Common Cents

So, obviously, my life isn’t empty and meaningless. It’s only partly empty and meaningless.

I think it is normal to have those feelings occasionally. As I told Marcus, I’m not holding onto a pill bottle or anything.

I just need to be more active and get out more.

Which will be a lot easier now that I am getting a new car! It’s not new new, but it’s new to me, and it is not the death trap that my current car is. Dad #1 found the car and talked the guy down from $1500, while Dad #2 is paying for it (mostly). There are some advantages to having five parental units.

I am pretty happy, despite the moments of melancholy. Work is tough right now, but I know that each week it will get easier.

The little things make me smile. This new Brad Paisley CD is rockin, and tomorrow is a clamboil with the fam.

I’ve been informed that the rest of the world calls them clambakes, but that makes no sense. You don’t bake anything that you eat at a clamboil. You boil it all!  Maybe it’s just a SouthCoast Mass thing, but it makes sense!

…

I’m supposed to be cleaning, so instead, I’m reflecting.

I made the mistake of unpacking my high school yearbook. Ah, the life imagined and never achieved. Everyone, myself included, thought I’d be writer. Now all the writing I do is blogging–and let’s face it; blogging isn’t real writing. It’s just high tech journaling.

I really shouldn’t give into the melancholy, but how can I not? What is this life I lead? This empty, meaningless life.

But the alternative is worst, so I continue.

Continue being a nobody behind a computer screen. Just trying to live a proletariat life, trying to pretend there is nobility in amounting to absolutely nothing.

The Work and the Worry

I’ve always been fascinated with Jewish culture, especially Orthodox Judaism, most probably because adherents demonstrate a discipline and devotion that I never will.

The Gift of Asher Lev has been on my mind for a few days now. I read it fairly quickly–perhaps too quickly. It wasn’t until two days after reading it, while trying to fall asleep, that I finally understood what his gift truly was. There’s something mystical about books that good. I want to be the writer of books that good.

My relationship with my own faith community is mentally exhausting and frustrating. I feel continually judged, and at the same time condemned, because I just don’t fit, but still I can’t let go.

While I find many other faiths beautiful and fascinating, I find my own convincing and necessary. The God I worship is decidedly Mormon, but the life I lead is not.

I wonder what to do with myself. The more I ponder it, the more I know that I believe the Gospel to be true, but I don’t believe in the perfection of the Church. This is why it irks me when I hear testimonies that begin with “I know the Church is True.” I don’t know that and perhaps I am merely jealous.

I seem to draw much from multimedia these days. Monday nights are Big Love nights. Every week I tune in, and not just for the polygamy. The Henricksons, Bill especially, are a family who live out their faith in the best way they know how. They don’t rely on a structure to hold them together. They have a specific belief and they live it, despite all of the problems that entails.

I’m not sure what I expect of myself. I don’t want to go back to pretending a belief in something, just because believing it would make my faith easier and less complicated.

I worry that I am simply rationalizing my behavior. That I want the belief without the work.

But then, this feels like work to me.

Doors Closing and Doors Opening

Finally, tomorrow, I am a free woman.

Tomorrow I begin running my own shifts. I’ve already begun being paid as a manager, so that isn’t the perk I am most looking forward to. It’s the extra day off. Shift Supervisors work four ten hour shifts, and I already have so much planned for those three remaining days.

Today, after the annual trip to the Strawberry Festival, which takes place in the town in which I was raised, I drove home, falling asleep by the time I hit Millville. It was a 45 minute struggle, but I made it home in one piece.

As soon as I passed the threshold, the sleepiness evaporated, so I began to tidy the apartment. Week One of Three Days Off will involve Project Clean House. And my little OCD heart is so happy for it.

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This morning, I managed to make it to church, and the ceiling didn’t even cave on my head.

Karlo and Lori are headed off to California, which was enough to completely dissolve me. Why is it that all the good families move away?

At least Bret and Kora came back.

And then I moved away.

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It is a strange thing to have a full and bright testimony of the Gospel, but still not feel moved to action.

I know Joseph was a prophet and the Book of Mormon is surely scripture, but I have no desire to attend Church meetings.

And who will believe my insistance that I do not have a testimony problem, or any hidden sin? That I am not a project in need of fixing?

Such is the paradox of a powerful testimony with no faith to back it up.

Now, how do I slam this revolving door?

Non-Post

For the record, I have no recollection of teasing Barney about his lawn care chronicles.

I too worry about my blog. I just have neither the time, nor the inclination, to write here anymore. I’d rather be doing a million other things.

I’ve got books to read and shows to watch, and walks to take, if it would stop raining all the time.

Anyway, things to do…