islandia

I will preface this post by saying I have nothing in particular I wish to write right now. Nothing of importance, nothing well-thought out or insightful. Nope. Just a bunch of top-of-my-head thoughts in 140 characters or less. Does my blog need a theme? Perhaps, but it's too late now. I'd start an entirely new blog if I ever decide to tidy up and become more cohesive. (Was "cohesive" the word I should have used? It means unified, well-integrated. Hmmm. I think it works. And since language is merely a social construct, the idea of a correct or incorrect word is silly at best. Kidding. I'm just trying to sound smart.)

Iceland. WHAT A COUNTRY, AMIRITE?! I am right. If I had to move to any country, I would move to Iceland. And who knows? Maybe my future includes fjords and elf festivals. I can't get over the feeling that Iceland is a mythical land, but apparently it's a real place??? I'll believe it when I see it/live there with the trolls and members of Sigur Rós. (But let's get real -- I could move there with what money I don't know, but move there and attend a public university FOR FREE and work on a sheep farm and eventually shack up with some native Icelander and become a resident. Wait, I'd have to marry the Icelander in order to become a resident, yeah? Is that how it works? Marriage isn't really a thing Icelanders do. Isn't that cool? Aren't they so cool? They are the coolest and have really terrific looking handknit wool sweaters, which are sometimes called Lopapeysa.)

Fourth of July. I should write about the 4th because today is the 4th and what better way to celebrate the holiday than to write a provocative piece on the failings of democracy? But you won't read that here because remember my preface? Good. Glad you remember.

Also remember that you bought three cookies at Subway today. That was a note for myself, unless you also bought three cookies (oatmeal raisin, white chocolate macadamia nut, double chocolate chip) at Subway today then I guess it would be a note for the both of us. The two of us. The two amigos, the two musketeers, the two stooges. I'm glad I have you, pal.

As is always the case, I planned on writing more. Maybe I was going to write about books? Or food? Or the center of gravity? I don't know, it could have been all of the above. I will get to those topics one day, but for now I must hunt down a bald eagle and ride on its back all the way to Iceland. I'm coming for you, Fjalladrottning.

miss

I am attempting to write without the perhaps necessary assistance of caffeine. By the end of this post we'll see if the caffeine is, in fact, necessary.

Things I miss:

*My long, meandering walks through the Avenues. Good time to chill out, think, fantasize about lives I could live in each of the unique, old homes. I also very rarely ran into other people. And if I did, they were friendly and walking friendly dogs or riding friendly bikes. So many gardens, so many prayer flags, so many Subarus. Man. I think I just miss the Avenues in general.

*Trees. There is no shade down here. HELP ME. Also, trees are kinda sorta totally sacred to me. Not only does my physical body need trees, but so does my soul.

*School. But not really. I don't miss a lot of things about school. I guess I just miss the discussions and some of the lectures and most of the readings and the feeling that I was doing something -- and it was something in which I excelled. I feel like a doofus when I'm not actively studying something.

*Laura. And she's not a thing, she's a person. I mean, duh.

Things I do not miss:

*A lot of people from 2004-2006. Sorry? (I do desperately miss some of them, though. But there are quite a few who I say GOOD RIDDANCE!)

*Uncomfortable jeans. I don't know why I ever wore anything high waisted or without spandex.

*Fried chicken. I guess I just haven't had it in a long time? I dunno. I never get a craving for anything deep fried. I hope that's not an obnoxious thing to say. I'm not trying to imply that I'm some snobby clean eater because I am definitely not. To prove this, I will admit that I am curious how Burger King's new hot dogs taste. SUE ME! Don't sue me. I will sue YOU.

*Secret things I shall not admit to the public, at least not now. Just know that I do not miss it. Not one bit. Nope. Okay, maybe a little. But only a little!

Yeah. I think the caffeine's necessary.

bent

Things I should not do:

*Complain about my ex, at least publicly. Sure, I don't use his name, but I think it's fairly obvious who the ex is. I think a big part of why I occasionally throw out little jabs is an attempt to reclaim my voice, to "prove" that I can speak up for myself and I don't always have to suppress the less-than-pleasant emotions and the less-than-ideal things that he did to me. And letting these things be read by many as opposed to jotting it down in a private journal is somehow empowering... Up to a point. After that it just becomes kinda dangerous. It's dangerous to stay trapped in the past and be bothered by the actions of those who do not deserve your energy. So I will move on and start complaining about more important things, such as that darn rock and/or roll music kids are listening to these days and the lack of pickles on my six inch Subway sandwich yesterday.

*Believe that blended frozen bananas are a substitute for ice cream. They are not. They never will be. Please, Internet and Dr. Oz, stop telling me it will taste exactly like ice cream.

*Go more than four hours without eating. Duh. Big time duh.

*Humor dudes who write/text/message me looking for one thing and one thing only. Use your imagination.

*Get sunburned.

*Get bent. Or maybe I should? Is getting bent fun? Dangerous? Fun in a kinda dangerous way, but the danger is worth it? I don't know. I don't think I've ever gotten bent in my 32 years.

*Worry about being too old to try new things and travel down new life paths. Go back to school if you want, Meggie. Go teach English overseas if you want, Meggie. Go farming in the South of France if you want, Meggie. Go audition for a small community play if you want, Meggie. Give me a fist bump now.

Things I should do:

*Write earlier in the day when my mind is working "properly" instead of right now, in the middle of the afternoon, when all I want to do is chill the eff out in a hammock and/or panic about the impending purge.

*The usual -- meditate, hydrate, yoga, vote, volunteer, help old ladies cross the street unless they are, like, soooo slow. I know the slow ones need the most help crossing that street, but lady! I have places to be and people to see! (No, I don't.)

*Go downstairs and find my food processor, bring it upstairs, wash out all of the spider webs, and proceed to make something that is not banana "ice cream."

*Get bent. Get bent forever.

sub

Do you ever catch a glimpse of yourself in the screen of your computer and go, "Oh boy, that person looks like a tired plate of mashed potatoes!" Because I do, all of the time. And I am tired, all of the time. But the thing with being a tired plate of mashed potatoes (with butter and lots of salt) all of the time is that you know nothing else. So tired is the new normal! It all works out!

I need more sleep, yes. Sure. Okay. Will do. But what happens if I love both early mornings and late nights? I am an early bird and a night owl and those two winged creatures do not get along. I guess I could always sleep away the day. YEAH RIGHT, BUB. Although... Maybe? Maybe my future career will be one with a graveyard shift (and an actual graveyard -- I could be a groundskeeper? OR A GHOST HUNTER!!!) and I will finally thrive.

Today I got into a teeeeensy tiny little itty bitty insignificant still totally stupid and I wish it never would have happened accident. I don't have the energy to tell you all about it -- plus it isn't fascinating in the slightest -- but I will say that I found it interesting how damn nice I was throughout the whole thing. It wasn't my fault at all, yet I still said sorry? And I complimented the driver's shirt, cracked some jokes, tried to lighten the mood. I am always trying to lighten the mood for others, yet I do whatever I can to litter my mood with storm clouds. Make life way easier for others, make life way harder for self: This is the diary of Meg Wiemer.

I do want to write more. I do! I do! But I want to buy a Subway sandwich more. I do? I do. This post went nowhere and it went nowhere fast. I need to start writing more quality posts. Quality > Quantity. Equality < Subway sandwiches. Subway sandwiches > Quality sandwiches. Math > Comes in handy when writing blog posts.

pur(r)e

I don't even know why I have hair. The one thing that can make me gag is finding a long strand of hair not attached to a scalp. And don't even get me started on shower drains. Ugh, FOR REALS it grosses me the freak out. The frick out. The fudge out.

Fudge. Next topic. Nice transition, Meg! Fudge reminds me of my grammy. She would make fudge and caramel for everyone around Christmas and send them in festive tins. I preferred the caramels over the fudge and I'm sure I still would today if she was still alive and making these treats. But treats? I don't eat treats, right? I don't allow myself the pleasure. Total denial or total indulgence of pleasure: Welcome to America, where we can't not do everything in extreme.

I do want to change this, though -- this denial of almost everything even remotely enjoyable in life. I don't quite understand why I hold such rigid restrictions for myself. Yes, it's the whole desiring-to-be-in-control thing. But there's something else to it as well. I am tempted to say it has something to do with repentance, with purity. If I deny the desires of the senses, I am somehow atoning for sins I most likely never committed. It's a bizarre, deeply ingrained belief. Then again, I might be way off base.

This was going to be a really lighthearted and fun post. OR SO I THOUGHT. Then I sat down and my fingers had a different idea. And now my brain has the idea that it's done for the day. It's almost 5:00 anyway. Quittin' time. Clock out, drive home, puff on a cigar. My brain needs an after-work cigar.

I am gonna give my brain a break (but no cigar, sorry) right now and go on a walk. A walk is like a brain massage. And after the walk my feet will need a massage. After massaging my feet, my tired hands will most likely want a massage of their own. I can't forget about my sore butt and tight calves and tense shoulders. There's a lot of freakin' massaging on my agenda tonight. A lot of frickin' massaging. A lot of fudgin' massaging. Massaging is a form of indulging, right? See -- I'm not hopeless.

(re)store

The older I get, the less I like the heat. Oh no! I'm discussing the weather again! And what I said wasn't even entirely true. I like the heat. Maybe not 100 degree heat, but I prefer it over being cold. THE THING IS I am not super fond of summertime anymore. Summer used to be a welcome relief, long days filled with running through sprinklers and eating so many Otter Pops that your mouth turns blue. Oh, and night games. Fun fact: My first email account was NGmeg@aol.com. The "NG" stood for, yes, night games. I loved loved loved night games. I guarantee my friends and I were the most obnoxious kids on the block. We must've been doing something right. Summer now, though? Summer now is full of way way way too many Little League games, way way way way way way way too many fireworks (idea: outlaw all fireworks), carnivals that ruin my pretty park, sticky kids terrorizing the streets, and Old Navy flag t-shirts. Summer is an introvert's worst nightmare.

Paragraph on weather out of the way. Now on to my paragraph about my ex. Kidding. But I will say that I try to cut him out of my life for sanity's sake, which basically just means I block him on all social media accounts. I cannot, however, protect myself from mutual friends posting things about him. After a long day of doing nothing but obsessively reading another Auster novel and avoiding sticky kids, I "relax" by looking through my Instagram feed. Lo and behold, a mutual pal posts a picture of my ex's apartment which he lives in with his gal pal. Pals. Pals everywhere. It shouldn't matter and it doesn't, but for some reason it bothered me at that moment. I will just throw the blanket over the whole situation and say that "it's complicated." I will also say that I am not jealous, I am not sad, I do not ever ever ever wish to date him ever ever ever again -- I think the petty side of me just goes, "Huh. Why does he get to be happy and seemingly successful when I am a) smarter and b) not a bad person?" I told you -- that's my petty side. He is smart, he is not a terrible human (but he did make pretty bad choices in the past! where oh where are you, karma?), and he can have whatever life he wants. I only need to be concerned with the choices I make. I have to stop comparing my life with the lives of 7,400,000,000 people. It'll get me nowhere except the loony bin.

Last paragraph, thank Buddha. Let's see, I can discuss politics or the weather again or the struggles of a slightly apathetic Millennial OR... My eating disorder! It's been a minute since I've done that. Deep breath. I won't get dramatic I won't get uncomfortably honest I won't cause you worry. <--- "I won't cause you worry" is a typical statement with someone with an eating disorder. We don't want to disturb anything or anyone, so we hide and keep quiet and put on the cloak of perfection. Everything's fine! I'm fine! You're fine! It'll all be fine fine fine! So first order of business: Speak up, show your emotions. Well, the first order of business should be to eat something. And eat often. And continue to eat. Recovery is such a delicate, tricky business -- an ED sufferer obviously needs therapy in order to recover, but they can't think clearly or function properly without adequate nutrition. So you have to restore your weight before any real progress can be made in therapy, yet you need therapy in order to eat without completely freaking out. It's a puzzle and seems nearly impossible. Nearly. But not totally. Recovery can happen and has happened to thousands of people. So why can't it happen to me? It can, don't you worry... I mean, worry. I mean, worry but also don't worry? I guess you should do whatever. And so should I. And maybe we can discuss all of this sometime over a nice, hot, entirely satisfying meal. We deserve it.

net

This heat, man! Sheesh. Okay, I won't discuss the weather, although I do discuss it often. I discuss the weather and politics. I will choose talk radio over music any day. I get excited when an Eddie Bauer catalog comes in the mail. I appreciate sensible shoes. I am a bonafide adult.

But I won't discuss the weather or any of those others things right now. Instead I will dive a little deeper and open up a little wider. Then again, maybe I won't. Maybe I've already chickened out and shied away from vulnerability. I tend to do this. I tend to not want to rock the, boat, to worry others, to set myself up for possible rejection. But by closing myself off, I close myself off to all of the good shit life is ready to give. The good shit = relationships, success, peace of mind.

All defense mechanisms are safety nets. The problem with safety nets are that they prevent one from learning how to land on one's feet. If you never learn, what happens when some trickster (i.e. sudden, unavoidable life events) cuts holes in the net? Wouldn't it be better to be prepared -- or to not even have the net in the first place?

The past few years have been... hard. Hard because I am finally feeling the effects of ageing, of not being in my invincible and unstoppable 20s anymore. I feel left behind, not-quite-there, a late bloomer. A very late bloomer. People my age or slightly younger have careers and families and homes and so much more shit figured out than I do. Or so it seems. Maybe they don't have shit figured out, but they have their shit together. Or so it seems. There is a lot of seeming going on here. Point is, I feel stunted, stuck, unable to progress on any of life's paths. I could label this as depression, fear, refusal, or a toxic combination of all three. I don't know. I do know, however, that something needs to change soon.

Where to begin? This is the question that overwhelms me, thus preventing me from building up the motivation to move forward. I avoid the question because I am so impatient with myself and want an immediate answer, a surefire plan, detailed steps on what to do and how to do it. But I have to realize the answer will only come from me, not from any outside source. So I guess I just stumbled upon my answer: I begin with trusting myself.

I think it's time for a long walk. I may not know exactly how to land on my feet quite yet, but I do know how to walk. Thank god for that.