Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Autobiography’ Category

Jul 18

23 Comments

just a little mental checkup

I’m coming out of another little down phase, and I’m kind of just writing about it here to keep track of it. Otherwise, I know I won’t note it at all and I really want to understand what these things are all about. Anyway, feel free to ignore this post completely.

So this one came about 7 or 8 months after the last. I was sporadic with the blogging, and I did in the end skip a couple of weeks of podcasting, but all in all it wasn’t too bad. It kind of peaked the last few weeks when I was really feeling kind of angry and even maybe a bit resentful. And that bit is new.

Last week I had a weird thing happen. I was talking to a co-worker and I just felt this kind of urge to be mean to her. For no reason whatsoever. We were just talking, and I suddenly felt this meanness inside myself and I wanted to be ugly mean to her and I just wanted to see the hurt and shock on her face. I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life! 

I’ve been angry, certainly, and I’ve spoken to others in anger and frustration before. But I always feel so guilty afterward, and I’ve never wanted to purposely  hurt someone, like just for the fun of it. It was an awful feeling, and I wondered if this is what mean people feel like all the time. Do they get pleasure and satisfaction out of shocking and hurting other people? Of course I didn’t act on it. I don’t think I could have forgiven myself if I had.

And then this past weekend I felt better. I even felt happy and hopeful at times this week. And that’s what keeps going through my mind, is hope. Just randomly this week, there would be times when I suddenly felt hope inside myself. I felt that good things could happen, and even that good things were  going to happen. And I realized that when I’m in these moody periods, that’s what’s mostly missing is the hope of things to come.

I know what triggered this little episode (apart from the anger/mean thing, that kind of threw me for a loop). I put a lot of emotion and energy into starting this podcast, and I wonder did I just deplete my emotional reserves? These down swings often come at the end of a big project.

Anyway, I’m feeling better. And hopeful. And not at all mean! I’m feeling like myself again.

Which of course means I feel stupid and weak. Everyone gets emotional or stressed or just overwhelmed at times. What’s wrong with me that I don’t handle it better? In any case, I want to find a way to work around or through my down times. If that’s possible.

♦

Jun 10

23 Comments

Name Dropping

I am terrible with names.

It’s kind of like Charlie Brown in my head when I’m introduced to people. “Michelle, this is whah whah whah.”

It’s the strangest thing; the name just slides right through my mind like it was never spoken. Even long-standard names like Denise or Jason are hard to remember at first, and I’ll ask for a person’s name sometimes four or five times before it sticks. It’s embarrassing, but I’ve finally just started telling people, “hey, it’s not you, it’s me – I’m gonna ask for your name a lot .”

I’m better with short, unique names; I only have to hear them a couple of times. If a name is very unusual, though, I’m not going to get it no matter how many times I’m told. When I think of that person or speak to them, I’ll see a jumble of letters in my mind’s eye. It usually has the first letter right, but the rest is simply a mess. I have to ask for the spelling, and visualize it being spelled in my head. After that, I’ve got it – I guess because I’m such a visual person. I think that’s why I’m so good with internet names, is because I get to see them.

When I can’t remember someone’s name, it makes me feel bad. Because no matter what people might say about their name not representing their identity, knowing or not knowing someone’s name is a kind of social signal. Knowing someone’s name means you recognize them as a person apart from the crowds of this world.

.

Even after I’ve got a name memorized, when I am tired or stressed or overworked, names are the first thing to go. Well really, the only thing to go. It’s odd. My mind goes completely blank. Emptiness. Nothing there.

I lose other proper names as well, like machines or tools. I usually stutter or stare at someone stupidly for a bit before saying something like, “You know! That thing you use to turn screws in and out.”

It’s the same with people, “Go tell…go tell…ahh…” Gaping silence. “Who’s  that other girl who does the same job as me?” It doesn’t matter that we’ve worked together for three years – her name is temporarily missing from my vocabulary.

It’s just how I’m wired. The same way that I’m going to tell you left when I mean right, and then I’m not going to understand why you turned in the wrong direction. The same way, if I see the number 351, the voice inside my head says 315.

It’s just me.

Some of these things are more easily worked around. At work, my brain automatically compensates for the number mix-ups. If my head reads 315 on the original ticket, when I’m looking for the match and I see 351, then I know that’s the right one. Even though my inner voice is saying, “315…315…”

If I’m giving someone directions, I just have to go through it slowly, double checking myself constantly. I can’t let myself get flustered or distracted. If I go too fast or say the directions without really thinking about it, there will be at least one wrong turn in there where I say left when I’m thinking right or vice versa.

The name thing is the only one that I haven’t fully compensated for. Except for just slowing down again, and putting in the extra effort.

And really, that’s not bad advice for any part of my life.

.

So what about you?

Are you a name person?

What are your quirks?

♦

Items of Interest:

How important to you is your Name?

.

May 13

18 Comments

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is buried in my neighborhood

So the big news around here last Friday was that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was being buried in my county. The police department was actually forced to make a statement along the lines of, “Yes, we know what’s happening. Stop calling us. Oh, and 911 is for emergencies.”

I’m not sure what all those people calling 911 were thinking, why they thought it was an emergency or what they thought the police were supposed to do about it.

Though I hate to admit it, my own knee-jerk reaction to the information, while hardly volatile, was  less than hospitable. I thought, “Why here? He doesn’t belong here. Why did they bring him to where I live?”

I just didn’t like it.

.

I still have that reaction on the surface of my heart, but deeper than that is the understanding that people are not one-dimensional.  There is more to us than our worst deeds.

God, for my own sake, I hope so.

And it’s easier than you might think to become something different from what you started out as. It’s easier than you think to get wrong ideas in your head, to become immersed in whatever crazy thing you believe, and to find yourself acting on that wrong thinking in terrible, possibly irreversible ways.

But I was saddened by the ugliness and just venom from some of the comments I read on-line, ranging from a simple “this is a disgrace” to “throw him in the sewer” to “Massachusetts  doesn’t want this trash rotting in their soil, so why should we have to take him?”

What he did was horrendous. But I have to wonder, is there an act so vile and repugnant that it completely renders the person irredeemable?

And at what point does it then become okay to deny that person their humanity?

Because if that line exists, I believe there are so many more people who don’t belong in our communities, much less our graveyards. People you’ll never hear about, who carry out their atrocities in quiet and nearly invisible ways.

.

He’s here because no place else would have him.

The Christian woman who found the cemetery said, “Jesus tells us ‘love your enemies’, not to hate them even after they are dead.”

The Muslim organization that runs the cemetery released a statement that they condemn his actions but believe burying him was their duty. “To God belongs the soul, and He has the final judgment.”

There is a part of me that feels a bit contaminated when I think of this man being buried here. As irrational and unkind as that is.

And even though I’ve carried out atrocities of my own.

But at the same time, I’m glad he was taken in. I’m glad there were people with enough compassion and love and unclouded thinking to do what was morally and ethically right.

♦

May 9

9 Comments

Prelude to a podcast

Title Pan 2

You guys- I’m starting a podcast!

Because I want to, that’s why. Silly.

Actually, when I started this blog, it was called “Let me ask you this…” Because I say that all the time. I am a question asker, and I love to know about people, about their lives, what they think about things…just everything.

If you’ve talked to me here or if I’ve ever left a rambling message commented on your blog, then you know I love to talk. And I’ll talk a subject into the ground if I don’t rein myself in.

Sometimes I desperately want to get out of a conversation with someone but I just can’t stop myself from asking things like, “And then what happened?” And I really do want to know, even if I’m not that interested in what they’re talking about. It’s odd.

Wait…I’m always interested in what YOU have to say. Truly!

🙂

I’m calling my podcast “people I almost know” because that covers everybody. Including myself.

The first episode posts two weeks from today; it’s an interview with newly published author Leanne Shirtliffe. In the meantime, I practiced on my 5 year old niece:

(warning for the faint of heart: farts ahead)


I don’t have a theme other than people – I’m pretty much just going to do whatever I want. I figure I’m old enough now to start living like that.

At least in podcast land.

But I hope you’ll enjoy them too.

♥

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »