I think that in the end we all need our Nocturamas. Your Nocturama may, indeed, be the most important thing you ever do. Failure fortifies us. It moves us forward. It strips everything back to its essential nature and leaves us clean and pure, ready to begin again. You don’t create something as problematic as Nocturama without a certain risk and a little courage and the temerity to fail. I love this troubled record for that. It may just be my favourite. ~ Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files Issue #20
“How was Vegas?” I was asked upon my return to real life.
How to answer?
Do I talk about how long it’s been and how good it was to see the people who I have grown to love and cherish since meeting them online 13-ish years ago? About how damn easy it is to be around them, how I can be as close to my true self as I can be in public and get away with it?
Do I talk about the moments of delight: of finding the Art-O-Mats, old cigarette vending machines that have been repurposed to give you art for $5; of the sudden sight of a 2-story metal praying mantis that shoots fire out of its antennae in time to AC/DC; of being able to see the Kusama Infinity Room in a near-empty Bellagio Art Gallery; of old neon signs, horses in front of a biker bar, and cocktails in the speakeasy at the Mob Museum; of sitting in Elvis Presley’s booth, and seeing a chair that looked like the Bobs in Mirror Mask?
Or do I talk about the bad poker, the over-stimulation, the cocktails, the casinos, beer with friends, long conversations and loud laughter, people watching, missing absent friends, the triggered memories, the bad moods, the good moods, the food, the changes in the 7 years since I was last there, the glorious feeling of being with people who get me, warts and all?
“It was fun,” I reply.
I need to be able to answer yes to most of these questions before I follow people on social media.
Do I know you?
Have we actually met?
Do I like you?
Do we have friends in common?
Do I like our common friends?
Do you post very often?
Do you amuse/inform/educate?
Do you give a glimpse of your real life, or is it carefully crafted to instill insecurity and FOMO?
Do I care about this cause/charity/business?
Is this the only way I can keep up with this cause/charity/business?
Am I irritated af?
I have been slacking on my katitude.ca photo-a-day project for at least a year. It was fun, and I loved how it made me look for something different in every day. The eight years (EIGHT YEARS!!!) of tagged photos really helps trigger middle-aged brain, let me tell you.
But it’s not fun any more. It’s been going on so long and has become so big that it feels like work, like an obligation. I was going though the motions because I had to. And I often forgot about it for weeks or months at a time.
So I have decided to retire katitude.ca. I could delete it, but I’m reluctant to do that. I like knowing it’s there. I’ll keep it running, but I’m not going to post anything else to it. I’ll back it up and use Blog Booker to create a pdf of it that I may or may not print.
And a funny thing happened once I made that decision….I wanted to do another fun photo-a-day project again! So I got a new domain, katitudes.life, and if I can maintain it, I’m going to back up/print and delete everything once a year so it doesn’t get too bit and take on a life of it’s own again.
Can’t wait to see how 4 days in Las Vegas is going to fuck up my morning shift sleep schedule #worthit #wpbt
— Kat Goodale (@Katitude) December 6, 2018
A lot. The answer is, a lot.
The yoga instructor said, “Let go of that which does not serve you.”
I have been having a rough time lately, for reasons that I cannot pin down. I have a great job with people I like and I am living in my dream house in my dream location. And yet, I feel disconnected. And emotional as fuck.
I’m finding it hard to get a balance in my post-menopausal moods. So hard that apparently I can’t find the words for it right now. I feel like some of it still concussion-related, but what do I know?
“You need to write more,” said a woman I work with. She is so very smart; I adore her immensely. And yet I have snapped at her, made mountains out of molehills, and generally made an ass of myself. Thankfully she is a better woman than I, and sweetly accepted my tearful apologies.
So I am going to write more. And I am going to get rid of that which does not serve me. I’ve deleted everything off of Twitter (I can’t bring myself to delete my account and give up my name yet…I should though), purged so much from Facebook (gone are the Toronto people, breweries, concert venues and bars that are make me homesick for a place I haven’t even liked in the last 5 years), and made some lists. I’m going to yoga again tomorrow. And looking for a local doctor. And a therapist.
I need to get my shit together.
I am on the 6th and final day of my staycation. I am left feeling like I did’t cross off enough To Do items, didn’t accomplish anything I should have.
And that’s the problem with staying home for a vacation. You’re continually torn. You’re constantly in a position where you see the stuff you should be doing/fixing when you’re trying to unwind and relax and do SFA, and feel resentful of the stuff you do/fix when you’re on your vacation dammit.
But it appears I am an equal opportunity slacker…I neglected both the things on the To Do list thatI should have done AND the relaxing things I wanted to do.
My novel is just as unwritten as before. Pages of letter paper are still blank. The half-finished embroidery project is still half-finished. The sewing is still unsewn.
But.
I went swimming in the river every day, spending time braced against the submerged rock in the deep spot, luxuriating in the feeling of the cool water sliding over my skin.
I spent an afternoon reading and napping in my hammock, listening to the crickets and birds.
I went for walks, for drives. I finished a knitting project and started another. I bought a crokinole board from the old gentleman at the farmers market who makes them by hand. I drove us out to Thornbury for ice cream and a walk along the water. I sat solo by the water towers and watched the sun go down. I felt sorry for myself at one point but managed to stop the mood before it could slide any further from alone to lonely.
I spent most of the time in or around the house. I love our house.
Keith asked yesterday while we were walking by the river, if it was fate or luck that landed us here. I said something flippant in answer, but it’s been on my mind. The better answer would be, it feels like fate, because I’ve never really been this lucky.
It feels…right. Right to be in our yellow house out in the boonies where most of our sparse-by-our-standards traffic is pickup trucks and farm vehicles. I love my commute through farms and fields and pastures, along rivers and the escarpment, where every view is lovely.
And I am grateful: to Keith’s mother who saved and invested so diligently to give us this nest egg, to Keith for so so much more than just embracing the move to this new lifestyle, to Side Launch for hiring me so I can live in this heaven, to whatever Fates or gods have landed me right here at this now.
Saw the Last Jedi yesterday with my beloved, and I can see now why all the white fanboys are all in a tizzy; the only representation they had was for hot heads who get people killed or damaged heroes who run away to hide from their mistakes.
From my perspective, it was refreshing to see women and minorities cast as characters who rise to occasion, save the day, and if it can’t be saved then pick up the pieces and keep going.
Every day, the shower routine is the same; start at the top and work my way down.
Shampoo the hair, rinse.
Wash the face, rinse.
Squeeze body wash on the floofy thing, wash arms (left first , left underarm then under and around the boobs, right arm, right underarm), belly, genitals, ass, down the left leg, then down the right leg. Rinse.
Same routine for drying, same order. For like the last fifteen thousand showers.
It’s not that I’ve ritualized it or made it a thing, it just seems the most efficient way. Of course, I’m sure that’s what people say who have ritualized a routine task or made it a thing.
But today I was distracted, stressed by waiting on other people, thinking about all the soon-to-happen changes and just how easy it would be for one thread to be pulled and unravel the whole damn thing (no, not really, I’m being dramatic for effect), and I washed out of order. And then I dried out of order.
My whole day has since felt a bit…off. Different. Like a bra that got put in the dryer instead of air dried, it still fits but it’s tight in the wrong places and is a constant reminder that shit isn’t quite right in a very small and slightly irksome way.
I’m not sure I like it, but I’m sure I don’t hate it. Kinda like masturbating with the left hand instead of the right. It just feels….weird.
I wish I was the kind of person who could cry freely, who could weep and wail and teat at her hair and clothing and let it all out. And once it was all out, it would be like after a summer thunderstorm, cleansed and fresh and ready to move on.
Instead, I suppress because I have the background that I have; repressed. I hold it in, push it down. A few tears might leak out, a few sobs or cries. But no more. It leaves me feeling worse, with a headache and scratchy dry eyes.
I really wish I could cry.
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