My body aches, and I feel tired most of the time.  Some say it may be physical, but I am pretty sure it is more mental.  I feel so overwelhmed right now that I just feel the need to shut down. Crawl under the covers, and imagine living another life. 

On a new age audio book a doctor said that he did what was called motor rehearsal on olympic athletes. He hooked them up to bio feedback computers and had the athletes run their races in their mind. The same muscles fired when they were running in their mind than when they were actually running it. He said the mind couldn’t distinguish from fantasy to reality and that he believed if you go their in the mind you will go there in the body.  So there’s my excuse.  I am living life, just only in my head.  It’s a damn shame I have to get up and go to work.  If only I could daydream all day…

I have created a fantasy lover. I know it sounds a bit pathetic.  He only comes up at night, right when I lie down to go to sleep.  I just imagine my life being different, me being different, and him just there, talking to me.  That’s all, just talking. He’s understanding, sympathetic, and I amcompletely comfortable with him. I have created it because I haven’t yet to find that in real life.

The skin on my feet hurt. I don’t know why. I notice at night, when I can’t sleep how sensitive my skin is against the sheets. And it doesn’t matter what kind of sheets I sleep on. It almost hurts.

The pinky finger on my right hand now aches.  It’s been nine months since I broke it and I have yet to regain full motion, or even half.  It makes typing a chore. It distracts me from the words I want to type. Words that get interrupted and lost somewhere between my head and the keyboard.

I think I have lost my words. They just don’t come to me like they used to. Maybe it is just because I am tired.

Almost exactly a year ago I was in the midst of the worst depression spell I had ever suffered. Now I fear I could be on the cusp of another one.  However, the demon rears its ugly head, it is not as strong as it used to be.  It’s voice isn’t as strong as it used to be, somehow now it is distant and weakened by static.  It waivers, never keeping hold of me as it used to.  I know that if I can get out of that depression spell I can get out of another one.

 It seems things are falling apart around me, but I really feel that once it passes I will be better off than I have been in a long while.  I can’t let myself get down, my future depends on a positive and confident attitude.  I just have to have faith in myself.

So many things are swarming in my head.  I wish I could escape my own mind at times.  I go back and forth about things to the point it drives me crazy.

There are times that you have to walk away from the things that are not good for you or things that do not serve a greater purpose.  There are things I want for myself and trying to turn something into something it is not doesn’t work. A sexual relationship will not become what I want it to be.  It will only be a sexual relationship.  Sure, I like sex, but I want more than just that.  This is why I keep going back and forth.  Sometimes it is easier than having nothing, but in the end it does not contribute to what I really want.

I was at a party on Sunday.  A cute guy with a wide smile that I had only met once before began to flirt with me lightly and later in the evening we found ourselves out on the porch alone talking.  He asked question after question about me and my interests, sincerely showing interest in who I was as a person.  The he asked why I wasn’t married.  It struck me as odd, since he was not the first to ask me, claiming to be surprised by that.

“It seems like someone would have snatched you up by now,” he said in all sincerity.

Truth is I shied away from dating for a long time.  I was once an awkward girl with kinky curly hair and an underbite.  Surgery corrected the underbite, I learned to control the kinky hair and somehow in my early thirties I began to blossom.  I was no longer the girl guys weren’t interested in and suddenly the girl that guys looked at.  It took a while for me to become comfortable with the attention I was beginning to get, but slowly I began to walk taller and talk to guys more easily, although it still is hard for me.

I have always been the fuckbuddy, never The One.  Before my sabbatical from dating and now I find myself in the same position.  And I feel as though I have brought it on myself.  The comment from the guy on Sunday got me thinking about why I am still single.  The answer I gave him was a true one.  I don’t get out enough, and I have always been shy.

Now there is no reason to have this excuse.  I have come to realize that I am fairly attractive, and i have many things to offer.  I am caring, intelligent, considerate, truthful, sincere, I listen, I have a sense of humor, I am not controlling.  I do not expect to be taken care of, nor do I expect a man to make me happy.  I began to wonder about the surprised reactions from two men recently that I was not “taken.”

I have not gotten out enough, no.  I am sure that there is a guy that I would be compatible with that would enjoy my company and would want more than just sex.  Not getting out there, is not helping me find him.  Atleast now I have the confidence to pursue this.  I have learned that I want more than just a sexual relationship. And that I want someone to do things with.  Someone to go on trips with, to stay at home and curl up on the couch with a good movie, to hang out with friends with, so on and so forth.

Atleast once a week I go for drinks with a close friend of mine.  Everytime I notice a guy stealing glances at me.  Once another friend was with us and insisted I go up to one of them, but I was too shy too.  I wasn’t used to doing something like that.  She said a guy would be thrilled if I went up to him.  I didn’t though.  Maybe I should have.  Maybe I should start.  Truth is you never know.  He could be a guy that just wants sex too, or is not a good match.  Or he could be the right guy.  I’ll never know if I don’t take the chance.  I’m tired of being the fuckbuddy.  I am ready to be The One.

I tried to email you on your gmail account but it keeps coming back.  I hope you are doing okay and sorry for the long delay in responding to your comments.  I only signed on this morning to find all of your comments.  You can email me at tappedandpierced@yahoo.com.

 Hope to hear from you soon.

It is in my nature to write and to write about what is going on in my mind and emotions.  It helps me work things out, put them in perspective, and besides I just feel the need to write.

I left his blog wanting to put it behind me, start anew.  But at the time I had not been writing much at all.  So perhaps I spoke too soon when I decided to leave it.  I started a new blog page with the intent to post things that are beautiful in life.  To try to find beauty in everyday life. It has made me write again.  But there are many things that I want to express that are not pertinant to that blog.  I woke up in the middle of the night last night unable to fall back asleep and thought of many things. Things going through my head, things I wanted to express on the page.

I signed on this morning, after not having signed on here in a long time to see many messages from those who read this blog.  It made me feel as though I was cutting it’s life too short.  This blog was much of my journey in and out of depression, I wanted to leave it behind, but truth is it is more about me.  My need to write and express on the page what is going on in my mind.

I was stunned by the messages I received and that there were many out there going through the same things and enjoyed reading my blog, so why cut it’s life too short?  Again, it is about me. Why put the label on it that it is just about one part of my life?

Three months ago I quit a bad photography job to pursue a freelance career.  I have never regretted it even though I am yet to bring in an income that will sustain me.  In a couple of months time, what little savings I have will have run out.  But I have jobs on the horizon and I have faith that things will kick in before then.

A month ago I went off of my anti-depressant.  More by accident.  I left my medicine at home when I went out of town over the Christmas holiday.  I thought perhaps I would see how things would go.  At first everything seemed fine, until three weeks later when it all began to hit me again.  Things began to bother me, I had bad nights again, where I was in deep despair.  So, I knew that I had to be on it.  I went back on it.  These days I struggle to gain a positive look on the future.  It is hard.  Insecurity has always plagued me,  and trying to become self-employed relies on self-confidence and belief that you can succeed.  It is a daily struggle to convince myself that I am good enough and that I can do it.

But I am growing.  Before I don’t know if I would have taken such a jump, but I know that it is what I need to do for myself, for who I am.  I want to be a free spirit, and have never been happy confined to a 9 to 5 existence.  My growth now is in gaining a positive outlook on life and the future, for it all depends on my success.  As many dealing with depression, you know that the demon never goes away, even on medicine.  There are residuals such as insecurity, and lately with me motivation.  These last few days I have had a hard time getting myself to do the things I need to do, feeling extremely fatigued.  I then begin to give myself a hard time about what I haven’t done or accomplished in the day.  One of the things I need to stop doing.  I think I resist when I keep giving myself a hard time.  But it is just another phase in my growth. 

We’ve been drifting a part for quite some time now. I don’t visit as often as I used to. But to be honest, I have grown weary of ruminating over things, my life, and depression. I have begun the journey of creating a new path in my life. I have begun to see what I truly want. It has taken a while, yes, but I am closer than I ever have been. I have grown to accept who I am, and like her quite frankly. What more is there to say to you? It’s far too late and we’ve been too wrapped up in wallowing in sadness and the past to start fresh. We have too much of a past here, and as much as I hate to say, I think it is time that I move on.

I woke up this morning with a combination sinus headache and hangover. My roommate and I spent last night enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, by sitting on the porch drinking wine. The evening started out lighthearted, us laughing, making fun of one of the dogs, us singing cheesy pop songs, to ending in rather serious conversations. My roommate has the habit when we get into these types of conversation to really push me into thinking about why I do the things I do, why I feel the way I feel. As the evening turned to serious talk, I expressed mistakes I have made and fears that I have. Christi pushed me to figure out why I continually make the same mistakes. I begin to see my lack of self respect. A lack of self respect that puts my well being in danger.Close to 3 am we leave the porch stumble up to our rooms. My sleep was filled with disturbing dreams, dreams that fill me with fear and regret, dreams that make me hate myself and the mistakes I’ve made.I wake up from it, the fear running through my veins. My head throbbing, keeping me from doing anything productive today, keeping me from distracting myself from the anxiety that begins to permeate my being. The parasite that gets under my skin.So I do something that I normally don’t do. I vegetate on the couch in front of the TV. I need distraction I need to not think about things. I can’t sleep, if I close my eyes, the things that bother me will haunt me.

I’ve had a headache on and off for the past several days.  A low grade fever that has made me light headed and dizzy.  I am anxious for it to pass, there are so many things I feel I need to be doing.

 I think perhaps being unemployed has been the best motivating factor for me.  The first week and a half or so I dragged my feet, I put off doing things, because I was beginning to put all of this pressure on myself.  You should be doing this, you should be doing that.  You are waisting your time.

Finally, I got past it.  I jumped into a photography project and hit the ground running.  In fact I ran myself sick.   I had been pushing myself indeed.  From sun up to sun down, I was doing something that involved photography somehow. Getting to sleep was becoming extremely difficult.  My mind was all over the place with ideas and things to do.  Then one day late last week, I began to feel strange and light headed.  I had a fever.

So, I was forced to take a break from it all.  Which I think was good. It has forced me to prioritize, and to realize that I need to stop pushing myself too hard or I will burn out.  I’ve always had the bad habit of not letting myself enjoy things.  When i was in jobs I hated, I always felt that I needed to be doing something in my free time to work to get myself out of it.  So, I’d put all of these expectations on myself.  For a long time, I spent most of my free time writing.  Two feature length screenplays, a handful of short stories, 2/3 of a novel and notebooks filled with notes involving that novel.  But writing wasn’t getting me out of those jobs.  So I switched gears.  Went back to school.  Entered a graduate degree program to get into teaching art.  That all change the second semester, when I began to see the reality of teaching.  I came across so many teachers and saw the exhaustion in their faces, and from many conversations, I realized that it was not something I wanted to do badly enough to be that exhausted and underpaid.  And there were many other things I worked on…none that really got me anywhere.

But now, I’ve really taken the leap.  And the time I’ve spent with the photography feels right, but I did feel myself growing a bit overwelhmed.  I went into a bookstore, the first thing I did was go to the photography books.  By this time I was sick of photography.  So, my time being sick has given me time to reflect on this.  Yes, this is something I need to work on.  Yes, I’m going to have to get some kind of income coming in with it soon or I’ll have to go back to getting a job I don’t like again.  But none of this means I should be pushing myself to work on it 24/7.  I swore to myself today that I would take a break from it.  Still feeling ill, I’ve been laying around all day, however I couldn’t keep myself from researching stock photography sites.  Well, atleast that’s all I did.  I just think I need to relax a little, do some things I enjoy other than photography, and have faith that things will work out in the end.

 Let myself have fun for a change.

So long…so long since I’ve posted anything here, my poor neglected blog. Lots of things have happened, so many, I don’t know where to even begin. Let’s see, well I’m unemployed now. Yes, jobless. It started when I got a photography job, a photography job that ended up being a job from hell. My days started at the crack of dawn and ended late in the evening. A day filled with driving all over the place, lugging around heavy equipment, and ridiculously anal paperwork that I had to get done when I got home in the evenings. My days were beyond thirteen hour work days. I barely slept, my body ached, I was exhausted. In the end, it was just labor. There was no creativity involved, the cameras were locked, so you couldn’t change them, there were certain ways everything had to be done. I was working myself to death just for money. In the end, it wasn’t enough. I want to be happy with each day, I don’t want to feel so physically exhausted that when I have downtime I have no energy to do the things I want to do. The job had sucked the life out of me. So, I quit.

I knew it was something I had to do. It was time to take the leap. It was time to take a chance. And it feels right.I have just enough money to last a few months. Just enough to get by barely. But I have my freedom to pursue the things I want to pursue, photography and writing. In the back of my mind I worry about when the money runs out, I worry that I won’t be on the road to self-sufficiency, that I’ll have to get a job doing something I don’t want to do. Sometimes I wish I could just be one of these people that go to work put in their hours, go home, and never think much about it. But I’ve never been like that. I really see that now how important it is for me to have the freedom to be creative. I’d much rather have my freedom than material possessions. The shoes I have are fine, I have enough clothes, I live in a nice house my good friend lets me live in with her, I have a car that runs (knock on wood). Right now, I have all that I need (with the exception of photography equipment, but I can get by with what I have).

Now my days are a blank canvas. I search for the confidence to believe that I can succeed. I search for the creativity, I work to mentally break down any blocks that stand in my way, such as insecurity and doubt. Mentally it takes adjusting to. So easy it is to take my time getting up in the morning, to procrastinate doing something because of a fear of failure. When it comes down to it, I have to get rid of these patterns of thinking. The pressure that I start to give myself, that’s when I resist, like a rebellious teenager. I have to learn to submerse myself in the things that I enjoy. Take the kinds of photographs I want to take, write my book because I enjoy and not write it thinking it needs to be a certain way. If the passion is behind the act, it comes through in the art. It is genuine not fake. Ah, so much easier said than done. Me, let go, and just play. Me, who has been riddled with insecurity and doubt most of my life, thinking I need to be something else, who I am is not good enough. Me, just be me and create what I want.Unfortunately my insecurities have spilled over into my creative expectations. So I want to be a writer? Me who barely graduated high school because of my English grade! You should be reading, studying, the classics, you should be reading this, and reading that. You should read and enjoy Jane Austin, it’s crazy that you can’t get past the first few pages of Pride and Prejudice! And don’t get me started on your grammar! Oh that voice…Julia Cameron calls it “the sensor.” The voice of doubt, the voice that reminds me I do not fit. I created in my mind the idea of what a writer should be. Well read, articulate, intelligent. Me, not well read, words often escape me, intelligent? But I know these are thought patterns I have to escape. Because when it comes down to it, we all live, and we all die. Shouldn’t I do what I enjoy? Can I just let go and submerse myself in my writing, enjoy it, and not worry about what the sensor says? Well, I’m working on it.

The past two weeks have sucked. I’ve been ill inside and out. Still unable to eat much, having lost nearly ten pounds. Mentally, emotionally, and physically I’ve been in a lull, yet plagued with a nagging restlessness that makes my emotions erratic at times, making me contradict myself. The depression demon feeds on this, he rears his ugly head but 20 mg a day of Lexapro shortens the wire that keeps him from taking a complete hold of me like he used to. But the restlessness is still there, peace not within reach. The depression lurking underneath the surface.