weekend in review

i celebrated a birthday (mine) over the weekend and couldn't have asked for a better use of my days.



i woke up on saturday morning feeling the tiniest bit sorry for myself, a little tear may have even trickled down my cheek - it's been many years (maybe even 6 or 7 or 10 or maybe all my life) since i woke up by myself on my birthday. i've always had friends or family or roomates or luvahs... someone. but then i realized (in the spirit of self-affirmation and about a million other things i'm working on) that i was the only one who could make my day great. so, i promptly hopped in the shower and began one of my favorite weekends in ages.

saturday highlights include:

• a fancy coffee drink and some reading time in a NW coffee shop
• a mani and pedi as a treat
• a streetcar ride to downtown pdx ending with a view of the new will ferrell flick, blades of glory (during which i laughed out loud numerous times) and some shopping
• cup cakes from the delicious saint cupcake
• a quick snack with the doctor prior to getting gussied up to go out with the girls
• great food and the company of three beautiful, strong women that ended in drinks and discussion that helped round out my day

my time continued on sunday with:

• the much awaited eggs benedict breakfast at a new and yummy local place
• the completion of the bedroom painting project started in february
• a bike ride in the sunny weather
• a viewing of blood diamond - i cried in the opening scene...

a few hiccups during the weekend (all on my part), but all in all a fabulous weekend put on by me for me. i could get used to this...

a little bit lost

sunday morning when i knew i was heading home, i could hardly contain my excitement about returning to pdx. by monday evening the thrill had completely gone away replaced by a melancholy aloneness that i'm not sure i can totally describe.

i want to be in my house and in my current geographical home, but i have no idea what to do with myself when i'm here. having been gone for a good portion of the last 4 or 5 months has completely isolated me from the few friends i have here and on monday evening when i realized that not one person had completely changed their plans/ dropped everything just because i was back in town, the only thing i could think of wanting to do was leave again. at least in another city i can be completely anonymous and it's not weird to me that i know not a single person or that it's another saturday night and i'm sitting in a hotel alone. how do i explain this here?

i don't really think i'm meant to be alone, i'm not sure any of us are. i generally love being alone and i pride myself on my independence and my ability to be comfortable alone, but secretly i sometimes doubt that i am ever comfortable being alone -maybe i'm just a decent actor secretly waiting for someone to come rescue me from my solitude. my overall fear of being alone would explain why i reckless jump into every relationship i have and my fear of being too needy, too dependent is the reason why i never completely open myself up to anything. god forbid i would ever be "that girl". instead i try to make square pegs fit into round holes or some such analogy but never really open up to change.

i have some decisions to make in the next months and for the first time in my life i'm a little bit scared to make them.

i guess i'm glad to be home, but i don't like feeling lost...

where my head is

this here blog has completely fallen by the way side; it's not where my head is right now. a month or so ago i actually drafted a post about how i wasn't going to blog in this space anymore, how i'd lost sight of why i started this thing and how i'd just started writing here for the sake of entertaining my readers. it's still saved as a draft...meaning, i'm not going to take this down yet. in the meantime, my posts may be sporadic while i'm figuring out how i want to use this space and for what.

a few things are going on with me right now. 1) i'm coming off the last weekend i will in town for a month, 2) i'm focusing, seriously focusing, on some people around me and they need the space and time that i have to give, 3) frankly, i have nothing newsworthy to report.

i'm going to spend the majority of the next month traveling and also hoping that it doesn't destroy or ruin or significantly alter any relationships in the process. to all of you, please accept my sincerest apologies - i cannot keep up with all of you right now and i want to and i think of you and i hope you are well, but i just can't. i also can't keep traveling like this, can't keep walking in and out of my own life - it's no way to be. my job must stay as it is and for the most part that travel is acceptable (additionally, there is the dangling carrot that travel will be decreasing in the next few months. jan.-mar. will always be my busiest months as long as i stayed employed here). but i can control the amount of travel that other activities i am involved with require and it has become clear to me that those things must end. if i'm going to travel outside of work, i want it to be for me to places i want to go to be with people i want to see. i'm holding on to one teeny tiny piece of this volunteer job, the part that i like. but the fact that it is taking me out of town for the next two weekends is enough to push me to the other side. i'm not a quitter, but this one i'm going to have to quit.

when i first moved to pdx, i used to tell people that i refused to travel back to seattle as often as was requested b/c i was dedicated to making a life for myself here. that first year, i missed so many things that related to my old friends and my old life and i really wanted to be there, but also knew i needed to be here. now i feel like i'm doing just that; avoiding being here, avoiding being anywhere b/c being somewhere makes me vulnerable and open to potential hurt, but also maybe open to good things. as much as i sometimes hate to admit it, my five year plan is based around five years in portland and if that's going to work for me, i need to be here.

i'm going to spend free time in the next few weeks working on calling when the easy thing is texting, working to figure out how to make room for all the things that currently make me smile, responding to your emails even though that means i have to look at my computer when i'm not working and generally making room in my life.

i'll post here when i can OR the next time i happen to eat shit in a public forum. it's my three week accident free anniversary tomorrow!