Lisa Marie Blair

Category: Journal

  • I love Friday the 13ths. Everyone thinks they are such spooky and unlucky days but I feel the opposite. I was born on a 13th you know and so too me they are worth celebrating. I wish this one were my birthday it being a Friday and a full moon, a rare occurrence indeed I hear. A quick search tells me the next time this will occur in April will be in the year 2063. I will be 78 years old then.

    No matter the date any Friday is a good day because it means the weekend and fun and rest. This week has been both long and short and as such I am both relieved and sad to see it end. I have no big plans this weekend and only the possibility of a Sunday morning hike to look forward to. I contemplated asking friends to come out for a “margarita Friday” but we’ve all spent too much money and time seeing each other lately. I thought about asking my family to get together but with so many of their birthdays coming up I thought it best to wait.

    Oh well, maybe a quiet weekend spent doing quiet things is worth looking forward to too.

  • Suddenly the week is passing quickly again. Perhaps stress and anxiety not only color the present and the future, but maybe the past too? Maybe it all got drawn out because I was too busy holding back, holding on, and avoiding moving forward all together and now that I am free from this small (in hindsight) fear I can move through time again—and time can move through me too—normally.

    Of course all this also means there aren’t enough hours in the day again.

  • I’m avoiding things again. Hard things are rearing their ugly heads and I am making excuses to turn toward lighter, happier, sunnier things, but I know it has to stop, and I know I will feel far better too when it does.

    So, the to-do list is growing and I’ve added dates and times to the calender. These are things that I must be brave for and must, if need be, mindlessly rush toward before my feelings and fears can catch up.

    I’m an over thinker, but I am learning to turn off that inner skeptical, pessimistic, and degrading voice and simply do. We can’t always be people of forethought and wisdom. Sometimes we have to be people of action if we ever want to get anything done.

  • Today was made of many small fortunes. The route I rode this morning was a long overdue reminder that this job can be both fun and rewarding if you put forth the effort to make it so. Of course, I knew that, but it’s been a long time since I felt it.

    There was plenty of work to do around the office when I got back but none of it was hard and all of it made me feel proud and useful. There was time to read afterward and despite my fatigue I was still able to be cherry and social with my coworkers.

    I took advantage of the rare opportunity to go home early today and promptly wasted it on an accidental nap. Oh well, it’s not like I’d have had the time on a normal day anyway and it’s not like I did nothing at all. Small chores and catching up on reading count for something, don’t they?

    The evening is less easy but there is still good here too. I’m going off to bed only wishing we were further along in the workweek. As for the rest, I am content.

  • The fatigue has returned. The day was easy on me and the people around me were understanding and undemanding and still I struggled to keep up. I crave sleep and where I couldn’t get it I at least craved solitude and silence. I got neither but thank God for headphones. At least I could tune out the undesirable and listen to music to music to match my mood.

    I spent a lot of time reading in the afternoon. I made the mistake of trying to read four different books at once in a desperate attempt to make up as much lost ground in my reading goals as I can, but I am beginning to doubt the strategy. Not because I don’t like the books, or because I feel overwhelmed, but because now all I want to spend my time doing is reading those books. I suppose there are worse ways to waste time.

    The evening is better. My wife and I cooked dinner together, something new, savory, satisfying. Tonight feels like another Sunday, not rushed, not stressful, and tomorrow the week will be a day closer to done.

  • Today was actually kind of a bad day, a rare occurrence for the weekend, but it was one of those bad days that while sad, and stressful, and hard, leaves you feeling grateful underneath it all too.

    It was a bad day, but it wasn’t just my bad day. It was a bad day, but I wasn’t alone. I was supported and loved and I gave support and love too. I know bad days are inevitable but I wish every bad day could feel like this. I wish everyone, if they had to have a bad day, at least got to have bad days like this sometimes too.

  • Today I attempted to plan a perfect day for someone else. I felt like my wife, who is always doing so much for others and planning everything, deserved a day doing things only she loves and a day in which she didn’t have to worry or think or decide what comes next.

    I planned a day for her and inadvertently experienced my own perfect day. Perhaps it’s only because we enjoy so many of the same things. Perhaps I failed in my endeavor and actually planned my own perfect day instead (this is very possible) or perhaps just seeing her happy and knowing that she knows how much I love her is what my perfect day really looks like.

  • The work week was a short one, shorter or me than most of my coworkers even, and I still felt like it lasted twice as long as it really did. When I write that or say it out loud, it sounds like a ridiculous thing to be upset about. More time—even miserable work time—is a gift I guess. It’s all about perspective.

  • I woke up early this morning, too early to get ready for work and still too late to make going back to sleep worth it. I lay there in the dark worrying over recent frustrations, future to-do items, and all the ways I am failing in life. I lay there breathing hard and growing increasingly anxious and upset until I was practically vibrating.

    I knew that if I didn’t get up and get some of this bad energy out of me I’d never recover the day. So I got up, grabbed my running shoes and the dog and ran it out as much as I could before I had to return and start the day.

    Since then I’ve arrived at work early, eaten a healthy breakfast, gone for another walk, picked up a few groceries, and nearly hit my step goal for the whole day. It’s 7:30 A.M. and I feel amazing! I wonder what else I will accomplish today?

    I’m picking up my old journal again tonight. Since I have been posting here, I stopped writing in the physical one, stopped carrying it around with me, hell, I couldn’t even tell you where it is at the moment, but, suddenly, I need it desperately.

    Some stresses, misfortunes, and pain, and even some joys and expressions of love only half belong to us, more often even less, and telling a story that isn’t yours alone is, at best, not your place, and, at worst, a betrayal. Still, I must speak and writing has always been the only way, the only place I can speak as just myself with no filter, influence, or fear.

  • I’m struggling to send an email, just one email. I’ve written it and rewritten. I’ve had it proofread by two different people and then rewrote it again.

    It’s hard to explain what you do to other people, and harder still to explain it to your bosses. They decide if what you do is right, or enough, or worth paying a person to do at all. It’s hard to meet expectation that weren’t spelled out explicitly and it’s hard to know what people want when they never told you they wanted anything.

    I’m probably way over thinking this.

  • I took the day off today and I feel awful about it. See, the day wasn’t meant to be for me alone. It was meant to be spent with someone else but she ended up having to go to work. Now I feel guilty for still staying home when I could have, should have, gone in and avoided all this bad headspace.

    And, what am I doing with my time? Nothing productive so far. The internet is a massive distraction and I am considering turning all theses screens off and going to read on the couch for a few hours instead. I figure that’s a much better use of my time than checking social media or tweaking the look of my blog, yeah?

    Of course, what I should be doing is writing, but, of course, it’s the last thing I can get my mind to focus on. I’ve done the dishes, taken a nap, caught up on the news, I even pulled weeds!, just to keep from sitting in this chair and doing the work. Oh well, it felt good to be alone, to enjoy the silence, and that isn’t something I have always been able to do.

  • It’s hot out today, like really, really hot. Today Denver hit 100 degrees in September for the first time, ever! Considering the what it felt like outside we were able to keep the house relatively cool, but we are still miserable. We won’t be sleeping until late tonight I’m sure.

    We spent the afternoon lunching at my favorite place for my wife’s birthday with her family. I didn’t pick the place; I was just pleasantly surprised to hear where we were going.

    Other than that I got caught up on some words here and worked out how I plan to post the drafts I missed getting out on time because of my trip. I’m going to finish them and progress on a few other pieces and projects I have been hoping to start. The rest of the week will be busy to make up for the time I took off but I don’t care. It was worth the trip and the rest.

  • Today I head home. The visit has been wonderful, and though I feel very different and very out of place here, I’m a little sad to go. I wish I could have all of my family with me back home. I wish I could see them all whenever I wanted and that time and money were never any obstacle.

    Siblings are highly underrated and deserve more praise, more love, more forgiveness, and more work on our part to keep them close. Half the strife between any two siblings is mostly the parent’s fault, or at least cause, anyway.

    Airport security was much easier this time and I am so happy to have upgraded for a window seat. The clouds are beautiful from here and flying through them is just incredible. It’ll be just a few hours before I am home and to be honest all I can think about is when I can get on a plane again! I don’t understand how people can be so humdrum about it. To be so high up traveling at 100s of miles per hour is damn near magical to me.

    But, I’m happy to be back on the ground and back with my wife, back at home where it’s safe.

  • I arrived to my destination safe and sound yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day getting settled and enjoying time with my little sister. I’m here for her baby shower (which is later today) and since we didn’t grow up together, and since she is going through such a big life change, there is no end to all the things we feel we need to say.

    We have a lot in common for two people born 6 years apart, lived miles and miles apart and were raised by different mothers, and are even now still living in different states with different cultures, norms, and climates. Genetics express more in us than I think many of us want to believe, or maybe it’s that I want to believe so badly.

    The air here is hard to breathe. I’m used to high altitudes and dry air, but it the scenery gorgeous. There are trees everywhere and they aren’t like the trees in Colorado at all, these’re as tall as skyscrapers to me and breathtaking. I miss the Rocky Mountains for sure, but the greenery here is tempting me to stay.