Irony is Ironic

My blog is titled in such a redundantly redundant way to pay homage to my first born. She and her bestest friend have spent many an hour coming up with these little obviousisms, and together, they second and third the notion of life being pen ready and in our faces at all times.
My latest light bulb of Irony turned on a couple of months ago. I was having quite the great week; won a parking space for a month at work, celebrated 6 months of sobriety, and was stumbled upon by a group of bloggers that not only enjoyed my present state of writing, but wanted me to jump onto their virtual boat of Bloggers Extraordinaire and submit my musings for My Chosen People to read.
My first thought was...Whaat?! My second thought was, of course, a channeling of my inner New Jersey Skeptic. Of course they want to sell me something, put me on a massive spamasstical mailing list and drag me into a world of corruption and mass hysteria. (Do you think I've watched too many episodes of CSI? Maybe.) I thanked them from the bottom of my heart, felt my cheeks redden like an emerging sunrise, then instantly scoffed..  My inner skeptic immediately took over, taunting me with thoughts like  "surely they want something" and  "do I Look like a sympathy quota to you".?!

I had been turned down a couple of months ago by a blogging network, so my skepticism held a bit of history and merit. Once upon a time, I recall entering a contest measuring my writing ability. I thought everyone would jump on my Blogging Bandwagon because I had confidence that I was a good writer. I was so busy feeling overly confident that I didn't see the Semi Truck of Discontent heading for me. I was hyped up from secretly thinking my writing was an easy shoo-in; a mixture of incredible wit and imagination only shared by those, like myself, lucky enough to realize our enormous potential. As fast as my hand-picked-for-the-Second-Coming (of Oprah, not Jesus) began, it was just as quickly thrown in the shooter. My writing was judged, thwarted and dismissed as road kill, for dropping the occasional, but often necessary, F bomb.
Since my protective shield of skepticism was in place, it didn't take long to recover and basically Get Back on the Horse. This entry marks my coming out of the Blogging Cave of Shame and admitting complete surrender. Knowing myself as well as I do, though I've gotten over the initial disappointment and erased the neon "Fail" stamped on my forehead, I still keep my lil' piece of comfort, my token of my true humanity, with me at all times. Even though I was judged for my flippant use of the f word, I will hold it near and dear to my heart and use it whenever I see fit, as I hold its' importance to be up there with God, Mother Teresa and Juan Valdez.

because it's warm

I have been working through the whole letting go-ness of life; the defective traits I've assumed over the years need to be gone. Doing this, though, is almost more painful than the acts themselves. My grandma coined a phrase, or at least I think she did, about keeping in your pain. "You stay in your shit because it's warm", she would say. In layman terms that means we keep doing the same crap, because we at least know, beyond reasonable doubt, the outcome would be familiar. That is why our unreasonable selves succumb to our same ol' irrational responses and defense mechanisms - who wants to process something new when we're in pain already?

When I stand back from a situation that I helped create a couple weeks ago, I see that my side of the story was partially to blame. As stories go, there are 3 sides; his, hers and the real one. If I let my inner moron conjure up reasons to blame the other person, citing examples of their behavior via a Large book, or a bad B-movie, I'm searching for the definition of 'fucked' in Websters Dictionary. It's not going to happened. Blaming another person for the exact nature of our wrongs is not taking responsibility for your part in the play, and my inner moron just became your reality.

Knowing and doing are two different things, and which comes first, anyway? The chicken or the egg - and who's the chicken?! I know in my heart of hearts that this feeling, this overwhelming sense of loss and sadness...this too shall pass. I have learned I have the capacity to love and be loved. It's just that I came to realize love as an action has to replace love as a feeling. Love as an action takes endurance and time management - how can I live within the boundaries of loving this person? Now that my mind is made up to commit my head, heart, body and soul to another person, what is the timeline? How patient can and will I have to be? Can I stand and wait for him to hold me and love me as I want? When will this fleeting feeling, that sets off all of those damnedable endorphins, stop and be absorbed by my will to take action?

The philosophizing and questions will soon settle and be answered. I've got to just drag that patience out and let it fester and bloom into the most beautiful virtue I can. Control is not an option - once I give up the control, if it comes back to me I give myself the permission to execute the strangle hold. Mantra of the day: This too Shall Pass.

Save the Last Dance

Okay...enough of the Dark Side. All of the work we do to mold our new lil' psyches should be rewarded. I was invited to go out dancing yesterday - release this damn current of angst and sweat it off on the dance floor! One of my girlfriends likes to go out and dance - not the dancing of my former 80's-spandex-self, but a cleaner, healthier way to trip the Light fantastic. I will let my lone follower know how this ends up - if all my parts work afterward!
Music is my one release that I can safely say I will never have to give up. It soothes the savage beast and ignites passion when I feel like crap on the inside or want to share my happier self with the World. It's been a good bonding agent with people, as talking about tunes is much lighter and more socially acceptable than mooning about the woe-is-me-ness of life.
I've been succumbing to the throws of iTunes lately, swallowing the fact that someone elses greedy revenue stream is about the only way we can enjoy and share music. Ok, don't think about that - just sink into our earbuds and escape. The fact that Jimi Hendrix and Chopin can share equal space in my head is astounding. I would love to research Jimis' music history more and see if he ever did anything remotely Classical. His lyrics are soooo beautiful - he wasn't just some dude on acid. He was Genius. This excerpt is from a great website that deciphers the meaning and derivation of epic songs.
http://http//www.inthe70s.com/generated/lyricsmeaning.shtml
At the time Jimi wrote the song he had had a huge fight with his girlfriend. When it says "Somewhere a queen is weeping, somewhere a king has no wife." he means his girlfriend is crying and he is loveless. Also, he talkes about clowns and jack-in- the-boxes that have gone away, which means there is no more happiness.
Well, boo-hoo. For all the sappy blokes that think Hendrix was just living in a drug-induced fog, that may be right, but he was an incredibly deep and soulful artist that fed his equally mournful audience a whole lotta Good Grief!

3rd step

I forged this journey thinking I would become intuitive overnight and clean up my
act -yesterday. That hasn't been the case, but what I am becoming more acutely aware of, is that when someone wants to blame me for their own shortcomings, I don't have to own it. I can give it back, even if it means potentially losing that person to their own egocentricities. ( I know I just blended Eccentricities with Ego - because after all, aren't our quirky traits and isms what fuels the Ego?) I've always been one to point out how not to lose your Power over a situation, but when it comes to taking my own advice, for some reason I cannot decipher the Crazy Cantonese language in my head. I did begin this entry hyping up my epiphany, so for my "one" follower of this blog, I will take you off your seat of pins and needles. These excerpts are from an author that is much wiser than myself.
But the moment our mental or emotional independence is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.
Our fight for independence is proportional to our yearning for intimacy with other people . The need to be needed sometimes overshadows our yearning to be independant and stronger than anyone else on the Planet. Walk Tall, Stand Alone, blah blah blah. Machismo should be left for Steve McQueen! Wanting someone in your life doesn't necessarily trump your cool vibrato.Oh yes, we'll weigh the pros and cons of every problem. We'll listen politely to those who would advise us, but all the decisions are to be ours alone. Nobody is going to meddle with our personal independence in such matters. Besides, we think, there is no one we can surely trust.
Whether we want a relationship with others or ourselves, trust is the key to a successful relationship. The key is - don't be an Indian Giver! Resist the temptation to take the trust
back - hello, let it go, already! Can we resist the temptation to control every angle and really let go and accept advice?We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God...
Sometimes our intelligence is too smart to let reality in. Whoever thinks that we should face our adversity alone is an idiot. Again...where is Steve when we need him?!

Norma Rae meets Snow White

I started out this process, this blogging idea, to help strengthen my purpose and give me a voice in my crazy life. I'm not one to air my troubles or my foibles to any passersby - until now. I want to turn my adversity into someone elses strength. To have felt all the pain of poverty, hopelessness - doing shit jobs in order to feed myself and my kids. I am truly a woman that subscribed to the Mother Teresa/Snow White/Norma Rae sort of ideology that Pain is Truth and the Truth is supposed to set us free, right?
I want to be in a position that anything I do, whether it's tend animals or work with kids on free lunch programs or educate women to fend for themselves....any of these things I want to go above my level of fear-based life and Turn it. I made a decision to turn every bloody gram of my existence over to the care of God as I understand him, and as long as He knows that I'm okay not being perfect, and he doesn't mind me saying fuck here and there, this is a good place for me to start.
When I bought into the whole Self-Help phase of my life a few years ago, I was really looking for a "something" to Save me. A book to save me? No, I was searching for a way to process pain of loss, deal with an illness I felt I had no control of, and I thought these inanimate objects could deliver me gently and give me all that I needed. I also entertained the idea of some good samaritan scooping me out of my garbage with their golden shovel. But the thing about those kinds of wishes, the shovels very quickly turn into double edged swords and pierce you in the ass . You can never truly find an easier and softer way out of your funk. If you go the direction of abandoning who you are to follow someone else's plan to fix you, you will be thrown you into an even bigger and stinkier vat of crap, dealing with their knight-in-shining-armor issues on top of your own garbage.
One can never really be saved by another. If you don't truly own your situation, taking responsiblity and blaming only you for getting yourself in your mess, it will never be yours to give away. You will forever blame the ex-spouse, family member, 8th grade geometry teacher for your problems. It stinks to admit failure. It sucks having to start again, but if you can see the situation far ahead, you have the unfortunate duty of handing this life you've built down to your children when you leave this world. If this turmoil and pain of unfinished emotional baggage is the legacy you want them to have, you may re-think Defeat and deal with your problems while you're still living.
Imagine giving your children something tangible. Each facet of your life, both good and bad, is in the form of a beautiful cashmere sweater, stinky pair of socks - individual pieces of emotional fabric. As a parent, you have the rare opportunity of putting these figurative pieces of your own Josephs' Coat in a nice unassuming hamper and hand them over to your children. When you die, your children finish the work you've started. This gives you closure and they, in turn, inherit the traits, flaws and wisdom that you instilled in them while you were living. As a parent, you make a choice to force these innocent creatures, who will soon have their own hampers of crap to deal with, to sort through and process your crap - because your business in this world is done. Who better to receive your emotional hand-me-downs than your own blood?
If I have the chance, and I do - I would take what I learned from my adversity and show them a peaceful existence of strength, courage and creativity to add to their familial resume. The last thing I want to do is have them learn that carrying a load of bad stuff is ok behavior. "Well...mom did it, so I guess it's okay. " Wrong. Step Back from the Vat of Hot Lava. I think Recovery for me has nothing even to do with alcohol or food or shopping or...whatever flavor-of-the-month I'm obsessing about at the moment. These things have only been a fog that has kept me from seeing a means to an end. I have chosen to lift this veil and actually live on Life's terms. It's true and right and hard as hell, but this is what I signed up for, so Let's Go.

Very First Post in Everdom

This is my very first blog, and my very first go of Nancy As Artist, so be gentle on me!! ha No, really...to share my stuff feels like I'm walking down the freezer aisle of a grocery store in my underwear- creepy, cold and exposed!
My new found energy could be from my recent purge of stuff from cleaning. Usually, cleaning out closets is waaay yuck for me, as I get diverted easily and by end of day, I have forgotten why I was cleaning in the first place! I've happily let go of more rubber stamps than I thought I had, and feel like the art stuff I've found unopened is kind of...embarrassing (okay so...insert blushing-weird-smiley-face now as don't know how to do that yet!) Okay enough for one post