Lisa Marie Blair

Category: Journal

  • 117 // Wishing for the Sun

    Winter weather has finally given way to spring storms. The clouds have rolled in and the rain is forecasted to stick around for at least the next days or two. The weather experts are calling this our first severe storm of the year. I’m excited by the prospect of high winds and hail, and I’ve missed the sound of rolling thunder for half a year now, but I can’t help wishing for the sun. I’ve needed light and warmth more than ever lately.

    But the truth is, the sun and the whole bog blue sky is still there, even when I can’t see it. There is space that exists above the storms, above the cold, above all the drear and drab. There is warmth even if it can’t reach me, and even if it can’t reach me today that has nothing to do with how the air will feel on my skin tomorrow, and it by no means stops me from bringing yesterdays blue skies along to warm me whenever I need.

    As for the work of life, it’s easier today. I’m more rested than I have been in days, and my mood is stable. I’m a little anti-social but not angry or avoidant. I’m only reflective and taking life all too seriously and days like this tend to put me at odds with the general public and their little whims and worries.

    Writing is coming easier and easier. I feel myself slowly getting back into my old groove. The scheduled hour of “real writing” is proving to be helpful in some surprising ways. Not only does it get me to do the hard part at least once a day, it makes it easier to get other things like these journal entries, post drafting, image searching, commenting, curation, and tweaking appearance or making customizations without feeling guilty.

    It turns out that knowing what to do and when is half the battle. Once you make it that far, the rest just takes a small dose each of courage, focus, and dedication to get you the rest of the way.

  • 116 // This Incurable Thing

    I’m on shaky emotional ground this morning though this morning isn’t out of what I am calling the new new new normal.

    The thought occurred to me on the way to work this morning that there is just never enough time to do all the crying you need. I know this sounds rather sad, but I don’t mean it that way. I’m ok, but sometimes getting through life, enduring this incurable thing we call the human condition, just requires an occasional emotion cleansing. I’m long overdue and in desperate need.

    Perhaps, like all things in our time of high productivity and unbridled consumerism, it has to be scheduled. Time blocked, with reminders on and timers set. Time between meetings, errands, meals, visits with family and friends, dinner, dishes, and bedtime to put on a sad song and let your heart truly break for yourself, your loved ones, and the whole world of struggle and suffering.

    Time to mourn and time to grieve. Time to lament all that time that’s been wasted, the time that’s been lost, the time we’ll never even have. Time to wish and regret. Time to be angry, to be confused, and simply to be sad.

    We work so hard to avoid all those weak, negative, and useless emotions, but I don’t believe we truly ever rid ourselves of them. They bubble below the surface, waiting for the most insignificant and insidious trigger to jump out and surprise us.

    No, better to find time to feel them regularly. Better to make time or it will happen when you least want it to, I promise. And don’t worry, after you’ve screamed it out and soaked your shirt with tears, you’ll do the same thing we all do. You’ll take a good look in the mirror and remember who you are, where you are, and what must be done. You’ll clean yourself up and get on with the hard work of living life from emotional purge to emotional purge, as if neither the pain nor the purge ever happened.

    Until I can make time though, I’m trying to remember that though life is generally stressful and often terrifying right now, not every minute is made of chaos and catastrophe. There can be—no, there are—moments of calm, security, and even joy. It’s hard to seize them when they come along, though. I guess when you are carrying the past with one hand and clinging to the future with the other, there’s nothing left for you to hold the present with, you know?

  • 115 // Paradox of My Life

    You ever have one of those days where outwardly the world appears calm, everyone you love is collected, and all of your problems are neatly under control, and yet beneath it all you sense a black and simmering chaos that you cannot reach? On days like these all you can do is watch and wait for that inevitable eruption of darkness, and it is this watching and waiting, not the bubbling chaos itself, that fills you with a vague dread for which there is no cure.

    Or perhaps there is? I tried coffee and yard work today, then watching a stupid show and taking a short nap, and suddenly I can see the sun and tomorrow doesn’t seem so dreadful. I feel better, but I also don’t. I suppose it’s another paradox of life, or maybe only of my life as it is right now.

    There is something about that dreadful and bubbling chaos that feels almost good.

    The fragility of the world is never far from my thoughts lately and “ends”—my end, the many ways life as I know it could end, the end of the humanity, the end of the world, the cold and distant end of the universe—are weighing on my heart but, strangely, I have never felt so alive either.

    It’s been so long since I’ve been walking mindlessly through life from work to home to bed to work to home and bed again and again and again, but I’m not mindless anymore. I’m awake. I’m aware. A sudden truth has come to the forefront of my mind and it won’t be shoved back again so easily. I’m hurting more, but I’m living more and I cannot make sense of it except that to avoid any one part of life is to neutralize it all to endless grey monotony.

    You are alive, but it is only the barest kind of life. You are content, but you are not happy. You are safe, but all sense of self and meaning have been removed. You will have your years, but you will not grow. This, right now, is a lesson.

  • 114 // I’m Not Good at It

    This is my first morning in a long time getting up with the sun, making a cup of hot coffee, and sitting alone in a space that makes me feel free and motivated. It’s only the end of the kitchen table, but it’s quiet, it’s clean, and it’s mine for now.

    I’m trying this writing thing. I’m not good at it. I don’t mean the words; I mean the focus it takes. I mean the discipline. Even this early, with nothing going on and nothing to force me away from myself, I can still find so much distraction and procrastination. Even this post is a kind of avoidance, though I’m calling it a warm up.

    I have the draft open though, and I have my body where it needs to be. I have a timer at the ready and a notepad to write down all the things my mind wants to do instead so that it might not feel neglected, defensive, or demanding. I will get to the to-do list, the pets and plants, the news, Twitter and TV in time, but not right now.

    Right now, I need simply to cleanse.

  • 113 // A New Battle to Fight

    It’s a strange morning. I’m working from a different location and the change in schedule is sending my anxiety levels sky high. I’m proud of the work I’ve done and the coping skills I’ve learned to calm and care for myself. I validate my thoughts and fears. I give myself space to feel. I can sit with the feeling without being overwhelmed. I can leap into action to put in place plans to ease my mind.

    It didn’t used to be this easy. It still isn’t but I can see now that it gets easier every day. Maybe this is what they mean when they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Each fear, each failure, leads to a new insight, and each insight leads to a new strategy, a new way to win against yourself. I just wish there wasn’t always a new battle to fight.

    I read a great post over on Brevity this morning, and it’s got me feeling inspired to write again. It’s started with these little journal entries and some reviews and personal essay drafts I’ve begun in the last few weeks. I have a list of posts on Are.na where I can collect quotes and webpages. I have everything started, but that’s all I’ve got, a start.

    But I’d like to try the actual writing part again. I’d like to simply schedule time to sit down for an hour a day (three or four over the weekend) and plug away at them one post after another. No talking, no cleaning, no social media, nothing but writing. I have the time, all I need is the discipline.

    And like the post said, “I’m slow and it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. I can do this.” There are no other goals or expectations to meet. There is no one I have to be better than. There is no one to impress. The goal is only to write until the time is up, no matter the subject or the pace or the skill level I’m at.

  • 112 // To Be Whole

    Time heals. That’s a truth. Time also hurts, and that’s a truth too. I welcome both realities. Sometimes I reject both too.

    Seeing others struggle now has me looking back on my life to a time I don’t often return to. I’m ashamed, I realize, of my mental health struggles and I feel compelled to hide those old pains and wounds. I was so irrational, so weak, so wrong about so many things. So I buried it all. Why burden myself or others with what’s long past? Why reveal so much vulnerability and failure? Who does it help, if it helps at all?

    The one profound good I fear is missing from my life is living in Truth. Omission is a form of dishonesty, and dishonesty is an insidious kind of infection. It pretends to be a cure and all the while it goes on killing. We hurt because we hide.

    But it’s a different time now, not my time naturally but a time I can claim if I can muster the courage and the want. I deserve what we all deserve, to be whole.

  • 111 // I Want to Change Too

    I’ve attempted to return to some semblance of normalcy today, but no matter how hard I tried to put on the same old face and take the same old steps through my life, nothing felt anything near normal, but it turns out, I’m feeling exactly what I need to feel right now and like all things there is a lesson to glean.

    The way I see it from here, normalcy is what lead to complacency, and complacency was the contributing factor that lead to disaster. I don’t think I ever want to be that comfortable again. I don’t want to think this or that can’t happen, this or that is completely safe, or that this or that is all taken care of.

    There must be more diligence. There must be more thoughtfulness and courage to tackle what might be scary or uncomfortable. Time has to be made for hard conversations, deep understanding, radical love, and drastic measures. Time has to be made to for feeling, giving, guiding, and receiving.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery lately and all the ways it can manifest from person to person. There is so much I am afraid of, but there are worse outcomes than even I can imagine. Seeing what others have to endure and overcome and seeing the courage it takes to do so fills me with both shame and determination myself.

    Since my birthday passed, I’ve been thinking a lot about my age too and how slowly my time is becoming a “different time”. I compare my life, interests, pursuits, and values to the changing world around me and more and more the two sides don’t add up. I feel left behind and I know deep down it was because I grew up in a “different time”, a time I realize now failed me miserably.

    But I want to change too, and I think it isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. I don’t want to be this time’s failure as others were to me in mine.

  • 110 // A Terrifying Prospect

    Things can always get worse and often do. They can get better too and do just as often. So, never get too comfortable, not with the good nor the bad. Life is always changing, and it’s never according to plan or even the wildest of imaginations.

    It’s a terrifying prospect how much you can miss about yourself and others and how fragile health and happiness can be. It’s terrifying how much you can lose in an instant. The abyss is never very far and the wrong step in any direction can send you and your loved one’s plunging.

    I am finally beginning to grasp the worth of a daily gratitude practice. The bad always feels so much more profound than the good, and in those bad times you need not just love and support, but the memory of who you were when you knew joy, awe, and hope. Remember: you can just as easily find yourself there again, too.

    It would be easier to be an island unto myself, unbeholden to the expectations and judgements, needs and wants of others, but where would I find meaning then? I see now it’s through the suffering of others, and our own suffering in turn, and their suffering for us too that makes the meaning.

    We find ourselves in that darkness. We find others there too, and, with time, we can heal and grow into a new light, together.

  • 104 // Overstuffed and Dull

    It’s the day after my birthday and like Sylvia Plath after Christmas, I am overstuffed and dull. Not just physically, but emotionally and socially as well. I’ve had too much food, been given too many things, and shown too much attention in one day to process. It may be weeks before I recover myself fully.

    Unlike Plath and many Christmases I’ve suffered through, I am far from disappointed. For me, birthdays are nearly always brimming with pure pleasure. I manage to cram so many of my favorite people and things into one day that my senses and soul become overwhelmed in the best possible ways.

    I’ve been loved enough for another year and I’ll spend the next analyzing, agonizing, dreading, and then wishing again to be, for just 24 short hours, the center of my circle’s little universe.

    I’m grateful for them all: my coworkers, my friends, my family. The celebrations aren’t yet over but the day is and no matter what other wishes or gifts I’m given the excitement of real and tangible growth is gone. A threshold has been crossed and the past year is fully in the past now, unreachable. I’m starting around the sun anew and I’m as young as I’ll ever be again.

    I suppose every day is a birthday in that way. Perhaps spending a whole year celebrating the self every day isn’t such an unreasonable notion at all.

  • 084 // Back to Myself

    I’ve spent a long time away from myself now. Over a month at least. I’ve been resting and reading, working and cleaning, and not much more. I’m too drained, too dejected, and, sometimes, too distressed or disquieted for anything else.

    But I have missed myself these past few weeks. I’ve missed spending time on those little things that calm me, awaken me, excite me. I have missed my early mornings, my solitude, my little hobbies and particulars.

    The problem has been deep and persistent guilt building inside me. There are so many people around me taking the time to be patient, to be supportive, to be kind and helpful, which is all very good and nice, except now there are all these little debts I owe piling up everywhere all the time.

    Now any scrap of motivation or focus I have has to be spent returning the favor. All I have time for now is work, or my house, or my loved ones. There’s nothing left that belongs to me anymore.

    And today isn’t much different, except that I had a little too much coffee and found myself with just one spare minute I didn’t quite know what to do with. So, I thought, why not stop by this old place, clear some cobwebs, and sit for a minute with that old feeling of possibility?

    And oh, how I have missed it too! I’m suddenly reminded of how many ideas I have yet to explore and how many little interesting and thought-provoking things I had hoped to share. I’m suddenly reminded that I had a purpose for this place and a goal for this year. I’m suddenly filled with a small—very small—spark of determination.

    Now? Who knows. I found one minute today, maybe I can find two tomorrow? Maybe I can get comfortable carving out a little time and a little space—this space—to call my own. Maybe I can begin to believe I deserve something of my own at all.

    Maybe I can find my way back to myself again.

  • 050 // It Still Feels Good

    I started the day feeling sluggish and stupid despite getting my third night in a row of uninterrupted sleep—a feat unheard of in my personal “new normal”.

    Since that slow start, things have sped up quickly and the sluggish and stupid feeling gave way to a feeling of optimism that’s been building steadily since my first sips of coffee. I want to blame the caffeine, but I know there’s more to the change in mood.

    Perhaps it’s because the end of the week I’ve been waiting so anxiously for has finally arrived. I hate to take the rest work week for granted like this, but time has been dragging so and I have been feeling such boredom and restlessness at work it’s driving me crazy! I’m in desperate need of real time to myself for a while.

    I have started writing a few things in the gaps of time between emails, tasks, requests, and meeting. Nothing that amounts to much more than notes and outlines, but it’s a step forward from ideas and dreams, so I’ll take it.

    This weekend I’d like to carve out time to do a lot more. I don’t want to lose what momentum I’ve gained. I want to use this new energy and excitement to polish and publish old drafts I’ve struggled to clarify and conclude.

    It’s going to be tiresome and awkward path forward, but that doesn’t matter. It still feels good to be back in the chair, thinking and typing away about the little things that matter to me.

  • 049 // Save Your Strength

    I’ve had two nights in a row of uninterrupted sleep, a rare occurrence and exciting development. This might be the first sign of real healing.

    I have an appointment with my doctor later this morning, and I’m hoping the good news on my end will mean good news on her end too. I’m hoping that we’ve finally hit on the right combination of medications, diet changes, and stress management techniques to calm my immune system and stop the inflammation.

    Part of me is reluctant to hope for too much. I don’t want to start dreaming of a better tomorrow. Hell, I don’t even want to live like I have a better today! Not because I think I’ll jinx myself or anything like that. It’s just that whenever I think I’m better, I start pushing myself too hard.

    I think I can be the person I used to be and do all the things I used to do, but the path from sick to better, to well, to healed is gradual and winding, often looping or doubling back in strange and unpredictable ways. A favorable stretch or promising directional change may only be temporary. The key and the hardest lesson: slow down and save your strength because you never know what perils lurk around the next bend.

    A little better is only that, a little, and that is the most I can give myself or anyone else right now: a little.

  • 048 // The Numbers Don’t Matter

    A dense fog has fallen over the city, making the morning mysterious and dreamy, and making me contemplative and deliberate.

    This is one of those days where focus comes easy. It’s the kind of day you want to spend alone with your thoughts and your work. It’s a good writing kind of day, and I am lucky that there will be time to match the motivation.

    My mornings are slowly returning to a calmer and more effective routine. I’ve been able to get up with my alarm two days in a row, and for the first time in almost a month I had some time to meditate. Watching that run streak turn over from zero to one brought back that old excitement and sense of accomplishment, but it also brought back that old sense of anxiety.

    I wish these kinds of apps didn’t track your “days in a row”. I know why they do it. That anxiety I feel is what keeps me logging in, watching ads, or paying subscription fees, but it isn’t good for morale. That counter will keep you coming back until the one day when you inevitably “fail”. Then it’s only all that much harder to come back to your good habits.

    I tell myself that the numbers don’t really matter, that a day away here and there is okay. What matters is the effort. You don’t fail until you fail to try again.

    Easy enough to say but harder done to believe.

  • 047 // A Little Optimism

    The weather is finally warming, though we’re forecasted to hover near freezing for the rest of the week. Next week is looking a lot more spring-like, and I’m reminded that having something to look forward to is all it takes to muster a little optimism.

    Many of my coworkers are enjoying a four-day weekend, and though I’m expected to head into the office, it will at least be an easy and early day. I’m assisting with a CPR class, which mostly means I’m on mannequin disinfecting duty. It sounds worse than it is. In fact, I often prefer these quiet, solitary tasks to team work.

    The early day means more time to write. Nothing profound is coming to mind today, but a few unfinished pieces are a few awkward paragraphs closer to done. I just have to get back into my old groove, but I know that as long as I have been out of it, is as long as it may take to get back in.

    Writing is my passion, but it isn’t easy. It isn’t always fun, and it doesn’t always feel good. The joy is in “having written” but it’s a lot of misery getting there.

    My heart goes out to the millions in Texas dealing with freezing temperatures, power outages, and water shut-offs. My little sister is among those being affected, and I’m wracked with worry for her. Her power has been out for over 30 hours and she resorted to staying in her car for warmth as all the hotels in the area are booked.

    I hope everyone can find a warm place to sleep tonight My sister has friends to go but I know there will be many out there who don’t have loved ones to take them in.

    Stay warm. Be safe. Show compassion, please.