A couple of years have passed since I wrote and read here. People close to me have died, children have become adults, and I have been introspective only in my head lately, instead of converting and committing thoughts to tangible words and sentences. I came back because of reading what someone else wrote about turning 30, and it reminded me that I had some thoughts about when I turned 30 many years ago. Thoughts while being in my 30s. Many thoughts. Not the same ones, just thoughts. Most of what I wrote here, until today, was from ages 35-39.

I  have been struggling all month with thoughts of my sister. I want to not be angry at her for being disconnected from me. Her distance is not to the point of being estranged, just uninterested in me enough that she doesn’t keep in touch or answer back. A lot of what I wrote here years ago, although unrelated to my sister, would help me deal with that.

I’m still angry that she hasn’t answered my message I sent October 9th and it is now November 11th. I wanted her to answer about whether she and her family could have a birthday dinner for her and our mother. I knew if I asked her to join us, she might not answer and I knew that would make me feel upset. I knew if I didn’t ask her, I would feel guilty about not including her. I decided it was better to risk the pain of her not answering than to not invite and include her. Now that she hasn’t answered, I’m still upset and I don’t want to be. The frustration and hurt goes back throughout the last 20 years — too many years of feeling like this for me to let go of my hurt over her ignoring my birthday invitation as quickly as I would like to.

My friend Katarina suggested recently that perhaps my sister is jealous of me and that’s why she is distant. I pondered that for a few weeks. I have never believed she is jealous; I believe just the opposite, that she looks down on me. Even if she was ever jealous, why would that lead to her being distant? It’s not quite rational, but I’m open to the possibility that it could be rational. I have been considering how the illusion of her being jealous of me could make it easier for me to cope with the fact that she doesn’t want me in her life for whatever reasons — I know the main reason is that she is too busy with her family and her job to think about me much. Another thing Katarina reminded me about is that my sister is introverted, and I am not. I find my mind going to all the reasons she would have for not liking me as a person, all my faults and all my mistakes from when I was much younger. I guess that’s what hurts. That and maybe being forgotten. Being forgotten is different from being looked down upon. Or is it? Did being looked down upon precede being forgotten? Are any of these reasons even real? What difference does it make, other than what negative thoughts about this are swirling through the pathways in my brain, looking for a way to be free from the confines of my brain?

I had been upset for years that she rarely gets in touch with me when she comes to the town I live in for football games, and she lives three hours away. I see her once or twice per year. Someone very wise said to me last year, when I complained, something that made me feel much better about it, something that I had not really considered: I and my sister have very little interests in common. Hers and her family’s are in sports, hunting whatever’s in season, country music and church. Me — none of those things. Political preferences are different. (Insert shudder.)

I wrote here several times about the pain of people not responding. I haven’t covered here how this related to my sister. I’ve thought a lot about how our brains invent negative reasons about ourselves when someone fails to respond, and other people, instead of internalizing the reasons, simply assign the non-responder’s rudeness and inconsideration to the non-response and they move on.

Feeling the pull back and forth of how much a person gives versus how much he gets back are physics and mathematical problems, I believe. Someone told me he gives as much attention and love to a person as he receives, always, and he calls it the boomerang effect. Doing it on purpose is one thing, but when it happens unconsciously and both people are always giving everything they've got to each other, the effect can be a wonderful equilibrium of bliss and happiness and ultimate fulfillment. I wonder if the law of physics warrants this equal trade of energy and attention. It's draining and terribly disappointing if you give more energy, creative energy, thought, and attention and don't get the same back; eventually, or very soon, one will encounter a lack of will to keep giving and not getting back at the same level, and then it feels all very conditional. It's hard not to be disappointed in myself for putting out all that energy and not getting the same back, because I already know it will lead to disappointment, and hollow expectations, and I do it anyway.

The sun is on the back of my neck and shoulders, pushing me to believe I can shake off the negativity I've been feeling the last few days to make room for beauty and happiness in my life. One day I will act to not welcome this negativity in my life; the pattern I’m stuck in and want to get away from is two-fold: first, pretending negativity will not be the consequence to my actions, and, second, later living with the consequences that make me feel sad.

I heard!

This week I listened for continuing education credit to a judge talk about the importance of listening. I've been thinking about it for the past several days. This is a kind man, who thinks it's important to be respectful and civil and courteous when engaged in the practice of law. This civility he speaks of is a rule of professional responsibility ... and I was happy when I read it for the first time .... but, oh-what-a-surprise, it is not necessarily followed. The best thing he said was that when a person makes a decision about what someone else is saying, that person has stopped listening and fails to hear the whole message. It sounded pretty basic, but profound, and it was beautiful. So many of us are not good listeners. It made sense to me that it is because we prematurely judge (or just judge) and therefore tune out before we should. I've been talking a lot about listening lately, thinking about how good it feels when I know and feel that the person I'm talking to heard everything I said, and how bristly and frustrated and edgy I can get when I know someone has tuned out or will never get it because judgments have been made and I feel with pain that that person has nothing else to hear.

Food (and Juice) for Thought

Last year I brought cashews and juice to a stranger at a car dealership who sold me a car headlight bulb and installed it for me. He was installing it just to be nice, and, as he said, because he wanted me to come back. He cut his hand in the process of installing the light bulb on something sharp inside the hood of my car. I told someone that story and that someone said I was creepy for bringing gifts back to him. I saw the same guy today, as I was coming back to get something else on my car fixed. He walked out with me to look at the car and I told him he helped me last December. He said he doesn't remember. I told him I brought him juice afterward. He said, "Oh, I remember that. That was the nicest thing that happened to me all year." I laughed and said, "Well, but you cut your hand ...." Creepy? Magical? Sometimes there's a fine line.

Equilibrium

My wise and thoughtful friend Suchanderina said recently, "If you give away too much of yourself too fast, you will get hurt." I've had my heart broken three times in less than a year, she observed about me. I wasn't counting. If you never give any of yourself, then you can be just as miserable. I guess I have to look for a happy medium somewhere, as usual.

Silly shortcuts that aren't much shorter

Cake mixes are silly. Taking an extra step or two by using a recipe to make a cake is healthier and much more delicious. I am in disbelief that I had not discovered this long before now. I wrote the same thing about spaghetti sauce many, many months ago.

Creativity was Living Under a Rock

Today I took a beautiful black and white photo, a portrait against some trees and a little sky. I made my subject laugh and captured a bit of true happiness, and I was satisfied with it on the first try. I was assigned to take this photo, and I was determined to do something creative with it in a job I have that occasionally and miraculously calls for the artistic nature in me to emerge. I also created a glorious dinner this morning that cooked all day and was perfectly and deliciously ready when I wanted it in the evening. On a small scale, I created what I probably alone consider a little magic today, and that is enough.

Sun Blue Green

Today I found the change of perspective I'd been seeking, and it was blissfully therapeutic. Not too far from here, but far enough, there were tranquility-inducing negative ions floating from a little waterfall next to a giant fossil rock where the soothing sun was pouring down on all of me. I visited a friend's three-room cabin nearby, swept off a few pathways and steep steps leading down to the Shaver's Fork River. All was mostly wellish again.

Thursday

Trying to clear my mind to let in new stuff. It's hard. How does one clear one's mind? Vacation? Fasting? Change of perspective? Deep breathing? Yoga? What am I doing wrong?

Waiting

This is my friend Suchanderina's message to her teenage daughter:
There will be boys who like you. There will be many boys who like you. They will not all be able to give you what you need. You will be miserable if you let a boy into your life if he can't give you what you need. You don't want to feel miserable waiting and wondering if he will contact you; and feel miserable if he disappears for a week and a half and then contacts you and then disappears for another week and a half; and tells you he'll see you when he's finished with being with his friends or after this or that important thing, and then maybe, or maybe not, follow up after that. You need and should have more than that, because that lack of care will make you feel miserable. You need someone who makes you his priority, who will be there for you, who will care for you and about you, who will want to contact you as much as you need, who will wait for you and be respectful of your time and listen to you and do what you want to do, when you want to do it. The only way to be sure that you have found that person is to wait until you get to know him before you give yourself to him in a most vulnerable way. Once you give it, it's too late to not have feelings for that person. It'll be a struggle to let those feelings go, despite the lack of care you feel. You can only let someone else into your life to give you that after you let those feelings go, so let them go so you can make room in your mind and your heart for one who can make you his priority. You have to wait for that moment, until you're sure that person has the capacity to care for you and give you the time and attention you need, before you give in, because if you don't, and he can't give you all that, you will be miserable, hurt, lost, confused.

Daniel and Me

Greenness has crept into everything, and the scenery on sunny days is that perfectly spectacular combination of deep blue sky and happy healthy green. I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night, and I kept thinking about the patterns of shadowy stars, flowers, snowflakes and dusty spots that appeared all over everyone in what I perceived to be his imagination. He has a high, gentle voice in the songs he sings, and a gentleness and a wisdom in there that occasionally borders on the genius, the outrageous and the unstable. Some of his drawings shown in the movie look like mine. I saw one of an eye with no eyelid, flying with wings and that I had drawn about 14 years ago, a drawing of which I had presumed when I drew it to be original in as original of a form that is plausible. I wondered how else Daniel and I thought alike.

Sunday

Happiness replaced negativity so much faster than I predicted, and nothing really happened to make me feel better except the advent of the return of equilibrium. And that makes me happy. Perhaps committing it to words helped my cause.

Moving

My brain is fighting a brave and fierce battle with a spill of negativity in its many pathways, like a sickness that hovers and saturates the landscape of my well being. I wait in enthusiastic anticipation until it heals and passes. I know it will heal and pass, and I want it to happen quickly, but it doesn't work that way. I've learned this lesson so many times and it doesn't make it that much less painful, knowing that it's just a matter of time.

Slow

Sunday I was an audience member in the play "The Wizard of Oz," and I cannot think of a better way I could have spent my afternoon. Aside from the amazing performances, energetic and talented dancers dancing, scarecrow falling with grace and perfection, and magical characters filling the theatre with sentimentality and sweetness, I finally took the story's message into my brain: everyone only and already has exactly what they need inside of themselves, and as soon as they know it they will find it. All that singing, dancing and fantastical characters and scenery had consistently distracted me from the obvious. I had understood it and heard the message the first time I read the book, with the lion and the scarecrow and the tin man, but this time, I didn't realize it was true for Dorothy as well. When I knew that, it all suddenly clicked and somehow that realization offered layers of new dimensions of understandings for me -- how we make all our choices and how only we can hold ourselves back.

Repetition

Life keeps processing on, with plants to water, mouths to feed, walks to take, and words to write. The sun is pink and shining directly on my face this morning, and it feels like Groundhog Day, today, the day from the movie where everything happens all over again but it's another chance to get it right, better than it was the last Monday. I spent much of my time yesterday outdoors, working in a botanical garden, weeding and raking, and walking around in the cool, early spring weather.

Elephants in the Room

My eccentric grandmother had the habit when I was young of using her own drama to convince me that whatever surprise she had to offer was special and rare and wonderful, and it never was. Whatever it was, it was disappointing, meaningless and empty. There was something wrong with everything, whether it was something she cooked or sewed or bought (I think most of what she said she bought were things that someone else gave her that she didn't want, or that she dug out of her attic). Her house was full of beautiful hardwood carved furniture and her house looked unlike any other house I'd ever been in, as it reflected a mind that was bizarre, eclectic, and from 14 hours north (New York City) of where we were. Clutter with bold colors of red, gold, turquoise and black and old furniture crowded the house. The house smelled of moth balls and if anything was removed from the house the smell stayed forever. When she died, she left behind mountains of stuff that was so old almost all of it fell apart or was on its way to disintegration. Every week or so I have dreams I am back in that house, and last night I was there with zoo animals. There was an elephant on the screened-in porch, taking up the whole porch, and there was a tiger in the living room. They were resting on the floor, and they were sad because they wanted to go back to where they came from. The first time I heard the expression "the elephant in the room," it was at a work meeting, and I had no idea what the expression meant or what the elephant could possibly represent. I feel I never really know what that elephant is supposed to be, and, because it's a big elephant, and a euphemism for something that everyone sees but ignores because ... (why?) ... I feel forced to feel that I should know but I don't.

Time

At a college planning meeting, I heard a few informative and helpful words from a retired public school counselor who is from my hometown. At least 10 years had passed since I had last talked to him, and the way I remember him is that he had brown hair and a brown mustache. He is a friendly, funny, smart counselor and at one time he was a coach. He is the kind of man who a person would feel able to talk to about anything and it would be understood and accepted, as the best of the counselors would be. That brown hair was all gone, and he had much less of it and it was all white. He remembers me, or at least he claims he does, and I hope I did not offend him by telling him I remember him with brown hair, but he accepted my observation and laughed. I started to think about how, now, today, 10 years seems to have passed so quickly, but children grow up in that time and grown-ups may undergo a complete transformation simply because of mother nature's magic. One's perspective on time is ever-evolving as one travels the long and lovely path of years.

Infinity

I read recently that the author of a book I've been reading believes that in our infinite universe, it is a given that life will repeat itself infinitely. Our experiences, thoughts, lessons, patterns, habits, fortune, misfortune ... it is all simply a system of repetition. The more life experience I have, the more I believe it.

I hit a roadblock.