That’s where I left off. DANG

I have a lot of blog left to read

or maybe it would have happened anyway.

But because I was getting a threatening stalker (more to it, but that covers the bases) I had to back away and hide my blog…

I used to write several times a week, but last year I had to step away from the blog. And somehow, I lost connection with it. I used to really know, really remember, my posts. But now I find I have forgotten many of them.

I am going to make a point of re-reading my entire blog, and pulling out some good stuff. I want to put a bunch of my stories and essays (aka blog posts) into a book.

a

NOTHER

book.

…feels good to day that..

BUt I have some good stuff I’ve written over the last ten years. I think i’d like to call it “Memories and Meanderings”

I will have to set some goals for finishing reading this whole thing again.

Let’s see…120 months. I will have to read 5 months a day to read it all in a month

I”VE WRITTEN A LOT OF WORDS!

jeez.

I’ll have to work hard to read all my work.

I’m daunted and impressed with myself. Dang. Its going to take me a couple months to get through just the blog.

So.

It’s been ten years of blogging. A lot has happened in my life in ten years. THANK GOD!

Imagine how wretched an individual I would be if I hadn’t had something happen to me in ten years.

When I started this blog I lived in a cheap two-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale, was about to finish my bachelors degree. I had already been a consultant in Silicon Valley and gotten off just as everyone was getting thrown off.

I figured I would get my college degree, because I knew I needed to move. But you can’t graduate from a college unless you ATTEND it for a while. And I wanted to wrap up the degree.

So, I finished my consultant gig and then finished my degree. Just as I was about to graduate with an English degree I found out about BLOGs.

I had to get a piece of that. I started out on Blogger. Then my brother Bryan bought me a domain name. Then i bought my own domain name. Three platforms later, and now I am still blogging

So much has changed. I had dreams and what I thought the future would hold then.

I had my first laptop then. I am on my fifth laptop now. and I RAN THEM INTO THE GROUND.

I am on my third car.

I am on my second husband.

And I am stuck on my first child. She’s pretty great

I am living in my second home and on my 6th mortgage.

I’ve had one cat, he’s dead. oh wait, I had joint custody of a cat with my brother. He got full custody. That cat is gone too.

I am still living with my first dog.

How does one measure the length of ten years of life?

Ten years. One Blog.

Wrote this a long time ago about myth and science.

Now I am thinking about metrics. Thinking about how to develop myths or to get a handle on the myths that already exist.

I can’t be the first one to think of this. Wait, no..I think when they do political polls, they are very very aware of what questions are asked to get particular responses.

That must be a part of the myth-building or the myth-tapping.

Narrative and story are very very important

I’ve been thinking.

I’ve managed to keep this blog going for almost 10 years.

10 year anniversary around the corner.

wow.

I went to Bakersfield today.

Now THERE is a town I don’t understand. It seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere. It is the biggest town in the nearby vicinity. Which makes me think that it is not very densely populated. There are big empty fields all around this town.

Buut in the town itself, there are a lot of medical services. Very very many medical services. In this town, in what seems like the middle of nowhere, I count at least three hospitals and more than a dozen secondary medical offices.

What is going on? Is this town where the whole Central Valley comes to get sick?

There are other town-ish businessness. Restaurants, shops that sell trinkets and necessary things.

And then I find yet another medical service business.

There is something I don’t know about this town. It feels creepy.

I’m on the cusp of a lot of new things right now.

While I am going about my business, I am fantasizing about how great any number of these things might turn out to be

BOY, I tell you. Thinking about how things might turn out well is a very nice change from fear and dread. I am glad to have discovered an alternative to fear and dread.

HOWEVER, all these opportunities will not become realities if I do not do the right amount of homework. I have to read up and get prepared. I have to create the right kind of documents and practice talking points.

that’s more work than fantasizing.

I guess I better go to sleep, because I’d better be refreshed in the morning.

Because sometimes I think hopeless thoughts. The whole

“who am I kidding?”

“Who you do think you are?”

“Do you really think you’ll have a chance to do THAT?”

And also
“Bad things are going to happen”

and

“Bad things are not going to stop happening”

Those are bad times. I don’t like thinking those thoughts. I don’t like feeling those feelings. So I will tell myself

You are not reliable right now. Like the voice in a book of fiction, who leads you along and tells you things, and then you discover partway through the story that that person’s voice you’ve been hearing is not telling the truth. The unreliable narrator.

I am an unreliable narrator in my life, when I tell myself depressing things.

And I will be more likely to think those kinds of thoughts when I am tired or not feeling well.

Of course, another part of me will say “Yeah, but why should only BAD things be the unreliable story? Why not call the unrelenting optimism be the unreliable voice?”

And to that voice I say

Shut up. I like the optimism better, even if it is a lie.

I am realizing that I don’t have to be the hero all the time.

I have some uncooperative people in my life, who are STOPPING me from doing what I want to do.

And it’s ridiculous! Why wouldn’t I get what i need from these guys? Why are they not letting me get there?

THEY want to be the ones who look like superstars, and if I have to look like an idiot to make them look good, then they are fine with that.

This would have driven me crazy, once.

but I am thinking, maybe they want to be the hero of this story.

and maybe, i am thinking, I am the hero of a different story.

I gotta go get in the right story.