30 November 2010

Return of the Queen

I feel I need some kind of explanation for why I left this blog so many months ago and have now returned to it. I started This Car Is My Pants with Steve as part of a half-baked plan to win a year-long job blogging on a beach in Australia. (Literally, this was the job.) Obviously, we did not get to Australia, but the blog became something that we shared during our relationship, even though the updates were as sporadic as ever. I liked the thoughts I expressed there, and still do, and I feel that I grew during that time. However, now that we've broken up it seems wrong to continue writing in that blog. It was something we did together, not something that either of us could just pick up and continue separately. So here I am again, on my own personal blog, which is an appropriate analogy to the way I'm taking back my own life. I never realized how much of it I had given to the relationship, how much I wanted to let my self dissolve into that couple-closeness. I don't think I'll do that again -- well, at the very least next time I'll know better what I'm getting into and be prepared to watch myself against it. I'm developing a much better idea now of who it is that I really am, under all this bullshit and fear and the layers of social conditioning. I am really, really cool. Under all this, I am fearless and invulnerable and supremely loving. I worry a little about all the changes I'm putting myself through and whether some of them might not turn out for the worse, because I can't see all the effects at this single pinprick in time. I know they are though. I just ask the little bastard voice in my heart (the one that always tells the truth) and he cackles and says, "Yes, of course they are! Are you a moron?"

Well, yes, sometimes I am. I am starting to become okay with that. Of course I'm a moron. Would I ever be perfect? Someone once said that the quest for perfection in art was the greatest protection against creating good art. I am starting to really identify with that sentiment. I am amazing; why would I wish to become perfect? It's also helped me to stress out less at work. Last night I broke a whole tray full of dishes and nearly had a coronary. But thinking calmly, what is the point of that coronary? They were just dishes. We have plenty. Nothing is truly hurt.

I came back to this blog because I'm sick of starting new ones, thinking that each one will be my iconic blog, the one where I finally begin exploring deep truths and funny topics and get lots of followers and generally starting giving a shit about making a good blog. That blog will never happen. It certainly will not happen now, no matter what format or forum I use, because I am just not that dedicated to blogging. I hardly ever sit around and think, "Hey, that would make a great blog post!" It is just not in my head.

What is in my head is who I am, who I have been, who I can be in the future, where that person is going, what I can do now to help her get there, what frailties I exhibit that I've never given dignity to before, what strengths I have always taken for granted. I cannot honestly explore these in a blank slate, a brand-new blog with no past to reference, no frailties of its own, designed to cover up the moron I have been all my life. That's disingenuous. I came back to this blog, to Wandering Slade, because here I have been a moron. I have an even more moronic Livejournal that I am still ashamed of, which I will have to address at some point. But this blog is the height of the stupidity and foolishness that I can look at and recognize as me. This is where/when I started to grow. I feel comfortable here. So I came back, gave her a new paint job, and here we are.

Let's roll.

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