catastrophe strikes. confusion abounds. the things i think are detrimental to the level of activity necessitated by my life, by the things i need to do. there is no time to sit and figure it out, yet that is all i need to do. i need to sit and work my ass off to accomplish something. and yet again, as usual, the boulder that hits me/us is in despite of all the hard work, despite the brutal level of commitment we have demonstrated. i am fucking sick and tired of the intermittent wrench thrown in our workings, the loss of control we seem to suffer so regularly. there has been nothing handed us, save the color on our skin, the tendency of our desires, the status of our socio-economic upbringing. there has been no money on platters, no invitations to jobs or to schools extended based solely on our lineage. there has been no hint of nepotism. no shadow of favorites played. i know the privilege inherent here, but it is not in play when trucks fall out of the goddamned sky. no amount of whiteness seems to be able to prevent that. i want nothing but to reach a point where we can enjoy the fruit of our labor, where i can plan to live in one place and all that entails: saving for a house, working out the legalities of home-schooling in our state, attempting to acquire an apprenticeship. i just want a workable budget, an income instead of a hole dug in our savings, the ability to say that i will or can do something in the next three years. i am exhausted by waiting. i am exhausted by the constant dedication necessitated by graduate school: the long hours, the wandering mind, the never-ending work load, the meandering schedule, the pressure constricting thoughts and feelings and availability. i just want a real life. one in which there are possibilities and choice. i am in the constant attempt at grown-up-hood and there are boundaries i cannot breech whilst this is all still in process. there is some portion of my life that no amount of new furniture or fad diets or new babies will help me to reach. i can stack it all up and still hit this glass ceiling again and again: jon is not finished with this lengthy project and at this rate, it is indeterminable when he might be. i want to want. i want to afford the opportunity to create opportunity for myself. i want something for me. i am tired of being this foundation of support. i am worn out by all of this. there is a lump in my throat aching and begging for something new and something profoundly mine. i try to create it in the gaps. i become the pseudo-student midwife or the volunteer moderator. i join yahoo groups and myspace, build a website like i were advertising anything other than the product of this mind which is neither for sale nor for any sort of cause or resource of information. i just lay myself out for the voyeur to ponder. there is hardly fun or profit involved. i suppose my business is attention-getting and it is only there for itself. the existence of all of this is but to exist. i am good at talking excessively and typing sporadically on all the notions that strike me, but it serves no purpose and does very little good, i am convinced. i am so tired. i am finished with it. i am done. and yet, i have to find a way to plow through. i must find a method for staying afloat and buoying all those around me as well. to that end, i plan to draw a suitable budget, eat to live, and volunteer simplicity. and for all that, i must be completely fucking insane.

my pockets and purses used to flood with scraps of paper, receipts, napkins, build-your-own-sandwich sheets, note-sized library paper, all littered with bits and pieces of thought, of poetry, and intent. i used to write. i used to be a writer, always thinking of the experience-as-editorial. i used to frame my life in the cup of my hand and listen to it and the words it was speaking, the images unfolding in my mind. today for the first time in ages i wrote something down on the back of the grocery list (which was, incidentally, written beneath the recipe for dinner). i was thinking of the way that mike doughty was singing about a girl and i was wondering to myself as the baby was sleeping in the back seat and the groceries were bobbing around in the trunk about what love was supposed to be. i was considering myself and my expectations from a decade before this, what my dreams outlined true love to be, often on the back of receipts and build-your-own-sandwich sheets, no less. it was all moonstruck and falling, swoon dead, quivering loins, et cetera. it was all perky breasts and limitlessly erect nipplage. tongues tied amongst each other, furious, undying love. and the expectation was that love would discover me and see me for the first time as i am, that true love would uncover me, help me to realize the bits of me that i'd neglected and reach for all my dreams with me. i, of course, would do the same in return and together we would unearth new truths about the universe. depending on which way i hold it to the light, that's basically what actually happened. ever since, i've been too busy with the life i set in motion to have too many thoughts to scrawl on bits of paper. ever since, i have been chugging along so faithfully at building the life i'd dreamt, that there hasn't been much in the way of envisioning it. unfortunately, i cannot yet determine if the reality is of remarkable likeness. i think only memory will be able to match fantasy in terms of glow and vibrancy. retrospect will cast all this in new, perhaps more favorable light.