emotions and feelings are so weird. really. how they can grip your psyche and move you at the slightest remembrance of something that was once important to you. the worst, i think, is how the past is so clever at influencing the now. sometimes when i am in a reflective mood and i think that i am alone with my thoughts i will discover that i am instead alone with thoughts that i had quite some time ago. regurgitated like the past meal of some animal with multiple stomachs (cow, camel, goat? all ugly animals). good or bad thoughts or feelings or premonitions, it makes no difference. i just want to have todays instead.

how do you live in the now? how do you completely erase the might-have-beens and the did-not-really-ever-happens from the dusty (or not so dusty) archives of your memory? how do you focus instead on what could be or should be or even what might be done with the innumerable hours and minutes and seconds that seem to be approaching at an
ever-increasing rate.

there are days when i wish that i had the plans for what my life is supposed to be. detailed ones, with a dull blue background and sharp white lines and lots of superfluous notes put on for show by an overzealous architect. instead i can't even figure out what is inside me, never mind pretending to have some idea of how i fit into the world. just vague wants and goals and (worst of all) feelings. some days i would trade in the adventure for the answer book. and on those days it seems that simply breathing in and out and in and out and ... is all that can be done. at least that isn't so bad.

the worst journal entries are the ones that are filled with questions. better to write them and get them organized and out than to think them over and over when i should be doing dishes, though. : - ). to the dishes.