THERE IT IS

Michael asked me yet again, probably for the fifth time, what I needed for summer camp. I answered him with the same answer I gave the four times before: a shug of the shoulder and a questionable ‘nothing’. I mean, I’m teaching a class on using the camera on your phone. I have a giant tablet I’m writing some notes on and a stack of lens cleaning cloths. I bought an HDMI cable so I could hook my laptop up to a projector for a slide show presentation at the end of camp. I have a tent, a sleeping bag, a sleeping mat, and an ice chest. I am debating about taking our camp box of cookware. There will be a few meals not provided at camp and while there will be grills and firepits, there will not be cookware. To take cookware or not to take cookware is the thing I am contemplating the most right now.

Except, I have had enough people ask me if I have everything I need enough times that I am starting to doubt that I have everything I need. Then, just a few days ago, Kelly re-posted a picture I had taken onto the camp’s facebook page as advertisement of my class and what’s being offered at camp and I heard it. I heard the voice. It started out by just whispering in my ear, but quickly escalated to straight up yelling in my face. Yeah, you guessed it. It was the Voice of Doubt. There it was, telling me that I am a total fraud and an imposter. The truly amazing thing is that I have been able to fool people into even thinking I had some sort of talents. In fact, The Voice of Doubt applauded me on my acting skills. At first, I almost didn’t recognize the Voice of Doubt because it’s been awhile since I’ve heard it, but it has also been awhile since I’ve done anything that puts me in a vulnerable spot.

Do you know what the Voice of Doubt makes me do (besides obviously see myself as a failure)? It makes me procrastinate. This is such a flip from earlier days when the Voice of Doubt would have me in a frenzy of over preparedness. I have a mystic voodoo theory about how the Voice of Doubt affects me now versus how it affected me then and it basically comes down it’s all Chris’s fault. Gah! I used to get so frustrated by Chris’s procrastination particularly because I was the opposite of a procrastinator. Now, because of my mystic voodoo theory that is too crazy for me to tell you about, I get it. I understand that all of that procrastination was because of the Voice of Doubt. Instead of doing anything, I am sitting here thinking about making a list. But only thinking about it. You see, I can’t even get it together enough right now to make a damn list. This infuriates me and I want to scream back at the Voice of Doubt, but I never scream back.

I’ve never been good at putting up much of a fight.

I have two choices right now. I can walk into this whole thing half prepared or I can snap out of it and get myself together. I know what I am doing. I have some really good bullet points of information I plan on sharing. I do not need much of anything to share these bullet points. I don’t need to be THE authority of digital photography. I just need to share the things I know. I have got this.

So fuck off, Voice of Doubt.

CONTRACTS

166/365 Je suis

7 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "166/365 Je suis"

It was Memorial Day weekend and Michael and I met Terry and the boys at the Union Station Memorial Day celebration. I found myself in a conversation regarding sex which is not surprising considering the company. At some point in the conversation, one young man turned to me and asked "Are you good at blow jobs?" I opened my mouth to respond with something positive about my abilities, but paused. I looked at the guy who asked me the question and said "I used to be really good at it, but now? I don't know." I shrugged and said "The penis is different." The young man tilted his head to an angle, looking at me with total confusion and Terry then went on to explain my tale of two dicks. 

The empty spaces that came from Chris's departure filled up with doubts and a tendency to lean towards hypochondriac. For example, it's bug bite season and I know that the bites on my body are from mosquitoes or maybe a flea from the cat. I've not seen any fleas, but that means nothing because my crazy brain has already decided that the bites are from bed bugs. Michael keeps walking into my bedroom whenever I'm in the middle of searching the mattress for signs of bed bugs and every time he shakes his head as he says "We do not have bed bugs. Stop looking for them." There is a rational spot on my brain that knows this is true. We do not have bed bugs. But what if we do? I'm going to have burn the house down. Sometimes I think about burning the house down just to start over with a clean slate. I should probably not be left alone with matches or a lighter. 

The fortune in my Fortune Cookie Diary on Saturday said something like "talk to the person who is most on your mind." I wrote a semi-autobiographical story about not talking to the person most on my mind. I wrote about all the doubts I have in what I am doing and even doubts in who I am as an individual person. The things I used to be good at, I am no longer sure I'm good at any more. I struggle to answer a question because I don't know if I'm going to answer incorrectly, when there's no right or wrong answer to the question. I just hesitate like a deer in the headlights because I want to answer in a way that will make all parties happy. I am so caught up in thinking of the otherness of the other that I forget to think of myself. My happiness is not as important as the happiness of others. 

"What if this is all the love you ever get."

I have been working really hard this year to stop doubting myself. For one thing, the dead can not reassure me that I am doing things right. And really, what is right? That's my choice. I decide what is right for me. I answer to myself. Most days, it seems to be working.

Most days. 

When I came home from work last week, Michael said "let's go to Bella Napoli's and then get some groceries." He'd dropped the Cabbage off at her Mimi and Nona's earlier, so it was just the two of us. We were seated at a table fairly quickly, which isn't normal on half price pizza day there. It's usually busy but we had managed to get there before the rush. As we waited for our server, Michael mentioned that we had to be close to the date when we met there for the first time. We are both bad at remembering dates. I looked it up and we were a day off. It has been exactly five years. You know, I almost bolted? I was sitting on a bench, waiting for him to show. Chad and I were texting back and forth and I suddenly had the strongest urge to just get up and walk away. Except just as I stood up, Michael walked up to me. So, I went through with the date and then I thought I was ordering a glass of wine, but really ended up ordering a whole bottle. 

Michael has stopped talking about marriage. Instead, he has decided that we'll just renew a verbal contract every five years. This works for me. I've never been big on legal marriages. I've only said that I would do it if it really meant that much to him. I said the same thing to Chris. Chris thought it was important that we get married. It was not my idea, but there are big parts of my life that were not my idea.

And those parts turned out okay. 

YOGA FAIL

This is not a post about not getting on my yoga mat or feeling guilty for not getting on my mat. In fact, I've been really good about doing my practice. You can find me in the middle of a sun salutation around lunch time about five days out the week and I'm not just doing the easy stuff. I always put in at least one or two poses that I don't really like do. Those poses eventually become poses I don't mind doing, so I add in a few other poses I don't like doing. I'm not just laying down in savasana, though that wouldn't really be all that bad of thing every now and then. My yoga practice has been really really good. Except for one thing.

The last three times I've sat down on my yoga mat to do marichyasana (as pictured above), I have not been unable to bind and clasp my hands. I haven't even been able to brush my finger tips together. The first time, I kind of just brushed it off because I hadn't done a lot of the preparation poses that makes marichyasana easy. I say 'kind of' because I never really needed to do the prep to easily bind, but what ever. The second time I was on my mat, I did some of those prep poses like twists and hip openers and I still couldn't grasp my fingers. This time, my ego became inflamed with rage. This is a pose I normally like to do! This is a pose that looks impressive in a carnival freak-show kind of way and I've always been able to do it well. I've always been able to do this pose with out effort. What was wrong with me?!?!

Yesterday I got on my mat with marichyasana on my mind. I thought maybe this time I needed to do something more than twists and hip openers. Maybe it was my shoulders causing the problem. This time I threw in a bunch of shoulder opening poses. I thought for sure that this time I'd bind myself up into marichyasana like I'd always been able to do. Nope. My finger tips were a little bit closer, but no where near close enough to clasp. This time my ego wasn't just mad. This time my ego got in there and started yelling inside my brain like a middle school gym coach yelling at the scrawny pre-teen to climb that rope. My favorite, easy pose has now become a pose that I don't like to do. What. Is. Happening?

I can't quite figure out what's different. I thought maybe it was a weight issue, but this body I have now is the same as that body up there in the picture. The other day, I got a notification that someone had recently 'faved' a photo I'd taken for my thirtieth birthday. It was an artfully nude photo and as I looked at it, I had to admit that I didn't really see any differences between that body and this body. All of this makes not being able to do this pose even more frustrating. It's a showy, trick of a pose. Like balancing on the palms of your hands in crow pose. I can easily do crow pose now. It used to be one of the poses I didn't really like to practice. It looks like I might have traded one marichyasana for one crow pose. Hello Ego! I see you've come to take me down a peg. 

That's the thing about yoga. One day you think you've made it to guru cave level yogini. The next day you're reminded that you still have lots and lots to learn. Today, I'm going to get on my mat. I'm going to do those hip openers and twists. I'm going to do those shoulder openers. I'm going to throw in some chest openers and maybe even do a little self massage of the muscles in between the ribs. I'm going to sit down and make another attempt at marichyasana and if my fingers still don't reach to bind, I am not giving up. I will make marichyasana my pose of the month if I have to. 

That's how you get to guru cave level yogini.