posted on August 2, 2010 at 10:37 am by Khali
Power.
It took me a long time to grasp the notion that power comes from me. Let me rephrase. Other people only have power over me if I let them, and vice versa. Of course knowing this and using it are two totally different things.
It has also become equally apparent that I am susceptible to my low self esteem. I have an overwhelming, if not pathological need to be liked and have behaved in a manner one might call chameleonic to achieve this. The last ten years I’ve seen myself get better with this behaviour - as in I’m not as likely to do it, but there are times where I simply do not feel worth attention and I tend to isolate myself instead when I feel like that. So I create this circle of depression that I don’t quite know how to fix. However, they say that knowing is half the battle and I suppose that coming to terms with these facts - as tough as that is, is part of that.
I need to know where this lack originated. My mother’s experiences with uncovering key events in her childhood has made me curious about the things that happened in my past. I don’t recall a lot of my childhood and I don’t know if there are things I’m missing or if I have blocked them on purpose. Soul searching ensues.
Recently, all this came into play. I suppose I felt particularly vulnerable because I was stressing out, because J and I were falling into old patterns, because… it was so easy to rekindle old feelings that I let it go farther than it should have.
The road to hell, as they say.
listening to: Kosheen - Recovery
reading: Abundance - Sena Jeter Naslund
Posted in fiction maybe, journal | No Comments » | Tags: anatomy of pain, oh smeg, power politics
posted on January 20, 2010 at 3:56 pm by Khali
Well. I think I said before that there was no manual for being a parent, let alone being a step-parent. That being said, I have a fair feeling that I am sitting in the classic role of “wicked” step-parent. I decided when I found out (out of the blue, I might add) that the Teenager was coming back, that I was going to continue as I had before and be the backup. I will back up J’s discipline and be the one he bounces ideas off of and the one to suggest things. But because I am decidedly NOT her parent, I can’t be the one to deliver all the discipline. I won’t let her talk down to me, or back to me, but in regards to her being grounded or otherwise punished for crap behaviour, that is something she will see J deliver and me enforce. I think this will limit her resentment on just one of us. I mean its not fair for her to spend all her energy rebelling against one of us rather than both. This way I become an extension of J and not the go-to for the easy way out. I am a sympathetic ear, but I’m not the scapegoat.
This whole thing about wanting to do self-paced school is a symptom of something else, I’m sure. The same thing that the attention seeking and tendencies towards shitty, drama-filled relationships are a symptom of as well. I have my opinions, but I will keep them to myself.
Regardless of our best efforts, I fear the Teenager is making some questionable choices.
Listening to: Grow up and Blow Away - Metric
Reading: Macbeth - William Shakespeare
Posted in journal | No Comments » | Tags: oh smeg, step-parenthood, wicked stepmother
posted on May 25, 2009 at 10:31 pm by Khali
You know, I don’t write here enough, and when I do it seems to merely be to bitch and moan about something or to update my nonexistant readership on the random crap of my life. Or to rant. I think I’d like to challenge myself to write something more than that. Or make my rants actually have a point. Or just maybe a little more interesting, because you know, lame otherwise.
On that note, I found my archives. I really did rename them something totally illogical. Go me. Seriously, where do I get off freaking myself out unnecessarily like that when I already have other crap in my brain. Heh… probably more likely that it was a symptom of the other shit in my brain, but no matter how you look at it, I freaked out for nothing. Nothing is missing. *breathes* (And no one cares but me really, anyway.) Not that it was a huge thing, there are only a couple of posts that I think are actually worth keeping, but it’s like a diary for me - a record of myself… and I’ve been better at keeping up with the blog than I have with anything that I have in a note book - those always turn into compilations of fiction, poetry and crap I’ve glued in. Those are also fun.
I’ve been a tad nostalgic recently because so many people I’ve reconnected with over facebook seem to have got married or reproduced and it got me thinking about the things we thought we wanted to do when we first knew each other in junior and senior high school. One of my girlfriends had this huge list of things she wanted to accomplish before she was 30, and she’s actually managed most of them, motherhood among them. Me? Well, I’ve not grabbed the bull by the proverbial horns. Granted I thought that by now I’d be a Marine Biologist, married and living on the beach somewhere, but hey, not all of it is totally unrealistic. I kind of wish for simpler times when I had life ahead of me, but most of me is just kind of fed up with myself. Hello! Time to get going on things. I’ve let life just go along. Yeah, my clock is ticking, biological and otherwise and it’s time I did something about it.
Random: I saw my first old lady mullet last week. Perm in the front, braid in the back. Way classy.
Oh, and a word of glee here: Kiddo also likes the smell of books - as in she sniffs them just like I do - she just did it while she was reading the back of my newest addition to my rabid collection. She is One Of Us. Mwahahahahaha. /evil.
listening to: Roisin Murphy - Modern Timing
reading: Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (Why have I not read this before??)
eating: macachee (ugh, whole wheat noodles are fail)
drinking: not enough
word count: 203
darling du jour: a decent boss kill in WoW. (Yes, I said it. Deal)
Posted in commonplace book | 1 Comment » | Tags: geek, just to say, oh smeg, random stupidity, wtf
posted on May 16, 2009 at 10:36 pm by Khali
I had thought that I could have a nice relaxing day of writing today. Or at least this morning. I forget that it takes some time for my brain to switch gears from ‘reality’ to ‘creative’. More so these days since ‘reality’ seems to be so much more intense and requires more of my brainpower to adjust to how things are working.
The boss, the cigar-chomping stress-case that he is, freaks out at the smallest thing and I find that I am not like that - at least not about work. There are things that I simply can do nothing about, so there’s no point in freaking out about it, or stressing over it, or even whining about it. (Though whining about it seems to be a great stress-reliever on some level. I like to vent and I’m sure sometimes that sounds like whining.) Anyway, this seems to cause said boss no end of fits and he gets his fingers into things where I was perfectly fine. This is something TMF is going to have to get used to too. I don’t know if how I handle it is the best approach, but it’s the only one I have: I just let him rant and do his thing and then quietly clean up afterwards. I think perhaps this gives me an appearance of being unruffled, but really, I’m ruffled. I mean really, what in the world did you hire me for if you’re going to try and do it for me anyway? Smeg off already.
Yeah. I’ve been watching Red Dwarf. And a ton of old movies. I need the mindlessness. Besides, Rimmer has some of the best lines ever. i.e. “and on that day, Lister, Satan will be skating to work!”
Anyway, I did manage a few words on a new story. Something that’s been brewing in one form or another for a while. I’m not sure if this particular incarnation will be the final story or not, but it has introduced me to a new character, one I am coming to like very much. His name is Justice - he’s being close-mouthed about his last name right now, but he’s driving the story pretty well. The other, as yet, refuses to be named.
Saw Star Trek tonight. It rocked. The audience clapped at the end. I among them. I have been a Trek fan since junior high when I discovered The Next Generation on prime time and I have to admit I was kind of worried about how JJ Abrams would handle the Trek Universe having admitted that he was more of a Star Wars fan. I need not have worried. Granted there are a couple of things I would have liked to have had explored more (i.e. just WHY do the engine rooms look like breweries and what the heck is with the multiple warp cores? And really? Uhura? I did not see that coming!) it stayed true to the Trek universe in a very satisfying way.
I am sad to say, however, that I have quite possibly lost all of 2005-2006 of my blog archives. I had moved them off blogger in order to archive them, but the file seems to have disappeared before I could burn them. I’ve either deleted it by accident or renamed it to something obscure in accordance to some strange logic, but the fact remains that they’re no longer on blogger and they’re no longer where I thought they were, and a complete search of my computer has produced nothing. Yeah, I feel like a complete idiot and I’m peeved that I’m stupid enough to have not backed it up when I first decided on doing the project. Fuckitty fuck. Fuck. Fuckkity, fuckkity, fuck, fuck.
listening to: Tina Dico - Count to Ten
reading: Tanith Lee - When the Lights Go Out
eating: perogies
drinking: pepsi
watched: Elizabethtown and 4 episodes of Red Dwarf
word count: 512 (ha! better than nothing!)
darling du jour: Justice proves just how stubborn he can be
Posted in commonplace book, work | No Comments » | Tags: blargh, oh smeg, work
