Life as I Know It

I feel like I gripe too much on here. I mean, I'm honest but nobody has infinite patience for complaining. A bitter, unhappy person will only have an audience for so long.

There's a balance I think...between being honest about your feelings and being a drag on the people around you. Not sure how that one works exactly. Have had trouble in the past but am interested in finding a good balance. I know that I don't want to be--be--I don't even know how to say it, except...I don't want to be like THIS the rest of my life. Dependent. Weak. Low-functioning. I see all these capable people around me and wonder "How did they work it out like that?" Oh, I've been high-functioning before. I've led the pack in academics, in patience, in various leadership roles, in my faith. But I"m not now, and sometimes I even wonder how credible my past roles really were. But that doesn't matter really. Now matters. I'm not like I was. I never will be.

That's not to say that I can never accomplish anything again, but I won't do it by running on self-sufficiency and self-criticism.

When you learn that the way you've always lived is not effective or healthy, you can choose to change. But changing, for me, involves sorting out what parts of me were great and what parts were not so great--what to keep and what to junk. I need to learn the line where my strengths begin to work against me and find effective ways of putting on the brakes when I find that line. These are little BIG things.

How much of this will be done from a place of incapacitation and how much can be learned while functioning well? That, I suspect, is best learned from trial and error. Lol, you can probably fix a hangnail while walking down the street and not trip...but could you set a broken bone? The struggle is learning what needs how much attention.

And sometimes I get sick of looking inward...and looking outward is alternately overwhelming and angering. (See post entitled Why I'm Not in Church Today for more info.) But I have been thinking about that. Will discuss faith issues another day.

Okay. Tired of introspection.

Happier story: I'm going home to Ohio tomorrow! Apparently, my grandparents (dad's side) are going to be in Florida for six months, missing both Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have decided to schedule an early family Thanksgiving for this weekend, and i'm flying home for it! I'm WAY too broke to finance that travel myself, so my grandparents are paying for my ticket...they said they want to see me there. I'm so blessed to have family that is willing to do something like that. I love my grandparents!

I will be home from Tuesday night through Sunday afternoon, then I'm taking a Greyhound bus from Dayton-to-Indianapolis-to-Chicago-to-Minneapolis (long story, don't want to tell it). I will get home just in time to get ready for DBT on Monday. I'm really excited about seeing my brother Chris; i haven't seen him since Christmas, he's probably HUGE! (He's...14? 13? 13. he's 13. And GROWING)!!!!! I love him. AND I haven't met Elijah or Tony, the brothers who are our current foster placement. They're cute little buggers and I wanna hug 'em. ;)

There. Much happier note to end on. Hmmm...