I really should be asleep, im tired... but my mind is too active...
and I just finished drawing out the pattern for a craft project. Got what I need for it, maybe will start it tomorrow...

So do I want to wear a dress to Mabel's party or pants and a blouse... if I wear pants and a blouse I will be warmer and probably more comfortable... but will also look... more businessy and this is a dinner/dance party. If i wear a dress it will be my black one and I will have to be in the mood to deal with not getting self conscious over just how much cleavage it shows off..

*sighs*

I talked to miche tonight, that made me feel a little better, but I've kinda felt like a part of me is compressing in on itself all day. I hate choices when I dont know if what Im doing is the righ thing... and no this isnt about clothes this time. I feel like I'm failing and yet I cannot control how I feel, and likely I feel how I feel for a number of reasons.

And yet somehow I want to blame myself for how I feel.

Well tomorrow and on the weekend I shall enter the stage, and wear my mask and charm away the gloom... and if my glassy face does shatter under the strain so be it.

yeah this is a darker post, get over it.

Ok a brighter note... my house smelled like cookies today, primarily due to my sister and mom baking. I made the batter for my gingerbread cookies, will have to remember to bring the dough in tomorrow night to let it thaw since I have to make the cookies up Friday.

Saturday evening and sunday morning out with Aaron, we'll have been together 3 years. Time sure goes by fast...

Then sunday evening is my fencing party...

I need time, time to myself, time with people, not everyone just certain people... I dunno what i need anymore. I need something.

It's the holidays I should be feeling happy and excited, not this sense of down and gloom and impending doom.

I need a hug... but its late and no ones around to give it.
Guess bed is the next best thing.

On the bright side I almost finished Thief of Time today, so must now decide what I am going to read next.

Man I whine alot...
Hmm what have I done today that didnt include whining... I learned a few things on my blackberry... despite my inner luddite I must admit one can do a few cool things on that piece of technology. Still havent used the internet on it yet...but all in good time.

I continued with my meditational stretching exercises to help my asthma. So I have now done it 4 days in a row... thats not enough to set a routine but a good start... and on the plus side of things it does seem to noticeably improve my breathing, if I continue or even can fit it in to twice a day I may be able to even cut down my inhalers. So i guess that is a good thing.

My mother once again was insanely vacuuming at like 10 this morning that was annyoing
Poor Fraoch ran running into my room for sanctuary... I should vacuum in here though, stupid appartment gets so dusty and that probably doesn't help my asthma. Damn stucco ceilings...

Caitlin was here today... as usual she decided I needed to be made fun of... she seems to enjoy portraying me as some lazy do nothing who sleeps way into the afternoon, is late for everything and has nothing to do.
Funny since she doesnt live here any more that she feels the right to make such assumptions. Yeah im not a mornign person and yet this week have dutifully gotten up each morning to walk the dogs no matter how late ive gone to bed the night before, I have not been late for work (in fact since its on campus i just stay there and then walk over to it when its time for work).
And I've gotten quite a bit done, heck my laundry regularly makes its way into both the hamper and then once washed into my dresser drawers which is more than she can say.
I just wish my dad wouldnt always join her in laughing, yeah im not perfect but I quickly tire of always being the butt of every joke that comes out of her mouth, especially with built on with "your clothes look stupid... you never do anything with your hair... you wear ugly man-shoes... you should wear makeup...

apparantly if your footwear are the least bit comfortable and allow you to walk without leaving huge blisters on your feet they can only be "ugly man shoes"... because women are clearly far too stupid and superficial to choose comfort over fashion.

She doesnt speak for all women certainly but that coupled with her saying "feminism is dead" makes me go want to transform into some androgynous other since those examples of femininity make me not want to even be associated with the word "female".

*sigh* ok im being bitter... shoulda asked her what she wanted for christmas this year... *other than a lump of coal*... jks...

Ok seriously time for bed need to do christmas shopping tomorrow and then go to a party which will probably be on some level socially straining since I know only a few of the other people there.

oh well... *Sigh*

I feel lonely right now On the bright side Julez will be back soon for a visit so i will get to see her

Yeah thats right, I finally after... a very very very long time, got around to updating.

What! You, update? Inconcievable.

Me? Procrastinate? Well I never...
Liar, you've had that scanner loaded for weeks, but oh no you didnt scan or upload any of your work...
Shhhh... I was waiting for a while till I had a mass update.
Stop fibbing.

Ok fine I was lazy, too lazy to update, but I have now... and thats all that matters.

*sigh* not this again
Yes this again, the post-modern fragmentation is back.
It's silly because its all you writing in silly voices.
Browning wrote in silly voices too... silly psychotic voices, but he gets to be considered talented.
Freud would have something to say about that.
Frued would have had something to say about alot of things.

If I want to write in a flow of consciousness inner dialogue I can, even if it means Im skirting addressing other issues.

Like the fact you are merely procrastinating doing your stretches so you can breathe right...
No... I will stretch in a minute.
You were the one who decided after feeling like someone particularly heavy was sitting on your chest all day yesterday that this break you were going to set a routine and try to stretch.
Yeah... I did. hehe the higher self is silly.

Quiet lower self. The self is crazy.

What happened to the spiritual self?
Shes on vacation, turned out this show was too much for her.

Aww but we cant do meditative stretching without the spiritual self, how will we open the mind and regulate the breathing....
I'll regulate your breathing...

Fine ok no more fragmented postmodern flow of consciousness writing... instead... Omniscient Narration!!!

Noooo

Yes!

Clare had had a somewhat useful day, despite it being boring and mostly her holed up inside her room like a monk.
She had been up very late drawing and had slept till... well had been woken up earlier than she would have liked to take the dogs out. Her sleep had been restless anyways.
No interesting dreams were remembered.
A pity too for there should have been some very interesting dreams indeed.

After walking the dogs, she finally after much procrastination hooked up the scanner, this took some fidgeting, the frantic searching for the cord, which was inside the box all along and the updating of some drivers.

Scanning of artwork occured, and the toying with of the scanner settings to try to get as smooth and detailed a scan as possible.

Clare learned that scanning with pencilcrayon doesnt always turn out very good

Lunch was followed with the updating of her DA which was followed by running an errand for her family over to the grocery store. A nice lady let her go ahead because she only had one item. Clare has not done her holiday shopping for people yet, she should do that sometime this week.
She doesnt know what she wants for the holidays... maybe because she doesnt really know what she wants in general. Maybe she would like to know what she wants... but that isnt exactly something one can buy in a store and wrap up with pretty ribbon.

Her blackberry sits next to her computer, shes still figuring it out and entering the contacts in from her old phone. Her inner luddite whines and complains about having to get used to new technology.

Clare should vacuume her room then her asthma might be better. She should also start getting ready to go to fencing. Fencing is fun and awesome.

Ok that is all for now.

This was another ridiculous and silly update brought to you by clares stream of consciousness.

So I have not written since October when my restless began, I cannot say it has entirely abated. There have been some moments of despair, some moments of happiness, and some moments of something in between.

What I do know is this, something in me is changing, growing, something awakening, something that in the current place my life is in, feels smothered, caged in.

The path I have been on for some time has been wonderful, its been safe, its one I have become comfortable on, familiar, and secure. I have had many good times on that path... but of late I have felt that path dwindling, and new paths opening up. Paths Im not sure I want to pass by without exploring. This path I am on right now, it is as if the dense brush is growing in, I wade and push through it but more and more I feel trapped on it, and uneasy about following it further.

Im afraid sometimes, one if I do choose to leave my current place, I shall be leaving that comfort, I dont know what any new avenue of that area of my life might hold.
I also may hurt a few people along the way, people I care about, and thats something Id rather not do.
You want to please everyone, and when everyone likes the path your on its all the harder to change all the harder to say "I need something different in order to grow"

I guess Ive tried to deny to myself that need, that something in me has become so restless demanding for something to change. But I can't anymore, for it seems if something doesnt change I am going to become increasingly unhappy.

Im 22 and I dont know exactly what I want to do with my life and where its taking me.

I wish I could write this out more clearly, drop the running metaphor but I cant. Not sure even in a private paper journal of how freely I would speek.

This week I experienced something I had sorta forgotten, or well was reminded of it. I guess it had gone dormant, fallen asleep with contentment. But now, it is like there is something burning in me, something I both fear, and yet am empowered by.

I cannot say what the next month may bring, with any choice comes an end of certain things, I am trying to think carefully, note what is at stake (which seems quite alot) but also weigh how much those things will continue to have value.

I dunno, its hard to explain, things just arent as they should be, and I cant fix them, something in me needs to give, something needs to be free because its growing inside me and wont be stunted or lie dormant, and it cannot grow very much where I am currently.

In other news, its that holiday time of year again. Things have been busy, I finally finished my midterms and final essay. I have been busy being treasurer of fencing, fencing and trying to learn german in my german class.

Of late I have taken also to returning to drawing, i will have to scan some of my drawings. I've started a spite drawing thing with my friend and it has been rather inspirational. Im starting to draw people, from photographs mind you but its a start.

Im also going over my Star of Elsar stuff, have done alot of revamping and reworking of characters, races, things happening on the planet. This is good.

And ive written a few new poems (not alot) but its something.

So I shall have to post those too.

This post is convoluted, it doesnt make alot of sense, ignore it, hopefully i will be making more sense soon.

Firstly... they need a mood icon for restless. Some sort of pacing animal would be appropriate. Cuz seriously thats what I feel like, been feeling it for a couple days now. Like there is some feral creature in me pacing in a cage that is too small, its shoulders hunched, ears flattened, pacing, pacing... waiting.

Waiting for what? I dont know.

Im restless, winds of change have touched me and I have a need that isnt met, an itch that I cannot scratch and a mind that is boiling over with restlessnes.

I need something... a walk, to run till my breath burns and my legs feel like jello, to paint, to draw, to swim, to meditate, to go find a punching bag and wail on it, to talk, to sleep, to be alone, to be with friends... maybe all those things or none of them.

Oh poor little heart why do you swell with such desire, such burning for some untasted fruit I have not discovered, or perhaps have forgotten the taste of.

Last night I could hardly sleep for the longest time.

But why the irritation, the frustration the emptyness with things...
Is the frustration sexual, spiritual, mental, physical... *sigh* could be any of those or none of them or all of them

how poorly can one know themself than to not know what one wants/needs when their mind and body scream for something like a starving infant. Give give give... but what?

Grr, perhaps writing will help to fill the hole, that is what it is really a hole. And I, a vessel, am empty; asking to be filled, enlightened... comforted.

Perhaps it is just my own anxieties of late that are making me feel this way. So many things I worry, and so many things I want and cannot seem to achieve.

Grr, i need to get out and do something.

Bah!

I was sitting there on the cool damp rocks watching the sun set on an almost glassy lake and knowing it would be the third thanksgiving which he would not be joining me for.

Work. It was always work.

I had hoped so hard, thought about all the wonderful things I would make, show off my excellent cooking skills. The pumpkin and apple pies, the squash, the cranberry sauce... all will still be made but with a lacking joy, a bitterness knowing that once again he will not be there to savour them, and once again I will be alone.

It felt like the air was pushing against my chest. Im not sure if there is a term yet for it, for that feeling when you cannot cry but inside you are crying. When your mind is a hysterical maniac beating against your skull screaming profanities, threatening to harm itself and crying out injustice; all the while the outside is a stoney face of neutrality. A rock, cold and unfeeling in its demeanor, unable to change, to produce those tears, to shiver and quake in heaving sobs.

And I thought of Icarus, that myth that is supposed to be one of pride... and I realised it is not about pride. Well perhaps it is, but it is about something else as well.

The story of Icarus is the story of dissapointment. The very personification of it in fact.

Like most, Icarus starts out with hope, that hope we feel at potential. Unchallenged, unfettered we rise and soar on our new wings of possability. Soaring through the skies of dreams, hopes and desires. That sun, our goal, we soar towards it... only to be burnt by reality. The facts grasp and tear at our feathers, stripping our wings of their glory.
Hope cannot hold. And down we plummet into the sea of despair (the usual outcome of all dissapointments). It is that plummet which is the dissapointment, that downward spiral into ourself. That pressure and weight upon ourself which tries to choke us with the lonely absense of potential.

In the old story Icarus drowns. Sometimes that ending is true; other times however, Icarus is strong and swims out, and upon reaching the shore he rises up upon new wings enlightened.

Perhaps though even the death is not the end. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series seemed to express better than anything that to change is to survive. And sometimes, if we cannot change, a part of the old self must die in order for a new enlightened one to be born.

From despair Icarus rises again towards the sun and sometimes, just sometimes, he grasps it.

Today I, Icarus, did not reach the sun. I was hurtled into the cold waters of the very lake I was sitting near. But tomorrow perhaps I shall rise up on new wings of potential and maybe I shall even grasp the sun.

I shall still be lonely on thanksgiving, Caitlin will have her Michal, and I... I shall have a puzzle, and a book...

Its nothing new.

But maybe there will be a day soon where I shall have my Love to myself with no work, or technology or other people to get in the way, and when that day comes I will have grabbed the sun, and danced with it.


Ok this was way more dramatic than I wanted it to be. An interesting interpretation of the allegory perhaps but too heavy on the melodrama.
I blame it on the PMS, PMS makes life suck in general.
So does having a sore ankle.

Now maybe less whining and more sleep.

Yes. Sleep is good.

The End.