What’s up, fam? It’s been a minute since I wrote a blog post. It’s also been a minute since I’ve heard anyone use that phrase to define a long passage of time.
It would be great if this time lapse was because I’m hard at work kicking ass and taking names, but mostly I’ve been scrolling Instagram. Aside from the three books I wrote and self-published in 6 months, adopting Padfoot and losing 30 lbs, it’s been pretty boring. Oh, and moving to a rental house in a new county and learning their requirements for licensing and taxes and whatnot.
Also I got married in October 2020 at a wedding I planned and designed by myself, including making most of the décor and guest gifts. Probably I should have worked harder to lose the 30 lbs before the wedding, but it wasn’t a big enough motivator.
Also I drove my dad home to Wyoming when he crashed my motorcycle and needed more screws than my last piece of Ikea furniture. Stupid motorcycle is now a problem all on its own.
Also Padfoot had hip surgery.
Also I had to send Perry to board and train for almost attacking Belle.
Alright, so scratch that second paragraph. I’ve been crazy busy and working my butt off. It just doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything. Maybe it’s imposter syndrome, maybe it’s deep seated insecurity, or maybe I just expect more from myself. I don’t know what that more is, just more.
When I started this blog, it was to share my love of dogs in writing. In doing so I found the courage and inspiration for the Ampersand Series and now the subsequent Cyn Sharp Series. The novels are polar opposites in so many ways, and I’m OK with that. No one is completely darkness and doom and no one is light and fluffy all of the time. Most of us live somewhere in the middle, shifting to extremes based on our most recent experience or medication change.
This concerns me, not because I’m super stable, but because I like to think someone out there is. I’ve always enjoyed the notion that somewhere in the world there were people who could just go through life completely even. In writing these books though, and reading the reviews, it doesn’t actually feel like the reality that is Gravity Falls has a Tad Strange to balance the weirdness quotient.
Is life meant to be a permanently unbalanced see-saw?
Is it annoying when people wax poetic about the meaning of life?
Should I forget that I have a minor in philosophy and let life be what it is without explanation?
The initial email address for this blog was dog mom marathoner because I defined myself as a dog mom and a runner. In doing so, I felt like I had found and was creating my tribe. While I love the people I have met through running and the people I met volunteering at the rescue, I don’t fit in either category. I’m starting to wonder if I have a tribe. Are there people out there in the world who are meant to be alone and excluded from groups?
In high school, yeah I remember that shit show, my group of friends was diverse and eclectic, but even then I had more than one group and none seemed keen to “own” me as a member. I had my core friends I hung out with in quad 3. I had my JROTC friends, my swim team friends, and the people who borrowed my homework friends. I couldn’t go anywhere without stopping to talk to someone and I still felt out of place. In retrospect I thought this was because of my social anxiety, but even now with millions of ways to virtually connect, I still feel distant and excluded.
So here I sit, 33 and three times self-published with a husband and two dogs asking you, any of you, where do I belong? Why do I need so desperately to be accepted by people I don’t like? Why are there so many people I don’t like? Is it jealousy, or are they really as terrible as I think they are? This is an ongoing narrative in my mind. The need to both be accepted and reject the people I want to accept me.
So now, I have to wonder:
Am I an author if no one reads my books? Am I runner if my pace is considered walking? Am I a dog mom if my kids need surgery and behavioral re-wiring? Is it wrong to wish I had Harry Potter magic to infinitely refill my coffee cup without having to get up or hurt the environment with K-Cup pods?
There are probably no real answers out there. Much like the meaning of life, the only people who know are past the time to tell you about it. We are all just sitting in the desert, revolting against the notion that life has no meaning and simultaneously accepting it (thanks, Albert Camus).
BUT (there always is one), if you can relate, drop a comment.
well written, author
thoughtful, philosopher.
i really enjoyed your wedding.
moving always sux, especially when someone gets hurt.. I think those of us who are observers always feel like we are on the outside looking in.
I am (part of) your tribe… I am a dog mom… but my little white dogs are the mirror images of my social anxiety… Groot has chronic ear infections due to yeast that for the life of me I can’t get rid of… Lillie is probably the most DOG out of them… We originally ‘met’ through a group dedicated to running skirts and running.. but my pace is more like an injured sloth…(can I really call it running?) and I haven’t done anything other than read about other people running in a long time…
I have read all 3 of your published books and enjoyed all of them. You ARE an author. You have readers. I say plural because at the very least I know that I read your books and my daughter in law is reading the first one now. 🙂
I too feel like I am an imposter. I am the director of HR at a very large well known trucking company. How I got here I will never know… everyday I come in to work wondering if today is the day they figure out I am an imposter… a fraud… the person who walks around with a coffee cup in her hand like it’s a security blanket… because it is… pretending it’s less threatening to walk into someone’s work space with a coffee cup rather than a notebook or a file folder when in reality it is to stop me from picking my nails, pinching the bridge of my nose, scratching my ear
Anyway, perhaps we are part of the same tribe. The travelers.. the Gypsies.. the drifters… the ones who belong everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. Stopping briefly where we need to be.. where we are needed.. only to move on when we feel we are done or when the people we stopped to aid no longer need us. In all honesty, I get antsy when I am in one place too terribly long. It makes me feel invisible like the old chair in the corner. People know it’s there but rarely sit in it… just glancing every now and them to see that it’s still there occupying space that could otherwise be utilized but not having the time or energy to do anything about it so it just sits.