Yes! This Will Be Fun!

Ivy tagged me for a meme. Seeing as how I’m awake at 1:00am even though I shouldn’t be, I figure a nice, rambly sort of post about my baggage would be a lot of fun. For one of us.

The rules, as I understand them, are that I’m to write about three things I should have let go but haven’t.

Blogging

I probably should have aborted this little exercise in exhibitionism a long time ago. I’ve run out of good stories to tell and the arthritis in my fingers makes typing only slightly less fun than having my hair gnawed on by mice. As more and more of my church, school and family members find out about it I feel less and less able to say “pissed” and “gendarme” and other naughty or pretentious words.

I started the blog as a daily truth-writing exercise to hone my chops and make my book better. Now that my blog is a cranky toddler it bothers me as much as any other 2.5 year old child. It’s noisy and requires a lot more attention than I want to give it right now. But I love it. I’ve birthed it and we’ve had great memories together. We’ve made new friends and new enemies. I’m addicted to this blog like a scrawny meth-head with brown and cracking teeth. I’m mixing my metaphors to a ridiculous degree now, too. That’s perhaps a further indicator that I should abandon blogging the same way I treated piano lessons, lace crocheting, Grey’s Anatomy and Jim Warren. But I guess it’s here to stay for the time being.

Coca-Cola

As a rule I don’t gamble. But I would lay cash money on the following wager: At least 50% of the people doing this meme will say “caffeine” or one of the various caffeine delivery devices. Hatin’ on caffeine passed baseball as the national past-time right around the time when that coffee commercial aired where the guy is an ass and then says “Sorry I’m an ass–it’s the caffeine” and then his wife swoops in with decaf coffee in order to both entertain their guests and de-assify her husband. Or something like that. We all hate caffeine. But we have to have it. It’s like oxygen or hand-sanitizer. Once it enters your world you are compelled to keep using it.

I can’t stand coffee; it’s like drinking a campfire. You can dress it up with all the sauce and cream and whatever–it’s still the nastiest beverage this side of Beverly. But Coke? Ahhh. Coca-cola. I would walk across a lake of decomposing corpses for a glass of coke over ice. It’s sad, because I’ve kicked the Coke habit several times–usually with the aid of morphine. What’s even weirder is that my Coke cravings are entirely related to (sorry, fellas) my “hormones”. I can go for about 2 weeks and not even look at a can of coke and then all of a sudden it’s Katie Bar The Door. I think I’m doing well to have tamed the Coke beast to 3 or 4 days a month, and until they have a Coke Anonymous and I can get a sponsor, I’m sticking with that.

Fear & Worry

Oh look! This has turned into a Scientology post! I love to roll my eyes at L.Ron’s Religion A Go Go, but you have to hand it to them. They’ve summed up MOST people’s biggest problem and capitalised on it. I can’t remember what they call Fear & Worry–it’s got a nifty religioscifi name like Realigrams or something [“Reactive Mind”: I went ahead and looked it up because it was driving me nuts]. And their whole religion centers around the fact that if you let Fear & Worry rule your life you end up spinning your wheels and don’t get anything accomplished.

I can attest to that. I get afraid a lot. I worry a lot. I put off going to doctors because I’m afraid what they’ll tell me. I worry about the future and fear things from the past. My oftwise husband says that worry has no place in a Christian’s heart. He’s right. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

And then if you flip back a few pages to Matthew you get the whole “look at the flowers and birds; I feed them and make them beautiful so you quit worrying about what you’re gonna eat and wear and earn.”

I’ve gotten better over the years. The first 7 months of this year were a good exercise in seeing how the Lord provides in times of uncertainty. But I still have my moments. Especially with fear. How will I screw this up? How will my “unique ways” ruin this project? How can I have a conversation with this or that person or finish this project? I swear that I keep having others expect me to be a grown-up when in reality I’m a 9 year old.

And I know I’m supposed to tag other people. But I’m afraid to. Usually when I tag someone they don’t do it. But we’ll try:
megaphonic
Megan
and
Magniloquence

Because I’m in a megamagnanimous mood.