dutch

Phil,

I don't know if anyone is reading this journal who isn't also on facebook, but might as well post here - Klaus and I have gotten engaged, after being together 7.5 years.

Yay.

apparently my doctor does not call in prescriptions for patients he has not seen in over a year. this is perfectly reasonable, of course, but devastating too. i am thankful that the nurse who returned my phone call was good enough to call me in two weeks of prescription to start before i get in for an appointment.

i cannot post any more about it. i cannot go into the details. this is very hard, and i'm scared.

there have been signs for 2-3 weeks now. it doesn't matter how many times i've been through this - it always feels like a life or death battle. the first attack, though, is always the absence of a desire to fight, or any interest in the victory.

i act as much for klaus as i do for me. he has made it unacceptable to see the problem and not take action against it.

so i put in a call to my doctor for a prescription. alright, then. let's do this again.

I lost Phil. Do you know where he is?

Okay, so either someone from my office left their phone here with a ringer that sounds like a very small leprechaun yelling for help, or... there is a very small leprechaun somewhere in my office who needs my help.

He has stopped yelling now, and I'm worried for him.

Ah, see, there are other good reasons for keeping a hand-written journal.
Sometimes you figure things out as you write.

So.. I've already explained my responses to my recent journal project to great extents in my off-line journal (you know... that old-fashioned thing called a spiral-bound notebook), which kinda took the motivation out for me to go into great depth here, but i'll do a mini recap of each of the points i addressed there.

1. I have changed. One of those changes is that i can now be self-aware and honest with myself.
2. There are a lot of things that I had forgotten about who I used to be. Having a written record is very important because your memory is inaccurate and insufficient. Large gaps in entries were hugely disappointing. Therefore I want to commit to journaling more frequently.
3. My sense of humor about myself will save my life.
4. All those years I thought I was wasting were not wasted.

And i was came to this conclusion: if I continue to live my life feeling that my worth is dependent entirely upon reaching a grand, triumphant destination (without ever knowing what it is) then I will continue to regard all of the time until that day, and all of the time after that day, as void of worth.

The best that I can do is to choose a path that I find challenging, motivating, inspiring, and beautiful, and hope that wherever it takes me will be exactly where I needed to go, and on some level I will be satisfied with it.

The idea is new-agey and cheesey. It's cliche and Hallmark beat me to it a million times. The idea is everything that I have found boring and everything that I thought I was above.

Therefore, I'm not sure it will work. I have always understood my worth to be dependent upon my achievements, and that I'm supposed to do better.

But there *has* to be some way that I can stop the feeling that I'm a failure. How do I win over this brain of mine? With what logical steps can I re-wire this thing?

My official position is that I am hoping to find employment in Portland so that we can move at the end of March, but that I am prepared to handle whatever scenario develops as that time approaches.

What that said, let's have an honest moment. Just one.
If I don't find employment in Portland in the next two months, there will be an all-out tantrum.

Just sayin'.

Okay, so this project that I ended up on randomly, which is to read all of my journals in order from 1989 to present, is going to have strange effects on me. I can see a few themes running through the journals, and have found some very noteable insights. This may end up being very useful to my Saturn return dilemma. Maybe it's just a mood, but I've discovered a lot to appreciate and be optimistic about while reading these journals.

I won't get into details yet. I haven't finished the timeline. There will be more later.