Tag: life

Personal Beliefs

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

It’s possible that I take the “personal” part of personal beliefs a little too seriously. As in they’re my beliefs and they’re none of your business.

Seriously. This blog post isn’t about what I believe but why I keep my beliefs to myself.

I was raised by two atheists. Please note that sentence. I was raised BY two atheists; I wasn’t raised TO BE atheist. I was raised to believe whatever I wanted to believe.

As a kid, I decided to explore the possibility of God and religion. Over the years I went to a few different churches. It might be hard to believe, but at one point I was a very good Bible quizzer. I can still quote bits of Luke.

My parents were cool with it. They never told me I couldn’t go to church, never told me I was wrong, never told me I was stupid. They respected my choice and let me find my own way. They never once pushed their beliefs on me.

My parents set a pretty good example for me in that respect. The word “God” wasn’t an assault on what they believed; it was just another word. They didn’t care that it was in the Pledge of Allegiance or written on money. It had nothing to do with what they believed at the time and as far as they were concerned, in those contexts, it wasn’t infringing on their beliefs and trying to make them change their mind.

It was quite liberating to be brought up in a household like that. I was never made to feel threatened or forced to get defensive about what I believed and I learned to return in kind.

I also learned to keep it to myself.

Without being expressly told, I learned that personal beliefs were just that. Personal. They’re mine, all mine. No one can give them to me, no one can take them away, and I can’t force them on anyone else. I have to admit that due to my years of spiritual exploration my beliefs are pretty customized. It wouldn’t be easy to preach my gospel.

And I wouldn’t want to. Oh, I will discuss it when asked about it provided that I feel the conversation is safe for expression. When I talk about my beliefs, it’s not an invitation for conversion. I’m not trying to convert you, don’t bother trying to convert me. Don’t worry about saving my soul or convincing me with science. I’m good where I’m at, thanks, and I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to you.

It really boggles me when people express their personal beliefs like they are the statement of utter right. What ego must go into that. What disrespect for anyone who doesn’t think the same. What blindness to think that your beliefs won’t be criticized when you put them on display like that.

There’s another thing. It’s hard to insult me about what I believe when you don’t know what I believe. Oh, I’ve had my feathers ruffled before by people saying things, but the insults weren’t direct because there was no way the offending person could know any differently. I could have, of course, pointed it out, but there’s no satisfaction in the correction when the person just says, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about YOU”.

Instead, I comfort myself in the thought that the person running their mouth is really telling more about themselves than the group they’re insulting. And, yes, I’ve been equally offended by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m human. I think some things that some people believe are absolutely ridiculous and can’t even begin to understand it. But I try to keep as much of that to myself as I can. If I don’t like people offending me, then I need to work hard to be the bigger person and not offend them. It’s hard and I fail, but I keep trying.

Why?

It’s one of my personal beliefs.

And, yeah, for the most part, I keep it to myself.

Obessesions

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I will be the first person to admit that I am given to fixations. I find something that interests me and then I make it my mission to learn as much as I can about it. I get waist deep in the subject. It takes up quite a bit of my time and my mind.

I guess you could say I get temporarily obsessed.

I wouldn’t call it a problem (as denial would be fitting for such things) because it doesn’t interfere with my functioning. In some ways, it actually improves my functioning.

My obsessions become something to look forward to, something to get excited about. They improve my mood. They give me something to focus on and give me a place to go to when I need a break from the world. I need a warm fuzzy or a smile or a bit of comfort, it’s my hut on the beach, my winter cabin in the woods.

Naturally, this sort of behavior can be disconcerting. You get too deep into an obsession and extraction takes professional help at $150 an hour and maybe a backwards fitting jacket, if the obsession consumes enough of you. Luckily enough for me, I get bored before that sort of thing happens.

Okay, it’s true. There are some obsessions that I have carried with me for years, but not at a maintained intensity. I fell in love the The Monkees when I was six and twenty-five years later, that hasn’t changed. The obsession peaked my senior year of high school, the intensity fading within a year of graduating. But I still listen to the music, watch the show, and collect the memorabilia. It’s a designated safe place for me to go when I need a boost.

 I acquire my obessions in various ways. Sometimes I stumble into them. Sometimes they come from friends. Some I’ve had so long that I feel like I’ve been born with them. Often times as the intensity of one obession fades, I’ll acquire a new one or the intensity of an old one will rev up.

I’m sure that there’s no coincidence that the intensity of my obessions goes hand and hand with dreary times in my life. When my Monkees obsession hit its peak, I was in the midst of a depression slide following my parents’ divorce. School was where I went to be a normal teenager and the Monkees were my happy place.

Last summer was a dismal one for me. My laptop crashed, my Internet failed, and it was a nightmare trying to put all of the pieces back together. Considering that at the time the bulk of my money was made via the Internet in some form (either selling stories or selling stuff on eBay), I was feeling the pressure and I was feeling pretty low.

With a sudden influx of time on my hands, I turned to watching the Cubs play to stop from chewing myself up. I’ve been a Cubs fan since I was a kid, watching the games and checking the standings. But last summer, it became my obsession. My scheduled revolved around the games. Instead of waiting and stressing about getting a new computer and getting the Internet issue resolved and how I was going to make up for lost time, I transferred that emotion and devotion to my Cubs. It became a safe emotional outlet. And despite the miserable season, it became my happy place.

It’s still my happy place, even in the off-season. There’s still news to be kept up with and there’ll be more than just warm weather to look forward to.

Now I imagine the intensity of this obsession, as with the others, will fade, but my love of baseball and the Cubs will remain. In turn, something else will take its place, a new bit of happy to warm the cockles of my cold, black heart and be my new refuge from the harshness of reality and life.

It might drive my friends and family crazy sometimes, but it sure beats drinking.

Journal Crazy

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

My mother gave me a journal as part of the now defunct “Aunt Kiki” holiday. Pretty and purple, the script on the cover says “Me, Myself, and I: An Instrospective Collection of My Innermost Thougths and Feelings” and the design features three faces in a knotwork ontop of a silver diamond, and it sat for a month before I wrote in it.

In that first journal I admitted that part of my hestance wasn’t just marring a pristine page; I was afraid to remove my innermost thoughts from the safety of my brain. Out of my head, they could be exposed to prying eyes with no respect for privacy and judged harshly. Worse, out of my head, they could be real.

The reluctance is evident in that first journal. First of all, I didn’t use it much. The entries begin July of 2003 and end January 2008. Nearly five years. Secondly, there’s a sense of holding back in some of the earlier entries. I was too scared to put down everything into words, all the thoughts, all the emotions, all the crazy bouncing around in my head.

You can see me get more comfortable with opening up over the course of the entries in that first journal. I got better at it and I did it more frequently.

My second journal I believe Carrie bought me as a birthday present. It’s rainbow colored, cheerful and simple, and I’d say it has about as many pages as my first one. The entries in it cover from January of 2008 until December of 2009.

Yeah, I got a lot better at writing in it more often. I started using it more as it was intended. Instead of being afraid of putting my thoughts down on paper, it became THE place to put my thoughts to get them out of my head. It became the refuge of my frustrations, mostly. It let me get the things off of my chest that other people wouldn’t, mostly because the ensuing arguement would be pointless and solve nothing.

It also became the locked box for the mushiest part of my heart, allowing me to explore those sweet, vulnerable feelings I don’t like to admit I have. There are some romantic ideas in those pages. Ideas that would absolutely shock the people who know me as the horror loving hard-ass that make men cry for their mothers and make women try to befriend me so I won’t eat them.

My last journal was red. That’s it. Just red. The entries cover from December of 2009 to January of this year. This is the journal I got truly comfortable in. This is the journal I put my craziest thoughts in. I gave myself permission to be absolutely ambitious and hopeful and unrealistic and unrestrained. There is some serious, wild insanity on those pages and to date, if there were any journals I’d burn before my death, that would be the first one on the fire.

Since that first journal, I’ve moved from being reluctant to dependent. I did my last entry in my red journal on my birthday with no new journal waiting for me. I’m slowly moving into frantic mode. I have things to write down, thougths that need ink! I’ve gone from not even shrugging at the idea of missing a couple of months to feeling guilty if I only have two entries for a given month.

Right now, I’m thinking about all of the things, good, bad, and crazy, I want to put in my new journal as soon as I get it. I fantasize about marring those clean pages with the inner workings of my mind. It’s going to feel so good to get all of that out.

And with any luck at all, in thirty years I’ll be able to read back over those stored thoughts and marvel at how I functioned, coped, struggled, and felt during those important years, some of which may be lost to the sands of time by then.

More likely, though, I’ll just shake my head and laugh and think, “Wow. You were really kinda nuts back then, weren’t you?” before putting down my old journal and picking up a new journal to scribble once again.

The Holiday Gauntlet

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Every year I run the holiday gauntlet. I’m sure lots of people do it, but this isn’t about them; it’s about me.

The gauntlet starts with Thanksgiving. I attend dinner with my dad’s side of the family at my Aunt Jo’s. Some years I’m responsible for shuttling the nieces down, too. It’s a nice way to ease into the craziness that follows in the weeks to come.

From that point on, it’s a matter of wrangling presents, buying them if I can afford it or making them if I can’t, wrapping them, mailing them, piling them up with the rest of my Christmas paraphernalia in the corner of my room. This likely takes me until the week of the holiday because I’m lousy at coming up with gift ideas in a timely fashion, and if I do come up with something, then I tend to misjudge the amount of time I have to get it. Somehow, I always managed to squeak in under the wire.

My middle niece was cursed with having her birthday exactly a week before Christmas. My mom doesn’t put out any Christmas decorations until afterwards so she can have the day and of course, I’m there for it to give her present and enjoy some cupcakes. It’s like a warm-up.

The week of Chrstimas is probably my most dreaded week of the year. It’s the logistics of trying to squeeze in as many Christmases as necessary so everyone is satisfied (this happens when you have divorced parents, divorced grandparents, and traveling grandparents). One year, I ended up doing six Christmases in four days. It was a nightmare and I’ve resented Christmas ever since. Typically, though, I usually have no more than three. Last year, I only had two. This year I’m only having two. It’s like a vacation only having two.

Part of the headache of doing the Christmases is the traveling. A trip to my mom’s is usually no big deal, just a twenty minute drive. A trip to my Aunt Jo’s is about the same amount of time, but in the opposite direction. But there have been years in which I drove to my mom’s on the 23rd and 24th for Christmases and then on Christmas drove north to her house, picked up the nieces, drove south to my Aunt Jo’s, had Christmas, then drove north to take the girls home, then drove south to take myself home. The entire Christmas ping pong trip ends up being about 150 miles. It’s a lot of driving for a day full of food and presents and sometimes crappy weather.

Sure, other people drive that distance in a day. My grandparents pretty much have to in order to make their Christmas rounds. But, I think it’s more exhausting to drive it like a fish on speed trapped in a small bowl.

After the mania that is Christmas begins the slow cool down. New Year’s Eve is a raucous affair for a lot of people, but for me, it’s a quiet business of a marathon of some sort (last year it was Mystery Science Theater 3000) with some snacks, sparkling grape juice, and a friend or two. Nothing big, nothing drunken, nothing fancy. Just a quiet ringing in of the New Year.

My oldest niece’s birthday is January 11th and, you know it, I’m there for cupcakes (or cheesecake) and presents. It’s the last trip I have to make and by that point, I’m tired of driving 51 North.

The gauntlet ends on my birthday the next day, January 12th. My mom usually just lumps my birthday in with my niece’s, which has led to some interesting birthday cakes over the years. I can’t blame her. By that point, all of my friends and relatives are tired of celebrating things. Even if I had the energy to do anything special, I’d most likely be doing it alone. The last time I went out on my birthday, I was twenty-six and ended up puking at the bar, so maybe it’s just best I’m too tired to do anything anyway.

It then takes me until Thanksgiving to rest up for the next run.

This is why the people who love Christmas baffle me. I think of them like I think of people who enjoy running marathons; it’s hard for me to enjoy anything when I’m struggling so hard just to breathe.

Despite the craziness and my Grinch-like demeanor, I do enjoy the quiet, sweet moments with family and friends. And the food. And the free stuff.

Rob Whoville!

Rob Whoville!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Ah, December. The time of year when people talk about goodwill toward men and showing the love and giving and sharing and lots of other mushy, squishy feelings we’re only fine with showing one month out of twelve. There are a lot of holidays that occur during December and most of them run with the same kind of warm fuzzies. Christmas (Jesus’s birthday version, Santa Claus version, and the combo platter), Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Yule, Solstice, Festivus, and probably several more that I’m either forgetting or not aware of. 

Though I celebrate Christmas (more of the Santa Claus version as I was raised by atheists and am now myself an agnostic of sorts), I no longer wish people a Merry Christmas. I don’t say Happy Holidays. I tell people to Rob Whoville.

Why?

Because people, while talking about the “true spirit of the season”, act out the actual spirit of the season which is, of course, MINE! These people who decry the commercialism, selfishness, and absolute material greed of the holiday season actually personify it all beautifully in a religious sense with their insistance that December only has room for one holiday and it’s theirs and theirs alone.

Love your fellow man, so long as he bids you the proper holiday greeting and celebrates the same holiday as you. Cry and plead to the masses about the lack of tolerance you’re getting, but not about the lack of tolerance you yourself are showing.

Well, I’ve got news for you, kids. Just because you don’t celebrate it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong and it doesn’t exist. That goes for EVERYBODY. If you’re going to preach the meaning of the season outside of Black Friday and door buster sales, then you need to be willing to practice it, too.

As I said before, there are a lot of holidays that are celebrated in December. There’s nothing wrong with wishing people Happy Holidays, just like there’s nothing wrong with saying Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, or any of the rest of them. ALL OF THOSE ARE CORRECT. Even if you don’t celebrate the particular holiday, somebody does and it’s okay to politely acknowledge that. Your face will not melt, you will not spontaneously combust, and Santa will not skip your house.

It’s unfortunate that for all the talk about kindness and giving during the season, it ends up being only talk because to be truly selfless and kind would mean giving up being “right”. And laws knows we can’t be having with that.

So if simply expressing a season’s greeting is offensive, then I’m going for broke with my December motto. Why pick sides in this holiday “war” when I can create my own side and offend everyone? Sure, my motto might take some explaining, but I don’t mind that. Some things are worth explaining.

Remember, it wasn’t until the Grinch robbed Whoville that he learned the TRUE spirit of the holiday. Maybe people need to experience a little kind of larceny to really get it. Maybe they need someone to steal their pride.

Rob Whoville.

The Late Bloomer Blues

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I can remember going to my mother the eve of my thirteenth birthday quite upset. Tearfully, I told her that I didn’t want to be a teenager. I didn’t want to grow-up.

Needless to say, my mother had no idea what to do with that. What kid doesn’t want to grow up? That’s what every kid wants. They want to big. They want to be older. They want to do whatever the adults are doing because the adults get to do whatever they want!

And I wanted to stay a kid. Baffling to say the least.

The truth is I’m a late bloomer. Intellectually, I was ahead of many of my peers, but emotionally, I was behind. This gap has caused some problems. I’ve lived that line, “Old enough to know better, but still too young to care.” The trouble is that it’s not as fun as it sounds. Well, most of the time. What I mean is that I know where I’m supposed to be emotionally, how I should be behaving and responding to things, but my emotions are too far behind to respond correctly. And by the time I get my emotions to the level they’re supposed to be, my age has moved on to a greater level.

It’s frustrating. It’s one of those things that I can’t so much work on as cope with. I’ve learned to accept that I am just slow on the uptake when it comes to certain aspects of my life. At this point, I figure the emotional maturity gap to be about five to seven years behind my actual age. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the situation.

Now, let’s not confuse this with wisdom. I’ve been told most of my life that I’m wise beyond my years. My friends often come to me with their problems because I’m so good at sorting things out and finding a solution. I’m very good with knowledge and logic. I do so well with them because my emotions aren’t a factor.

When it comes to acting and reacting, to coping and dealing with my own feeling and my own heart, I’m a sloppy mess of a person because I know what I should do and how it should go, and yet, it doesn’t. I should be beyond certain reactions. I’m still waiting for those knee-jerk reactions and flashes of anger and giddy butterflies to mature. In the meantime, I struggle to make them behave beyond their years. It doesn’t always work.

I hope one day things even out and my emotions catch up to the rest of me, but until then, I’ll deal.

At least I stopped pushing the boys I liked into mud puddles.

Three years ago.

A Mess of My Own Making

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I have no problem admitting that the mess I currently find myself in is all my own fault. Of course it’s my fault.  To say otherwise would be to say that other people have been controlling me and that’s the last thing I’ll admit.

Okay, so it’s entirely possible that other people may have influenced the decisions that I made that led me to be in this mess. I know that I don’t operate in a vacuum. I know that I affect other people and they affect me. But the idea of blaming my life on my parents, or my family, or my friends, or the cruel, cruel Universe doesn’t appeal to me. I prefer to take the blame and the responsibility for my actions.

Ah, responsibility. For some people, money is the root of their problems (to be fair, money is a big part of mine right now, but that’s another post); for me it’s responsibility. It’s the root of my mess. Not that I don’t take responsibility for myself, but because I end up taking responsibilites that aren’t mine. Astrologers say that’s the lot of a Capricorn’s life. Well, it’s the bog of mine.

When my parents split when I was fifteen, I became responsible for myself in an adult sense for the first time in my life, which I admit was a rough transition for a late bloomer like me that had been somewhat sheltered from the grown-up world. I went from kid to adult in less than a month. What’s worse was that I found myself been put in the middle of my parents’ divorce as an adult, being made privvy to their bile and venom for each other like I was a friend to vent to and not the result of their combined DNA. It was also the beginning of my unpaid career as a messenger.

When my sister got pregnant the first time, it became my responsibility to see that my niece made it to family functions on my father’s side. My grandpa never emailed or tried to get a hold of my sister; he always got a hold of me and told me to bring the baby down. This doubled with the birth of my second niece and tripled with the birth of my third. Never once was it laid on my sister’s head to ferry her children down to see the family; it was me. And when my mom adopted the girls, I was held even more responsible for them in that way because my sister was off the hook. She removed herself from the responsibility pond entirely when she moved to Texas. 

My sister never had to hear about it from my father or his side of the family for her mistakes. I heard it all. My mother is spared the rants I have to endure from my father when it comes to the girls. I’m the one who bears the brunt of the disappointment from my grandfather when my nieces can’t make it to a family get together for whatever reason.

Honestly, all of THIS responsibility put me off of taking any grown-up responsibility for myself. I still live with my dad (and now a roommate) because the idea of moving out and trapping myself in a job that I hate just to make ends meet just so I could say that I was out on my own didn’t flip my skirt. Why would I want to take on all of THAT when I was already dealing with all of THIS? Then I quit my job and decided to become a writer and now I can’t move out even though now I want to because I’m flat broke because the only part of the starving artist stereotype I’ve mastered is the starving part (my bank account is definitely starving). So, once again I’m looking at taking a crap job to make money, which will require me adjusting my writing schedule to accomidate it and I’ll still end up stuck in this house and the only headway I’ll make is the satisfaction in not having to ask my dad for money.

That’s if I can get hired somewhere. The job hunt has not been positive up to this point.

So I’m broke, living at home, and struggling to turn an unsuccessful writing career into a successful one.

I take responsibility for that. I take credit for it. I had choices to make, I made them, and it led me to this point.

Now I have new choices to make. And I only hope I can make the right ones that get me out of this mess.

I’m ready to take responsibility for some victories now.