Peanut butter, four rooms, and random facts

I've been having a hard time being creative lately. I don't know why, exactly, but it feels like... it feels like I'm dry inside. Like peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth. Can't write, don't feel like acting, and my words just don't come out right, even when I'm talking.

I'm not really sure what this means. I am getting lousy sleep, that's for sure, which Benni helpfully diagnosed as "Nightmare Insomnia" the other day. It means I don't have any trouble falling asleep, but a few hours later, I will wake up screaming and crying from a bad dream, then go back to sleep, then wake up from another bad dream. My brain just isn't processing things right. I'll put it this way - I'm sleeping as much as I drive each day - about two hours. I have the patience of a 2 year old that's permanently in need of just a really good nap. And since sleep and appetite are linked, I haven't been eating much either. Joy.

BUT - I have started working out lately. Which is a GREAT thing. I already feel stronger. I started up again with Escrima (Filipino knife fighting) and found an instructor who combines Escrima with Wing Chun (a hand-to-hand form of martial arts that utilizes grappling mostly), so that's been challenging and fun. And, for those days when I'm NOT feeling violent, I took up Yoga. I had my first class on Monday. 

I have an inkling that my dry spell has something to do with the Four Rooms. This quote sums it up best:  

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.  - Rumer Godden in A House with Four Rooms

I definitely only live in one room at a time. And visit the others, oh, every other month, maybe. I tend to be very singularly focused - get one thing done at a time. Problem is, life doesn't exactly work that way. I can't be awesome at 1/4th of my life and then ignore the other 3/4ths all the time. It's just not balanced.

So my new goal is to go into each room at least once a day and take care of something - anything - that I can in that area. I'll let you know how it works out. In the meantime, I've decided not to push. All my life I've pushed myself, and rarely just stayed in a place that was sucky and uncomfortable. Doesn't work anymore. So here I am, sitting in it, letting it wade around my ankles, and hopefully it'll move along sometime soon. And I know I've sucked at leaving comments and posting because I sit in front of the monitor after reading all of your posts and... nothing comes out. Nothing. Just...nothing. I am dried up inside. It's weird.

To make up for this being the most boring post in the history of blogging, I thought I'd make a list of five facts about me that you might not know. Because maybe if I'm an interesting person that'll make up for it. (Fingers crossed.)

1) I don't like to waste time on books I don't like. If I can't connect with it, I don't care how many people rave about it (Finnegan's Wake, anyone?), I won't finish it. Life is short. Spend it on the books that move you to tears or make you shake with laughter. This goes for movies too, only the rule I apply here is - no dead animals. I don't care how beautiful the story is or if it has the best acting in the world. If the main animal dies at the end of the movie, no, screw you, you can't make me watch it. I won't. Animals die horribly every day. I don't need Disney movies to drive the point home.

2) All my life I thought what I wanted out of a partner was someone who would sit through the entire credits of a movie with me; someone who would hold my hand while one of us was driving; someone who would sit in silence and listen to the entire song I just told him that he NEEDED to listen to without interrupting or moving on in the conversation. But I got it only half-right - what I really wanted was someone who just naturally did these things, someone who did them before I had to ask him to do them, because it was just who he was. And now that I'm with that guy, it's pretty damn awesome.

3) I'm thinking about shutting this blog down. Because it feels like this world is just kind of over it, you know? No one cares anymore. Having followers used to mean that they'd actually comment. And maybe that's my fault for creating inconsistent, stilted content that doesn't exactly inspire people to visit or leave feedback. But maybe a fresh start is what I need. Not sure. I think I'll give it to the end of the year and if I don't sense anything but a huge wave of apathy when it comes to my blog, maybe I'll just shut it down and invite the 25 or so of you (you know who you are) who have become my blogger family to go meet me in a field somewhere else, under a different blog name. I guess we'll see.

4) Part of what I meant by the words don't come out right can be applied to my last post. I think people interpreted it that the moral of that story was: accept that you're a doormat, then continue being a doormat. Oops. I suck. That's not what I meant to say at all. What I meant to say is: when you love yourself unconditionally, you stop putting up with other people's shit. Which is exactly what happened, and that particular ASS in my life now floats in a completely different boat, in a completely different ocean, than where I am. This person lost all ability to affect me in any way because I took the first step in accepting myself unconditionally and then looking at this person with compassion and saying, "You don't deserve to have my attention." And it was that simple. 

5) I have a random fear of dropping important papers down into the crack between the floor and the elevator. I can't explain it, and I don't think they've named it as a proper phobia yet, but every time I'm in an elevator and I am carrying papers, I clutch them tight to my chest like a freak and take a huge step over the elevator/floor crack of doom.

I never claimed I was normal.