Tagged for Life: A Memoire

So... There's this new form of the "get lucky" email going around. It's a blog challenge based on a mythological bet that Hemingway once made. His autobiographical words were purported to be, “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

And here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post (http://herebaby.blogspot.com/2008/06/six-word-memior.html) if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links
5. Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

So... Can you sum up your whole life in six words?

Ahem: "wise others curious boundaries open self"

Wise
Others
Curious
Boundaries
Open
Self
Wise
Others
Curious
Boundaries
Open
Self
Wise...

It may change as my life continues. First, there were the wise others who watched me. There were may wise others, curiously. Then there were others, curious about me or about whom I was curious. I spent a lot of time focused on others. Isn't that curious? I also spent a lot of time being curious about HOW this was so... and I discovered that it had a lot to do with boundaries. My boundaries, and those that others had toward me were rather curious for much of my life, really. Curious boundaries, had we. Very open, they were. Yoda, I was not.

And then the curious boundaries opened, and in many ways my life transformed because I gave myself permission to pass them. And then I became curious about life. I decided I wanted to live it. So I started creating boundaries between myself and those who threatened my life. Boundaries. Curiously, my life opened before me as my boundaries became healthy and real. I myself became open. Open to life, open to health, open to change, open to possibility and hope and reality and new beginnings. I opened to myself, and got to know her in a new and intelligent way. Wisdom, they call it.

I opened to Self, and became wise. I became myself more fully and more joyfully than I have ever been before. And here I am. Open, and in relationship with my Self. Learning new ways of being. Making friends with others. Disseminating wisdom to others. Wise. Curiously wise in working with others, really. Especially for my age. I'm about to become 30. I have a lot of life left. And I'm curious about what it will bring...

My six-word autobiography might need some editing and modification and change as I go along.

....TAG! You're it.

Chaos, and the Rules that Cause It:

I have been walking around with a list in my head. Well, okay-- I walk around with a LOT of lists in my head... but THIS ONE was the list of "how it's supposed to be." You'd think I'd have learned my lesson about demanding that the universe conform to my plans, but no.

I once thought that happiness was caused by doing what you're "supposed to do." So I went to college, and then I got married, and I had a job, and we bought a house, ... and I wasn't really very happy most of the time.

When I refused to be a part of that train wreck any longer, and started over with the "go to college" bit, I realized that there isn't really a tangible recipe for happiness. There isn't a check-list to success. Not in the way you check off the steps of a home renovation, for example.

Then, I created a new plan. I'd get my new degree, and that would lead to my new career. Once I had a new career, I could finally pay off my debts and have health care, thus leading to a healthy healed body, and building a solid foundation for me to finally start looking for new relationships. And all of this would have to happen "somewhere else." Somewhere with no old patterns to contend with as I fought to create new and healthy ways of being.

It's only been in the past month that I finally realized that maybe, even if I wasn't getting that career job in library world, maybe I COULD be working on other goals. And then things started to fall into place. Serendipity, I think it's called.

I found an awesome house-mate. I moved into her house, and felt at home. She introduced me to a friend of hers who gives great massage (for free, until he gains his certification), and happens to also be a very wellness-oriented Yoga Master. And I called up my Uncle Rod's Acupuncturist, and discovered that she would do a straight trade with me-- one of my skills in exchange for one of hers. So, for no money, I suddenly find my body healing. I even played three consecutive rounds of a great bean-bag-toss game called "Corn Hole." I swear, it's true. There's a whole league of semi-serious players here-- and there are official rules, and everything! I played this game with only some temporary discomfort in my shoulder, where I'd once have been in agony for days after. This is an improvement I'd like to facilitate! It's EXCITING!!!

Now, I'm meeting other great people, and I've also developed a supportive and growing friendship with someone I knew in high school. Not the boy-- it's been three weeks since I last heard from him. I'm not holding my breath. And it's okay. I feel no personal insult or loss from it, though I still think he'd have made an interesting and appealing friend. No, this one is my friend, DS. She's personally funding and creating a really amazing non-profit that supports the cultural historians and artists in Guinea, in Africa. Her dedication, knowledge, and the need for her work are just amazing.

Oddly enough, my Personal & Professional Life Coaching business has picked up, too. Out of rather humid summer air have appeared five paying clients. WOW!!! I look forward to more as the year progresses.

And suddenly, I realize: Here I am. My body is healing, and I'm growing a great community of friends. I have a wonderful place to live, and the beginnings of a career (even if it stays part-time for a while) I love. I've started to incorporate healthy new patterns to my life, and I've done it all RIGHT HERE. So, I've started looking around for a job that might let me stay local for a while longer. And there is one. Don't know if I'll get it, but I plan to do everything in my power to promote that possibility. I'd be doing research, and collection development for a vendor who works with academic libraries. My two favorite aspects of being a librarian-- combined-- and I'd get to do them for more than one library at once. Talk about service opportunities!!

On top of all that, I just met someone wonderful. I don't know if we'll be friends or if there'll be more to it than that... but I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know this man better. He's mature, and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed talking/listening with him, and he has two cats-- who he spoils rotten. It's a good start.

It's so exciting for life to feel good right now!

Funny, That

It's a funny thing... I had an email last week from someone I always wanted to know better in high school. I emailed back, and then spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out WHY I thought he was who I thought he was back then. And I've yet to come up with something believable.

I always thought of him as a kind and gentle person, but pretty self-contained and fairly strong. Quiet, possibly even painfully shy, and yet someone with strong ideas of how to get along in the world. What did I base this on? I have no fugcking idea. My most recent memory is of him sitting slouched in the back of a classroom in his poofy down coat, with his pimp-wannabe baseball cap on backwards and a really bored expression on his face. Yeah.

In the whole of high school, I think we had maybe six conversations. And none of them lasted more than 20 seconds-- except the one where my mom forgot to pick me up from school and it was pitch black and the school was totally deserted, and HE showed up and offered me a ride home. That time, the poor guy was stuck in his truck with me for a full 20 minutes of horror.

I think what usually happened was that I wanted so much to be liked by this guy (remember-- high school) and was so self-conscious and weird as only a pre-pubescent girl can be that about 20 seconds into the conversation, I'd say something that was either really dumb, really bizarre, or both-- and he'd get this "deer in the headlights" look, and stop talking to me. This is how I remember ALL of our interactions. I don't even know what his parents did for a living (or do now, for that matter), I don't know his brother's name or age, I don't know what this guy did after school or even what sports he played-- if any.

But anyway, I got this email last week, and thought "HEY! How cool would it be to finally find out who he actually IS-- and maybe have a whole conversation, too!" So I responded. It's been a week, and I haven't heard anything back from his end. And I have to say, I'm finding it funny. THIS time, I don't think I said anything dumb, foolish, or weird. THIS time, I simply have the inclination to laugh at how familiar the whole situation seems to me. And I'm writing him another email if I don't hear back in a few more days. I'd sort of like to know what happened to shut him up. I'm honesty curious. After all-- HE STARTED IT!

Yeah. Between not hearing from him (YET), and not hearing (YET) from any of my applied-to libraries, I'm feeling kinda lost in the sea of interweberry. There's this book of poems that I really loved in middle and high school because the writer echoed so many of my own confused feelings about my life at that point-- the title is something like "Hello World, It's Me- Margaret." I remember the title being pulled from a poem that discussed that feeling of unwanted invisibility...

Invisibility. I has it.
...Funny, That.