my happy little life

relish autumn for me, would you?

forever i have wondered how these two really strong, really opposing, personalities i have live together in my one body. i am totally a dreamer. someone who gets lost in movies and music and design, who needs to be making something to be happy. i am an introvert who never wants to leave my house or close my novel. big but: i am also super left-brained. i love stats, economics, logical debate with real people, technical writing and research papers, studying, and yes, obsessively cleaning and organizing.

i want, and have tried, to be happy with only using one side of me. for awhile, my job was to stay home and knit and take pictures and write from my heart and do crafts with my daughter. i loved it! i hated it! to please my other personality, and nagging spiritual promptings, i jumped back into this horrible schooling process. i love it! i hate it! i miss my old life. i have been getting seriously concerned that i'm just a person for whom the grass is never green enough. and based on my experiences in life right now, i have been worried that my post graduation life will continue to be a craftless, soul-sucking existence.

last week i had a comforting epiphany. as we were discussing political strategies based on sociological theories in class, i realized, this work requires incredible creativity. school sucks, that's true. but to propose solutions for social problems, to intelligently and non-divisively defend positions that are not popular, to research and write about the human experience, to find the right therapy to heal a wounded soul, to work on minimizing social program ineffectiveness and maximizing human effectiveness... these activities all require serious creative juice.

so ya, right now is weird. without balance. but someday, when twenty page papers aren't due endlessly, it will be so different. i will go off to social work creatively and extrovertly for some hours each day. then i will come home and mother, wife, and craft creatively and introvertly for some hours each day. i just need to make it through this out of balance rough patch. then i'll reap the rewards of my hard work and will be one unified person. happy in the green, green grass.

i think these feelings can apply to many different life stages. one stage that immediately comes to mind is the mothering of small children. during those years, you may feel like you only have time to prepare food and endlessly change diapers. as much as i want to be you, and in that stage, i also know that it is an out of balance time. important and short, but out of balance. i look at my two older sisters, with five and six kids, respectively. once they were caring for babies 24/7. but now they are each at a stage of motherhood that affords them more time and means to pursue activities they personally find rewarding, and they get to share those interests with their teenage kids. then again, mothering a bunch of teenagers brings a whole new kind of stress.

can you relate? i guess the trick is to focus on the quickness of each trying phase of our lives and look for the great in it... the parts that may never come again and really teach us what we're made of. what's that saying? the grass is greener where you water it.

right now

justin hackworth kindly emailed me to let me know this is a huge poster outside of his exhibit. probably the most presentable i've ever looked on byu campus- if i made it to class it was in sweats. although i'm so busy, and although i'm socially anxious, i don't want cate to miss seeing herself on the wall of an art exhibit. so i'm excited. and attending.

i've been keeping my head above water, so that's good. i'm finding it very difficult to take time out and exercise, meditate, take care of my soul. which is what i need the very most. so i'm working on that. see you later.

an open apology to everyone who knows me

balance is hard.

i can do nothing right now outside of my school obligations. and making sure i have clean underwear and gas in my car. and making my bed so i have somewhere to sit and write papers.

my field placement (a nice name for an incredibly stressful job for which you don't get paid) is so stretching, so hard, and so exactly where i am supposed to be. this is what i am meant to do with my extra time. it really is. my family first. then helping the addicted and mentally ill. that's it. oh i guess i'll knit while i watch a movie to relax at night... someday.

right now: so much happens. everyday. so many epiphanies, so many impressions, so many lightbulb moments, so many inches of soul growth. i want to document it so bad. there's a lot of things i want to do so bad.

i've struggled my whole life with discipline and structure and self-control. right now i cannot stop oscillating my thoughts between internal pep talks that say, "you can exercise, you can record everything you're learning, you can have personal time: you just need to structure your day and wake up early", and then the opposite, "this is a temporary, small season of your life, it is okay to immerse yourself and do what you need to do to get through it. you need as much sleep as possible, and no more rules and things to do. stop trying so hard, let go, flip off your homework, who cares about grades".

which one of me is right? the dictator or the wild-child? i lay at the bottom of the ocean in my mind, in peacefulness, and look up at the waves. those waves are my dictator and wild-child arguing. i look up and just observe. i honor their good desires. i honor my dictator who makes sure my homework gets done even if it takes all night. i honor my wild child who makes sure i take a break and sleep in.

and deep, deep, deep in the water i live in peace.

half way

cate turned nine this week. nine more and we have to set her free out into the world. wow. life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around every once in awhile, you just might miss it.

and if tomorrow i'm an apple seller too, i don't need anything but you

can i just tell you i'm really excited to pick some prints to order next week at justin's office? he blogged about us here. (one note: the doctor said really really hard, not never. so he was right on, it turned out).

i have been so grumpy. this weekend should be fun, i hope i don't ruin it. we have been anxiously awaiting seeing brave, and we're going tonight. tomorrow evening we have tickets to go see real salt lake play (soccer). all fun and good family time. but probably i won't be able to relax because i have so many papers due.

right this second cate and i are watching annie with breakfast. (that was my favorite movie as a kid- seriously have every word, every movement, memorized. i was obsessssssed). annie just sang her solo to the president and a weird salty discharge is starting to drip from my eyes. whaaaa?

kelly remember: stick up your chin and grin and hang on till tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. the papers will get done, your bathroom will someday be clean again. have a fun weekend. write your papers in the middle of the night if you have to, who cares. what's the worst that can happen? accidently ending sentences with prepositions? have 11 instead of 12 recent empirically researched papers to support my statements with? who cares.

ps- the comments from my last post were so kind. thank you. i replied to them in the comment section. have a wonderful and carefree weekend, friends.

but i look like i'm talking about happy things

this evening grant was relaxing on the bed when he got home from work, and i was at the foot of said bed telling him about my day. (you are so lucky you are not him and therefore don't have to hear my daily diatribes about seriously debbie downer topics). today's freakout: 1/4 of U.S. high security prisoners are severely mentally ill living in inhumane conditions for sick people that makes them sicker. but when they get out they kill people because they think they are aliens sent to attack their family and are homeless and don't take their meds and go back to prison. mental asylums were closed long ago. it didn't save us money- it's just going into the ill-equipped prison system now. make my blood stop boiling, please.

grant, smart man that he is, has learned to half listen and half play on his phone. win-win (i really don't need feedback, just an audience). today while i ranted he took pictures of me and said i looked pretty. then i forgot what i was ranting about and cozied him. he knows just how to handle me.

it reminded me of dating. i used to test boys right off by being super intense about subjects to see if it scared them away or if they enjoyed the debate. (in truth, it was less of a test and more just who i am). people told me i'd never get married that way, it wasn't feminine or fun. but i am both feminine and fun- i just need someone who can handle my mouth, too. (i love the movie ever after so much). those people were right, though, that a lot of boys didn't like it. screw 'em, i said.

then, one day i met grant. he was immediately subjected to my ridiculously verbose views about something or other. he relaxed on my couch with his hands behind his head and said with a cool smile, "calm down". i was smitten. he wasn't intimidated and he didn't care. of course he could shut my mouth and school me when he wanted to, but mostly he just liked to make me laugh. and i fell hard in love.