Tag Archives: the good old days

Searching

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” – Emily Dickinson

9.27.26

Today was the first day in a long time that I did not have an impending sense of doom. Not doom in the normal sense, but the inability to be fully in the moment because there’s too much hanging over you, a backlog of to-do’s that may or may not ever be done, trying to hold all the pieces of staying in touch with others and with myself.

I’ve been in some level of survival mode for months now. Life doesn’t care or slow down. I’m busy and overwhelmed daily…except for today.

I think I’ve been searching for a me that I remember fondly. One who held to a routine, sang for the sake of singing – and posted it for strangers on the internet, one who got home from work tired but would still make dinner feel far from mundane; the one who wrote, who relaxed – from the past. I miss her. I don’t know when she left or the real reason, but I’ve wanted her back ever since.

The version of that me I have been desperate to have back, is highly romanticized. All of the pain and struggle that existed simultaneously to this version of me, has been muted.

So, I realized today, that I can never be that person again – and that’s okay. Current me, future me, are just as important as the one in my memory I’ve been trying to hold on to. Instead of looking for those pieces of me, and trying to make them fit into my current life, I must accept the me that exists now. How sad to leave her waiting, while I conduct a pointless search for pieces of the past.

I am not the same person I was, and yet I still am me. Celebrating that sounds silly, especially since I don’t harbor as much love for this me as the other, but what might be a turning point, a perspective shift, that is worth a small celebration.

How else do we move forward, if we do not let go of the past…

So hello, Strangers and Friends. It’s so good to speak to you again. I’m hopeful for the future, even though unknown.

Silence

For some, silence is that uncomfortable feeling creeping up on you in the dark; uncontrollable, except to be broken. Others may find it peaceful. There are of course, different kinds.

Loud
Mine, right now, is filled with a low whirr of the laptop trying to breathe, a high pitched frequency from some utility – accompanied by it’s own white-noise-type fan, clicking and shifting of metal: the oven preheating, a shhhhhh of water and then fmp fmp of (I think) the heater warming it, all rounded out by a faint but shrill tinnitus in my ears and sound of typing.
Neighbor’s music through walls, people shouting at fireworks outside, footsteps or moving furniture overhead; loud, as you sit in silence.

Soft
When quiet enough to hear candles crackle slightly as they flicker, or gentle rains approach, the small sighs of pets surface and whispers feel like they float; it’s those nice things that tend to produce a spirit of rest. Even then, another kind of silence can linger.

Either or Both
Sitting in a room full of lovely, laughing, happy people, there can exist a deep silence. If you seek someone in that place, first find their eyes, more still than expected, like undisturbed water. Alas, pain can be perceived as comfort if “better” comes like waves.
A blank wall is not loud, yet a mind afforded generous silence in multiple senses, can fill with chaos of brash, banging, rushing thoughts. One does not even need to finish before another cuts it off, yanking back and forth, here and there, with no mercy.

If you have read this far, I thank you. My mind has been both so dill, silent and avoiding any opportunity for rabbit trail after rabbit trail of spiraling, confusing, endless chaos of thought. I’ve found it difficult to care about anything except sometimes to distract myself, scrolling social media posts, videos, Pinterest pins, nothing of any real creative value since I’m almost completely zoned out then.
At the beginning of next month, it will be two years since I started this blog. I had such excitement and passion then, that it makes me sad to look back and see the slow fade. So much has happened and changed since, not just in my life but in our world even still. It makes me wonder if it’s worth it to hold on to those things that used to ring so loudly in my heart.

This is what happens when I get silence. I start thinking “what is realistic? what is worth it? what do I need to prioritize?”. The questions don’t end and I never feel like I’ve done enough. Finding the small things in life, the quiet beauty, being still and able to enjoy silence, I’m trying to get back to that.
For me, posting on all creative platforms has slowed to once in a blue moon, not just here. In the endless scrolling of them, my mind shouts “you should post! why haven’t you posted? what is wrong with you? post!” and I have no answer. Eventually one comforting thought timidly stands up in my grey matter. “I am not only valid when witnessed.”

I am not only valid when witnessed.

Stephanie – Rabbit & Crown

Most days, silence is the monster under my bed, saying that not much matters, especially me. I’m hoping to get back to days where silence is sunshine on my skin and the quiet beauty of life around me.

I’ll be around, Friends and Strangers. Thank you for being here.

Simpler Times

I often find myself wishing for “back when things were simple” or “the good ol’ days” but when I really think about it, I can’t tell exactly when that was. Was it last year? (No, not 2020. We don’t count 2020 as last year yet.) Was it the year that I moved out of my parents house, completely on my own to a different state? Was it my time in college, or highschool? Maybe it was when we lived in what we thought was our dream house, when the internet still went skeerrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee, or I would play for hours outside by myself.

When I think of these times generally, most of them don’t strike me as the best time in my life. I know all of the struggles and the shadows on the other side of the bright spots that can reflect as “the best”. Has anyone out there mastered the perspective of seeing the past and the present for what they actually are in relation to each other?

The past sure feels like simpler times when my hippocampus lazily floats a memory to my neo-cortex, packaged up so prettily in nostalgia and sunshine. Yes, I went on a tangent and looked up which parts of the brain are responsible for memory. Brains are super interesting. I could go on a multitude of rabbit trails about brains but I digress.

I’m not sure what to do with this information. I try to frame my present as a good time and fight against the skewed image that the past was the best time of my life. A lot of it wasn’t.
Part of the reason for this site is to bring that good, that simpler time into my present. I have so many ideas I want to explore but am not quite sure how to get there. My next blurb should (hopefully) be something more in that realm of things I’m passionate about.

Thank you for reading this post of ramblings. It is not nearly what I consider good content but I told myself that I would work through and towards my future here, on this site and this is part of it.

May we find the simple things in our days, the good in our times.