following through

Going back and reading through the past four or five years of having this here blogger, I realize I MASSIVELY FAILED at more than one of the blog-posting goals I had set up for myself. No, I'm not talking about the building of my own website because, frankly, that's definitely a priority that shifted, changed, and is no longer of importance to me. And I admitted it. In black. In white. On here.

So now here I am, waiting for the green light to leave CleveOH to head back to EriePA, thinking about some of my smaller failures over the past four-five years. Some of my more easily rectifiable failures. Which led me to think about how the power is in my hands - especially when it comes to my writing space. And my life space. And my workspace. And my brainspace.

I am embarrassed with myself because I did not follow through on two of the writing/blogging goals I had thought would be relatively facile for me get done. I am embarrassed because I cannot stand it when people in my life say they are going to follow through on something, then don't. I am well-known for my follow-through, but if I'm being honest with myself here, and of course you, my readers, I've also had my fair share of flaking out on things over the past years.

In the past, if I was unable to follow through with something, I usually did not have a problem accepting that sometimes I was unable to fulfill a commitment and let the person depending on me know that I was unable to fulfill said expectation. Then directing dependent person to other resources that could better fulfill their needs. It was also not as difficult for me (as it obviously has been over the past few years) to admit that I needed an extension or simply needed help in fulfilling expectations and following through on what I said I would do.

I'm trying to rebuild, reconstruct, patch up, whatever you want to call it - this characteristic of my self that I used to hold in such high regard because it was one of my best qualities, and I still hold it in high regard - even though I see I dropped the ball quite a bit over the past few years.

And while I'm disappointed with my self for doing that, I can't go back and change it per se, I can continue to improve and ideally prove through consistent demonstration, not only for others, but also for myself, that I am able to follow through, admit my missteps, accept responsibility, ask for help, change the situation(s), etc.

I am now, out in the open forum of my blog, admitting and accepting responsibility for this lesser quality I allowed to rear its ugly head in my life for a few years, and in response, have been proactively working on said lesser quality for several months now.

I still make missteps in my life, A LOT of them, but I learn from them, and change them, or work to change them - instead of saying it's life circumstance or that I have no control or any other number of excuses I know I've made - because I do have control over my choices and decisions.

This post was meant to more or less keep to my blog failures, but we all know it's also correlated to my real life.

Enter building blocks.

I'm going to redirect this post back to aforementioned blog failures. My two big blog FAILS over the past four-five years are: 1. Timeline - I still have two decades to finish posting.; 2. Self-Statements - Of the one hundred I said I would post, I only posted ten. TEN?!?! Really?!?!

If I calculate the completeness of each of these failures, I only achieved 33.33% of Timeline; 10% of Self-Statements. If I was graded or reviewed on these, they would definitely be considered failing scores.

I can't change the pre-existing failures, but I can do some extra credit by finishing and achieving these two blog topics that I've meant to complete because I want to and have wanted to...but for some reason, had not gotten around to doing. We all know I don't sleep much, so I can't say that I don't have time. That's a bullshit excuse.

This is one of the big changes I'm in-process of better understanding the motivations behind, dealing, and thus confronting head-on this year. No matter how uncomfortable I am.

Not just with the blog, but in all facets of my life. Taking ownership back, following through, asking for help when I need it, knowing when I am simply unable to fulfill an expectation or need to put it on hold, and then communicating that to any other parties involved.

That said. My two blog failures are going to be successes this year.

Time to get back on the road again...

i'm drifting farther away and reaching further inwards.

there is an end or at least a solution which is and has started going into effect.

i just don't know how many more minutes of hours of days of weeks i can handle all of it.

it doesn't help when i am aware of the fact that i am consistently belittled in a passively manipulative way by someone with whom i care. it also doesn't help on the days when i am flat out ignored, steamrolled, bulldozed.

i'm struggling. it hurts.

So much going on in the life of Miss Karoline presently. Sometimes it feels like I am suffocating on toxygen (toxic + oxygen = toxygen). As I continue moving forward with what I know I need to do for my own health as well as Maggie's, I keep discovering there is more and more work to be done. I'm digging through the layers of my earth, and beneath the surface there aren't just four layers, there are layers within the layers, and then the toxygen takes over and I am left breathless. I'm scared, yet excited. I'm overwhelmed, but I know I've been through worse things than this. A wise woman I know, my therapist, advised me to be a broken record to parties who refuse to listen. I think this is a smart move, yet in practice, it doesn't seem to be working; although, rationally I know it has only been less than a week, and sometimes messages aren't clear in such short timeframes. So I keep playing the broken record. Needle skipping on this one scratch. Repetition. Obnoxious in its unrelenting ways, but I know it's what I need to do to keep my sanity. Skip. Skip. Blip. Blip. Hopefully the message will register loud and clear over the next couple weeks, and I can then stop breaking records and start enjoying the music that I know is present in my future.

There is vehemence in the aphonic.

Sometimes the words that matter, carry gravity or lackthereof depending on how you look at it, elude me. I allow myself to get mired in weaving words and language when all I need to do is utilize my powers of brevity.

I've recently found that while my linguistic skills are still somewhat muddled, I am able to get down to the roots, my roots, through painting. I am no aficionado, prodigy, or expert, and others who might ever have a chance to see my painterly side, will probably think it's total sh*t, but it's cathartic to me and I find beauty in my lack of skill.

My lack of language. My lack of training. My lack of expertise. Understanding and embracing the awkward of something new again. I haven't taken to canvas in years. I never felt my skills were good enough. I never felt good enough.

The messiness, the abstraction, layers slathered on, then peeled away. Imprints that are there if you look closely and not too critically. I've never considered myself an artist or artistic for that matter, but over the course of this extended roadtrip, I've found that maybe I can release some of what I want to say and scream onto a canvas. The canvas doesn't judge. It just is.

Painting my heart has been a release. A damn good one at that.

Homeslices III

i have a direct line to the Gods. dancing barefoot outside in the rain during monsoon season. electric rain bullets attacking, pounding down delicious ambrosia epiphanies into my otherwise starved body and brain. i have no abandon out here, splashing, shouting, laughing in the flooded streets. with the rain pulsing, pelting me, i believe i can accomplish anything. monsoon dancing stirs something from within my core. something more than the familiar numbness i’ve grown accustomed to feeling over the past several years. joy. ecstasy. empowerment. alive. i am ALIVE. then from out of the rain, you walked into my life. you are a vision. and you stir something from within my core. just like the Gods do, but really you are one of my Devils. only i don’t recognize it yet.

18 Weeks

I never thought I would be one of those gals whose blog would start to revolve around her pregnancy babies galore once she made the offish announcement. But I am. I feel kind of embarassed and my face flushes when I think about this, but it has happened, so why not revel in it? I spare my readers the details they probably don't want to hear about such as my bowel movements and vomitaciousness, yet I am also sure I overshare to an extent as well. I cannot make everyone happy, but I try to respect the fact that not everyone is interested in hearing about such things as my body functions.

Today marks the beginning of week 18. I had my second doctor's appointment on Wednesday, and everything looked and sounded normal. My vitals were still a-okay with my blood pressure remaining quite low (looow = normal to me), which was both a relief and a surprise since I wasn't the most active person the first four months of the baby incubating. I still need to improve on my eating habits, which is an ongoing process and I'm trying to make it work. I want to do everything I can to make the last 4.5 months as smooth and comfortable as possible for both me and the Flash.

Speaking of the Flash, I started to feel it moving around a couple weeks ago - the Saturday of Labor Day weekend to be exact. You know, after the mysterious virus I had that kept me laid up for a week. J and I decided to go out to eat that Saturday night, and let me tell you the Flash was thoroughly excited I was up and moving and out of the house. I just had to have Italian food that night, and since Mama Santa's was still closed due to the Feast, J and I decided to chain it and go to Olive Garden. On the drive to the OG (the first time I had been to one in Cleveland), J and I were talking and then suddenly I felt as though butterflies were trying to release themselves from my belly push themselves up through my throat. It was the strangest, most surreal, yet most natural sensation I have ever had. It continued throughout the evening and I had to box up my meal after a few bites.

Since then the Flash has been quite active. In fact, at my appointment this week the Flash was moving around so much while my doctor was checking the heart rate, it took several minutes to get the reading. She finally got the heart rate - which was 145-155 (normal), but it was rather funny. I'm going to have a very busy baby methinks. Now I just have to wait two more weeks for the ultrasound that will tell me what the Flash's sex is. I have a feeling this is going to be a veeery long two weeks. September 26 can't get here fast enough!

Just Call Me Karoline Fat Pants

May I speak openly?

One thing no one ever tells you when you are becoming full of baby is that you will wake up one day and your pants simply don't fit you anymore. This happened to me this past week. I popped. In a weird, I look like I've been eating too many Twinkies and Ho-hos kind of way. I have an interesting little, hard babybump belt below my bellybutton. I knew I was likely going to start showing in the fourth month, but I didn't know how suddenly my pants wouldn't fit right anymore. I've had a hard enough time adjusting to the new size of my chest - hello, two cup size increase already and they're supposedly going to get bigger! - and now, suddenly, I have to get used to being a completely new size by buying bigger pants for my new spare tire, wear yoga pants all the time, or take a deep breath and pony up and wear the very strange stretchtop pants.

This is new territory. I can't control my expanding belly and chest and not having control over it is kind of a frightening concept to me. And while I've been in recovery for well over a year and a half, I've been obsessing a bit about my size and other stuff that goes with the ever-familiar unhealthy territory that consumed over half my life. This is the territory I am proactively trying to steer relatively clear of presently and futurewise, and it is proving to be quite a challenge to steer clear of it while coping with the rapid body changes I am experiencing - some of which seem to happen overnight.

Sooo I thought I'd air my insanity out here, just to at least try to get my thoughts out in the open (a forum where my partner in crime doesn't look at me as though I am utterly ridiculous...and even if said partner is raising eyebrows at me right now, I, at least, can't see him); Because yes, I've been thinking about trying to control my size, weight, space, but then my wisemind kicks in and tells me that I know that I need to nourish myself not just for me anymore. It's a two party nutritionfest. And thus far I think I've been pretty great about everything considering this huge life-changing factor - and I hate to say it but I'm going to anyways - it probably helped that I lost weight the first two months and then balanced/plateaued for almost the past two months. How sick does that last statement sound? My doctor would probably have a heyday with that one.

Sometimes it's just hard to breathe when I start to think about the massive body changes I am going through and will be going through. I know as long as I keep myself in check, everything will work out okay. Keep my eyes on the prize - a happy, healthy baby. Some days are just better than others.

Homeslices II

I watch as you carelessly slosh the spiced rum with lime around in your glass. Your body moves with such familiarity and ease, I feel like crying. If you only knew how the smell of patchouli had always sickened me until you. Now I can't seem to get enough. Of you. Entwined on your beat-down brown and orange plaid couch, we breathe each other in and speak of climbing mountains - taking on the world! Relentless rpms, spinning circles around us and between us. We listen to the sounds of the earth - life pounding in our ears, pressing us to move. Writhing, panting, sweating. We are tired of this dance, yet we cannot seem to stop.

Homeslices I

You whispered the meaning of clouds to me. I murmured the meaning of stars. We played endless games of tag that summer. Our silly childgames often resulting in the rolling down of hills. My uncontrollable laughter bubbling between mouthfuls of grass you implored me to chew and spit. Then describe to you. Just so you knew how it would taste. Exhausted. We lay on the grass splaying our bodies "just so" there would be imprinted lawnangels. In our stillness the grass pricked our bodies in that insatiably delicious way you just know you are alive and onto something. Something.

Miscellany

For those people who want to know what has and hasn't actually been going on in my life recently, here's an update on life buildup:

-- Last Monday (Happy Friggin' St. Patrick's Day!) I had my second oral surgery and root canal of the year. Completed after yet another jaw infection and abscessed tooth. Bone loss included. We are hopeful this one will take and a new porcelain crown will join the dregs of my slowly recovering eating disordered mouth in the next couple weeks. My mouth is a moneypit.

-- Travel to Argentina is scheduled for April 14. This is a 4-5 week trip. I'm hoping for five.

-- Since the travel to Argentina is occurring much later than anticipated, the Cleveland Half-Marathon is going to be a no-go this year. I will achieve my goal of running a half this year, just not in Cleveland. Right now we are looking to travel somewhere to run in July or August. My vote is for the Rock and Roll Marathon and Half in Virginia Beach over Labor Day weekend, but we shall see. But there is also the Roadrunner and USAF right here in Ohio, so who knows?

-- Also along the lines of switching up my 2008 goals, I think I am going to join CrossFit instead of starting a beginner Pilates class...at least for now. Since moving back up here, I've been itching to get myself into a hardcore fitness program to burnBURNburn as well as to meet likeminded people, but have been lacking in the "go get'em" attitude to do so. I'm tired of not getting the desired results from the solo workouts I do and after much research, I've officially decided CrossFit is the type of thing I'm looking for in regards to exercise regimens and muscle building. Check it: Cleveland CrossFit Now the question is, "Do I start ASAP or after I get back from Argentina?" Not sure yet.

-- I'm still seriously contemplating hair extensions.

-- I am scheduled to get more work done on my left forearm next Wednesday, April 2. I will be driving down to Pittsburgh to have Joe Bruce ink me up at Stay Gold Tattoo. He's awesome. A fantastic artist. I will post pictures after the session.

-- I've recently been in contact with one of my really great friends from my undergrad days at the U of A. He found me on LinkedIn and is actually featured in my x365 posts which have stalled yet again; But will have back up and running as soon as things settle down in my life. I should call it my x365 in x730 days. I think it is going to take that long for me to get it done. But you know what? Slow and steady wins the mystery race, right? Ha! Anyways, my buddy is a fellow writer and the correspondence has been nothing short of great. I'm stoked that he found me and that I can once again call him my friend.

-- I've been diligent in my learning the ins and outs of CSS for my personal website which will be: The Stubborn Swede, but I'm almost tempted to just plug my blogger into the site versus actuallly building. Temptation is hard to resist. For now, I am resisting. Largely because me having knowledge equals power over what I am doing in regards to current career change. But that's the future domain. FYIJSYK.

-- Speaking of tecchie things, I need to relearn PhotoShop. Last time I used it was like seven years ago maybe? Six? A long time ago. I also need to find the Sony DSC-H2 as it is boxed up from my last move. I would also like to learn the Nikon D80 that has been gathering dust in the hall closet...maybe I'll get a chance down in Bargentina. And spring is coming which means I can use the awesome list of places in ClevelandOH to go shoot photos Kill Basa sent me a few months ago. I'm looking forward to that.

-- Going on a ghosthunt to the West Virginia State Penitentiary with a paranormal group during July. Confirmation came via email yesterday, so it's a go. Supercool, eh? Moundsville is spoooooky.

Overall, life for me has been a series of far ups and far downs since coming back north. What I can say is that I am sticking to my plans and am asking for help when I need it. I have a wonderful support system and I am truly blessed to be able to lean on those people in my life.

Recovery is difficult. But worth it.

Super Skinny Me

While most people were watching the Super Bowl yesterday, I was watching this: Super Skinny Me

Thank you for making this short documentary, BBC. Thank you.

It's a pretty insightful piece. Especially considering that the two journalists involved were of "sound mind" when they opted to participate in the experiment.

Overall, I found it bittersweet and think it is a pretty enlightening piece for the general public/audiences.

Many people I know and talk with regularly think this ED stuff primarily happens to younger women - adolescents in their teenage years.

And they find it to be a hard pill to swallow when they learn that women my age struggle with ED - or that it never went away from previous years of abuse.

And harder still to swallow when people discover women older than myself struggle with it.

The ignorance makes me want to scream sometimes.

Slight Reflection

Every year since I left Arizona, I've written a wellness goal list. This is not to be confused with stereotypical resolutions for the New Year such as: "I resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, etc.," but rather, a list of ways to improve my life and continue to strive to achieve a better balance of wellness in my mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional states. I call(ed) it my "well-list."

I would post previous years in here; However, largely due to the Great Karoline Meltdown of 2007, I deleted all of them off my hard drive. Awesome, right? No.

That seemingly small yet significant action I performed in June of last year, gives you an insight into my state of mind for a large part of last year - not to mention a few years previous to that.

I felt I wasn't worth having goals and dreams to achieve. I simply didn't want to be around anymore. And it surely wasn't worth having a list of five years of small successes and what I perceived to be huge failures for others to view and make commentary on regarding my life when I was busy checking out on everyone - including myself. So I purged those goals and dreams. Just like I intended to purge myself.

I again believe it is important for me to have goals and dreams to achieve, so I am starting over with my list this year. This is yet another small significant action on my part. By doing this, I am showing to myself and others that I am worth existing and having successes as well as failures, no matter how small or large.

Right now, I'm in the race of life for the long haul, and I am hoping to prove to myself and others that I am proactively changing for the better and trying to do the "next best thing" in all aspects of my life.

It was a long way down, and I'm trying to find my way back upUpup. I think the challenge is worth it.