Who reads blogs anyway?

I feel like what I want to use my blog for - as a journal/diary of my thoughts, insecurities, and celebrations - can't be that.  I want to write anonymously about my life, but then I wouldn't be able to use some of the very real, essential details that make it mine.  I also don't want to disclose too much information about delicate experiences, but I need to say it somewhere.  How do bloggers do this??

What I would like a blog for is essentially talk therapy with myself.

If: By Rudyard Kipling

I was just telling Jon:  I forget that I really like poetry.  I don't read nearly as much of what I want to be reading, and it's not that anyone is telling me not to read what I want, it's that I get caught up in the mess that is 'The Internet' and am led away into the deep, swallowy pages of nonsense and no-use.

But I like poetry.  I like that the aesthetic, the tactic, strategy, the puzzle.  So I read this poem, and I'm embarrassed that I hadn't heard/read it before now.

If -

If you can keep your head when all about you  
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;  
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;  
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,  
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I don't know if that means I have to analyze it now right before your eyes.  But there are some things that speak to my core and my character that I like right here - it's a good reminder of who I believe I should be.  I hope you enjoy it.

Remember this:

Feeling a bit heavy today...

What a strange paradox.  I'm feeling happy and sad, overwhelmed and at ease.  I don't really understand how one can feel such contradictory emotions at the same time.  I can only imagine that half of them are from hormones and the other from life.

Let's talk about the good things.

• I got a rear rack for my bike today!  I know this is a small, mundane thing, but I'm so excited!   Those bike rides to the grocery store will *hopefully* happen now.

• I have some pretty lavender tulips and baby's breath sitting on my end table at home

• We are looking for a house to move into so we can hopefully get a puppy.

• A close family member is seeking help in fighting a 6-year battle.

• I did yoga this morning.

a realization

First:  I have to get this off my chest.  Everytime I think about the people who have my blog in their Google Reader I get a little gun shy.  Why/how is it always so scary to post things online?

On with the realization:

I do this thing.  I didn't realize or understand it until yesterday.  I realized that I don't celebrate my victories.  I always thought it was that I can't take compliments... when somebody says, "Good job!" I usually feel sheepish and undeserving.  I try to say thank you - but I never quite feel accomplished, per se.  Other people seem to celebrate their victories, at least I think they do.  And those same people are the ones that are good at celebrating others' victories as well.

I am not good at this.  At celebrating others victories.

It's not that I'm not proud of other people for their successes - because I am.  But I've always felt like I've needed to fake the excitement that goes along with celebration.  It's weird, hard to explain.  But it's rooted back at how I treat myself.  As a child I always had these insurmountable expectations for myself.  I was easily overwhelmed and overly stressed when something didn't come easily to me - I always expected that I'd be able to perform perfectly at anything that was asked of me.  This is/was probably an unhealthy mindset.  But I developed a sort of backwards reward system for myself.  Instead of celebrating victories, I've only ever punished myself for my failures.

I expect myself to be able to do things perfectly, and when I can't, I mentally beat myself up.  On top of that, I don't celebrate the things that I do achieve - I just chalk them up to the baseline expectation I have for myself.

So what that means is I float around my emotional baseline and the only direction I'm moving is down. Like this:

What's difficult about this is I've only just realized it - and I have no idea how to go about retraining myself to think in a way that will obviously be much better for me in the long run.  Help!

the fox + the crow

A Fox once saw a Crow fly off with a piece of cheese in its beak and settle on a branch of a tree.  

"That's for me, as I am a Fox," said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree.  "Good day, Mistress Crow," he cried. "How well you are looking today: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds, just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of Birds."

The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox."That will do," said he. "That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese I will give you a piece of advice for the future: "Do not trust flatterers."

"Do not trust flatterers."

Beatles Love Wedding Cake + Blueberries & Blackberries