fertilizer.

My life is rich in people resources.

It's lacking in direction.

It's full of spring, and things that are green. My yard is blooming the weeds of spring that are aching to be cut with the mower that I do not have. And my flower garden has begun to sprout buds that were not present when I planted them. Today, a yellow flower made it's way past the green casing that had been hiding it's beauty.

In my near future, choices have to be made that will affect my future days, choices that I don't feel I have to resources for. These things, the reality of choices and the inadequacy I feel following through with them, basically make me feel like a twenty-five year old child; someone with necessary and inevitable responsibility that still needs afternoon naps, and a pacifier to put them to sleep.

To bring me back, and replace some of the insanity with that which is sane, I will go outside onto the front porch with a bowl of water, and drip it along the budding flowers that I planted in the ground, when the sun was shining. My hands were covered in dirt, with remnants of the ground scattered over my exposed pieces of skin. I was at peace, unearthing the roots that would hinder the growth of the kimono flowers about the go in the spot I had selected for them. I am not a lover of worms. Some would say, I would say, I dislike them very much. I react to slimey squirmy worms akin to the way a toddler would react to their mother yanking their pacifier from them. But I was being told, by my roommate Tonia, that I must leave them there, as they are good for the soil that my flowers so desperately need to thrive. With that, I put my hands back in the dirt, digging, arranging, making peace with the reality that worms must stay, and eventually, I must leave, and it's all necessary and a little disgusting and all together good.

The Throwing of Things.

Steaming milk, pushing the double shot button the pull espresso from the fully automatic espresso machine I face nearly every day, I was rushing in every sense of the word to give my attention the the ten beverages lined in a row, waiting to be made, while the ten people waiting on them stared at me with eagerness and impatience. More than one of the beverages were caramel macchiatos, and my bottle of caramel drizzle, something many people are very passionate about, was basically empty; drizzle was simply lining the bottle instead of filling it. And so, in haste and frustration, I threw it.

Sitting on the couch, discussing life with a dear friend, we brought to life the delicacy of a woman's heart, and how affected it can be by an unassuming, clueless man. When these wonderful head in the clouds men do or say something that affects it, and they have no idea, we are left to deal with the disappointment, all the while, knowing the one doing the affecting is completely unaware. Which means, not only are we sad, but also alone. Having actual scenarios in my head to draw from, in angst and frustration, I picked up the water bottle on the arm of the couch, and I threw it.

Standing behind the counter with a kind smile on my face, I greet the man with some sort of "how can I help you?". Tall black decaf coffee was his reply. At the place where I unfortunately work, we re-brew the coffee every thirty minutes. When the timer goes off, we dump the coffee out and put freshly ground coffee into a filter, which goes into a basket, which is brewed with extremely hot water, and in about four minutes time, becomes coffee. In this particular case, it was in the process of becoming decaf coffee. It was two minutes in to the brewing cycle when Mr. Decaf asked for his cup. I asked if he had about one-hundred and twenty seconds to wait, and his reply, given with a tone of annoyance, was, "well I guess I will have to." Funny thing is that by the time I was done taking his money, grabbing the cup, and walking it over to the brewer, he had about thirty seconds left to wait for AN EXTREMELY FRESH CUP OF COFFEE. As I was retelling this story last night to some of my regular customers, the annoyance and frustration came back into my veins, so I grabbed an empty cup, and I threw it.

It feels as if I am in a stage of limbo. I have a job I do not like with a degree that affords me no appealing options. I want to work, but in something that is fulfilling. Until I find a job I will enjoy, or convince my brick mason father that I would make a fantastic laborer, I am stuck behind a bar making caramel macchiatos with not enough drizzle in my bottle.

I also have no desire to spend anymore of my years without companionship. I am running out of the energy required to keep my heart up all by myself. But the thing about companionship is that you have to find someone that wants to be your companion back. Until then, it's me and books and movies and lovely friends, which are wonderful, but not quite the companionship I am looking for.

And littered throughout my life will always be tall decaf coffee people that are not willing to wait one-hundred and twenty seconds for anything. He represents a greater force out there that seems to be entirely missing the point, and so it is not just him that sends poison through my veins, but the school of thought that he is the president of.

The moral I am learning? I have no control over these things. I am in limbo. I can do what I can to fill my days with as much goodness I can, but there are things out there I cannot change. And so, when those uncontrollables rise to the surface, I will merely reach for the nearest object, preferably unbreakable, and throw it.

BoDe.

I witnessed a life enter the world today. One minute he was inside her, and the next he was squirming, breathing air, crying, confused, loved.

I have yet to experience anything like it, ever. Overwhelming in the most modest of attempted explanations.

hope.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. It's in the bible somewhere. Some may argue that it makes the heart stronger, and maybe some of both.

I hate seeing that look on the face of one of my fellow humans that indicates the feeling that someone loves someone that doesn't love them back. That makes my heart sick.

People are fickle and have their preferences and make their choices, and I don't judge the people that don't requite the affection shown them. I just hurt for the people holding the affection, because it's such a desperate and vulnerable and lonely place to be. And the irony is that you are feeling those sick feelings because you are in possession of more affection than you have a place for. You could say you have too much of a good thing and it's bad.

I will say that if it's true that hope deferred makes the heart sick, that my heart has been sick since I was eleven or twelve. And if that's true, with all the goodness I have had, I look forward very much to what a well heart feels like.

future.

I have a problem.

I need a new job that hopefully utilizes my degree but doesn't require me to actually practice the specific field, where I can be around people without having to meet their every unnecessary need, and also a position that will challenge me, where I want to meet the challenge because the task at hand is connected enough to my value system that I care about the outcome. Any ideas?

When I search for jobs online, there are a lot of things that I think to myself, "I could do that". The second part of the thought is usually, "but I don't really want to". It's not that I don't want to work. I am not lazy, I don't think. I just don't want to go to a job everyday that I don't enjoy. And ultimately, I want to be a mother, so it's not like I am looking for a lifelong career. And eventually, I would like to go back to school, so if I was looking for a career, it would probably be found after the second bout of secondary education.

Maybe I should just go back to school and live off loans.

Or maybe I should stick my current job situation out for a few more months while enjoying my current living situation, and then teach English in a foreign country until I figure out what I want to do.

Or maybe I should go to pastry school.

Or culinary school.

Or just go to sleep and not wake up until a dream reveals to me what I should do. Right now, that option feels the most right. Yawn.

lines marked through.

I am clean.
Sheets are clean.
Bedroom is clean.
Living room is clean.
Floors are swept.
Kitchen is clean.
Laundry is done.
Work week is complete.

New To Do List:
Read.
Drink Calm Tea.
Listen to Cat Power.
Apply Origins Sleep Time on the Spot Gel.
Sleep.
Enjoy my Sunday, my day off.

To all of my task oriented friends that I have often made fun of, I concede that I must give you some credit. Perhaps your task oriented nature is something that drew me to you in the beginning, because it's something I wanted but didn't want to admit. And when I didn't have it, I made fun of you, to cover up what was missing from me.

I believe it will never be second nature. The nap will likely come first. But it does feel kinda good to get things done.

sigh.

I have this thing, this feeling, like I fit in.

I have never felt it, as a whole, before.

As a child, I was sweet and compliant, as my dad would say. I wanted to be the helper rather than play competitive scary games with other children.

As an adolescent, I was 13 going on thirty, if you will. I was the babysitter that cleaned up the house and did the dishes for the parents whose children I was watching. I was grocery shopping and hanging out with adults, in utter contentment.

As a high schooler, I was ready to be out around the time I started. I was in the kitchen with the adults at gatherings. I was never in to the same things high schoolers were in to. I cooked dinner on Saturday nights. I didn’t even know where the parties were. On Mondays, I was at FAITH Evangelism outreach, bringing people to Jesus. I was the High School yearbook editor, not by choice, but by vote, by my high school-like peers that had no interest in taking on the responsibility, and knew I wouldn’t be able to help but take on more responsibility.

I was from a small town, born with a city girl mindset. I was always seeking and thinking about things that made the typical life-long Inolan go cross-eyed.

When I went to the Christian college I had coveted, in hopes of finding like minded people, I realized no one had to like me, and much of them weren’t like me at all. I was scary to some, perceived as confident, broken up and insecure and wavering on the inside. I was not the camp counselor type, nor was I granola, or into splunking. I don’t even know how to spell that if it tells you anything. And so I spent four years as an outsider, as a whole, because I didn’t always have a smile on my face, because my parents were not alumni, and had never taken me to Sunday School or had family meetings or kept me from watching the Smurfs or sheltered me from Saved by the Bell or R rated movies. I found true friends along the way, that I an ever thankful for. I am reminded of why I pay a student loan payment every month each time I think of them. And though I felt safe in their presence, even they did not make me feel like I belonged in that particular place.

I chose a major I was not passionate about in the midst of people that were passionate about it. Talk about outsider.

So what do I do? I move to the state of Florida, a place I had never desired to inhabit, to live with a person I love, but am nothing like, if you don’t count our last names. I worked in an office full of people that were either married or had children or some kind of mental disorder. Shut up. I have no mental disorder. I promise.

And then I moved home, to live with my parents. I do not know if there will ever be a phase of my life that I feel like I fit in with my parents. I have friends that do. I admire them. But my mom is usually telling me that I am weird. I love my parents. I often enjoy them. But I don’t fit in with them.

And so here I sit, on my cozy twin bed, fitting in. I feel at ease with the group of people I have chosen to spend my life around. We are not all the same. We do not always agree. But I am accepted, and mostly, understood.

There is a question that arises in my head, however. Does my feeling of fitting in exist because of the acceptance that has been directed towards me from other people? Or am I able to perceive acceptance from others because of the acceptance I have found a way to give myself, that was always so allusive in the past?

Either way, I will take it.