Expanding

Today seems like kind of a bust, if I'm being honest. I slept til noon. My greatest accomplishment was driving to the credit union to deposit my unemployment check. That in and of itself is laughable because I have the option for direct deposit.  I have had some technical difficulties in making that happen, and somehow, despite having all the time in the world, I've been unable to summon the patience to remain on hold for upwards of an hour with the unemployment office to have the issue rectified.  For me, certain tasks elicit instant disdain & complete certainty that they will devolve into harrowing ordeals.  Most of these tasks involve talking to customer service representatives about my finances.  These severely disagreeable tasks are not totally isolated to finances, however, as anything involving paperwork & organization & the slightest bit of follow through strikes terror into my heart.  Which brings us to tomorrow.  I will be taking my little folder of tax papers to an accountant at the crack of noon.  Until this tax season, I've always consulted my mom with any problems I ran into & always asked her to double check my work.  This is highly embarrassing for a 32 year old to admit, I realise, & even more so because my taxes have always been the EZ variety.  But I have a paralysing fear of anything remotely mathematical.  The consequences of errors of arithmetic were relatively mild in high school, but the stakes have been raised considerably in adulthood.  I don't think I have the constitution for an audit.  There would likely be more math, and accountability, neither of which are my strong suits.  And this year is a bit more complicated because I lost my fulltime job a few months ago and needed to withdraw a substantial amount of cash from my 401K to pay my bills.  I am hoping that my accountant will know some radical jui jitsu tax move that will keep me from incurring a steep penalty.  We shall see.

My lovely boyfriend went to bed a few minutes ago.  Before he said goodnight, he remarked on how he is bothered by how filthy the back of the fish tank appears.  He was really inpsecting the grime & he vowed to get some sort of sponge on a stick thing to really get after it this weekend.  He and I certainly complement one another in perfect, bizarre, and hilarious ways.  He is so focused and goal-oriented, absolutely single-minded about the things he needs to do & the things he would like to do in his life.  He makes plans.  He takes small steps to accomplish a bigger goal.  The upkeep on a saltwater fishtank is nothing short of intensive.  It is an expensive and time-consuming hobby, but Dion is all in.  I adore observing the little ecosystem in action & have grown very fond of all the little fish & snails & urchins, but I don't think I would have ever had the fortitude to bring even this small dream to fruition.  I get so bogged down in big picture living that I am unable to see the small, everyday steps that eventually make big things happen. It all just seems so massive in scope, impossible in execution. 

I frequently get overwhelmed with all of the things I feel I am supposed to know, & would genuinely like to know--local, national, & world news & politics; countless books, music, film, comedians, plays etc.  Plus, there is the stuff I think I should already be well-versed in--history, art, science, & all the sub specialties therein.  Not to mention all the glorious plants I want to know the names of and be able to identify.  So many writers write gorgeous, intricate prose about regional flowers & greenery, & I feel like my own knowledge would be limited to evergreens and dandelions.  I just feel so knowledge-deficient sometimes, so terribly ignorant on so many topics that I wonder how I have the temerity to write anything. 

For the past couple weeks I have been trying to read this wonderful novel called "Flight Behavior".  It explores the habits and instincts and compulsions and mysteries of human behavior & of animal behavior.  It is rich, sumptuous writing with interesting, fully developed characters, & yet I find my mind wandering.....thinking of all the things I should already know or should learn soon, the things I should have already accomplished or had better accomplish immediately.  The irony is a little too on-the-nose for me.  My own hard-to-shake flight behavior of awe & overwhelm & insecurity that keeps me endlessly fleeing from the task at hand.  These small, manageable, & potentially engrossing and rewarding tasks could teach me lessons far more important than simply accumulating trivia in some cold warehouse in my brain.  How is it that most of us know, on some level, what is important in life, but we get lost in a wilderness of bullshit?  How can we keep that simple recognition at the forefront & filter out the extraneous nonsense that undermines our spirit & our dreams?  If you have any ideas, please send them my way.  Because I spend far too much time digging through rubble for treasure when I could just look up at the night sky and see stars sparkle like flipped coins.