Tag Archives: identity

A Hazy Shade of Lavender

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108I’m not sure what it’s like for other people. I can’t say what their dark place of mental residence is decorated with or smells like. I don’t know how it tastes or how much it weighs on their shoulders. I do know it’s a place other people go.

I’m not sure if I can, or should, explain my personal brand of Lavender Black. There isn’t a map to show how I surrender to such a place, or how I eventually find my way back. It simply, happens.

I can say that naming my dark is an act of conventional word defiance. It’s my personal perspective; the condition may be ordinary, but I can name it and decorate it any way I please. Lavender Black isn’t a desirable destination, but it is a place. My place. It’s quiet there and the deeper I wander in, the fact is, the less I participate in the world around me.

Typically, I can still write while meandering through such a space of individual seclusion. Some of my best writing has originated from time spent in my lavender realm, but sometimes, I move past the threshold of expression and the result is silence. It’s where I’ve been these last few weeks, beyond the green fields and purple flowers. In this version, I walked deep into the black parts of Lavender and disappeared for awhile.

Going to Lavender Black is easy enough, coming back proves difficult. There’s something sadly comfortable about suffocating in a zone meant only for single occupancy. It’s a self indulgent territory dripping with familiarity and knowing. If there’s one place that covets a thousand reasons for being dark and twisty, it’s the back room in my mind that collects life’s little black trinkets like a chemically imbalanced pack rat.

Surface maintenance. That’s how I handle day to day reality when I’ve gone off into my place of silence. When a body is in trouble, it has the ability to shut off functions to everything but the vitals. I’ve fined tuned that perspective when it comes to the dark side of my personality. Vitals=Family and that’s the scope of my selective interactions during Lavender Black spells.

Either people will understand this about me, or they won’t. It’s nothing personal. Never has been. I understand that it isn’t easy to accept or understand, not when people interact and depend on feedback/input from one another. My occasional shut downs go against the human nature rules of engagement and I realize I always run the risk of hurting the feelings of other people when I dissolve into myself. Regrettably, my only recourse is to try and pick up the pieces once I’ve came back.

I’m not sure it serves any purpose by writing about this, here, publicly, other then disclosure. But it is who I am. A part of me, one I find both interesting and challenging. Just as I observe the world around me, it’s important I spend time observing my interior workings, the beautiful, the black and the unexplainable…….

Evolution of a Personal Blogger

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large_writeillTrue, I never shared personal relationship status, nor play by play highlights of my comings and goings during the last 5 years of blogging. I had/have my reasons for that, many of them. Regardless of my omissions,  for me writing in this dimension always felt like deep personal individual…… anyway.

I never felt like I was holding back key ingredients, or vital information that people would benefit knowing the details. From my perspective, everything was right there within the nouns,verbs and adjectives; sentences filled with personal thought. My moods and struggles, joys and happiness are spread out like a flow chart laced through entry after entry. Perhaps it came across as riddles and mysterious to the eye who wandered upon my pages. I can appreciate that, I designed it.

Tones and Stones that moved from the left to the right. This zone has always acted as my bridge between Lavender Black and fields of contentment. Over the years I have frequently walked between the two places in my mind. I’ve shared the color and texture of the rocks I overturned, but neglected to describe the weight and location. Intentional off center distraction. But this is changing, my direction has shifted…….

In light of my recent blog-blackout, I spent the last two days printing off the entries I hadn’t saved in paper form. (I’m experiencing paranoia) I had a two year catch up and a lofty ink cartridge bill at OfficeMax. The desire to print priceless comments from readers, along with the entry is a pricey one~but worth it~ 

I was disappointed in myself for letting great lapses in entries occur. I missed a lot of personal history in my neglect. Even so, the evolving evidence of me is still found within my words and for that I was intrigued. Change in it’s subtle evolution is difficult to recognise when our noses are in such close proximity to the reality. I can barely define the incline that got me to this point. I know at times it was steep and overwhelming, while other moments I strolled across even fields.  Such is life.

I pictured a year from now. The time when I will look back at what I’ve written for the year and I already know I will see a few defining moments about myself. I will see that in April of 2009 I personally opened the window into my life, with much less smoke screen. I won’t be upset with myself for neglecting my history and I realize today I’ll probably continue past April 30th with near (notice I don’t say positively) daily entries. Printing off my last two years of blogging has me mourning all the days I’ve now lost into unreliable memories.

I’ve always struggled with my motives and purpose for blogging. That fact has always aggitated me. I dislike (hate) not understanding why I do or don’t do certain things. Be it blogging or other life choices. Many people seem confident and purpose filled with their content and roles. I’ve always been the blogger orbiting erratically without a planet to revolve around. But, I think I’m finally circling in on personal purpose. I do need a bit of gravity, not so much that I’m grounded, but enough to keep me focused. I’m gravitating to my role. Maybe in a year from now I’ll be able to define it~

Folie à deux

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shhh2big175I’ve noticed a measure of evolution within myself of late. I realize everyone experiences moments of improvement, or backward progression, which makes my shifts neither remarkable or extraordinary. However, paying attention to changes and at best claiming them from time to time feels like a sound notion.

By natural design, I am reclusive and private about my own actions and thoughts. My ’personal quiet’  is notorious among my circles and for that I have always shrugged my shoulders, tossed a smile of distraction and moved onto the next topic. I even have a scary pic of me shhhin one of my kiddoes (proof and smile after the pic)

In my world,  privacy is the crown jewel of self respect and secrets usually resemble a throw rug of shame. There is a relevant difference if anyone stops and thinks about it. Privacy/Secrets. Unless it’s a surprise party or a gift, secrets are rarely good things.  Privacy on the other hand seems like a fading notion of times past when I listen around to the things people are willing to offer up as general conversation.

Since this is public and bound for interpretation, I shall clarify something. I do believe there are experiences, extremely private and personal experiences, that should be shared. While every experience is individual, when there is opportunity to teach other souls, or find solace through sharing, I would always encourage one to venture down that path if I believed it would help others and find individual balance to the experience………

My swing to the extreme of privacy all these years hasn’t exactly been a comforting place. Solitary experience, meaning those moments in a persons life that aren’t shared, tend to take on a life of their own, yet, never formulate into a solid memory of truth. Experience not shared is an embryo of life never quite birthed. Being extreme in anything typically creates an imbalance. And for that reason, I haven’t been a balanced individual.

The shifts I’ve attempted and actually achieved are important (to me)  moments of sharing my madness. From the subtle tones of admitting I was a high school dropout, publicly, to a rather hyperventilating moment of sending a good friend an entire handwritten journal of my thoughts, scribbles, observations, drawings and writings. The Rebecca I used to know would never, ever, have considered opening such windows. And many more examples I’ll spare the room here.

The most interesting change I’ve experienced is sharing my feelings with those that are close to me. Feelings, emotions, all the thoughts inside a person that play tug of war and bind up a persons mentality under the surface of a smile. I can claim that I now start sentences with, “This is what I’m feeling……” and actually finish the emotion verbally. Those that know me express that it’s an interesting change of communication, one they can work from and build off. The truth is, I rarely gave people that opportunity.

Maybe some of this new revolution will filter it’s way into my writing here, maybe only in little slices and dices of sharing, but the most important piece to my shifts in mentality is I am willing……and realize, able…..and it doesn’t feel as violating as I once assumed. Today, I am willing to share the madness (and joy and experience and life) that is me with another, and another and another. That is change, that is shifting and I find it relevant enough to voice~~

Identity Crisis

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Since I moved blogs/journals, I had to re-register through a few websites I utilize to keep my blogging in order. This registration process is sort of like a kid being processed for a new school. Each station you pretty much do the same thing, name, email, blog name.  Then they torture you a bit with verifying thy blog and usually your good to go. (unless it’s the Google verification system, which to use my best descriptive word, sucks)

But a couple of them want to know “what kind of blog do you own?” I.E. The category we should stick your slice of the apple pie in. Category? “Who Me”, I thought? Could I be summed up into one classification of bloggerdome? When I tried to skip it, or get around it, one place warned me sternly that according to the powers of blogwisdom, not sticking to a ‘theme’ of some sort is a recipe for blog disaster.

I’m human, and my mind went somewhere like,  ”Oh shit! I don’t want to fall through the cracks of the blog highway like sad little drops of uncategorized thoughts.” 

So, I tried to figure out which identity I’d pretend to be. For example, I looked at Technorati’s main category choices, which in turn each breaks down into little sub-catagories. I couldn’t even get past the big daddy 6 divisions, let alone find my social standing in the subcategories.

1) Technology: Oh, I have a thought or two about technology, and bitch about it from time to time, but I’m pretty sure I want to stay a zillion miles away from that topic of terror.

2) Sports: Hmmm, the one and only time I wrote about sports was my disastrous experience with the Greek God Golf instructor and his remarks about my boobs being an asset to the sport. Again, my qualifications are sorely lacking.

3) Business: Well, the reason I never mention my business (es) on here is because this is my escape from that reality. No thanks……..

4) Politics: Simply put, I’ve just never gone there with my journal. I’m a girl from Idaho, we are trained here not to talk publicly about politics and religion and it’s hard to unravel oneself from such mentality in a group atmosphere. So, again, no dice on the category.

When I saw the last two catagories I perked up with possibility that quickly fell as flat as an _ (that’s an underscore in case you didn’t get my subtlety)

5) Entertainment:I thought, well, I entertain myself with a blog, surely the people that visit my website get some form of entertainment. But, I didn’t see “blog that entertains with randomness” located in the sub-catagories. This is Perez Hilton’s zone, and the people who review TV, music, and video games. So I gave this category the middle finger and moved with great expectations to #6

6) Lifestyle: These were my choices. Architecture (seriously, they get a whole sub-category?)  Art ( I like it, but don’t make it or critique it, or take photos)  Autos ( LOL)  Fashion (nope, nadda, zippo)  Food and Wine ( Ah no )  Health and Fitness ( I wish)  Home and Garden (my house wishes)  Travel (sometimes)  Pets (umm no again)  Parenting ( I qualify, but don’t write about it often enough to earn a label) and finally, Literature. ( which I mention from time to time, but this isn’t a book blog either)

Clearly, I was screwed. And then I thought with shock and wonder, “What in the hell, (pause please)  have I been writing about for the past 5 years?”

I have no definable qualities to claim. I don’t even have a mold to try to squeeze into. I’m a flop home with no house rules. Barely 5 years old and having an identity crisis. I’m not sure what to do with my discoveries, other then say, “Ahh, I write a blog and it’s about, you know, stuff.”  I’ve never until this point looked at the whole picture of what I write here.  I’m a mishmash of whatever flows from my fingers. A compass spinning wildly and unwilling to settle on a direction.

This crisis made me think of all the other blogs I read. I realized many of you do have blogs with purpose. You know what you want to talk about and generally stick to a theme. I can also think of a few that are a bit like mine. Random with a subcategory of  eclectic. It makes me curious, could you fit into one of the above catagories or are you hovering around like me, lacking a blogosphere team hat?