Painful new features

Why is it so hard to start blogging again after a break…what is the biggest problem – perfectionism? Lost the pipeline of paragraphs-in-development? Inertia? Maybe it’s more specifically June-July, Dallas heat.

I have been thinking for a while about retiring the Endorphin Index and Addiction Archive – they are getting repetitive anyway, I always eat and drink too much and buy too much art and worry about family and have a hard time dragging myself to work – even I run out of different ways to say that.

But inspired by artist-blogger’s Tilly Strauss’s list of “grateful for,” which I find more inspiring for its no-frills format, I have been wanting to do two new sections: Grateful For and Grieving For. Tilly is an internet friend and responded on her blog, http://tillystudio.blogspot.com/ , that she liked the idea of a Grieving list. She has been doing a gorgeous multi-media series on the topic of her divorce and several pieces of that had to do with grief, so I knew it wasn’t too far from her consciousness.

While driving to work this week (isn’t that everyone’s best time to think?) I started on a Grieving list and it seemed to stretch out exponentially. So now I am having creative blockage writing it down – will it scare most people?, will it offend certain people?, will writing and reading it make me feel worse? Can I really focus on a Grateful For list or is that just a feeble thing offered as a balance to the long list of complaints? And I also realize that the Grateful For and Grieving For lists have different qualities, not just quantities. Grieving is sometimes, at least for me, easier to identify. Grateful I take for granted – or do I? Of course the relative weights and merits shift often, if not constantly. But there is still a sense of Sad-Bad List and Good List, the two being separate.

Now, maybe that last sentence is something to focus on – can I take things to another level so that I see good in the grief, at least some parts of it? Yeah maybe, but not tonight. I am intimidating myself with this idea – stop it. Of course I am good at finding grief in the good. I think I was born with that skill!, certainly had it back as far as toddler years, LOL.


GRATEFUL FOR:
(Not necessarily in priority order – please readers, don’t nitpick about that, I am trying not to obsess about it.) Husband, job, house, sister/father, cousin-sister-friend, other important family and friends. Those that are not part of the problem are usually an important part of the solution!, or at least make the process bearable. Friends include internet friends! Therapist, therapy family, favorite authors, favorite painters – my art collection. Blog readers!, if not already covered in the friends mention. The renewing human body that absorbs so many of my excesses. Dogs – when they are good, and I guess as a learning experience even when they are bad. The good parts of my genetics. The low cost of living in Texas.


GRIEVING FOR:
Certain aspects of the jobs I used to have – special handling of my special talents, projects that utilized both sides of my brain. A work dress code relaxed enough to allow Chucks. Two living brothers, a living mother. The slimmer body I used to have (and didn’t appreciate…but that’s another story). The available credit I used to have…the retirement savings I used to have. The healthy feeling of my feet and legs in the cooler temperatures of mid-June London and Paris – the energy and stamina I had there, sigh.


WOW! The Grieving list was relatively short! Am I too drunk, too tired to keep listing or to amplify my thoughts...or maybe (maybe) writing down the most compelling bad-sad controlled it somewhat.

There may be more, or a lot more, next time - but that's OK. (I can state that with certainty after a big gulp of Chardonnay.)