technical difficulties
august 15th, 2000

i'm in the perfect mood to do webdesigning right now, but the ideas i have 
in my head require the use of my scanner - a scanner that is being 
stubborn and refusing to work, i should add. there are quite a few things 
i could/should be doing - answering the mounds of email that are piling up 
around me, cleaning house, but i am very much in "ooh, let's see what i 
can do with photoshop!" mode, which doesn't happen very often to me. i 
usually struggle with something all of seven minutes, and then i send a 
pleading and half-crazed email to Dust telling him what i am trying to do 
and failing, and asking if he could *please please please with sugar on 
top* help me make it look good. and he usually does, cause he's a good 
guy. in fact, i believe he is currently working on the rip-off of "the 
seven faces of dr. lao" entry page for my site that i've had in my head 
for months upon months now, but which i simply can't make look good. so 
when i have these moods, they should be monopolized.

i am experiencing technical difficulties. please stand by.

part of my lethargicness is due to the fact i was planning to spend the 
entire evening with some old friends from governor's school who came to 
visit me today. they came, and it was wonderful, but they had to leave 
tonight - in fact, they basically just walked out the door - and the visit 
was just too short. i always kick myself for being so out of touch with 
them whenever i'm around them again. we fall into the instantaneous click 
where we all talk to much all at the same time and still not enough, which 
is why, i suppose, we gravitated towards eachother in the first place. and 
they are such amazing people. living big, and large, and loud up in 
boston. i admire them a lot, because they both have a hell of a lot of 
strength to manage everything they do. and our lives are very different 
now, but that doesn't seem to matter. needless to say, i've missed them a 
lot, and being able to spend an afternoon with jeanna and melicia was 
incredible, even if it was just an afternoon.

and i came to a conclusion when i was taking the groceries out of my car 
earlier today. (funny place to have epiphanies, i know, but hey, when 
you're a single mother, you take 'em when you can get 'em.) as i mentioned 
last week, i've felt i was changing in a very drastic way, and i wasn't 
sure exactly how or why. i'm still not entirely sure, except this - i'm 
happy. and i don't mean that kind of dizzy happiness that is caused by 
something or a wonderful day or somebody special looking at you right or 
even the little bits of wonderness my daughter gives me - it's not an 
ecstatic, on another cloud kind of happy. it's a soul-happy, a deep happy, 
something comfortable settling within myself, happy with who i am, with 
how i am living. something stable, and balanced. i suppose "comfortable" 
might be a better term for it. someone who can admit her falacies without 
feeling burdened by them, someone willing to work through whatever 
"issues" she has left. my problems are no longer demons - they are simply 
obstacles that i have to be clever enough to find a way out of. and i get 
annoyed, and upset, but there's an inner peace i've reached that can't be 
usurped. i know what i want out of life. and i realized today, that i 
don't need anyone else to give me that happiness. that i've finally found 
something deeper than any of the bits of happiness i had found through the 
relationships i had been in before (not that i'm discrediting any of you, 
because what you gave me was really wonderful). i'm my own hero, the star 
of my own show. i don't have to hide behind costumes and masks of lipstick 
and eyeliner, i don't have to have any definitions or labels or a 
line-by-line interpretation of who i am, it's something i know, deeply, 
like i know and understand the universe. something i can't explain, 
because it simply *can't* be explained. (after all, what am i but a 
fractal in this grand scheme of astronomical chaos, which would mean if i 
can't describe the universe, how could i ever describe myself?)

i don't know why i always felt that need. i suppose everyone does. i was 
writing more older entries into my journal from my sophomore year of high 
school, watching my mood swings and confusion, and shaking my head 
smiling, but also acknowleging the fact that i have grown really far 
really fast, and being proud of that.

i still can't spell, though. i ought to write an essay "how microsoft word 
ruined my grammar."

people are always talking about how unique and individual every person is. 
but i'm going to say something highly contraversial in response to that. i 
think we're all the same. we're just all in different places, is all. 
every person i've come across, i've identified with in some small way, 
some more than others. i've been there. or i am there. or i ended up 
there, eventually. the older you get, the more you discover people have 
dealt with the same things you have. situations might have been different, 
but the truth behind them has always been the same.

my daughter is painting the floor with milk again - she likes doing that, 
and i have a hard time bringing myself to get onto her about it. i mean, 
it's a tiled floor, she's not hurting anything, i can clean it up, and 
it's not dangerous. and it's easy for me to get her out of things she 
could really hurt, or things that could possibly hurt her. but painting 
the floor with milk? would i be stifling her creativity if i did that?

she winks now, too. it takes her a while, but eventually after scrunching 
up her face enough she'll actually wink. she's so adorable.

i feel so complete. just me, here. being me. all of the parts of me. 
growing into myself, getting comfortable. learning. growing. i feel like a 
snake that just slipped out of her uncomfortable skin, getting too tight. 
(speaking of which, i ran across the biggest snake-skin i had ever seen - 
my grandfather said it was a copperhead. huge, out behind my house. i 
guess it would be easy for your skin to get too tight if you were a big 
snake like that.)

i feel so damn focused. it's odd for me, but i really like it. knowing 
what it is i want out of life, and how i'm going to get it. and watching 
everything fall into place for me. being calm, and still. being able to 
live as abundantly as i always wanted without having to allow the 
craziness in.

it's silly. nothing i can say can convey this emotion to you. it's as if i 
am reaching inside to the core of myself and touching something real and 
alive and its glow is infecting me. as if i am consciously aware of myself 
on an entirely different level. of course, that's just now, since i've 
started writing this entry. that will pass. in general, i'm just very 
comfortable. like i've become a pair of worn, second-hand jeans with the 
bottoms walked off.

i'm about that tired, physically, at the moment. i'm waiting for Ash to 
fall asleep before i blissfully crash, and of course she isn't 
cooperating. but that's okay.

i've become horribly addicted to sonicnet lately. it combines the element 
of surprise (which is what i love about radio) with the ability to really 
choose what you want to listen to, even down to the ability to skip 
through songs you really aren't interested in listening to at the moment. 
and it can introduce you to a lot of new things. for instance, i finally 
got to listen to jeff buckley (wow) and belle and sebastian (double wow) 
and ash (who, i discovered, do that "girl from mars" song)...and the radio 
becomes more tuned to your taste the more you listen to things and decide 
what you like to hear more of and what you would like to hear less 
of...and it also gives you the ability to share your station with the rest 
of the world. (if you would like to listen to mine, click here.)

i don't really have much to say, or at least not much more. and what i'm 
writing is not really flowing. i think i'm just wasting time until my 
little one gets ready for sleep. so i'm going to go waste some more time 
elsewhere.