Third-Person to First- Then Back Again

When you live your life carving out a certain path and when, more potently, you make a concerted effort to maintain that carved lifestyle, you grow accustomed to a certain set of questions, comments… conversations.

You smile on your end.  And you give the answer that your audience wants- after a while, after all, it is entirely to easy to read most people: what they are looking for in a response, what will make them feel good.  You can anticipate both the question and the answer in demand.  So color me surprised today when a coworker asked not 'why' or 'what for' when he remembered that I am leaving in about a week to move to Norway.  Not 'why' or 'what for' but 'you running to something or away from something?'

Are you running to something or away from something?

Am I running to something or away from something?

How prescient of this man who hardly knows me; who hardly knows that there really has never been a 'to' or 'from' for me.  It is just running.

I am just running.

Because it is what I do, how I roll- I run.  I have made a life out of running- out of burning, moving on, moving around, making a mockery of traditional life-paths.  And yes, this is all absolutely something I have written about before- on more than one occasion.  But it is, once again, and for obvious reasons, on my mind.

Hello Nomadism (Nomadisme [lame] in Norwegian)- it's nice to be acquainted again… and facing the running realities again.  The go-go-go until you can't go anymore and then you sleep before waking to run again.

When you live your life in a certain style, you accept that certain- no fundamental- human or social experiences will be absent from your own individual, personal experience (even as much as you accept all the questions, comments and conversations).  Maybe you even resign yourself to this fact- it's your life that you're living, your experiences that you're cataloging, your own world that you are shaping: what is or is not included in those things… well that's on you, right?

Right?

You are your own alienator.  You are the one who pulls people in or pushes them aside.  You are the one who retreats, recedes.  You (I) are (am) the one who makes (made) a life for your(my)self in which you (I) are (am) infinitely forgettable, replaceable, running.

And Until Next Time, Dearests...

The Birthday Blog

For the past four years or so, I've made an effort to blog on my father's birthday.

Today is that Day.  Each time I try to outdo my first birthday post.  Last year I think I got sort of close even though it was far more sentimental than it was humorous.  This year, I got The Bob a rather large machete as a gift.*

So let's see about this post, hey?

First of all, I'd like to, on behalf of The Bob, apologize to all of the men in my life.  Get over it…. You are never going to be him.  You are never going to inhabit the space in my heart and soul that he does.  You will never take up the amount of space in my heart and soul that he does.  I will likely never consider any of you as even half the man that he is.

Oops- his bad.

Next up I'd like to go through a wee bit of a photographic rundown- or what I'd like to call 'Evidence the The Bob Can Never Deny Paternity of TheBobsDottir.'

The next apology I will make on behalf of my father is the fact that I am tirelessly challenging and unapologetically (note the irony there) untethered (and note the irony there, too).  I am challenging because he challenged me to be so.  I am untethered because of the freedom gifted to me by my parents (yes both- even though this is The Bob's Birthday Blog, Mom is a pretty formidable counterpart with an equal  - who constantly pushed me to realize the world…. 

That's it. 

They pushed me to realize the world.  

On my beloved father's birthday, instead of wishing him happiness- which I ceaselessly do- I'd instead like to thank him.  I'd like to thank him for my happiness.  I'd like to thank him for my childhood, for my adulthood.  I'd like to thank him for my standards.  I'd like to thank him for the hand he had, and still has, in raising me and shaping who I am- the person I am becoming, the person that I will be, the person into which I am constantly evolving.  

I'd like to thank my father for me.  

And wish him another Most Happy Birthday.  

I love you, Daddy, 

And Until Next Time… 

*I told my boss, who scoffed at the machete idea, that everyone else will get him fantastically awesome gifts (of this I am sure)- meanwhile I am the slightly iconoclastic nutter who he counts on for the ridiculous gifts.  Hence- the machete.

April Showers-

-Lead to entirely too much time to obsess.

I am late in this one.  I know, I know, I know.  But Holy Bananas, I cannot get enough of The Walking Dead.  And Netflix has made this obsession exceptionally easy to dwell on- that's right, they have the first three seasons streaming.  To be totally honest, I talk a big game BUT… I can only binge on a few episodes a time before I start having auditory hallucinations- so there's that (No Kate, that's not a Zombie- that's just someone snoring in the other room).  I mean, I started watching it in order to stop the unnecessary goading from a certain someone (yes, I am a pansy- get over it!)  But yeah… now I totally get it.  I also get the Daryl obsession floating around the interblogs.  Hellooooo, Norman Reedus- you are getting added to the short list.

I should have included these guys in my last obsessions post.  I discovered them when I was last in Norway (I think everyone else knew them, I think, from this most recent World Cup- some sort of theme song thingy).  X Ambassadors are pretty much on constant repeat on my iPod.  Especially having downloaded their second EP.  This song makes me simultaneously happy and sad.  There is an honesty and rawness to his voice that makes it both ultra-masculine and ultra-appealing.  Brother does the same thing to me, the happy and the sad.  It's one of those songs with wrenching lyrics couched in a  pretty harmony.

Goodness, enough of that.

This website has become an endless time suck- as well as an inspiration for some *ahem* potential artwork.

Since beginning to work at REI, I have formed an unhealthy attachment to a certain fixture- one which houses all manner of fitness tracking devices: FitBits, Jawbones, Suunto watches.  In particular, the side that is closest to my line of vision has the display for  the Garmin line of trackers.  And boy howdy, have I talked myself into and out of a Garmin Vivo Fit2 (or VivoSmart) about a thousand times.  And here's the thing… on the list of things that I need to get together before moving to Norway- Garmin ranks cavernously low- far below the numbers one and two: extra contact lenses and meds for Henry.  Not to mention that I don't actually need any extra incentive for watching what I eat and how much I move- yeah. Right.  I'm a fairly accomplished anorexic, let's be honest, I do just fine on my own.

This website is messing with my head (see above).

I'm going to put this out there- judge me if you want- but I like the new Mumford and Sons single.  There, I said it.  Continuity be damned, shake it up!

BOLO for a blog on The Bob's birthday- which makes the obsessions list only because I try to top myself every year.  Not that every year is better than the last, only that one year in particular still makes me happy to have written- yes, I'm obsessed with my own writing- let it go, I'm otherwise utterly without ego.  The Birthday Blog, thanks to an unaware auntie, has become on of my yearly favorites and it's about time to start obsessing and a-typing.

And Until the 22nd.  Happy Obsessing.

Why I Fight

The Rabbit Hole is a weird place.  It's weird when you're standing at it's precipice, toes hooked around the edges, staring down with the experienced knowledge that one little shuffle and you're in it, in free-fall (alternatively, one big leap and you're on the other side, safe for at least a heartbeat longer).  It's weird when you lean in and let go.  It's weird when you're plummeting down it, not sure where the end is; not entirely convinced that there is an end.  And it's half impossible to get out of until you hit the other side- wherever that is.

It's exceptionally weird when you are trying to climb back out of it.

The Rabbit Hole is a weird, weird place; and one which I am intimately familiar with.  I've spent my fair share of time there, in varying states of well-being (mental, physical, emotional, you name it)- sometimes wallowing, sometimes resting, sometimes hiding, waiting, wandering, healing, hurting, pacing, bracing, desperate.

The one constant there, here, is that I fight- whether I am in it or not, falling or flying.  Every day I fight the Hole, I fight myself, I fight everyone around me.  I would fight the world if that's what it took.

Every day I fight for the privilege of counting myself amongst the living.  Every day I fight to move as many steps forward as I can muster because who knows when I will find myself taking ever-more steps backward, tripping, and starting that soul-numbing slide toward

N
O
T
H
I
N
G
N
E
S
S…

Every day I fight.

I fight because I have a family that loves me.  I fight because maybe I will someday have a family of my own.  I fight because I have a little blond dog who likes to jump on me, bark at me, and snuggle me when I'm feeling down.

Some days I fight simply because it seems like the thing I should do.  I fight because I'm contrary- the disease that kills me comforts me, and I hate that so I make it pay by fighting.  I fight because I feel like I should be above this bullshit by now- even though I know that I never can be, not fully.  I fight because weakness annoys me, not because death scares me.

I fight because I like a challenge- I thrive when I fight.

I fight because if I don't, I'm done.