accepting the unacceptable

when the rain comes, and it all pours down, and you're left with mud slick on your boots, with wet hair in your eyes, and a heavy fog in the air around you. with each slippery step try to discern where the hope could be in the fog, could possibly be. in the midst of all the unacceptable. what is there to hold on to? what is solid, after all?

did i know this would come? all along?

There are unacceptable things which I must learn to accept. deaths, disappointments, failures, and this relationship coming to an end. this relationship ending. this relationship ended. unacceptable. accept it. this will not weigh me down forever. time will do its thing, will move forward, and carry my shaky body with it, my anguished mind. and time will carry me into a better place, a better mind, a better being. and i will accept it. eventually. in small parts. in tiny fragments. in forgotten memories. in discarded gifts. in deleted emails. deleted phone number. deleted relationship. and the mud slick on my boots will be washed clean. and i will walk on. accept it.

bittersweet, these things.

And then there are the unacceptable things that can and should never be accepted... all around us. a 10 year old girl was beat up 2 blocks from my apt for crossing the street into gang territory. a man was shot 10 blocks from my apt in the middle of the day while going to the store. bombs in my beloved Boston, in OUR beloved Boston. the gentle academic city that i thought was a dream come true, where all my most important firsts happened. now blood on the streets. memorials, a part of the city forever. unacceptable.

someone clean up this city! someone make it right! I can't accept Chicago to go down like this, Old Town to disappear and to ring with gunshots. I refuse to accept it and i will do all i can to stop it. this is not how it should be. and it tears me apart.

the sun sets on the city, and covers our shame in strokes of gold. the lake shimmers in the sunrise, and hope grows all around us. we will be ok. we will see this night through to daylight. hold on.

figuring it out

This freelancing thing has been hard.

But each day I'm learning more and more how to adapt, how to control my time and my drive, what anxieties to let fall and what anxieties to pay attention to, and try to fix. To fight the loneliness of finding myself suddenly without coworkers or classmates, I find myself going for walks with a friend that works nearby on lunch, eating lunch with another friend, skyping more with my sister, talking to myself, starting up dance classes again, and organizing more social activities with my friends, and taking up more offers to go out. I want to add journaling every day to this list. I actually, for the first time since working full time and commuting so far, find myself craving social interaction. My mood has definitely improved. I am doing more interesting projects, and have even thrown a few pots.

But the structure, the attempt to get things done, or completed... this is hard. And if I just watch Syfy episodes all day and don't get anything done, the guilt at the end of the day is overwhelming and depressing. I hit a self-motivation low around the end of February, and since then have done ok at dragging myself out of the non-productive hole, completing a few projects helped. It's still hard to get a full day's work in, and I have a lot to learn.

But I like this. I like taking on projects. I like the opportunity to do my art and if I could just learn to discipline myself better, I think I could be really successful. I haven't done any art for myself in so long, and coming back to it is rusty and slow, but the muse is whispering, and soon she will be shouting and I won't be able to deny her request.

whisper on, muse.