Oh man. This question is like a slap across the face.

My apartment floor is littered with half completed art projects and posters waiting to be framed. My computer desktop contains a dozen unfinished articles and stories. My books are all bookmarked somewhere in the middle and my famously elaborate to-do lists rarely see more than 2 or 3 check marks.

So. My answer to the question would be... anything. I'd like to actually finish one thing that I've started. 

I was big into imaginary worlds when I was younger and I guess I haven't really stopped. I still tend to make up scenarios all the time, but they only really exist in my head as a means of understanding other people and why the do the things they do. Give me a few facts actually based in reality and I'll run away with the possibilities. Most of the time it's not a good thing, as what I've imagined is something painful. But that's another topic, another project, for another day... I loved playing important business woman. I had my own company called Fashion Plus. Yes I know it sounds like a cheap Lane Bryant rip off. I don't think I ever got far enough to decide what I actually sold, but I knew enough about being "important" to design my own stationary and order around my younger sister (my secretary of course). I also used to play college with my friends. But all I really remember us doing is pretending to make out after going out drinking. How I knew, at 7 years old, the essential part of higher education...

This question seems a bit awkward to me. Am I asking someone from the past about well, their present? Or am I asking someone now about their (our) history? Well yeah I know I don't have to answer but for some reason on this Monday morning I feel like rambling on a bit. Asking someone about the past immediately makes me think of Bill & Ted's. Like when they bring back Socrates, Napoleon, and a bunch of other famous people for a history project and take them to the mall. I love that movie. And Keanu Reeves. So yeah maybe I would do the same thing, if I could ask anyone FROM the past about things I haven't been alive for. Maybe my great x 10 grandparents or Oscar Wilde. Or Anthony DeMello. Or maybe I would go and talk to any old random person in Wyoming in 1973. I don't know. But if I actually had the ability to travel back in time and speak to any of these people from the past, I'm sure I would be a bit too busy doing press conferences and appearing on Oprah.

My job situation is a constant source for funny and bizarre anecdotes. Some days I am pleasantly amused and feel almost lucky to have access to such prime material. Other days (like this one), I am reminded of the complete absense of  personal and professional boundaries between myself and my employer and what that means for me.

I am a big boundaries person. I try very hard to maintain these walls in all aspects of my life, but most importantly in the work place. Having been hired in an administrative capacity, I should be only be required to handle administrative tasks: answer phones, type letters, file, fax, create invoices.... blah blah blah. It's boring but it's what I get paid a relatively decent amount of money for. In NO WAY did I sign up to lie, keep secrets, be someone's stress relief ball, and take the blame for other people's mistakes. No thanks. That was definitely not listed in the job ad on Craigslist. Small businesses may be small but they can still operate under the general clause of decency and privacy. I don't want to be involved in your private screwed up lives.  

I feel like I'm forever playing a game of monkey in the middle. And I'm not even the monkey. I'm the thing that gets tossed back and forth.

Those times where you walk around feeling exposed, like everyone can completely see you no matter where you hide. You want to cry but not because you're sad or depressed. If it's any type of easily pinable emotion, it would have to be fear. Everything brings a need for caution. It's fight or flight, yet only laughable as there's no fight in you. And of course you don't laugh. All you can do is look for an escape but that's the real problem. There is no escape, no friendly place, no safe haven, nothing. Sometimes sleep helps but it's putting off what will eventually creep up again. I like to call it the naked feeling but I don't like having to call it anything. 

It is always hard to relate this experience to someone else without cheapening its terror and sounding like something out of a made for TV movie about high school or depression.

Yuck.

Maybe I only thought of this because it's been affecting me on and off all day. Just lovely.

It's like having traveled back in time through sound, fabric, and drink. The air is stale and my vision is blurry. I'm somewhere new yet more familiar than I can articulate through words. My body is tired like I've aged 10 years in a matter of days. My mind is fuzzy and full of disjointed memories and thoughts. I'm a little too conscious of my breath or the lack there of. This shirt is choking me, I feel stuck. I can't get out of here, but if I could, I still wouldn't know where to go.

Pretty much anyone who's listening and even a few who aren't.

The wild and crazy adventures I could and should be having. Or maybe I am having? I don't know why, but I feel like there is so much to be learned, done, experienced, tasted, touched, and felt in this world and most of us (myself very much included) just settle for the easy. That's not to say that we don't have our moments of spontaneity and variety. It's just that the default is to settle, to relax, to retreat, to feel safe, to not make any waves. Why?

Perhaps what really scares me about this is that it's only up to ourselves anyway. I can't change other people or the world or bigger than that- our dominant ideology. Instead, I can only throw myself recklessly up against the sways of our culture and hope to land on my own feet, unbroken and unaffected. Freedom maybe? Is that what I'm really referring to? Freedom from ideals and norms and common markers on the timelines of our lives? How does one go about this? I joke about dropping out, dropping off the face of the world as my family, friends,  and acquaintances know it. But like most jokes it's born out of truth. 

Sometimes this line of thinking wraps around itself and I end up back at the start. Confused. Where did you go, logic?  

Habits.
Sometimes when we think we've taken care of a bad habit and it's a thing of the past, it comes back. With a vengeance. I quit smoking. Couldn't even stand to be near someone smoking a cigarette. Would actually feel superior, like "why are they smoking? I can't believe I ever did that!" Wouldn't drink. Couldn't even think about drinking like I used to. Even wine was too much for me to indulge in. Then it all changed. It was like I came back from Christmas with my habits from 4 years ago fully intact and in charge. Cigs and Chardonnay. What the f.

No joke. Chewing a condom at 4 years old. Obviously I didn't know what it was at the time, but my babysitter found me going through my father's stuff and freaked out. I think that is the earliest memory I have. What a first.