Have You Any Dreams You'd Like to Sell?

So counting down, again. If I had a penny for everything I've counted down to. Right now, with only a bit over a week until NaNoWriMo begins again, I think it's totally fine for me to be looking forward to it, stocking the fridge with food I eat when stressed and exhausted, and yes, panicking about lack of plot. Unfortunately, I've been watching far too many Joss Whedon TV shows to feel confident in the originality of my ideas. Erp. Oh well, as usual, jump in and see. There may well be vampires involved. Because I loved them before Stephanie Meyer brought them into the spotlight.

Oh dear, I just looked at the calendar, guess what's exactly two months away today. Oh dear. And the crisis begins... now? More like continues. It's not like I haven't been wondering what I'm doing with my life for the past, oh, let's just say several years. And really, I've never felt more secure in the knowledge that it'll all work out. And it's not like I'm the first of my friends to cross this threshold, in fact, close to the last. So why does this feeling of dread fall on me like so many bricks?

On the other hand, that means I only have about 2 months until my sunny warm Christmas. There's something strangely appealing about wearing shorts (shut up, Loud, I mean comfortably and not for the purpose of jumping into snowbanks) around Christmastime.

I got off the ground today!!!! Even if I was partially lifted. Progress!

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

101 Dalmations

Well, colour me a little sheepish. I meant to do something big, important, special (relatively speaking of course, I have it on decent account that there are only about two people who still read this) for my 100th post. It seemed like an important milestone, one deserving commemoration. Then I checked the handy dashboard button that lets me see how many posts I've actually published, rather than just all the ones I started and let auto-save, many of them blank pages, and discovered that I'm actually past that delightful milestone. Tarnation! Here I was hoping to take the chance to reflect upon how much has changed in one hundred posts, spanning three of the more interesting and tumultuous years of my life. Oh well, knowing myself, I probably would never have gotten anything on the page, I'd be too concerned about being profound and reflective, and generating something for posterity. I love to look at those beautiful notebooks they sell in the classy bookstores with the five-dollar-a-pop coffee shops in them. You know, the ones with artistic designs on magnetically or elastic closing covers and pages that are some interesting shade of off-white, maybe boasting of their composition, recycled organic acid-free paper, or just plain pretty to look at. I never buy them because I know I won't write in them. I always feel like nothing I can write can do the book justice, like it's so beautiful it has to have profound things written in it. The right message for the medium. No, it doesn't help to know that somebody else is going to buy that notebook and use it for shopping lists. But now I feel almost in the right state of mind. I worked 8 hours and meant to go to sleep when I got home, but it's been a couple of hours since then. Long enough that the tea I made is cold. Well, tried to make. Silly me, I followed the directions on the package and am left with a veritable boat (because of course when you screw something up it's never the time you're making a reasonable portion) of lukewarm milk which, while providing all the aroma of a cup of Chai, has nearly none of the expected taste. So while I'm waiting for that to disappear, and the overnight (read: will hopefully put me to sleep) sinus medicine to kick in, I suppose I'll keep tapping away on this keyboard and see where I end up.

I made a long-distance, pond-hopping phone call today. At first, it was rather panicked. The voice on the other end, however, reassured me that my plans hadn't just come to a grinding halt as a result of a minor postal delay. The first thing I felt was relief, and then, for a moment before getting once again swept up into the whirlwind of that which must be accomplished before Monday, I considered that for the duration of this next chapter, nearly every voice I hear is going to sound like that. That accent is going to permeate my consciousness. The language will be almost the same. And I've been told that that can be the worst part.

Ace isn't sleeping again, we stay up talking and it's good to touch base again, to have another contact point with the outside world, so to speak. He helps remind me that there are an awful lot of things going on out there, and sometimes I think he does it by reflecting back to me some of those qualities I wish I could purge myself of. He can be abrasive and hard to deal with, but I grit my teeth and manage because he also reflects back to me some of my favourite qualities, and I keep hoping that exposure will make them stronger.

I wonder if the refresh button gets sore when I press it this many times. I'd stop if it would just show me what I want to see. Time marches on, and soon I'll have to call it a night, but I keep hoping.

The tune is the same, change the faces and names.

I can't help the way I feel, which right now is totally reckless, ass-over-teakettle hoping with every fibre of my being that this will work. It wasn't like this before, I know what I said, what I had to say, to protect the both of us. Now it's different. People change, nobody knows that better than me. Once again my practicality takes over, only this time I don't want it to. Love isn't all you need. Love can't pay the bills. Even though this is as grown up as it's ever been, is it really grown up enough? I don't know how to make this real. I just feel it. I can't explain why it's different, why the words I said before are really true now, why you should trust that it won't end up the same. I don't know. I don't even know if you should. But I do know that if it doesn't work out that way, that you won't miss me. You'll find someone who really is what I try sometimes to be.
Because. Maybe this is that feeling they were talking about, that magical, elusive "you just know".

I think the medicine's starting to kick in. My sinuses don't feel any better, but my limbs feel a little leaden.
Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer

Sad Eyes

Every time. Same thing over and over again. Never any resolution, we just try to forget it ever happened, until the next time. And somehow it's always my fault. And yet nothing I say can possibly make it any better. So what's the point of having these conversations. You get mad, I get mad, and everything gets worse.
I get it, I get that I'm a terrible person, and you're a wonderful one, and that you'd never do the awful, terrible things to me that I do to you, but really, I do get sick of hearing it over and over again.
How come you never apologize to my face? I didn't think of this at the time, but maybe subconsciously I was walking away because I know we never resolve anything face to face.


Sometimes I cannot stand you. Maybe it's because I see the things I hate most about myself in you, maybe it's simply because I see a lot of myself in you, and I was never meant to get along with someone who's like me. This is why I've been chewing so much gum lately. It's much easier to bite down on a wad of chewing gum to shut yourself up than it is to bite your own tongue. Trust me, I've got lots of practice, and it hurts. Maybe I haven't got any right to be this angry, but I am. I'm practically fit to be tied. What I don't understand is why things changed. I have a gut feeling, but I'm not sure. Either you changed, or I changed, or we simply had a major difference of opinion that threw the minor ones into sharp relief. Maybe that's it. A difference of opinion.

5...4...3...2...1...
Last few feet of the mudslide. Maybe it's time to dig in my heels.

On another analogical note entirely, I feel like I'm slowly being pulled up the lift hill towards the top of a really freakin' high roller coaster. In case I haven't mentioned this to you before, I'm terrified of heights. As soon as I get over the top of that lift hill, I'm going too fast and screaming too loud to even notice most of what's going on. It's the lift hill that's the killer. The anticipation.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer
P.S. Maybe it is too late, Ace, but I've always had a penchant for lost causes.