The Brief Update

My computer is up and limping, but still no internet connection yet.  Perhaps I'll get that done tonight.

And since I've received your comments by email, a quick response:

 

Yoda:  I'm not as worried about sending a quick email as I am logging into the server and blogging.  If they want to track me that badly, they can, I'm doing it after hours on an approved email site, and there are no work references here anyway.

 

Farrago: Yeah, I'm a strange bird.

 

Paula: More later when I'm not starving!

Cut off!

Aack!  My computer has crashed!  Rolled over and died, even.  Stayed up until 1 am trying to get her limping along again, and finally succeeded.  Then this morning I reinstalled Windows so she's starting to look like herself.

 

Hold on a second - if I've lost my computer, then how am I posting?  Well, since I can't blog from work, and really have no desire to anyway, I'm trying to email an entry from my personal account after hours.  I think I remember my post-it-by-email address that I created so long ago.  If I don't, then you'll never read this anyway and you'll all just start wondering what happened to me...but on the off chance I do, I haven't totally disappeared.

 

Keep your fingers crossed - it could be another long night.

Which Muse Am I?

My friend mr. schprock asked a valid question on his blog....Who is your Muse? First time through, I misread the post and thought he said Which Muse Are You? I could only remember two or three off hand, so since I haven't been sleeping much this week, I dusted off my Greek Mythology and read up on all nine of the Greek muses...Terpsichore, Calliope, Clio and the crew. Then I scoured Google and found this great quiz that says I am Euterpe - muse of music and hapy when all is in harmony. Accurate, but geesh, couldn't I get a better name?

After a second reading, I realized he wasn't asking which muse *I* was, but who inspires my writing. DOH! Guess it's all that sleeplessness clouding my concnetration. Which reminds me - update: still no word from him. The social circle in which we first met reconvenes again tomorrow night and I'm entertaining the idea of not going. Part of me is thrilled to see him and part of me scared to death to see if he will ignore me in person as he has all week, and avoidance will allow me to continue to dwell in denial a bit longer, grasping to that hope that perhaps he still cares, just a little bit. And right now, that's all I have going for me.

Also, as an aside, anger is inspiring my writing because I wrote this long and beautiful post that blogger lost when I clicked publish. Thank goodness I'm not sleeping cause I'll be up a while trying to recreate that thing!

But I digress.

The first line of the post suggests that all bloggers want to be writers. I disagree. There are a significant number of bloggers out there who care naught for the proper turn of a phrase, much less stringing them into a coherent and compelling whole. These are the people who use their blogs as cyber-extensions of their real lives. Who use the written forum to gossip and play and bully. These are also the people who type like they text - all done as fast as possible, no time spent, no effort expended, words reduced 2 stuf lik this. C'mon people - I only text like that when i'm driving. Get real!

Anyway....the bloggers whom I read take the time to put effort into their work. We may not share our true identities with the blogosphere, but we share our true selves, something much more precious and guarded. We write not to please others, but to please our selves. Sometimes that means a lengthy tale, a dream, or a diatribe.

I am a very private person. You will never see a photograph of me on this blog or an identifying detail. I was actually quite frightened when I started getting comments, afraid that it would be someone who would recognize me. I started this blog just as an outlet for the words I couldn't say to the people who were special to me, so I wrote them here, knowing they would never read them but not having the patience to write them longhand. But as time has passed, I have started to use this not only to exorcise demons, but to stir them up a bit as well. One person who knows me in real life has this address, and he never reads it anymore....even so, I stay away from the personal stuff and try to write that which will connect with someone.

I think we all do that. Whether it's a dream, a story, or a current event commentary, I think we all try to strip away the identifiers. We strive to use that one common thread of language to delve beneath who we are and into what we are. I speak only for myself, but I think that if I can hone my words to the point that, for one brief moment, you forget that you don't know my face or my name, and can instead identify with the moment frozen in time, or see a picture of what I'm describing, or feel the heartbreak or joy or elation or confusion....if I through my words can reach beyond the day to day and evoke a moment of shared emotion, then my muse, whomever it is that day, has been successful.

Etiquette Questions

I really should be asleep right now, since I have to get up in a few hours, but I can't make my mind relax. It may be the headache that's been working on me all day, but something tells me it's more than that. It's the pain of being completely ignored.

I'm not an overly obtrusive person. I don't push myself into other people's business or lives. However, when those who mean so much to me suddenly turn a cold shoulder without so much as an "I need a few days to sort through some things," that's when I feel hollow.

Let me explain. As the faithful few of you know, the last month has been extremely hard on me. I haven't had much to offer the world except pain and heartache, so I've kept mainly to myself and my family. I've been there for my mom as we've lost her father, and for my dad as we lost his uncle in body and his mother in spirit. I've shed more tears and turned more earth in the last month than I care to in the next year. Through it all, I've asked for very little support, but when I have, my requests have been denied. My best girlfriends can't be expected to drop their lives and take sick days to help me shoulder a weight I'm not sure how to carry, and I didn't even feel I could ask my boyfriend to make the trip.

These are the experiences that teach you who cares, and how to care about yourself. After weeks of life's chinese water torture dripping away at my forehead, I took a night this weekend after work just for me. To sit in solemn silence and shed anonymous tears for lives changed in a split second. For the unborn children who will never have the privilege of knowing their great-grandfather or great-great-uncle as more than a photograph or a story. And for myself - for the opportunities past...the kick in the stomach that stole my breath as my former fiance uttered the words "I'm engaged"...the worries that perhaps my own father will never see me walk down the aisle, not for reasons of martyrdom or self-esteem, but for reasons of sheer mortality.

This is the state I've been in for the last few weeks - these thoughts, half-formed, running around in my brain, emerging at inopportune moments at times crippling me with their presence, then retreating to find more sustenance in the recesses of my consciousness. Add in a massive overhaul of procedure at work that has required more hours, and a second job to cover unexpected expenses on top of the Christmas budget, and I've been turned quite inward this month. It's something I have admitted and apologized for each step of the way.

Which brings me to the topic above. It appears my life has become too much. Without warning, communication from one I hold close, has ended. Kaput. Text messages get no response. Phone calls are ignored. And tonight, I was stood up for our dinner plans without so much as a "I'm not coming" note in any form.

My question to you, faithful readers, what is blog etiquette in this situation? He has a few blogs - nothing as personal as this...each one focuses on certain topics - that I would love to check just to see if he's at least posting there. Part of me feels that would be an intrusion...that if he chooses not to communicate with me, that he would not appreciate me reading his words. The other side of me, though, says that he wouldn't put it out there if he did not mean for others to read it. I'm not worried about the content, I'm just being a girl and seeking solace in the words and cadences I know so well. And yes, he does have this addres, but I don't think he reads it anymore. I've kept quiet this month so as to keep him from feeling uncomfortable, or learning about my life from a blog versus from me, but now, I need to vent to someone, especially since this turn of events has left me hollow, stunned, saddened, and confused.

Perhaps it's the lack of sleep for nights on end, or perhaps I'm just numb, but I feel like a girl made of Magic Shell. Once upon a time there was ice cream - sweet and desirable - that some one found intriguing, but would find even more so with a layer of Magic Shell. The shell hardened, but instead of digging in, he walked out of the room. Now the ice cream has melted, leaving behind only the shell, and pieces of that have been shattered and thrown to the wind as well.

Okay, I should try to go to bed again now. Maybe this time it'll work. If not, I'll get up and write again. Remind me to tell you about my mirror image friend sometime that's another post that's rattling around in my head when I can't sleep like this.