The view from inside.

Oy. So, last night I fell asleep watching Thursday night's prime-time Olympics coverage. It was 9:51pm and we were watching the women's supercombined, and Doug said, "Nine minutes!" My response was an immediate and resounding, "No way! I'm wide awake! I won't fall asleep at 10!" Ten o'clock seems to be my new bewitching hour (used to be 10:30); it's when my eyes get heavy and within seconds I'm drooling onto one of the throw pillows. And at 9:51 I was wide awake. Drinking iced tea, petting a cat. But wouldn't you know it - at 9:58pm I felt my eyes drooping and was fast asleep within seconds. All I really needed was a nap, though, because at 12:30am I woke up to Wyatt humping my arm and the sounds of Doug's guitar coming up from the basement, and then I was wide awake again. So I continued with the Olympics where I left off and didn't go to bed until 5am. This happens to me every once in a while. I accept it.

What's different about this particular second wind is that Doug and I had a very heartfelt and meaningful conversation starting around 2:30am, after we watched Yevgeny Plushenko finish his silver medal free program at nbcolympics.com (our pre-set DVR recording stopped just before his performance - the anger!). Doug was absolutely exhausted and wanted to go to bed, since he didn't get the luxury of a nap, but was good enough to talk with me about the post I did that night on the Olympics. I won't get into the specifics of the conversation, but I'll just say that it was one of the better ones we've had about these same old topics, because I was not bringing any kind of heated emotions into it, or any kind of prejudgments. It was nice, and I thank him, because he confirmed what I've been thinking for a while, which is that I've got to stop dwelling on these thoughts. Enough already. And if I'm not going to stop dwelling on these bigger ideas of meaning, purpose, inspiration, possibilities, then I have to at least stop blogging about them. Because it's getting old and no one needs to hear about it anymore.

So I'd like to just say that I know I have written many a post questioning my direction in life, the meaning of my life, wondering if I'm already, at the ripe old age of (just about) thirty-one, washed up and ready for the old folks home. I have revealed my feelings of inferiority and insecurity, and exposed my personal journey towards inner peace, which often seems like a giant avalanche of confused and meta thinking rushing furiously down the mountain of my mind. I tend to turn to the blog as if I would a journal, or as if I would a friend or a therapist, when I get stuck in my thoughts, and what ends up coming out are posts that make me sound whiney and ungrateful, a true white whiner. And often times I think that's what I am. But often I'm just someone who is trying to get things right for herself, and is doing so in a public way, and I think that it's better if I do this less publicly, and less thoughtfully. Meaning more action and less thinking, and less writing about that thinking.

This doesn't mean that I'll stop blogging, and it doesn't mean that I'll completely stop these posts without pictures, but I do hope to put as much of an end as possible to these posts that delve into the darker, deeper areas of my mind, the areas that don't really need a spotlight on them for all the world to see. Because there's so much more to my thinking and my life than those parts of me. Sure, I get inspired by the Olympics - who doesn't? But my posts on the Olympics don't have to turn into a diatribes on how I'm not living a goal-oriented life, how I would in my next life but in this life it's too late, I'm not good enough for that, or I'm too screwed up to do so. Because it's not too late and I'm not too screwed up. Really. I hate the labels that I feel attached to me - the complainer, the one with the problems, the person you should treat with kid gloves because she's going through some crazy amount of personal growth and inner angst. I'm tired of getting myself caught in a negative thinking pattern and exposing that thinking pattern to the world, which only serves to confirm those labels that I hate. Where is my self respect? Where is my self discipline? In a way, where is my Olympic spirit? It's here, it's in me, it's just not getting the spotlight. And that should change. In my effort to get my life right enough, I'm focusing on all the wrong stuff and I'm causing you, the reader of this showcase, to focus on all the wrong stuff, too. My apologies to you, but my thanks to Doug, who should probably kick me in the butt a little more often. He's good at it.