Life in the Middle Lane

For years in North Carolina and in Georgia, the background on my computers at work have been some oceanscape.  Waves lapping on a beach, the view from a sail boat, or small island.  Without fail, the first thing I do when I get a new computer at work is change the background from whatever the default it, to something ocean or island related.

I’m a little obsessed with water; ocean, river and lake front properties make me drool. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of my favorite cities, San Francisco, Boston, Madison, and Miami are, in one way or another, on the water.  I blame my parents for this.

The nearest beach was about a three hour drive from where I grew up in  North Carolina and we would often head to the beach spontaneously for the day, an overnight or a long luxurious weekend. Driving to the beach and letting us kids splash around for a few hours, getting a great seafood meal, and driving home the same night was an easy and inexpensive way to trick us kids into behaving and to stop us from complaining that we never went anywhere. Dad (when he was there) or mom would load us into the station wagon and head for one or the other of our favorite beach spots.

I thought about this today. I’m at work wishing to high heaven that I was somewhere else.  I looked at the background of my island paradise on my computer, tried to go to my happy place, couldn’t and got a little angry.  I got so frustrated suddenly that I HAD to; ABSOLUTELY had to, change the picture.

So I did a google search on ocean pictures and found this one and I liked it. I could feel a headache coming on, so I took some deep breaths and stared at my new backdrop.

I can almost feel the heat and the dampness of the air.  I, just when I close my eyes, can smell the salt and sand coming off the water.  If I concentrate just a little bit, I can feel the lushness of the flowers. I run my fingers through the soft grittiness and smell the heady aroma of the dirt that produces such beautiful plant life. I relax just a little as I imagine myself in one of those corona commercials.  Beer in one hand, book in the other. No need for ipods, the world is my soundtrack. Ah, the life.

Don’t think that I’m just here getting my tan on at the beach.  After a morning swim, and a short “meditation” from my beach chair; I shower, dress (in something small and flowy, because it’s hot and I’m at home) and settle in my office for the day.

Where is my office, you ask? A screened-in porch at the back of my “house” where I can see and smell the ocean and hear the sounds of the birds and the waves.

In my office, I go to my computer and I write. I’m not sure yet what I’m writing. But I am. And, somehow, I know that I’m making people happy. And I’m making me happy.

And this is my life. Someone pays me to do this.

Suddenly, I am snapped out of my reverie by a ringing phone or a irritating laugh of a co-worker in a nearby cube. I shake my head and go back to reading the 50 page bill on my desk.  The one for which I’ve been asked to prepare a fiscal analysis. This analysis, like the other analyses I’ve done over the past six months, won’t make a huge difference in the world.

I glance back at my new happy place on my computer background.  One day.My

My life is riddled with occasions that I did the “right” thing even though it may not have been what I really wanted to do.  These are occasions where I may not have really known what I wanted to do so I did what was suggested. Or times when I didn’t want to disappoint someone who was counting on me.  Or times when I did what I thought would give me the most flexible or practical outcome, even if something else would have been so much more fun or interesting.

If something goes wrong and outcomes are bad, I generally have someone else to blame for these decisions. And I often regret that I forfeited my own decision making power to someone else. At the very least, I kick myself in the ass for not being true to what I want.

Sometimes I just make impulsive, some would say rash, decisions. Those passionate, emotional, little-thought-required decisions are generally the ones that I am the happiest with. In those cases, even when/if I fall on my face, I get up and stand behind whatever decision I made. After all, I either got what I wanted or learned a huge lesson, right?

Some decisions, like my decision to go to Salem College, are a combination of both. My then-boyfriend was already in college in Winston Salem, so it made sense to me (in my 16 year old brain) that I should be looking at colleges in the same town so that we could be together forever. I scoped out the Winston Salem colleges and found two that looked good(Wake Forest University and Salem College).  I applied, was accepted and visited them both.

I visited WFU first and at best, I felt indifferent and at worst, I felt like my soul died a little on that campus.  But when I visited Salem, I felt immediately at home. The other colleges where I was accepted (and there were some good ones) didn’t stand a chance because I made an irrational, emotional decision. Salem was where I belonged, price, location, etc be damned! That decision changed the course of my life (for better and worse). But regardless of my mixed feelings about Salem, I never regretted my decision to attend that school. I went because there was an irrepressible calling here. It was like I was being tugged by something I couldn’t see.

I’m on the verge of making another illogical, emotional; some would probably say stupid, decision to try to be involved with something that I am extremely passionate about. (my true friends could probably guess it in 3 tries, it only took my mother 1) This decision (and what is likely to come out of it) won’t make me rich, likely won’t advance my career, is likely going to cost me money, and is going to make me do something that a few months ago I said I wouldn’t do.

But I’m going to do it anyway because if I woke up tomorrow and found that my uncle would give me money to quit my job, this one thing that I’m about to do- would be something on which I would dedicate large amounts of time and energy.

And damn it, it’s my life and I wanna do it.

But you know what, the longer I think about it (big mistake) the easier it becomes to try to talk myself out of it. Trust me, this decision isn’t practical, it’s a bit of a long shot, and I am nowhere close to having all the details all figured out.  But I’m like a cat, I *tend* to land on my feet. And details aren’t really my thing, they fall into place on their own.

And in this particular case, a wise person told me that they knew it was only a matter of time before I came around to this decision. She told me that my whole life has been in preparation for this moment.

And another wise person said that this particular thing is something that I’ve been talking about repeatedly for the whole time they’ve known me. This person damn near laid out a plan of attack based solely on all the random sh*t I’ve said over the years.

And I have another friend who told me that when I truly KNOW myself and allow me to be me, my purpose would reveal itself. (And I SWEAR she was talking about this.)

So anyway, I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, “What the hell do I want?” And my whole heart says, “This.”

And God help me, I’m going to listen.

I was born in December of 1981. Because of a couple of educational loopholes, (and the fact that I could already read) I started kindergarten when I was four.  This was a lucky break for me. I found that it was easier to blend in as someone who was younger, than it would have been if I one of those kids that was almost a whole year older than everyone else.  It wasn’t until college that it was a pain to be the youngest. Especially at 18 and 21. But that’s a story for another day.

My birth in 1981 leaves me on the edge. I’m on the cusp of the Gen X/Gen Y split.  Sociologically, I completely identify with Gen Y. I boomeranged. I’m happily not married. I’m a job hopper. I fit all the criteria.

You would think that I would jump for joy at the prospect of having hundreds of Gen Y blogger feeds delivered to my Google Reader every day. You would think that I would be able to identify with, and be encouraged, educated and inspired by the writings of my generational compatriots.

Then I go to Brazen Careerist, which no doubt has given me access to a bunch of, in some cases, underrated bloggers who I love, but sometimes I scan the titles and think, “It this it?”

This is the best and the brightest? These are who we “feature”, who we ask to guest post, who get best blogger awards?

Are Gen Y bloggers only allowed to talk about Gen Y, social media, the internet, marketing, and entrepreneurship?

Ya know, I love a REALLY GREAT post about any of those subjects, but the “Top 5 Ways to Hack Blah Blak Blah” and the “Gen Y is different because yak yak yak” has been done to death.

Seriously. It’s dead.

Unless you have something COMPLETELY new and different to share, stop writing about being a member of Gen Y, social media, HR, marketing, career planning, or any number of boring and/or overdone topics. But if you blog about these topics because it’s your passion or brand, or it’s what you do for work, or you want to get noticed by an industry insider,  for God’s sake, make it interesting for the rest of us.

How can you make your blog posts more interesting? Make me care.

Your life is interesting. Relationships are interesting. Building bridges is interesting.  Having a conversation is interesting. Telling a great story is interesting. Making a difference is interesting. Exposing stupidity is interesting.  Overcoming is interesting. Making me jealous is interesting. Being inspiring is interesting. Being funny is interesting.

For goodness sakes, if you are going to write for the web, say something meaningful. Compel me to subscribe to you.  Be fucking interesting.

Lately, I had a lot of time to think about water.  Here in Atlanta, it has been raining almost non-stop for about 15 days.  Yesterday, I walked in the rain for a bit and watched the path of the water flowing down the street. I often left my cube, to see how the rain was affecting traffic patterns. I observed the splashes of water on the roads, I crossed a bridge over the Chattahoochee River, I watched new reports of people drowning.

I love the way the clouds sit between the buildings.

And I started thinking that there was a blog post somewhere in all this observation. I decided to start writing and see where it all lead.

1.  Water takes the path of least resistance, downward. I watched a stream of water flow down one street, hit the curb at corner, turn left and flow down another street.  I wanted to see where it was all going, so I followed it for a bit.  It flowed for a while until it came to another, lower street where it flowed until it found a drain.

2. Water has a one-track mind; when flowing, water goes in only one direction.  In every instance that I observed a flowing body of water, all of it was moving in the same direction.

3. Water is fickle. The least bit of disturbance would cause it to redirect its path.

I love to run around with my camera. I was hoping for a view of the interstate, but it was raining too hard.

4.  Water always finds a way to get where it wants to go. No matter what obstacles are in water’s way, it will go around, through or under them all to continue on it’s journey.

5.  Water has a “mind” of its own.  No matter how many time we whined that we wished it would stop raining, it didn’t stop. No matter how many people cried for their homes and families to be spared the destructive power of the flood, they weren’t. Poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods (and everyone in between) was affected by the storm.

I was going to go through and relate each of these water thoughts to life, the job search, being a twenty-something, learning, perseverance, crowd-sourcing or any number of things. Then I decided not to.

What do theye things mean to you? To flow or not.

I like to surround myself with creative people.

In the past, I would have said that I like to surround myself with creative people because I don’t have a creative bone in my body.

I now know that this is not true. I do stuff.

However, while I accept my creativity, I have to keep it real. My creativity manifests mostly in my thought process, rather than in a physical form. I still can’t draw worth a damn. My paintings are all rather abstract (even when I don’t want them to be). My short stories have minimal plot (they are more like scenes than stories). And while my poems are the bomb (if I do say so myself), they are few and far between. And it has been far, far too long since I wrote anythng worth showing folks.

And that is why I’m hating on poets.

On Monday, I went to a spoken word thing.  I call it a “thing” because it wasn’t a slam or a competition, so I don’t know how to catergorize it. And for you local Triangle peeps, come bless the mic and tell me when so I can come clap for you. (Its every Monday night)

So.

This poetry thing was in Chapel Hill and was a very different experience from the Atlanta and Durham poetry things that I have gone to in the past.

Let me explain.

My Atlanta experience with poetry things has been really gay. Mostly women speaking on how much they love women and all the reasons why they love women and all the ways they love women.

And in Durham, the poetry things are rather militant and political. They talk about revolutions, and overthrowing the government, and smoking weed and embracing diversity.

Monday, the poets were mostly college kids, idealistic, sugary. They lacked the life experience to really talk about anything that makes you wanna holla. Some of the “deepness” seemed forced or contrived. Their pieces didn’t evoke any lasting emotion. There were a couple of times that I may have even snickered and thought, What the hell are they talking about?

But even in the midst of that, there were flashes of brilliance. Some of those kids had skills. They had word play, they had depth, they made me think, they made me listen. They made me jealous.

They had the gift. They were real poets, speaking of experience beyond their time, making me feel some kinda way.

That’s why I hate on poets.

I’m jealous of the way poets see and are in tune with people, situations, circumstances, emotions. Poets tell us how we feel. They tell our stories. Its like they know us (all of us) And then they have the nerve to add rhyme? Yep, I’m hating. ‘Cause I’m jealous.

I remember (in my younger years) when I could sit down with a pen and a notepad and the words would just…flow. And I would surprise myself.

And Monday, as I listened to these kids, I was reminded of my younger self, with my half-boiled, just below the surface emotions that I carried on my sleeve, and I was sad for me.

Young Monica was a poet. She could take a situation, (even an ugly one) flip that ish and make her momma say, where you copy that from? (True story)

Now, I don’t even know what I do. I’m hard. Cynical. Blah. Sometimes I think I’m sleepwalking. And I’m definitely not writing any poetry.

I’ve lost something. I’v ignored my sensitivity. I’ve ignored my humanity. Not is the sense that I don’t care about the world, ’cause I do care. But I look at life at an arm’s length. I don’t let anything get too close.

And its hard to write about emotional sh!t when you keep your emotions all locked up.

Monday, I took notes at the poetry thing. When someone said something that spoke to me, I wrote it down. Don’t know what I’m going to do yet. But I’m going to do something. Dammit.

I couldn’t sleep Monday night. I tossed and turned and wrote poetry in my dreams. Then I got up Tuesday and I couldn’t remember any of it. I would have felt better had I just sat up and let my pen work. *sigh

I gotta strengthen my flabby poetic muscles.

I’m going to keep going to poetry things. I’m going to let the gf give me painting lessons (and writing exercises) and I’m going to shake the dust off my raw emotion and let it out. I’m going to take more opportunities to think poetically.

Because I’m sick of hating on the poets and their ability to twist vocabulary in a way that makes my soul ache.

Sh!t, I used to be able to do the same thing.