The one thing that insomnia doesn’t allow for, even though it allows for plenty of introspection, is lucidity. I rant a lot. I go off on tangents which start me at point A, and ends somewhere along point P except without a clear path of how I got there. I mean, why else would I have the picture above?

For instance, last night while I sat in my living room watching Fail-flix I saw something small, and black, skitter across my apartment floor. After swallowing down the instinctual reaction of “ewww spider” and “bllleeeech”, I calmly got off my couch, grabbed my shoe that I had re-laced, and proceeded to lay down the hand of God on top of the creepy, black spider that dared to make its presence known to me. Normally I try to shoo insects out of my house, but at 4 in the morning anything crawling that isn’t me, or a welcomed human being, will die…

Tangent…I learned them well in college. A few well placed comments would get my classmates and me out of a boring topic or coursework for a good half-hour. My 400 level poetry class was reduced to weekly hangout sessions with the occasional smattering of coursework, and my Business Law professor would purposefully stop class just to tell us a story about his cat. My favorite tangent moments, however, came in my honors lounge, where us “mature college students” had large posters filled with inappropriate quotes, and modeling clay. Kevin was created in-between debates about aristotle and who sang some song that none of us can remember. The thumbtack came later.

Insomnia fuels the ability to segue-way into tangents, but doesn’t always allow for the lucidity of them. This factor results in days and days of ranting about jerk co-workers, ridiculous Llamas, and money issues. I’m still a bit groggy right now, but that is the residual side-effects from the medication I took last night to try to knock myself out at a reasonable hour, which would have worked if my brain wasn’t so loud. I might just accept that my bedtime is now 8 in the morning and that unless I have a day off, errands and/or tasks that need to be completed will not be done. My next day off is in 6 days.

Looking back at the last few posts I realized how obstinate I was being towards some topics, and how sensitive I was being towards others. Money has always been a touchy subject in my life. Grow up without it and you learn to resent the need for it, resent the desire for it, and start to contemplate why little strips of paper and small rounds of metal mean so much to the living, but have little value in life. Money does make aspects of life easier, and I sometimes wish that I had money so I didn’t have to work like a dog, but I have done little to rectify that thought so it is truly my own fault. Big dreams, some ambition, little know-how.

It goes back to being directionless, which is why I had such a knee-jerk reaction to my roommate. I’m finally starting to gain some perspective in my life, and I finally have some stability after months of wondering if I should trade my car in for a van so I would have someplace more comfortable to sleep. It’s bad enough that come August I might be out of an apartment again, but at least that is a few months away. She wants out now, and I don’t have enough saved up to even afford one months’ rent and utilities, let alone the next 4-5 months. I also don’t want something like this to come in between a friendship that has definitely taught me more about who I am, both to myself and this world, and has taught me better control over my emotions than anything else has ever taught me. But I know money, and money rarely brings out the best in people. So I’m going to try to relax as much as I can, and lay out the facts as they stand, because I don’t have the wherewithal to deal with unnecessary drama.

I just wish people would stick by commitments, see things through. I understand special circumstances, I do. But this isn’t special; it isn’t even unique. It is as common as night and day. Just a few more months and I can find a way to keep myself above water…Yes, maybe that is selfish of me, but I don’t have a back-up. I don’t have a safety-net. As well as my extended family does for themselves, it would be too much of a burden to ask for help if I suddenly found myself homeless. So it’s part pride, and part realism. I can’t expect my family to fix my messes anymore than say a family with a famous daughter or son can expect said child to take care of them. Although, in college, I got scolded often for not telling anyone that I hadn’t eaten in a week. It bothered more people than it bothered me, but that is because I was lucky enough to be surrounded by some pretty amazing people.

Ahh tangents….which is what I tell people when they ask me why it is so easy for them to spend hours talking to me about nothing. I’m a storyteller in need of stories, so I talk to people. I hear their stories. I listen. I share my own. I’m not trying to one up anyone, but I don’t live a linear lifestyle. You know…are born, go to school, graduate, go to more school, graduate, fall in love, get married, pop out a few kids, etc. I’m went to 9 schools before I was 18 years old. Moved all over southern New York, and grew up in diverse neighborhoods. I’ve fled the country, and have been to every state on the East Coast. My oldest friend is 95 years old, and my youngest is 13. My first love asked me to marry her when we were 16, 8 years before New York finally passed gay marriage. I went to a technical school for law enforcement, and college for english, but one of my favorite teachers taught Myths of the Greek World. My life has been such a conglomeration of things that shouldn’t mix, and I love it. I love it because I have stories to tell, I love it because there are so many more stories to be discovered.

So no, it doesn’t surprise me when I spend hours on the phone talking about nothing with my boss, which is what I did today. He actually paid me a lot of compliments today, about how I’m a hard worker and that he wants to see me continue to advance in the field I am currently working within. It’s nice when your job actually wants to keep you around. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my work with my previous jobs, but I really love this job. But I do not want to stay in Corn-country. It really isn’t that horrible of a place to live, but I need water. I need adventures and people to do crazy random shit with, as well as places for me to find my own life. I’m just living here.

But I’m hoping to change that. If I decide against the AmeriCorps thing, I might stay to save up so I can go back to school and study Teaching as a Second Language. I will study anything to be able to teach overseas. I know I will not be able to see everything this world has to offer, but I want to stand on the beaches of Cuba, and look over the African Plains. I want to walk the streets in Israel, and wander the Catacombs in Rome. I want to taste my way through France, and laugh my way through Italy. I want to read in London, and dance in Spain….and one day I want to love again in Ireland.

Tangents…..

As I said, my boss is a really cool guy. I let it slip my age today, in which he thought I was older, and although I am getting to the point where looking older is no longer cool, it is nice to know people find me mature.

Even though I have my “he’s a poopy-head” moments….

But I like talking to my boss, and to a handful of my coworkers. I give everyone nicknames, which the one supervisor at my job gets a kick out of, but it is just something that is me. I got to talk to my other co-worker today as well, about mr. poopy-head, which was cool because I had cooled down enough to discuss the situation more clearly.

But we all have that right, you know? We have the right to be wrong about our assumptions, about our opinions and beliefs, and to be wrong about ourselves in general. During my last relationship, everything about who I was was wrong. I was wrong about myself and about what I felt, and I was miserable for 2 years because of it. But I had that right to be messed up because I had to learn from that mistake. I had to learn that I could be cruel, and heartless and vindictive. I had to learn what it truly meant to hate myself, and what it meant to fall in and truly, out of love with someone. My last relationship brought out every negative aspect a person could have within themselves, and I had a right to turn into a grade A asshole because I needed to learn that, what I had feared for so long, would only define me if I let it. I was the person I would punch in the face without thought, it was bad.

Learning experience tangents, I take them in all sizes and shapes as long as I have a reflective surface.

So I hope I make the right decision in the next few months. I have changed so much since I walked away from my ex 3 years ago, and have many choices available to me right now, whether to up and move again, or to stay, that I’m in a weird head-space. Yet, the world is open for wanderers to leave, and I am a vagabond through and through; a person lacking a permanent existence. We spend so much time worrying about everyone else, and listening to what they think is wrong or right, that we rarely listen to ourselves. Many of my friends thought I was insane to just up and leave the way that I did. But I knew I had to go. I didn’t know why, but it was time to leave. The few who truly know me were the few brave to tell me to leave, to go and make my mistakes. I make them often…It’s scary. My mistakes won’t always make me strong, but we all need a little weakness in our lives.

We need it like we need people we can spend hours saying nothing to.

We need space to learn how to mend broken bones as we try to learn to fly.

There is something out there for us all….a story waiting to be told. A story waiting to be heard.

Sometimes, it just starts with a tangent.

Question of the Day:

What has this world shown you?