cool beans

I’m keeping a paper journal. And you can’t see it. I’d say, “You don’t want to see it, either.” But you and I know that’s not true. Because you are a snoopy spy cat. I know. I am, too. Where do YOU hide YOUR Hello Kitty notebook?

What I’m not telling you is how messy things are and how much it hurts and how things don’t always have the result you planned or hoped for. What you think might make you feel better might make you feel worse, at least for a little while. Hopefully it’s just a little while.

For the past few months I’ve been building up confidence. Taking steps in the right direction and letting my brain take a picture of the good that comes from making progress. Storing each of those new, positive pictures in my brain gives me the courage to take bigger steps. It’s a cycle, you see. Or a process. Or whatever. All of this led to me taking a big step and I put my foot down firmly in front of me onto what I thought was solid earth. Guess what! It wasn’t solid! It was a big old pile of stinky mud. I’ve been psychologically swimming in it ever since.

Journaling on paper is much more satisfying than I anticipated. You can paste things into the book. You can cut out pictures and glue them in and cross them out. You can make them look ugly. Or pretty. You can make stick-figure drawings of people who make you sad or angry and then you can scribble all over them. Like a tantrum-throwing three year-old. And no one ever has to know!

Right now, I’m sitting in our smallest bedroom that we call the “Computer Room”. For a long time, this location has worked well for us. Walking down the hall to the bedrooms, you have to turn left and left again to get to this room and being curled around from the rest of the house keeps THE MESS contained and out of sight. This room is also the dumping ground for wayward piles of papers and books and toys. And clothes. And bath and body stuff someone gifted me that I think I might be allergic to. There’s also a dead printer and a dead fish. Wow, this room is a dump.

While this is a great spot for us to house our garbage, it’s not a great place for our kids to use the computer. If our children want to use the internet, they do so in a room that is tucked away from the rest of the house. Your parental RED ALERT just started whooping, didn’t it? I know, I know. We originally thought we’d be good at walking by and checking on them, but we’re not. And even when we are, they can hear us coming down the hall, nearly eliminating the possibility of the Sneak Attack. Tonight we found our son doodling on a white board that had chat on the same page. OH NO YOU DIDN’T. Which led to a big, ugly discussion about whether or not he was using the chat (HEART ATTACK!) and reminding him that Google searches are NEVER OKAY! NEVER! Do you see me WAGGING MY FINGER IN YOUR FACE? NEVVVVVER OKAY!

I’m not willing to have that conversation over and over again and I’m certainly not going to cure my laziness any time soon. So it’s time to make a decision. Are we going to continue to allow the kids to use the internet? If so, where are we going to put the computer?

What do you do about this at your house? Do your kids use the computer to view the internet? Do you sit with them the entire time? Is your computer in a public living area like the living room or kitchen? Will you buy me a laptop? Do you need a giant and peeling computer desk? Can I interest you in a dead fish?

I have two one Vox invite. Also, if you’ve signed up at Vox, please let me know so we can be fwens.

I also have roughly 10,000 Gmail invitations if you’re still needin’ one of those.

I have no clean socks, underwear or towels, however. Still looking for those myself.

I’m going to drop the doom and gloom for five minutes and be a joiner because The Pajama Mama is encouraging us all to spread some love around with “Bloggin’ Good Blogger Days”.

Here’s what to do:

1. Leave me a warm fuzzy in my comments.

2. Post a similar entry (giving credit to The Pajama Mama) on your own blog.

3. Leave a warm fuzzy on every blog you visit today. ["Today" being whatever day you're reading this.]

4. Sit back, read your own warm fuzzies and feel, well, warm and fuzzy!

Enjoy!

I’d like to say a couple things about my last post. I welcome comments about the ideas, but I’d like to refrain from rehashing what’s already out there and has been discussed. If you’re not sure if the comment should be here, my email address is in the sidebar to your right. That said, I hope we can take away a reminder that once words are out there, we can’t take them back. We’re not anonymous - no matter how much we think we are. And that the internet can bring us together and we can tear each other apart.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Thinking about who I want to be, how I’m going to change the things in my life that I want to change and what I want to do about my journaling. (I still feel that I should move my online thoughts and feelings somewhere "safer". But I haven’t fully come to a conclusion about what to do.) For now, I want to tack up a disclaimer and ask a favor of you. If I make a mistake, or if my perception is way different than yours, please point it out. I don’t want anyone to simply be put off, tsk and turn away. I’m not asking the world to spoon feed me an education, but if I’m ignorant about something, I can’t grow in that area if someone doesn’t shed light on it. I wouldn’t invite comments if I didn’t want to hear what other people have to say. (I like comments.)

Currently, I’m in a period of personal struggle and growth. Part of this time involves reshaping the way I see the world and the way I carry myself in it. Though I’ve been through something traumatic, I’ve been given a gift in the opportunity to focus and dig deep and decide who I want to be. I’ve had to stop and take time out to put a lot of energy into that or I’m afraid I wouldn’t be anyone at all. So far I know that right now, I want to be the kind of person who sees things for what they are and can call ‘em like I see ‘em. I also want to be the kind of person who knows how to say it and when what I have to say isn’t right for public consumption.