Christmas this year was one of the best I can remember. Most of my
family was getting along, the things I had been dreading never
happened, I got a lot of really nice gifts and I feel only slightly bad
that I didn't buy anyone anything in return. I wanted a lot of things
this year, I never write down the things I want but I think about them
frequently. Getting a new cell phone or a new car won't really change
life but I like to pretend that material things will improve how I
perceive things since that's so much easier than actualizing myself.
Yesterday I had to be to work early. Lately I've been thinking I need a
new job but applying for new jobs is scary to me. My sister has a
theory that since my parents rarely gave us children approval and even
our best wasn't good enough me and my siblings are afraid to try new
things even though the situation we're in may be
less than ideal.
My sister is such an interesting person to talk to, I had a good
time talking to her and now that I'm older I really appreciate having
sisters to talk to about whatever life hands me. For a long time, maybe
for as long as I can remember I
have not liked the person I am. Some of the things I don't like about
myself are within my power to change, I'd like to think that I've been
taking some small steps to work on improving those areas. I've made a
mental list and I could share it with you but one of the things I'm
trying to work on is being less free with my personal information and
who has what kind of access to it. This was prompted in part by things
other people have shared with me and partially by an article about
Facebook in a magazine that was delivered to my house.
Not long ago someone asked why I don't write
as much as I used to. I still write but very little of it makes it out
of my scratch pads or Word documents. Every day characters flit through
my head at work or in the car. I think about situations to put my
characters into and how they would handle them. My sister told me that
one of my characters was dark and complicated.
She told me I wanted to fix someone and that this character was a way
for me to do that. I don't necessarily agree with that analysis but
what I do like is getting feedback about things that I've written. To
me this is one of the great strenths of E2 because feedback from people
who read my writeups has been invaluable.
So much has changed recently. I wish I had been better about
cataloguing the events and I can't change the past but I have some
limited power over the future. My children are growing up and changing
from little girls into bigger ones. My oldest daughter cut herself the
other day. She has a two inch cut that runs along the top of her arm,
self-inflicted by a razor that I left lying in the shower. After seeing
that I spent a lot of time thinking about people who cut themselves and
why they do it. I thought about talking to her about it but I'm really
not sure what I should say or if addressing the subject is perhaps
giving too much attention to an incident that was most likely caused by
normal childhood curiosity.
Today I am thankful for all the family I visited the other day. My
aunt and uncle now own a condo down in Florida. Already I am planning
a trip there and whether or not the trip materializes I'll have fun
thinking about what could be. I spend a lot of time thinking about the
way I want things to be. At work I'm usually working on a writeup that
will most likely never get written. I don't think this interferes with
my ability to do my job and to do it well but it is something that
worries me periodically. I have a secret fantasy and that too will most
likely not come to be but I think about it, wish for it and want very
badly for it to happen. Looking back 2009 was a good year. I changed
and I believe most of that was for the better. Hopefully some of the
changes I've made will stick, I know they will if only I am persistant.
A quick update on the food allergy front: After several reactions in
a row I think I may be allergic to wheat. Since I've gone to a gluten
free diet I've felt better, had more energy and I even lost a couple
pounds. One of my sisters does not believe that I have a wheat allergy.
Quite possibly she is right although the last three reactions I've had
have been after consuming some sort of wheat
product. It could be that I have an allergy to something
else but I feel so much better living the gluten free lifestyle that
even if a physician tells me wheat is okay for me to eat I am not going
back to it. It has taken some fine tuning (I never realized how many
foods had wheat derivatives) and there are a few foods I miss but the
memory of how sick I was keeps my hand for reaching for what I now think of as forbidden fruit.