Blogging and the lessons therein

I started this blog on a whim.

We had a private family blog, which the husband mostly (or rather, practically exclusively) maintains and I occasionally contributed to and then concurrently in 2010 two dear friends started their own blogs which, incidentally, I suggest you visit cause they’re awesome: Nuts about Food and The Nero Chronicles. Their blogs have a focus, a purpose, I had none, but I enjoy writing and I’m a “sharer” so through the power of imitation I started what pretty much amounts to a life blog.

I wanted this blog to be anonymous, but as I said, I’m a sharer, so almost as soon as I started it I shared it on facebook. Thus, though not popular by any stretch of the imagination, this blog became not anonymous and is read, in part, by people I know in “real life”. This has never really been a problem for me, until recently. Sure, at times I found I would inadvertently censor myself or I would think of a possible subject and then decide not to post it because it would infringe on someone’s privacy, but it happened rarely and once I decided not to write it I never gave it another thought.

I was always happy to hear of a friend or acquaintance that visited me here, I felt it was a way to connect (albeit one-sidedly) to people in my life I rarely get to see. And yet now, I sometimes feel restricted by this blog, I constantly wonder whether I’m offending (I’m sure I am, with my anti-Italy posts), whether I’m over-sharing, whether by talking candidly about my life I’m overstepping on the right to privacy of the people in my life.

And so I question whether it wouldn’t have been better to suffer the silence of blogging just for myself while slowly building readership and, more importantly, friendship in the blogging world keeping it separate from my “real” life, thus concurrently protecting my family and maintaining a space for myself, where I could just be myself, and write my thoughts as they exist in my head rather than the version of our thoughts we present to the world. Because despite how candid we think we are, how true to ourselves we want to be, we inevitably censor, tone down, or up, or otherwise modify our reactions, our words, our gestures and actions and expressions depending on who we’re interacting with. It’s human nature.

On the other hand, I wonder if blogging anonymously isn’t just hiding, isn’t being ashamed, isn’t not wanting to own up to who we are. Isn't short-changing the very real, and very important friends one makes on the internet just because one hasn't met them in the physical world. 

I’ve never really cared too much about what others think of me. Of course, I can’t say I don’t care at all, because that would be ridiculous, but I’m not overly concerned if someone doesn’t agree with something I write, in fact, it’s highly likely that someone won’t. But can I make that decision for the other people in my life?

Sometimes I wish that I had a specific theme to my blog, a food blog, a design blog, an arts and crafts blog (an impossibility, as I’m neither artsy nor craftsy) but this is a “me” blog and I don’t live in a bubble. Also, I’ve got that whole over-sharing thing going on.

I keep going in circles.

So the lesson I learned from blogging? There are limits in everything we do, limits imposed by society, limits imposed by our fears, limits imposed by our own good sense, and sometimes limits imposed in what we write, about ourselves and about our lives. 

Can I live with these limits? 

I’m not so sure anymore. So where does a blogger go from here?

This post makes no sense because I wrote it with a gaggle of whining kids in the background.

Does two kids count as a gaggle?

Anyway. I’ve been feeling guilty about not writing for quite some time, but everything that comes into my head lately is either too depressing, too boring or would need fifty pages of explanatory preamble to make sense, so I haven’t been writing. But then today I decided to just stop feeling guilty and just write something already. Anything. Cause I like this blog and I don’t want to let it go off into inexistence quite yet, but each day that I ignore it, with a hundred and one supremely valid yet nonsensical excuses, makes it all the harder to go back to it.

I seem to always hit a certain degree of mal de vivre and of regret whenever I come back to Italy from a trip to Houston. I hate boohooing, I made a conscious choice to stay in Italy when I married the Husband and though we had always planned to move to the States I knew that there were no guarantees. And yet, all I’ve been doing since I’ve been back, nay, since before I even left Houston, is hating on Italy and letting all the little irritating things of everyday life become big, huge mountains that I have no will to face.

The truth though, if I really sit and look at it, is that there are just as many things that potentially would irritate me about living in the U.S., were I living there, because, no place is perfect and unfortunately the grass is always greener in the yard where I am not. (Did that sentence make any kind of sense outside my own head?)

Unfortunately, when I get myself into this funk, I tend to blame the Husband. He’s the one that’s making me stay here, it’s his fault, if only he hadn’t tricked me into marrying him… as if I had no free will…

So he’s been bravely, and somewhat resignedly, bearing the brunt of my bad behavior (I really intended to write mood here, but I simply cannot resist alliterating when I can), and I’m trying half-heartedly to return some semblance of sanity and reason back into my life. Because, despite what I would have me believe, Italy is not the antechamber of hell, it is a perfectly pleasant, though somewhat eccentric and often baffling country to live in. A country where logic and reason has no place (just look at the politics, or rather don’t, cause it’s depressing but that’s just an example) but that has many other qualities which I won’t enumerate here because I’m not there yet even though I’m now aware that there are good things, and I’ll soon start appreciating them again.

For now I’ll try to ignore the fact that both my kids managed to get sick after less than a day and a half back in school and the insanely cold temperatures and snow storms that hit just in time for our return home whilst diverting all of my attention to one of the regions main assets. The wine. 

Not Enough or The Ghosts of Christmases Past

Last night my Mom hosted a little shindig with some of our closest friends, hers and mine. I’ve mentioned before how we’ve moved around a fair bit, and although I lived in Houston for nigh on twelve years it just so happened that many, if not most, of my friends moved around a fair bit too. The result of all this moving and shaking is that I have very, very few childhood friends.

But yesterday I got to spend the evening with some of my best friends in Houston, some of which I’d lost contact with for a few years and others that I’d kept up with despite the distance in both time and space. It made me feel like a whole person again and yet it made me feel all broken apart too. Each of them had an anecdote, a memory of my family, of the person I was before the person I’ve become. And I wonder what they see now. Am I still some version of the girl they knew? Or have I morphed into a completely different human being?

I’ve only been here a week, and yet, I’ve already started getting a bit melancholic for the life that could have been. I’ve always suffered from the “what ifs”, and now, now that my family’s changed, now that my mom lives here permanently again, now that (due to the husband’s health situation) I likely never will live here again, now I feel them more than ever. What if I hadn’t gone to Italy for University, what if I hadn’t married the husband and stayed there, what if I’d come home sooner, what if he hadn’t had leukemia, what could have been of this life I live?

When you grow up in a multi-ethnic household, when you live here and there and everywhere you end up always feeling a little lost. I’m not Italian, I’m not Brazilian, I’m not American, I’m a little bit of everything and a little bit of nothing and it’s hard to stick a definition on it. It’s hard for me to stick a definition on myself, it’s hard to find something that fits. I spend so much of my time in Italy daydreaming about coming to America, about coming home, that it surprises me that when I finally get here I could possibly be so adrift. All the insecurities of the child I was, the child that arrived from Italy, with her loud, vivacious, oh so Italian father and her exotic mother, the child that spoke with a heavy British accent, that struggled to fit in, all those insecurities of years spent never really fitting in come rushing back to the surface.

Starting the year like this frightens me. Always wondering if I’ve done enough in the past, if I’m doing enough right now, if I am enough as I am, it’s tiring and scary and very, very unsettling at my age. Am I pretty enough, am I thin enough, am I elegant enough, am I intelligent enough, am I interesting enough, am I well-read and well-bred enough, am I loving enough, am I compassionate enough, am I patient enough…. I could go on and on and on, and the answer to most of those questions is no. 

It’s a little bit sad and a little bit startling to me that when faced with the ghosts of Christmases past the thought that underlies all my emotions, my words and my actions, at the end of the day is am I good enough? And I don’t like the answer.

Virtual Coffee {28}

Hello dear friends, welcome to coffee. 

I’m all abuzz today as I just realized I have four rather large events I need to get ready for before Christmas, so if we were really having coffee I’d probably be fretting about that.

I’m trying to plan the husband’s 40^th birthday party for December 10^th and realized I haven’t got an awful lot of time… right now my main concern is coming up with a great theme, I have an idea… which I can’t share in the (very remote) case he reads it here and I’m trying to keep at least that part a surprise… but I don’t know if I can pull it off as I don’t have enough time (damn me and my procrastinating ways!). Then I have to invite people, figure out where we’re doing it and if I should get it catered or have it directly in a restaurant. Thankfully I ordered his gift last year, though since it’s kind of hard to find, I just found out it may not be here in time for the party but will at least definitely be here in time for his actual birthday a week later. One day I will become an organized person, dammit!

I also had the bright idea to try and organize a big thanksgiving feast with all the American expats here in Cuneo (if you read this and I haven’t contacted you yet, call me, cause chances are I’m too disorganized to get to you in time). I love big gatherings and I love Thanksgiving, I’m just totally scattered this year and time is getting away from me. But I’ll manage, I just have to remember to order enough turkeys!

And the Girl… the poor Girl who always comes last because despite her best efforts to be noticed I always seem to drop the ball when it comes to her, is turning two next week and I have organized nothing, zip, nada, nisba, niet. It certainly doesn’t help that her birthday is the day before Thanksgiving this year. So, the thanksgiving shin-ding may just have to double as her birthday party too!

We have a wedding to go to the weekend of the husband’s birthday and we still need to buy a gift, figure out what we’re wearing, where we’re staying and what we’re doing with our children (bringing them, leaving them at home…).

And let’s not forget a little thing called Christmas coming up, which we’ll be celebrating early with all the husband’s family since we’re spending Christmas in Houston (YAY!!). Incidentally, I still haven’t got my tickets for Houston, so I should probably get on that or I won’t be able to go and wouldn’t that just make me feel like a complete idiot since I’ve been talking about this trip for two months now.

I thought writing this stuff out would somehow make it seem more manageable but it’s actually just freaking me out more, so please, tell me how you’re doing, are you gearing up for all the holidays? Do you have any special events coming up? How do you cope with pressure? Cause I used to thrive with the more things I had to do and now I just get flustered for no reason at all! Luckily I have these two little people that remind me to just relax and enjoy autumn sometimes:

This is how they like to spend their Sunday morning

Now don’t forget to visit our hostess Amy!

Right here, right now

I’ve kind of been having a hard time writing lately, I have many posts in the making and I can’t seem to finish any of them. My head is all over the place and it’s making me even less productive than usual.

I’ve been in the throes of a stomach virus in the past few days, so I’m quite possibly dehydrated and delusional (please keep this in mind as you read this) anyway, today as I was driving somewhere to do something positively vital (or something to that effect) I started thinking that we live too long nowadays.

Seriously, for thousands of years we were old at 40 or 50, if we were even so lucky as to get that far. Nowadays we don’t even start really living until then. We are too old. Our best years are over before we’ve even lived a third of our lives. (Obviously this thought process managed to spiral completely out of control). All the things we dream of when we’re young, we’ve done or likely won’t get done by the time we’re only halfway through our lives (if that, much sooner in my opinion) so what have we got left?

I’ve reached all my major milestones, I went to University, got my first (and then second, third and fourth) job, I got engaged (!), then married (!!), then I had children (!!!) and now… well now I get to raise them and look forward to all of their milestones, but it’s not really the same is it? Sometimes it feels like the long walk towards death has started, and every minute that passes I’m just walking faster.

This is just a recap  of what my brain was flinging at me this morning. I practically had a panic attack in the car. I mean, seriously, at death’s door??

But in a way it’s true, at least for me, I’m a goal-oriented person, most of the time if I’m doing something I’m already planning the next step. And now I’ve started thinking that maybe that’s not such a good thing, not only because I have no clearly defined “next” right now, but also because if I spend my entire life thinking five steps ahead at what comes next, when do I actually concentrate on what’s going on right this minute.

I guess what I realized today (and yes, I see now that it’s obvious) is that life isn’t a series of checks to get off my to do list. 

So as of now I’m going to stop worrying about what the hell I’m going to do in the future, when we’re going to buy a house, when I’m going back to work, when this or that or the other happens because things are going to happen either way and thinking ahead does nothing but give me more time to worry or obsess. 

Or that’s my lofty goal for the month anyway. Although, I wonder… is it even possible to change our way of thinking so radically. I mean can a planner, an obsess-er and a think ahead-er really turn into a live-in-the-present-moment kind of person?

And this is the point when I start obsessing again. Will this work? What can I do to make it work? Here let me get out a pen and plan this out…. How does one stop. And. Just. Relax?

I took yoga for many years, off and on, and I loathed the meditation part of the lesson, because I simply cannot make my mind shut up and just “om” already. I don’t know how to do quiet, peaceful presence, I don’t know how to shut out thought. I mean, if I have a negative thought I know how to replace it with another more positive thought to get myself out of a funk (except for this morning, apparently), but to simply still my thoughts… impossible. So how does one live in the moment?

Cause sometimes I get the feeling that my life is passing me by, I’m living it on fast forward, and I’d just like to be present right here and now for a while. How hard can it be? Any suggestions?

p.s. and when I say living on fast-forward I don’t mean that I have to much to do, quite the opposite, my head is so all over the place I can’t seem to get anything done.