The best-laid plans...

I had a plan today:
8:30: Weight Watchers meeting
9:30: Go grocery shopping armed with my food plan.
10:30: Swing by the pharmacy on the way home to pick up a prescription
Afternoon: Cleaning my kitchen and poaching chicken for the upcoming week's healthy meals.
Evening: Go to dinner with my friend A.

Yeah. Here's what really happened:

7:30: Wake up enough to realize that my alarm has been going off for a while. Hit snooze.
7:39: Why the hell do alarm clock companies think that 9 minutes=snoozing? 'Cause it doesn't. Roll over and hit "off"
8:30: Wake to the Beast's paw on my forehead. Look at clock and realize that there was no time-space continuum that existed in any dimension that would get me to the Weight Watchers meeting on time. Push away beast and roll over.
8:35: Half-asleep still, I wonder if I should try to go to church? I am, after all, trying to find a way to expand my social life and become more actualized. I sit up to think of a plan.
8:47: Realize with a start that although I had sat up, I fell asleep sitting on the side of the bed. Realize this because I very nearly fell off the bed. Decide that if I'm falling asleep sitting up that I'm too tired for church and lay back down. Abstractly notice that my seated upright snooze was about 9 minutes.
10:50: Have to pee. Go to bathroom. Fall asleep on toilet.
11:10: Wake up by almost falling off toilet. Look at clock and note that HA! I may have snoozed, but it was for about 20 minutes, not 9. Take that, alarm clock makers! Collect myself enough to go take my pills and drink some cold water to help wake me up.
11:15: Decided that I'd already screwed up my plan for the day, and that maybe leaving the house wasn't in the cards for me. Settled in to watch old DVR shows and visit Facebook.
2:00: Ate leftovers. Realize this is an improvement from last Sunday, when I at old microwaved popcorn for lunch because I didn't have any food in the house. (That's right, I didn't go grocery shopping that day either). Continue on the path of DVR clean up.
5:30: Spoke to A., who couldn't make it for dinner. Decide to order pizza.
5:45: Realize that I hadn't showered today, so ran to get a quick shower before pizza delivery person could get here and judge me on my greasy hair and poor nutritional habits.
6:30: Lengthy conversation with The Mom, until pizza arrived.
7:30-rest of evening: Ate pizza, watched movie, went on line, blah blah blah.

I think I could use this example in a gameshow I like to call, Single or Chronically Depressed? (where contestant have to decide which type of person this schedule belonged to.)

Sometimes it is really fun to throw all of your plans out of the window and express your freedom from others by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all day, because no one is there to tell you to shower and take out the trash. And sometimes it's just a wasted day, and I have to shrug it off and vow to do better next Sunday.

The Maiden Voyage

Anyone who knows me knows I have a lot to say...about everything. My blessing and curse is that I have an innate sense of diplomacy and tact, preventing some of the more interesting strangeness in my head from making it out into the real world. After all, I might hurt someone's feelings. We can't have that. I was raised right, my friends.

So what do I do instead? Why, publish my inner thoughts where anyone in the world can see them, of course! Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either.

But I've recently found that I'm on the edge of something that needs to be acknowledged, pondered, challenged, and written down. It's a shifting of some kind. I don't know what or why, but I know that the status quo is no longer content with me crashing on its couch. As much as I like the comfy cocoon of my daily routine (you know--get up, go to work, go home, eat dinner, surf net, watch TV, go to bed, repeat) I feel something else might be in order. That maybe there is the possibility of more. More of what, I don't know for sure. Maybe that there should be more of the word "live" in how I'm living.

Have you ever looked back on your life and see the crossroads? The times of your life where you consciously chose to make a turn and start in a new direction? Well, when it comes to my personal life and inner growth I've toed the straight line for at least a decade. No serious relationships, no marriage, no kids, and a shrinking social circle as those around me turn off on their own path. And as time went on it became easier and more natural to shut down, to avoid, to withdraw. You don't get your heart broken if you don't give it away. You don't fail if you never try. I didn't notice that with each passing year I was not only letting the doors of possibility close--I was shutting them myself.

And then I started journaling as a result of a class at work. I always resisted journaling: 1) Because I hated the idea of putting my craziness on paper and making it permanent, 2) Because I would re-read things I'd written and hate on it, and 3) Because if I died in a freak accident other people would read it and criticize me post-mortem. Ugh. But since it felt a little like a work assignment I bravely put pen to paper and found, to my surprise, that I started to notice my life again.

Which brings us to this blog. Because not only does a blog put you through the eye-opening creative process, but it also forces you outside yourself. A two-for-one mechanism of change. Change that I think I need.

So here I am, scribbling my thoughts into life's margin. I don't intend that every entry will be deep, thought-provoking stuff. Sometimes it might be an observation highlighting the funny strangeness that is part of life. Sometimes I just want to bitch about paying the bills, or share a recipe, or give a shout-out to my peeps. Whatever. It's the process of writing and sharing that I'm hoping will crack the door and let in the light.

So, lets metaphorically break the champagne bottle on this baby, and send Scribbling in the Margin onto its maiden voyage.