books / life

being lost.

• by kerri

Society has this vendetta against being lost.

I’m reading The Road to Becoming by Jenny Simmons right now. It’s opening my mind to the fact that lost can be okay. I mentally made a commitment to read more books about lostness (though, I think that the majority of books are kind of, in a way, written about lostness in one form or another). I did re-find The Art of Non-Conformity in my room, though—The War of Art is somewhere I cannot find.

Fitting.

Yesterday, my friend Drew asked on Facebook “Since a lot of people check in on *me*, how are *you*?”

I replied,

I am far too awake for midnight, and far too content with being mildly misplaced in this season of my life.

Misplaced is really the same as lost. Lost does not always mean forever: misplaced and lost, in the sense of being, are very much the same.

I am pretty okay with being here. Here means there is room for ideas, for growth, for challenge and change and hope. It means I can try new things because the old things clearly aren’t reciprocating as they need to be.

Except society really isn’t interested in teaching twenty-three-year-old university graduates who are funemployed* what they are doing, where they are, is okay.

*Funemployed is a word that probably my cousin Dean invented (or stole) one summer when I was unemployed. I use it now to describe my sort-of employed state doing projects that only sort of count as employment and/or don’t pay me yet.

The Road to Becoming has a chapter called Iowa Cornfield, and the next called Lost Girl.

Some people are desperate for a detour. It’s a pretty good litmus test for figuring out if you are in the right place or not. if you can’t stand your current situation and secretly wish the road you are on would close in front of you so you can take a much-needed detour, it’s probably time for a life change. Don’t wait for the road to crumble; it might not ever happen. Pack your bags and get going. You have permission to write your own Road Closed sign.

I wasn’t interested in any of that Road Closed business. I wanted a road. My road. The original one that we had a map for. So my answer was to stay at the Road Closed sign until someone from the Iowa Department of Transportation showed up to explain themselves and cleared their stuff OUT OF MY WAY so I could continue on the road I planned on taking.

I will sit here until you build me a road. Take that, highway bureau.

—

The thing is, I’ve never been given the option to lay out the roads. The only choice I get is what to do when the road suddenly ends.

—Jenny Simmons, The Road to Becoming (page 99)

I don’t know much about Iowa cornfields, but as soon as I saw Lost Girl at the top of that page, I knew that this book landed in my hands right now for this reason.

Self-reliance, fully mapped out futures, and divine epiphanies; these were the things that young adults should strive for—not lostness. Accepting lostness as a viable way of existing, if even for a short season, is not a mantra our culture is familiar with.It certainly sounded backwards to a girl who was desperate to move forward.

[…] Time to accept the seemingly insignificant nothingness of the blank page in front of me.

—Jenny Simmons, The Road to Becoming (page 104-105)

Lostness is, perhaps, the fervent search to find where you are going right now. It does not matter for how long, maybe lost is a place after all, whereas misplaced is a temporary-ism without the intensity of lostness. To do things without having to commit to them forever, to get by, to explore, to do things you’d never anticipate because you are now that person in that place you never thought you would be because the world prepared you otherwise.

The world doesn’t prepare us for lostness. We prepare ourselves.

We don’t all get to be lost. Even fewer of us don’t all get to embrace being lost. I tried already to become found quickly, and through that, I’ve only discovered that found probably isn’t even where I want to be right now—and definitely isn’t where I need to be. Six months ago, I made the realization, again, that I am more happy discontent—at least in this season. And being funemployed for the last five months challenged me to learn how to embrace that discontent.

I am living inside a blank page, a blank canvas, a Word document with only the cursor blinking.

I am content in discontent.

life / quantified self / quantify this

february: in numbers

• by kerri

Happy March! After a great day at goalball (my arm hurts from throwing! :]) and attempting to make things out of loom bands again (I mostly failed, I finally made a pencil grip), I’d consider this a strong start. Looking back on February, I’m going to try to one-up [at least!] all these numbers during March. It has more days, after all…

Blog posts: 8 (January – 11.)

Steps: 103,648 per intraday Fitbit exports; 120,915 per Fitline (these should be using the same data?!); 106,708 per Zenobase. (What did I pay for Fitline, then?!) Regardless: more movement needed. (Averaging 44 fairly active minutes per day, though. Cool.)

Tracks: Added to the running 2015 playlist: 4 (maybe 5).

Pictures taken: 467

The amusing thing is, it seems most of the sites I have set up to give me stats on such things… do not send those reports on the first of the month if it is a Sunday [or I just have things set to start the week on Monday. So… stay tuned for updates.

103,648

friends / health + fitness / life / wellness

my chronic disease secret

• by kerri

Most of the time, I try to be of the voice that life with chronic disease can still be awesome.

But that doesn’t mean chronic disease doesn’t suck.

A couple years ago, my friend Chris launched My Diabetes Secret. An innocent question from him lead to a discussion, and then… to this:

My Chronic Disease Secret.

“A safe place to share your chronic disease secrets. No judgement. No shame. No stigma. Merely catharsis through honesty.”

I like this a lot.

Huge props to Chris for investing his time in setting up these projects.

Share your story. Even if nobody knows it’s yours.
Or if that’s too hard, share. Just read, even.
And keep going. If you need them, there are resources, people, who can help—even if you just want to type.

I hope you’ll check it out.

asthma / health + fitness / health advocacy / life

“thank you for being so patient”

• by kerri

This morning, I was helping (or not helping, as the case may be) with the set-up of a new website. Two provinces away on the phone was the doctor I was “assisting” to navigate a new WordPress install.

[Note: She ended up calling tech support, so I can’t say I was all that helpful ;).]

During this call, though, she said “Thank you for being so patient!”

While this was in reference to the understandable frustrations of technology and distance (1400 kilometres is a bit of a distance to lend support on a host I’d never used!), perhaps it should be used in different patient-doctor scenarios.

How many times has your doctor (as a patient)/have you (as a physician) entered the room a) late, b) visibly stressed, c) without having consulted your notes first, or d) all of the above?

In any of these situations, I’d much rather hear “Thank you for being so patient,” over “Sorry”. Being thanked values my time, energy and investment into being a patient. Apologies mean little when they’re overused: apologize when you, as a healthcare provider, have screwed up; when something has happened and you could have done better, acknowledge it! Help reinstate the value of being truly sorry—we can tell when you’re being sincere, anyways.  Chronic patients realize that these things—being late, stressed, needing a second to check our charts—are facts of life in the healthcare system. It’s why I am reasonably patient (and pleasant) as much as I can be when dealing with my medical team, and make the effort to thank every single person I encounter in the hospital or clinic whenever possible: I appreciate the work you do, that these professions do not have nearly enough resources, and that everyone taking care of me has far more than me to think about. I want the people caring for me to know that.

And just as I, as a patient, appreciate the work that healthcare professionals do, I’d much rather the apologies be saved for when they’re truly needed, and instead, my experience be recognized and appreciated.

“Thank you for being so patient,” works for me.

life / music

soundtrack saturday – january / february.

• by kerri

2015, well, like the end of 2014… It’s been a weird year so far. Here we are, nearing the end of February, and unlike how I ambitiously pounced onto soundtracking 2013 and 2014… This year has been much different. It’s like I started the year in either seven different directions, or none at all, and I still have no idea where I’m even attempting to go. Which feels pretty uncharacteristic for me, and I am not sure I really like it.

Which I suppose is why, we start the list of contenders here… with courage and control…

Courage and Control – Brandon Boyd.

 

I thought I’d be on track again by the beginning of January. After the first couple weeks into the year, I found myself growing kind of despondent. I’d left 2014 with two of my descriptors—student and childcare assistant—lingering within it. It was a weird feeling, and not having a proper go-to-work job (or have “jobs”, but little/no work), left little to distract from those feelings as I often would do, also not having school to bury myself into.

The boulevard is bustling
A vast and wrinkled muselin
To hold over my eyes and
I know I don’t belong.
There is a noise inside of me
That bustles asymmetrically
Oh, how have I to balance
Those sounds into a song?

It’s time to let your hair down
and give yourself permission
It takes courage and control…
but you start by letting go.

Letting go is hard. Especially when your life is so absorbed in certain things/places/people, and suddenly, they are gone—basically fully, completely gone—and you’re left with thoughts rivalling both the moving part of a massive freeway and a gridlock.

The city’s an analogy
For things building inside of me
This chaos and this discourse
Still we move along.
But chaos sings of symmetry
And all her words are poetry
And that’s the kind of city
Which I want to belong

I know there are better places, things, opportunities ahead. Accepting that the present is what it is, though, and there is little I can do about it. Letting go is very much active, not passive. In January, I finally let go of many things.

All i think,
I feel,
I see.
Oh, that this place
it’s not me.
I want to belong,
but be wild and free
Oh, he who asks
receives. 

And gained others.

 

Of Men and Angels – The Rocket Summer

Around the time I met with Richard in January, this song was rather constantly buzzing its way around my head.

Stop the press, everything a mess
You can look alive, but you are not at rest
and i-ideas, are flowing through your head
a million miles an hour while lying in your bed
A lucid life you never thought you’d lead
Are you working every day, are you working just to bleed?
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

Right here, this can be what ADHD feels like. I’ve continued to embrace and grow in my ADHD diagnosis so far this year, and it’s been interesting (another post for another day :].)
This next part, of course, echoes back to the leaving bit of 2014… Because as much as we try, our past is part of us (and, I wouldn’t want that any other way, either).

[…] And feeling you deserve what you heard
But it doesn’t go that way

The rest… Enjoy the ride:

Oh, the tongues of men and angels
I speak like, love, oh love, will I stab you in the back?
Working every day, I forgot to show
What’s most important
—Love.

Here I am, dear Lord,
Tasting hints of fame
I don’t want it anymore
If it’s not You that I gain
Wanna fall at Your feet
Don’t wanna fall from Your peace
I understand.

Have you ever been the man that just ran
When you knew that God was talking?
Have you ever heard His voice through the noise
But just let it get away?

Oh, the tongues of men and angels
I speak like, love, oh love, will I stab you in the back?
How come I go with mine instead of Yours
when Yours is always right,
I’m sorry, just pour into me
—Love.

A heart at rest is harder now
Don’t let it go away
Hard earn pay, or hard earned pain
Right now they’re just the same
What’s the use, why work so hard
When it’s not what you crave?
When what you need is love.

I also was part of a discussion where I watched a friend lose a friend just by the fact that the friend didn’t believe in accepting love in all forms. And, when discussing love and acceptance, and writing questions on what church is… well, it’s a hard dose of reality to swallow that this becomes the outcome far too often.
 

Blankest Year – Nada Surf.

What do you do when you’ve liberated yourself from thoughts that were dragging you down?

Oh, fuck it.
I’m gonna have a party.

might be a pretty appropriate response. I reflected on the shit—‘cause as unfortunate as it is, it’s part of me—

I had the blankest year,
I saw life turn into a TV show
It was totally weird
The person knew, I didn’t really know.

Time don’t move,
We’re the only ones who do.
Bending reason
‘Cause it’s all we hold on to.

And… I choose how to respond to it.
And grow. 

[…] But you don’t own me, I’d like to return this spell
‘Cause it’s not my size—
And your lies are so much bigger than my lies
And your ties are made of things that shouldn’t make ties

Oh fuck it,
I’m gonna have a party.

 

Crashin’ – Jack’s Mannequin.

I wanna hear some music,
Now that they’re driving us all underground
Not the radio music
Or their satellites singing this
In this town…
I wanna hear some music,
And with the rock stars, all flicker and fade
Pop radio music,
I’m a ghost overground on, on parade

Crashin’ is a song that really comes down to finding/losing/gaining/discovering identity. 

And even if your voice comes back again
Maybe there’ll be no one listening
And even if I find the strength to stand
It doesn’t mean I won’t go missing
And my world will come crashin’…

And maybe that’s what 2015 is supposed to teach me. That I am not the things I do, I am the things that I am. And even if I am able to do all those things, it doesn’t mean the world will give a shit. I am the reason that I will stay alive (The Energy, AudioVent). The people around me aren’t who I am—I am.

Wanna hear some music
I have been waiting down here for so long
Trying to write this big music
With your breath in my face
But now… but now you’re gone

And my whole world comes down, down
And the words, and all the water on this broken town
The freeway’s just like veins without a heart.
[…]

And even if my voice comes back again
Maybe there’ll be no one listening
And even if I find the strength to stand
It doesn’t mean I won’t go on
And even if your voice comes back again
Maybe there’ll be no one listening
And even if you find the strength to stand
It doesn’t mean you won’t go missing
And the world will come crashin’
And the words will come crashin’
And music comes crashin’
Down on me…
And the words will come crashin’
Down on me. So down on me.
Down on you. 

I’ll get down on myself. I’ll get down on the people around me. But eventually I’ll find my words, my voice, my meaning, my place… again.

 

As it’s only February… I struggle to anticipate how the rest of this year will take shape. And I’m excited about that, that for once, this blank slate can be a gift… because for once, I have a blank slate and can choose to expect nothing. All of these songs might not be in the final soundtrack of 2015… but they’re part of the now. Of course, telling myself that I can expect nothing and actually doing so are two different things… because society, this world, expects different of me, too.