This week I have learned (or remembered):

1. Fear is a natural human response to a multitude of things, and potentially to almost everything.
2. When you respond to fear by trying to escape the cause, you lead yourself into a life of hiding. (*this is obviously not the case if what you fear is a physical, immediate danger such as a rabid dog or a falling piano. In that case go ahead and scoot out of the way.)
3. When you're hiding, you alienate yourself from everything good that you're capable of. You may be able to avoid what you're afraid of for a while, but you'll feel it lurking behind you and wish you could hide even more. After a while the urges to hide get so strong they're almost like a desire to escape your own humanity. You are actually wishing not to be a person at all.
4. It's too late, you're already a person.
5. The only thing to do is to proceed with what you're so afraid of and go ahead and feel the scariness and sadness and anything else that comes with it, even if you don't know how to cope with it all.
6. Don't be a doormat.

The end.

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." ~ Ecclesiastes 1:18

The idea is that the older you get and the more life experiences you go through, the less you are affected by them and the harder you become to the fluctuations between emotions and trials or stages of life. But it seems like the farther I go and the more of the world I see, the more the hurts hurt and the less I am able to see anything past them.

"Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind." ~ Ecclesiastes 1:17

I laugh in the face of expensive damage

If I hadn't destroyed my digital camera in the truck door incident, I would take pictures of the massive golf balls of hail that fell last night and gave my car a whole new texture. Next I'm fully prepared for the computer and my violin and anything else relatively expensive in my life to spontaneously combust or be crushed in a freak localized earthquake.

The things that add up and make people into crazies

Me, sweating buckets down my back, on my cell phone with my landlord: "Well, I was just calling... I was just wondering if I could get the air conditioning unit put back in."
Him, far away in a cool place: "Oh, yeah, I guess it's getting pretty warm now." He sounded smooth and undisturbed by weather, and objectively unconcerned as if he were discussing a leak in an empty ship in Antarctica.
Me, rubbing my sweaty belly through my tank top: "Well, yeah, it is. It's 89 degrees in here right now." While saying this, I realize that it doesn't sound nearly as hot as it feels since the place is almost all windows, making it like a piercingly warm greenhouse. Many of the windows don't open, however, leaving me with stuffiness not to be borne. And furthermore, even if all the windows DID open, it's 92 degrees outside. I'm not going to get far by encouraging hot air to enter the space in question.
Him, breezily involved: "Well... I just, I don't usually put them in this early in the year."
Me: left wordless for a pause. "Well, it is pretty hot." I was completely unprepared for a denial, having called expecting him to stumble with apologies for making me live in swelter for absolutely no reason.
Him: "yeah, well, it will cool down again."
Me (in my head): So what, now you're a weather man? Just give me my ^#$@$#$^ air conditioning! And an apology! And some free rent to make up for it! Obviously if it cools down again, I'll turn the thing off. It's not like you have to pay it to be in my window.
Me, really: "Oh."
Him: "Well, I'll try to get them cleaned off and bring them by there, maybe next week sometime."
Me, completely defeated, with tiny beads of sweat forming on the end of my nose: "Ok, that'd be great. Thanks."
After some pontification by him on global warming, we hung up.
I ponder demanding some kind of renter's rights, since I did JUST finish freezing my behind off all winter since the heat controls are in the downstairs apartment. I also ponder all the powerful, witty, slightly stinging ninja things I could say to prove that I was right and he was wrong.
But instead I went to work. The end.

oh me oh my

Well I finally got a full-time job. I'm a real person again! I'm a CNA at Brandon Woods, which is starting to look like an excellent job that I somehow stumbled into. I don't start until about May 1st though, since I had to give notice at my other job, although today I attended the first day of orientation. In the past week I've gone from lazy and relaxed to a little crazy with this new job and all the hoops it requires me to jump through, farmer's market starts soon which will take up many hours a week (did I tell you about that?), I have several other tasks to tie up before I can start the new job (such as painting someone's kitchen and dining room!), and there are still things to do before we can leave for India on May 20. In other words, this is one of those obnoxious blogs where the person talks about how incredibly busy she is.
The farmer's market thing is that I'll be selling baked stuff every Saturday at the Lawrence Farmer's Market. Hopefully it will be at least a somewhat lucrative endeavor. Or at least will be fun and allow me to get to know more people in the community. At worst, I'm hoping not to sink lots of money and get fat eating all my own products.
The end.

The growing inertia of one employed part-time.

I had a job interview yesterday at a nursing home, and it brought back all the things I dislike about the getting-a-job process. It wasn't a bad interview, it's just that I did my usual thing and started to freak out when I walked in the room. Even when I'm not nervous at all, I completely lose my vocabulary in an interview every time. I can see it fleeing through the nearest exit, taking my ability to finish sentences right along with it. No one else can see this happening, of course, which brings on the panic. I end up saying lots of things like "well, I like old people, so....." Things that not only lack precision or conclusion but don't even make any sense. Every new question, questions, mind you, that I could have answered with grace and ease in the car on the way there, brings a new dark cloud of confusion and nonsense that I have to swim through to get the question answered. By some magic the lady said she'd pass my file on to the next interviewer, which encounter I have to look forward to later this week.
Today I'm volunteering at the hospital from 12-2. And I don't want to go. I haven't had to do much lately, and now I find that I don't really want to do anything. I start to feel this way before starting a new job every time - mildly resentful for everything I have to do, everything obligating. And everything starts to feel obligating. I have to make coffee for myself? I don't want to! I made an appointment somewhere? You can't make me go!
Oddly, this resentment and dragging-of-the-feet tends to wear off a couple of weeks into the new job. Let's hope I get one soon, because right now I'm doing more sleeping and eating than anything else. And "anything else" only includes playing sonic the hedgehog. And I don't want to do that.