kyl3 (the band)

I was a little inspired by the TV show on FX called 30 Days.  So all last week I did my TV experiment.  I watched TV everytime I had any free time at all.  I watched a lot of TV.  Luckily for me yesterday the USA channel ran a Law and Order SVU marathon and I was able to watch Benson and Stabler all day.  After all that TV watching I feel depressed, demotivated and zapped of all energy.  I walk up 3 flights of stairs to work everyday.  Normally it is no problem unless I have really pushed the weights at the gym and my legs are sore.  Even then I still don’t dread the stairs.  This morning I did.  What happened?  I feel like an empty shell, as if sitting in front of that screen has zapped out my soul.  Ok, it is not that drastic.  As I know my experiment is over and I look forward to doing something else this evening my mood has drastically increased.  Now my TV watching is confined to the program 30 days on Tuesday night for an hour, and Burn Notice that starts up again this Thursday.  Well, and Monster Quest this Wednesday because my husband loves it.  So that is only 3 hours of TV this next week.  What a releif.

I have felt quite tired the last few days. I am feeling like I am in a funk and can’t seem to find my way out. I think it has to do with the fact that I have seen my extended family a lot lately. I always feel as if I cease to exist around my family. I am so different from them. They don’t appreciate this difference. Normally if I choose to be bold and speak up it is met with them making fun of me and or taking offense to what I just stated I believed or think. Due to this fact I usually just remain silent and try to appear like a good daughter. This starts to erode me on the inside. If I have seen my family to often without being able to build up my insides then it all just keeps eroding until I feel empty and hollow and I just feel like giving up and just being like them. I have to keep reminding myself that I have tried and tried to be like them and it was never a good outcome on those rare occasions. It did not make them like me nor did it make me feel any better. I am not saying that my family does not love me, they love me. It’s just that they don’t like me. I love them a lot, but I also don’t think I like them. We are just too different.

I know I have written about my family probably too much lately but that is who I have been around. Lately I feel claustrophobic and as if I may suffocate. Between trying to make them all happy and trying to carve out my authentic path there is just no way to win. Normally what I feel happens is that I do something to appease them which makes me feel bullied and manipulated and then it backfires because I did not do exactly what they wanted. I tried to come up with a compromise between what we both want. They just see it as me being an asshole because I did not do it their way. My opinion is that if I was always going to do it their way then what is the purpose of me existing. I wish I could find a way to stand up for myself and express myself without hurt the feelings of my family.

Since Rog3r’s Mom moved we have not got a chance to visit her. I was thinking today that flying out to see her for Thanksgiving would be fun. But I have decided to go over the pros and cons below.

Rationally it seems like an easy choice; we live near my family and see them very frequently and thus since it will have been 10 months without seeing Rog3r’s family it makes a lot of sense to make the trip out there.  It is also something I would like to do.  Rog3r and I would have a lot of fun making the trip and I know his mom would enjoy having us there for a few days. 

What I will not enjoy is how my family, especially my Mom will interpret this as rejection and will assume I am just being an asshole. 

Your parents interpretations of your actions should not be a factor in what you do when you are an adult and living on your own and paying your own way, but we all know how parents are in reality.  Rog3r’s Mom recently called us at midnight and left a voicemail half joking saying we had abandoned her by not answering.  She had failed to configure the time difference while it was early to her around 9pm it was late to us and we were asleep.  I mean seriously what is with parents.  They spend our whole childhood working until 7pm and being too tired to play with us except when they get their whole 2 weeks off for vacation (if they are lucky) so we grow up and do our own thing and then they get mad at us and feel abondoned and rejected when we do our own thing.  Baby Boomers really are the “me” generation and us “latch key kids” have grown up into our independence and don’t remember Joan Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver so we think this is how its supposed to be until our parents leave voicemails and get mad at us for abandoning them.  We are just the baffeled independent adults that can hear the entire conversatin before it starts and know we won’t be heard or understood because we are just big assholes. 

So I maybe should have put more “me” s where I put the “we” s in the above paragraph but I know I am not at all alone in this feeling.

CUT

Feels good 

Last week I was quite sick, just not sick enough to stay home from work.  It was all I could do everyday to complete my eight hours.  Luckily it was not near deadline when I have to work 10+ hours a day.  So I was sick, couldn’t sleep well, had a sore throat, had a temperture, felt achy and had my engergy level zapped from 100 down to 1.  The sickness has left but I the energy level is taking forever to resume.  I feel like I am barely at a 5. 

This is not good.  I have a million projects and neat ideas that I want to implement but I can’t seem to get myself going.  Luckily I read Zen Habits and they have such an article that should help me.  I will try to put this plan into action.  In a few days hopefully this blah numb feeling will lift.