I read over the last of my blogs and have decided they are irrevocably depressing. And for that I apologize.

I haven't been looking at the sunny side of anything lately, and there are a couple of reasons for that. I am homesick. I haven't been praying or reading the Bible, out of boredom with my life ~ when instead I should be pouring myself into something other than apathy.

So, alas, I am still in a funk but want to try my hand at creating something that doesn't dig a deeper rut for me to tread.

Quiet things.
Like the space between telephone rings.

Perfect things.
Like the cool rush of a creek.

Audacious things.
Like taking a stand in the middle of self-paralysis.

Redeemable things.
Like taking back the day from dawn to dusk.

Simple things.
Like the waving wind in tall grass.

Hopeful things.
Like knowing things always change...

One day at a time.

Labels and Fables Kind of Life

We have pretty severe thunder and lightning storms in the south. So much so, that I have grown somewhat accustomed to them, and no longer call my mom in fear or force my cat to cuddle with me.

However, in all of the times that it has stormed, I have never had the power go out.

Last night it did.

The funny thing is that when the lights flickered and went out, I didn't do anything. I didn't move, and instead I just sat in the dark for what seemed like ten minutes.

Humans have such an odd response system when met with unexpected change. I have never been in a severe car accident but I have had friends that have. They always say that everything goes in slow motion, and yet while everything seems to be standing still they can't even find the time to scream. The have no reaction, they just surrender to the inevitable.

So they do nothing.

It's that whole going into shock thing.

While the power going out isn't something that tossed me into a state of shock I didn't respond. I didn't immediately get up and grope around for a lighter or try to find my cell phone to use as a nightlight.

I just sat. Still and stunned.

Beware: this is going to get dramatic, so I should to apologize in advance. In these past few months I have neglected myself. I have turned myself off. I am living in a blackout.

I have drained out my own creativity in fear of it drying up on its own and am just reveling in the rinds of that forgotten fruit.

The strange thing is that I am not the only one.

As I was leaving the gym today I studied all the people passing me by. The ones who were alone walked with their heads down; kept up with their swift stride keeping themselves company with their own thoughts. The ones that were with other people, were more animated, laughing, and making small talk.

Both were pretending.

How many of us, if nobody was watching would scream out in frustration on the street corners?Or would talk to ourselves frenzied and crazed like the addicts and the homeless, because we are so tired of nobody truly hearing us?

I know I would. Sometimes I am afraid I actually will at really inopportune times, like when I am at my desk or in the middle of a nice dinner with people that buy into the whole labels and fables type of life.

I am easily sad. I think I tend to look at the darker side of joy more often than not, but I find that only happens when I turn myself over to faking it. When I forget that there is more to life. When I forget that God made me for a purpose.

I have been forgetting that too often lately.

I know that God's reason will find me. Or more accurately I will finally allow myself to see it, but until then I will settle for silent screams and perhaps a conversation or two with myself in the car.

If you get the chance this week to be real, to answer someone honestly about how you are and how you are doing I encourage you to take it.

White lies are just white noise, and I think there are some of us who just need to speak up in order to be heard.

Sediment and Split Ends

It's eerily quiet.

So quiet that I can hear the ends of my hair splitting. It's one of those days where I am so self-conscious that I can't be bothered to be fully aware of anything else going on around me.

I don't mean self-conscious in the way, that I think my butt looks big, I mean self-conscious in the way where I am contemplating, sighing, misguided, and bored. It is one of those places in time where you look around and can't help but ponder all of the irregularities that make up your poignantly regular existence.

The water ring on my desk. The broken button on my pants, (that I can't be bothered to mend). The constant ringing in my ears that screams of blocked expectations and the resounding slamming of doors.

And it is in these "eye of the storm" moments, where the sky is bit a pale green, and I don't understand why everything looks a little off, everything feels a little less than real.

The truth is that I can't be bothered with anything outside of my little world, and that's a shame. If I ponied up and began to explore the real tenure of my creative self, and the world in which the beauty of God is showcased I think I would be too awe-inspired by what I would find. I am already overwhelmed just when I catch a sunset, or the scent of Jasmine on my back porch.

I would feel made of tin, if I began searching for more than rational meaning. The type of meaning that makes more than just sense on paper.

I miss riding a horse. I miss riding a horse bare-back. I miss being barefoot on gravel. I miss dirty fingernails.

I hate keyboards. I hate fluorescent lighting. I hate feeling like I am a spreadsheet and a paycheck.

That is where the roads converge. I am where I have to be. I have a lot to learn. I just don't like being the new kid on the block.

And this sums it up,

"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now."
-- Graffiti

And so unhappiness settles down as sediment and I will just wait until it gathers up high enough until I can just walk out.

Dreams and Diatribe

Saturday morning, my husband woke up unrested.

I was trying to decipher what he was saying over the jackhammer hum of my Sonicare, but my lip-reading is a little rusty. I gave up, hit the pause button mid-brush and sloppily spit out, "Whash?"

He slumped his shoulders and just waited.

Wiping the toothpaste foam from my lip, I repeated with perfect diction, "What was that?"

"I am going to go into work this morning and tie up a few loose ends."

"Really? But it's Saturday."

He nudged his toe against the bathroom sink, "I know but I spent all night dreaming about work and I won't be able to enjoy my weekend until I get some stuff done."

I was kind of falsifying my grumpiness about him having to work on a weekend, since I was doing some self-promotion stuff downtown Nashville until 4 p.m., but working on a weekend just seems wrong.

As I was wiping down my face with a washcloth, and my husband was rummaging around in the closet for a hat to cover his bed head. How awful to have to dream about work on your day off?

And then I tried to remember my dreams from the night before.

Ah yes!

Jason Mraz and I were at the airport waiting for a flight to Hawaii and he fell in love with me in under an hour and was torn when we had to part ways in paradise.

Hmm...someone may be a little more steeped in reality than I am. But what are the purpose of dreams if not for departure? Sleeping is supposed to be sketches of some kind of Tim Burton movie, one in which we experience these dashes-upon-dashes of grossly unrelated musing. In no way are dreams supposed to mimic that of real life.

Then dreams just become anxiety.

This was all bumbling around in my brain as I was thickly putting on lipstick, dark eyeliner while styling my hair in a fog of hairspray amidst a concubine of bobbing pins.

I was pulling of the tags from the new clothes that I collected for the appearances that I had scheduled for that day at Fanfair, and I wondered when do the dreams that we have for ourselves cross the line from undying hope into the birth of unabashed angst?

When you are a "struggling" anything, people always ask questions like, "Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?", "What is your ultimate goal for your life?", "Did you always want to be this "struggling" fill-in-the-blank?" "When do you feel like you will finally arrive, what will that moment look like?"

What absurd questions.

What absurd ideas, that there are even such moments. Moments where we actually have the ability to see beyond our messy everyday diatribe into a neatly stitched future. Like we have any clue about what may be waiting around the bend. Its all just acting. Answering questions like these are impossible.

But it isn't impossible to imagine what life could be like in our ideal world. in fact it can be these imaginings that send people of into spirals of self-induced want and can incur unfocused foolishness.

A girl who was a friend of mine at one time was looking for any reason and every reason to get out of her marriage. If it wasn't one thing it was another. There was no grounds for her feelings other than she had imagined for herself a life in which there was no limit on her credit card, no vacation she couldn't take, and no amount of designer clothing she couldn't' have.

She built her life tightly wrapped around a thin string of saccharine. A fake sweetness that would never satisfy her and only leave her wanting something that was never real in the first place.

I have been open and honest about my struggle for finding fulfillment in my life. I share a similar affinity for surface desires as that girl did. I dangle "what if's" from every corner of my heart and find myself personally wounded when one gets blown away by some reality like age, lack, or laziness.

For me a dream isn't a dream if it creates a chasm between where you spend your everyday and where you ultimately want to be.

I know that there is room for improvement in every one's life- that is the beauty of the evolutionary process, we get older we get better jobs, we get better at what we do, we learn to grow up and let go of certain addictions and soul afflictions.

But as trite as it sounds, happiness is found in the small things. In watching someone you love sleep. In getting good news. In listening to your heart beat after something it was meant to create.

While, I am still somewhere between living my dreams and living my anxiety, I think I am beginning to see myself and my goals more clearly.

My husband worked a half of a day on Saturday and closed a really big deal that he had been working on. That is a little part of his dream coming true.

One person's anxiety is another person's empyrean.


And I am at peace again, which for me is the whole point of dreaming in the first place.

Ramblings of a Portal Seeker

I can see it in the distance.

A watery mirage, staggered with rainbow-patterned fragments of light. Its presence is wafting through an open desert space, embodied as an assault of raging steam.

It isn't a destination, its a portal. Glowing like ice on fire, I know that if I can only reach that time in space I may arrive at another side of the mirror. One in which I am looking out, instead of looking in.

I feel like I am caught in one of those dreams, where my legs are taffy, and I never can run the speed I want in order to reach the edge of the horizon.

And so I sit. Legs crossed, hair pulled back and soul aching. I read in the Bible yesterday that we are not to be slaves of men. Well, I have to say I think I am failing at that. With so many people out of work, I am ashamed at my selfishness. I am ashamed of my envy.

I am ashamed of my desire to run from responsibility.

I was gabbing with two of my girlfriends last night about this topic. One is not working right now and the other is working a temp job. The one who is unemployed just launched her own Esty jewelry line, which has been a dream of hers for years.

Adorn by Tiffany

And the other one is struggling with the maniacal demands of the mundane, as am I, at a temp job that is soon going to run out and throw her back into the pool of pause.

The truth is that each one of us, despite our occupational differences, has holes in our day where we allow ourselves to be abducted by want. These holes can become home. If we allow ourselves to get it twisted, its easy to forget that we don't belong in the in-between; we weren't designed to flourish in the space between sentences.

I have been circling over my inner desires for years now, afraid to land, afraid to sacrifice, afraid to make a mistake.

If I can be candid, I feel far away from God today. I feel far away from him whenever I feel bankrupt in my ability to create. I always feel exhausted and apathetic when all I have to look forward to is security.

Again, ashamed of myself. People are losing their homes, their jobs, and their entire sense of being right now. I am not. I am cozy. I am taken care of.

And I am not who I want to be.

This reminds me of that Switchfoot song that always stirs me awake when I hear it:

yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
yesterday is a promise that you've broken
don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes
this is your life and today is all you've got now
yeah, and today is all you'll ever have
don't close your eyes
don't close your eyes

this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
when the world was younger and you had everything to lose

I am technically considered, "younger", so doesn't that mean that I can still make mistakes, that I can still recover if I lose everything?

A few nights ago, I was sitting on my couch in a very foul mood. My husband blurted out, "I know it is hard for you to be where you are. I know you are an adventurer and someone who thirsts for change. But baby, right now, we can't stand to change anything."

And then he said something that shocked me, "You know I am open to going back to Seattle in the next year or two, if you want to."

Silence. Blink. Tears. Blink.

And then I thought something that shocked myself as well.

"Maybe we should talk about that sometime. Maybe we should."

But that would be too easy wouldn't it? To high tail it to the comfort of my own neck of the woods, start popping out babies, and forgetting about my gypsy soul.

That would be a way out. But would it lead me to that portal?

The mirage that haunts me?

The place that keeps eluding me?

Maybe I will never get there.

Maybe I have already been there.

Maybe I missed it by a couple miles, and a few years. I don't know.

But I can feel that I am departing. Maybe not physically for now, but there is a soul shifting going on.

Seattle might not be the adventure that I am seeking. Home is two parts comfort and one part guilt. Guilt for not becoming who you're new address promised you you would be.

I am not moving, but I am going someplace. And I will be damned if I don't allow God's purpose for my life to be realized.

So until I see clearly where I am supposed to be heading I will have to settle for standing still.

The Words Came

This morning I woke up with puffy eyes, swollen feet and swollen hands.

I have been traveling, not eating right and working all through the weekend in New York City, and just got back last night.

I was lucky enough to have the energy to rinse myself off in the shower, but during breakfast I spilled honey all over my pants and didn't have the energy to change them.

I then proceeded to suck down some coffee.

But then I stopped, mid slurp, and just shut my eyes.

I ran into the den, cleaned off the dusty piano plugged in the speakers on my Korg, and wrote a song called, "Wait".

It came out of me so quickly, like a raging rush of cool water from a broken dam. I began crying on the final chorus, well more like weeping.

And I eeked out, "So I will wait, wait, wait on You."

I need reprieve.

I need deliverance.

My constant prayer is that God will continue pushing on my heart to move me in the direction of the purpose He has planned.

I am going to write. I am not going to give up. I am going to pursue my heart and follow that lead. I may have to wait, sacrifice and humble myself in the now, but I know where I am heading.

I just need to stop being afraid and make the jump in faith.

More to come when I can keep my eyes open for longer than 10 minutes.

Pray for me.