The Soundtrack Of My Life, The Rock and The Hard Place

I've struggled with these Soundtrack posts. I went to sleep thinking about what I'd write here and woke up with a migraine. A bad migraine. I was dreaming about freshman year of college. Everyone hated me. Not in real life, but the dream. (My therapist would say I just found another "trigger." The idea of everyone hating me... trigger. Not forgiving myself for choices I made in college that pushed people who would've and could've been close friends away... trigger. The state of my friendships now with those friends... trigger. I'm not even sure which of these scenarios set off the migraine, because I felt them all keenly upon waking up.)

So, let's dig into this a little bit and see what happens.

The Soundtrack is back. For those of you who've lost track of where we are, it's Freshman Year of College.

Ironically, Dixie left an amazing comment on my Soundtrack post (Linger) that I think will apply here. She is really wise. Check this out (bolding mine):

Hi Robin. Your experience still seems painful because the memories hold some very dear moments. I cannot begin to understand your situation then or now, but I have compassion for the memories of painful times. What we learn then, and bring forward to influence another time, gives way to more learning. That way growth never stops.

I sometimes think I was born an 'old soul'. My movement from childhood to adulthood so gradual, I simply kept walking the path before me. I anticipated love in all forms... and practiced the best way to give. Today I practice the best way to receive. Maybe that's the key to my happiness. Knowing that loving it all with few or no regrets aids my life in a peaceful walk.

Bittersweet song - maybe one day you'll be able to listen and see what someone else saw. Maybe those who wanted you to Linger but knew you couldn't. How well did they hide their sadness from you - not wanting to add to your burden? It's often difficult to love parts of our past... and yet... we can be released. You are a very sweet and sensitive person. Your past has shaped a 'you' I love.

Most sincerely, Dixie

Remember when I said I was reinventing myself in the last post, and the only thing I kept was music? Well, that didn't work out so well. Music Theory is really hard. I did okay on the written part, but everything else... not so much. Before this class, I only knew what an "F" was in theory. Music Theory made it reality. Yikes. I was crying regularly.

I was also not adjusting so well to the non-academic aspects of college, but we'll save that for the next post. I want to talk about Dixie's comment and how it fuses with my song choice for today.

Remember when I posted the Soundtrack featuring Simon and Garfunkel's song "I Am A Rock?" Well, I didn't want to be a rock or an island. And I really didn't want to cry anymore. I had this feeling... even then... that the Romance part of my life was going to be bumpy. Or just not turn out well. I can't explain the feeling, but I didn't like it. That feeling made me chase it, not only in college, but for years to come. (Let me tell you that chasing something like a "relationship," does NOT work. Just in case you were thinking of trying it for yourself.)

So, I'm coming back to my room from another disastrous episode in Music Theory (and beginning to realize that Music is also not going to "work out" for me). All I wanted was to come back to my room, climb into bed, and never come out again. Barring that, have a good cry and sleep the rest of the day.

I walk in my room and my roommmates (yes, I had two of 'em) were in the midst of a philosophical discussion. They immediately posed the question to me.

Roommate #1: Okay, we've got a question for you.

Me: (not liking the sound of this) Okay.

Roommate #2: You have to pick one or the other.

Me: (really not liking this) Alright.

Roommate #1: You marry someone and you love him more than he loves you.

Roommate #2: OR you marry someone and he loves you more than you love him.

Me Thinking, Not Speaking: Well, hell, this is my worst nightmare.

Me: Neither.

Roommate #1: Not an option.

Me: (knowing that I'm dooming myself to something actually happening in my life) The second one.

And there it was. I spoke it into power. AND I knew it as I said it. Or maybe I made it true by believing it. I don't understand these sorts of things completely. I just had the WORST feeling.

Just take a moment and think about Dixie's comment. She said:

I anticipated love in all forms... and practiced the best way to give. Today I practice the best way to receive. Maybe that's the key to my happiness. Knowing that loving it all with few or no regrets aids my life in a peaceful walk.

I anticipated love in its worst forms... and practiced the best way to accept it. I also had difficulty receiving when love flew at me in a good and true way. Yes, anticipating love. Giving love. Receiving love. I do believe these are the keys to Happiness and a peaceful walk.

Slow down, hold still
It's not as if it's a matter of will
Someone's circling, someone's moving
A little lower than the angels

And it's got nothing to do with me
The wind blows through the trees
But if I look for it, it won't come
I tense up, my mind goes numb
There's nothing harder than learning how to receive

Calm down, be still
We've got plenty of time to kill
No hand writing on the wall
Just the voice that's in us all

And you're whispering to me
Time to get up off my hands and knees
'Cause if I beg for it, it won't come
I find nothing but table crumbs
My hands are empty, God I've been naive

All I need is everything
Inside, outside, feel new skin
All I need is everything
Feel the slip and the grip of grace again

Slow down, hold still
It's not as if it's a matter of will
Someone's circling, someone's moving
A little lower than the angels

This voice calling me to you
It's just barely coming through
Still I clearly hear my name
I've been fingering the flame
Like tomorrow's martyr, it gets harder to believe

All I need is everything
Inside, outside, feel new skin
All I need is everything
Feel the slip and the grip of grace again

So from now till kingdom come
Taste the words on the tip of my tongue
'Cause we can't run truth out of town
Only force it underground
The roots grow deeper in ways we can't conceive

All I need is everything
Inside, outside, feel new skin
All I need is everything
Feel the slip and the grip of grace again

I was so far from that my freshman year (and beyond). BUT, I'm so thankful that I get it NOW. I can't change anything I did (or thought or believed) back then. I can only change my present. Have you mastered the art of giving and receiving? Have you ever spoken a truth you didn't want into power?


If you're enjoying these posts, feel free to share your own Soundtrack. This isn't a hop. No requirements at all, but a suggestion to do it one song at a time. (If you participated in the hop several years ago, you can still do this. Just post them one song at a time, with the freedom to add more songs if you'd like.) I'll link to all participants at the bottom of each of these posts:

StMcC Presents BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Cherdo on the Flipside

Paula Deen In The Stew

Yesterday I saw a video of Paula Deen making this rather vague apology to anyone she might have hurt.  She was clearly upset about it.  She seemed sincere.  I had no idea what she was talking about based solely on her video.

The TV media folks cleared it up somewhat by saying that apparently Paula had made use of the "N" word 20 years ago (or thereabouts) and may have also used other racial slurs.  Really?  Paula Deen?  A woman who grew up in Georgia sixty years ago when the schools were still segregated?  That woman might have used the "N-word" back in the day?  She might not have known any better and repeated the same old garbage that her parents said and their parents before them?  Huh.  I am shocked.

Apparently this "news" is all being brought up once again thanks to a former employee, Lisa Jackson, back when Paula was first getting her start in the restaurant business.  Jackson claims that she witnessed numerous acts of violence, discrimination, and racism during the five years that she worked there.  That didn't stop her from penning the following letter to Paula three months before she quit:

On Friday, CNN's sister network, HLN, obtained a letter to Deen written by Jackson, the plaintiff, three months before she quit her job at the restaurant. It read, in part, "When I came to work for this company, I felt hopeless. I needed something, some opportunity that could provide me hope as an individual, as a woman, to make it on my own. At 15, homeless, without parents and with a young child, my life was headed in a direction no one could ever assume positive. ... Since then I have become the independent woman I have always wanted to be. I have been given opportunities that I never thought possible, all because of you and Bubba."

If you want to read more about Paula's back story (very interesting stuff) you can do so here.  It is also where I found the letter quote above.

Given the letter, it seems to me that Miss Jackson wasn't really all that unhappy about her restaurant job or Paula Deen.  She is just another Greedy Grabber looking to cash in on a good thing.  In so doing, she has dug around and pulled out the magic word: Racist.  You call anyone a Racist in today's world and you can sink their ship.  All we know is that Paula Deen grew up in a time when Racism was rampant and she admits that Back Then she used words that she would never use now.

When you know better, you do better.

That isn't enough for The Food Network.  Apparently, you can still be fired for the sins of a lifetime ago.  I am sure that they are letting Paula go to make sure that they are standing on what will be the Politically Correct side of this thing.

All I can say to that is that if we are all about to be judged for things that we did twenty years ago, that is really going to suck rotten eggs.  This life is all about learning from your mistakes.  If we all can't move beyond every stupid thing we've ever done, can't apologize, then we are all just stuck.  

N is for Not Afraid

A friend of mine emailed me with some comments on the last blog. She indicated, once again, that I am much funnier in bullet points than I am in paragraphs. I think it is because I have a sarcastic personality and you can't really get a good jab in with a paragraph format. It is only in bullet points can you sink one. I am a real fun one at parties, too. Nothing out of me and then *BAM* I nail the sarcastic jolt when least expected. Of course, my friend had a few other comments. I think I shall address those and anything else that comes to mind in bullet points, since I am insanely funnier that way.

• She says that I shouldn't have laughed at H-Girl when she said she was "all about the learning." That sort of behavior on my part is likely just to make the kid angry at me.
• I say that the kid needs someone to call her out on her crap. She needs to know that she isn't snowing me like she is other people. Kids don't respect people they think they are manipulating. I want her to know that I have her number. 'Nuff said.
• My friend also indicated that blogger had this nifty bullet point program. Peeps, I am utterly lost on a computer. Hand to God.
• My mother used to tell me daily when I was a kid that I would lose my head if it weren't attached to my shoulders.
• What does this have to do with anything?
• Well, I know that there are some of you who think I should just learn how to do the design on my website. You are thinking, "It can't be that hard."
• I thought like that, too, for about three hours after I bought the domain name and my web hosting site. Into the fourth hour, I very nearly chucked my laptop out the window.
• Eventually I called the 24-hour 800 number help line to get them to put up a page indicating my site was under construction because I could not figure out how to write that on a BLANK PAGE and put that up.
• Yes, it is that bad. And that is where the head and shoulders business figures in.
• I tell you that and I share you this thing about the bullet points for this reason: I have been on blogger for over a year and didn't know that in the menu bar that it would create bullet points for me.
• Right now I am looking at the quotations and I can't figure out by sheer reasoning what that will do if i click on it. Clearly it will do something regarding quotations, but what? what? what?
• It should be obvious, but it isn't.
• It's hard to believe right now that I graduated with a liberal arts degree from college, isn't it?
• I know. I am having trouble digesting it, too.
• On Saturday night, we went to the pizza place for food and karaoke.
• Our usual karaoke guy wasn't there because his band was playing somewhere so some friends of his were filling in. This was a new experience for us.
• Not so much for them. They have their own business and their own equipment.
• Once again, too many kids were singing for our taste. Pretty much any kids are too many because most can't sing. They scream or talk into the microphone and it is monotone.
• However, the kicker this past Saturday was that there were only 8 people on the sheet to sing, but the teenagers took over every time it came to them. How did they do this? They sang solo, they sang duets, they sang trios.
• Three girls managed to hog the microphone for forty minutes every time the rotation got back to them.
• So, we we were there for three hours and sang three times. You do the math on that one. Eight people. Three hours. Everyone should have gotten to sing a lot.
• We almost didn't sing that third time because my mom was tired of listening to teenagers and kids scream into the microphone. The lady came around with the sheet to get our song to speed up the process, and my mom asked how far out we were. Turns out two kids were ahead of us, one of whom was singing.
• At that point, I was in favor of waiting and singing. We were there for three hours and had only been able to sing twice. Mom was ready to go, and said something about there being too many kids.
• I knew that was a pointless drum to beat. When you go to karaoke at a restaurant, there will be kids.
• The lady said if you want no kids you should go to a place that is over 21, and she was right.
• I said that the real problem was letting small groups of people monopolize the microphone. It was not right. It would be like me singing, my mom singing, me and my mom singing, my mom and another friend singing, the other friend singing, me and the other friend singing, me, mom and the other friend singing. We could tie up the works for forty minutes just like you have let those girls do all night, but we haven't.
• She didn't like what I said, but she admitted that it was a mistake and wouldn't be happening again.
• Now, would it not be happening again because I said something, or would it not be happening again, period?
• I got a nasty comment from the guy running the machine about being impatient to sing when he called me up.
• That tells me that even though the woman was very gracious to me, and admitted that I was right, she didn't relay it back that way to her partner.
• Most people just leave and don't come back if they don't like something. My mom said that if she finds out that our regular karaoke guy isn't going to be there, we will rethink going there in the future. And that was after I said something.
• People don't like confrontation. I didn't like it when I was married. My ex made it so uncomfortable that I eventually stopped speaking out about what I did and didn't like. What is and isn't acceptable.
• I am not doing that anymore. It is unacceptable to hog the microphone at a karaoke joint. I will tell you nicely. You can make one jab at me, but not two. And if it keeps happening I won't come back.
• I guarantee you this: for every one person who tells how it is, there are twenty who are thinking it and just not coming back. Be grateful for that person who speaks out.
• And if you are someone who is afraid to speak out, try it. It feels so good. It if is your truth, then it isn't wrong to say it. It is never wrong to speak honestly and from your heart.
• Trust me on this: the worst thing in the world is losing the ability to speak your own truth.
• The first Marshall Mathers song I listened to was Not Afraid. It was what hooked me on Eminem. The song is about not being afraid to do what you need to do, speak your truth, be yourself.
• Before you say that you hate rap or hip hop, know what you are talking about. I thought that I hated it, too. I hated it BEFORE I listened to it. It is dangerous to make those kind of calls. And it is also dangerous to hate an entire genre of music, because you never know when a specific piece of music will jump out and hit you where you live. Just sayin'.
• My mom has been watching OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) and loving it. Apparently, there was something on there about the new Oreo cookie. It is a regular Oreo covered in chocolate.
• I couldn't quite follow if it was on one of the shows or if it was a commercial... Anyway, the entire family sans the mom are sitting around the table eating these cookies and talking in Martian about them. (In other words, my mom had no idea what they were saying.)
• Then the mom came in and she tried one and my mom tried repeating what she said. She kept at it until I figured it out. That was when I realized that the kids and hubs are talking in modern day slang. I hated to break the news to mom that the family were not taken over by aliens.
• What was the giveaway phrase, you ask?
• Shut the back door!

photo found at www.weheartit.com

Wednesday with Bullets

I was going to do another alphabet post, but you guys seem to like my bullet post style posts, what I have is mostly mish mash, so it seemed like a better way to go.


*For instance, right now I think Penny Can on Cougar Town is hilarious.
*You don't watch Cougar Town?
*How can this be?
*Oh yeah, you're Chris, and don't own a TV.
*Well, let me help you with some YouTube of Penny Can. This stuff cracks me up. It would be on my Thursday post, if I could work up the fortitude to roll one of those out.
*Roll the penny can footage:



*I love Ellie. She is the one that makes all of the crazy penny can shots. She is da bomb. I want to be Ellie when I grow up.
*H-Girl spent the night last week. It had its good and bad points. It scares me how much she has learned from her father. And I am not talking about the good stuff.
*She basically tricked me into taking her into the mall.
*Yes, I was tricked by a twelve year old.
*Yes, it still stings a bit.
*After she lingered over all of the things she wanted me to buy her... even after I told her before we left the house that I had NO money, we finally ended up at the bookstore.
*We spent over an hour mooning over jewelry. She was hoping I would cave. She never once asked, but she just looked pitiful. And once pointed out the matching necklace (the she didn't have)to the bracelet that she did (and was wearing).
*All of this after raiding my jewelry box at home and getting me to cough up several pieces of jewelry for her... moving on...
*So, after giving up on the jewelry at the mall, we arrive at the bookstore. That place is my personal weakness. I can turn down clothes all day long. Put me in a bookstore and that is like shoving an alcoholic into a bar.
*Naturally, we end up back in the YA section. She starts picking up various books and telling me that specific friends are reading this one and that one. She would like to read this one and that one. Then she says this: "Because I am all about the learning."
*I laughed so hard I nearly fell down and hurt myself.
*She followed it up with, "What? I LIKE to read."
*That only produced more laughter on my part. I started looking around for a chair because I had a kink in my side and it hurt.
*When I was able to speak again, I told her that she should call her dad and tell him just what she told me. I was willing to float her $15 if he would pay me back right away.
*He said he would. He also got a laugh out of that. Unlike me, he seemed to believe her line about being all about the learning.
*I find that interesting. One would think that a person who floats BS all of the time would recognize it in others more quickly. Apparently not. Who knew?
*Back to the trick... she told me that her aunt was going to meet us at the mall. Not true. Not even close. She just wanted to go to the mall and talk me into buying her stuff. Imagine my surprise when I find out that I end up having to take her all the way back to her grandparent's house. It didn't cut my driving at all. That is where her aunt was.
*So, I had H-Girl regale them with the tale of being all about the learning. They all laughed. Apparently, they were all shocked. Her older brother said he was going to read the book and quiz her to make sure she actually read it. Smart kid.
*That one day knocked me out in so many ways. Sooooo tired physically.
*So tired mentally. It really hurts me in the heart that H-Girl does these sorts of things. Her lack of honesty and the way she manipulates people without a second thought really disturbs me.
*As for me, I have been dreaming about sweets. Craving sweets terribly. I know what this means. I am stressed out. Severely stressed out.
*I bought two bags of M&Ms the last time I was at the pharmacy. It did occur to me that my Eminem fascination went from the person to the candy. H-Girl might not be the only "disturbed" individual out there...
*If you received the letter for my future non-profit website via email, please answer me this: did you copy/paste and send it to everyone in your address book, specific people in your address book, or no one in your address book? Whatever your choice, why? You can tell me in the comments or email me. My email is in the sidebar. Thanks.
*I really don't have much dirt. I am thinking about practicing Penny Can. Chris, can I call that exercise? It looks like so much fun to say "Penny Can" when you actually get the penny in the can.
*I really could have been a writer for Seinfeld. It was a show about nothing. I have got an excellent handle on that.