sense. For me, the reason the sparkle doesn’t seem worth the blah is because I am in the blah now and the sparkle is over. Whatever I am in currently seems to last forever. So, when I am in the sparkle, it is so worth it and is wonderful. I am in the blah now and it seems to stretch to the horizons.

      I do get the problem is with the blah. I have been looking around trying to figure out what needs to change so it is less blah. I do know I need to clean up my apartment to make things a little better. It is just so daunting and takes so long. I had so much energy in the sparkle and very little in the blah. Make change hard. It will take time and I fully expect to whine my way through it.

      I guess I do get philosophical from time to time. I am just use to telling stories instead. I don’t see me doing it on LJ because that exposes myself but that doesn’t mean I don’t. A friend expressed his surprise that I didn’t include more stuff about an aspect of my life on LJ and I explained that I am not the type to do that. If people ask, I am more than happy to tell (it is a little hard to shut me up) but I have to have the interest expressed. LJ is too passive. The stuff that goes here is the stuff I am sure people would be interested in reading/hearing or stuff I don’t care if anyone is interested in. This one was one of the latter.

      Thank you for your perspective.

      1. Wow, everything you said on clearing up the blah just rings so familiar to me right now. The blah just seems to keep mounting up and I just don’t have the energy to mess with it.

        I’m not sure if you would want to mess around with this, but one thing I’ve found that helps somewhat with the blah is taking vitamins — in specific, taking a good multi-vitamin and an extra B6 suppliment. I find if I’ve been under long-term stress, I seem to run out of B6 or something. Anyway, for me this helps with the lack of energy.

        1. Two funny things.
          First, I seem to have made even more of a mess out of my apartment by starting the Xmas wrapping process and running out of steam.

          Second, one of the reasons I think I am deeply in the blahs is vitamins. When I am going to be putting out a lot of energy, I take this energy pack of vitamins. When I stop taking them, I seem to have a come-down. My solution is to avoid taking them so I can readjust to “normal.” Ha Thinking about what you wrote, maybe I should continue to take them for a short time and then work my way off them.

          I seem to have plenty of energy, just really lacking in motivation.

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