Reading harold_maude's journal

I woke up early again this morning, thinking about the year ahead, and this next week.

It was sort of a mix that pushed me out of a deep sleep I think because the feeling of being overwhelmed by the idea of what's next or what now and is this going to be all there is seemed to be playing in my head like some kind of record with a huge scratch where the needle got stuck and no one bothered to stop it, or turn it off.

Last Monday as I finsihed my work day I thought, I've got two days off, and then one on and then one off, and made plans of how I wanted to spend the time and what I wanted to accomplish.
I should have made some kind of list, because nothing I planned to do got done.
Tuesday, I got called into work to fill in because someone who just got hiered where I work quit.

On my days off I it seems that I end up just passing time, and then wishing I had been more productive.
My ambition up and left sometime ago.

I had goals of things I wanted to accomplish, but most of the time I end up sidetracked from accomplishing them. And this being the start of another year for me I woke up with this feeling.
And it felt like it was going to soffocate me.

My personal new year begins with the day after my birthday, and each year as the end apporaches I tend to think about the past 12 months and try to see what I've accomplished.
I did alot last year. But goal accomplishing wasn't high on the list.

One of my life goals has been to make a living off my art. It's been one of the things that has always been there, and I've been working tord that one for a long time.
But I'm not any closer to it than I was a year ago, or even two years ago.

The short term goals I accomplished last year were these:
I got to see both my kids graduate, one from highschool, one from university, thoes were a month apart.

To escape from one of the most emotionally devistating places on earth with my sanity in tact.

Getting a job, so that living on the streets or staying somewhere with no options or means of changing things wouldn't be how each day started.

Two other things that happened that weren't goals, but good things were the two one woman art shows that I ended up having that were very sucessful.
The work was well recieved and that too me by surprise completely.
Until three years ago I viewed my art as nothing more than glorified refrigerator art.

That's it.
But each of thoes was huge to me. Each of them ment that I was more than what everyone in my past told me and believed I was capable of.

This year. I don't know. I have things I would like to accomplish, but have no ambition or drive right now.
The dreans that used to drive me and feed my soul seem to have gone to sleep.
I hope they wake up because I don't want this to be all there is.
Making it through two weeks and then getting a paycheck, and putting the money tord bills and hoping that I've my part of things covered.
I don't want the rest of my life to be just this.

I have started painting again. That, over the last 10 months has been speratic at best.
I've been approached about when I'm going to do my next show, and I can't give any answer. I don't have enough new work done to have enough to put one together.

Even though I love painting, and creating art, it's something essential to my existance, I have no ambition even for that.
I keep thinking that I feel so bruised inside and so disconnected and so disorganized that making goals and accomplishing them is going to be an impossible task.
Like trying to sort socks in a mountian of socks.
And even if you get a few pairs together, by the time you've got thoes done, there is another mountian waiting for you to start on.

I want to do more than just one day at a time, and be satisfied with getting through the day. That's not enough. The problem arises with the thought of what to set as a goal.
There isn't anyone that I can sit down with and bounce things off of.
Everyone around me is living their lives, however they've chosen to, and what I do or don't do, doesn't change anything they do or don't do.

This last week I got two job offersm out of the blue. I sought people out for advise. I needed help sorting through everything that what ever choice I was going to make involved.
The only answer I got back, with one exception, was that I needed to do what was best for me.
It hit me. I don't have a clue. I realized that I've spent the majority of my life doing what's best for someone else.
What's best for me never entered my thoughts or affected my actions.
I've done most of what I've done in my life becuase of someone else.
The one thing I did last year that was baised on what was best for me was getting out of the place that was killing me inside, and threatened to distroy everything sane about me.

I've never been in a place where I was given so many options, and was being persued because someone thought I had some kind of value, other than what I could do for them.

I really don't know what's best for me. How do you make goals when your life has been focused on what's best for everyone else and you've just gone with that?

No wonder I'm feeling overwhelmed. To me my life has very little value when I'm not doing something that makes life a little easier for someone else.
I know it's possible to change how a person does things, or why they do them at any point in life, but to think about what's best for me, that's just plain weird from my perspective.
It feels kind of like being amputated from what I was created for.
And what makes it worse, is that no matter what I will choose from now on, it won't make a difference one way or the other.
I don't know how to see it from any other perspective.
It's something I never learned how to do for myself.

Life lessons like this are ususally very painful.
The only thing I do know, is that I don't know if I'm ready for this.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.