“A certain shade of green,
tell me, is that what you need?
All signs around say move ahead.
Could someone please explain to me your ever present lack of speed? “
– Incubus, A Certain Shade of Green

While I was running yesterday, I was thinking about how glad I am to be starting on the path of a new career, but how I wish I had started it earlier. This is a dangerous path to go down. It starts you down the path of, “what if?” which usually leads straight to regret. Regret for past choices, regret for not taking a chance, regret for not speaking your mind.

Here’s the thing. You can’t go back. Ever. The sooner you get over that, the happier you’ll be.

I’ve made quite a few bad decisions in my life and I’m positive I’ll make more in the future. But any time I catch myself thinking, “If only I had…” I stop myself. A better way to think about it is, “Ok, so I did (or didn’t do) that. What steps can I take in the future to be better? What can I do now?” 

There’s simply no point in thinking about what you might have done, except to learn from it. But the ‘what if’ path is ludicrous. While quantum physics tells us that time runs in both directions (and that there may be infinite universes), for those of us on the macroscopic scale, we only know how to move forward on one timeline.

All mistakes are learning opportunities. All missed chances are chances to learn how to seize the moment in the future. All choices tell us about who we really are.

The more you dwell on the past, the more you get stuck there. The less you see the future and the less you move ahead into that future. I know it’s trite to say that ‘everyone makes mistakes,’ but it’s true. We all do. The best of us know to dust ourselves off and move on, without hesitation, without delay, and without our best friend sitting on our couch telling us to get over it already!

So stop wasting time wondering what could have been. Stop beating yourself up over that thing you did a week ago, a year ago, or ten years ago. It happened. Or it didn’t happen, depending on what it was. Either way, that time has passed, and all you have currently, is now.

*author’s note: there are expletives in this post. read at your own discretion*

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” – Gone With The Wind

After my last post, Contradictions, my friend asked me the following in a Facebook comment:

“What do you think about people’s right to privacy and the outing of these people? Do you think celebrities, particularly those who make a living off of showing their private lives and seek to control the private lives of others, deserve the same rights?”

It is a well-worded and thought out question, but I haven’t responded until now because I didn’t know how to put into words what I want to say. I think I’ve figured it out, so here it goes.

I don’t care. I really, truly, don’t care and don’t to waste my time thinking up an opinion on it, except the opinion that I don’t care. I merely used the Ashley Madison topic as a jumping off point to my own thoughts, which is where I would like to stay.

In today’s world where those of us in first world countries are all connected by the internet and can get news via tweet, email, facebook, instagram, you name it at any second of the day, everyone feels entitled to have an opinion on everything. And, (for lack of a better phrase) god help us, to share that opinion.

In no specific order, the first reason why I don’t care to answer the questions above directly is because I am not excited by the thought of getting into heated comment-debates online with people. The amount of stupidity and ignorance that goes into most online comments makes me cringe. If I have an opinion on an article I’ve read, I usually go talk to an actual person who is sitting with me about my views. I almost never leave a comment. Nothing comes across the way you want it to and people hide their ignorance behind their keyboard and their 140 characters. I’m just not into it. Plus, other than generating conversation about a topic I’m really not interested in, leaving a comment on my own facebook wall doesn’t actually accomplish anything.

Reason Number 2: I just really don’t care to debate this particular topic, or most news/politics related topics in general. I’m not interested in most current events. I know that everyone in my life tells me I should be, but to be honest, if I can get through my day, accomplish my goals, and interact with my friends, then I really don’t care about whether or not it’s right to ‘out’ people who paid to get help cheating on their spouse. Really, it has no impact in my life whether that’s right or wrong, and whether celebrities have a right to privacy even though they live public lives. And my opinion won’t change what they do.

I simply don’t give a fuck about most other topics that have no direct (or significant but indirect) impact on my life. Because my life, and the lives of the people that I interact with, are what concern me. I don’t have room in my busy life to sit around and think about whether or not I care about if hackers have a right to do what they do.

I know to a lot of you this makes me callous, uncaring, and selfish. I am all of those things, to some degree. I won’t deny that. But to me, it means I don’t waste my day worrying about or thinking about things that don’t help me personally progress in life. Being a little selfish helps you get what you want. Being callous means you aren’t hurt or affected by every misstep in life. Being uncaring means you don’t get sucked into trying to fix every problem of the people around you.

Which leads right into reason number 3: I don’t have time, and I don’t think it’s important either, to care about issues like this. I’m currently painting an aisle runner for my sister’s wedding that’s going to take 2 full days or more. I finished my online Ruby course today. I have Udacity courses to watch and projects to complete. I have a ‘Learn to Program’ book to read. I am reading/critiquing a science fiction book written by a friend of my dad. I’m trying to switch my health insurance plan and apply for a scholarship.

Seriously, I couldn’t possibly care less about the rights of celebrities. I’ll let other people spend their precious daily fucks giving a fuck about that topic. Mine are used for more important things like, ‘did I write this Ruby module correctly?’

Now, don’t get me wrong, if I’m drunk you can get me to debate almost anything, even things I don’t really care about. Because I’m already drunk and not doing anything productive.

Anyway, this post may be a littler harsher than most of my others, and it certainly is written in a different tone, but feel free to like it or not because frankly, I don’t give a fuck. 🙂

“My skin is not my own.”
-Leto II, Children of Dune

There’s a lot coming out in the past few days about the Ashley Madison website hack, namely that there’s at least 2 ‘major’ people who have been preaching/championing marriage and family while secretly having Ashley Madison accounts to for the sole purpose of cheating on their spouse. It got me thinking about contradictions.

How can people live with such a major contradiction in their lives? On a daily basis, they have to wake up every morning knowing that they are going to put on one face for the world while secretly wearing another underneath.

It’s extremely difficult for me to imagine, because I simply can’t do it. Well, I guess I can do it, but I really dislike doing it. But the more I ponder it, the more I convince myself that most people can fake who they are and what they believe on a daily basis, to a greater or less degree.

I see it every day at work. People who confess in private that they hate their job, they hate the politics, they hate the management game…these people still put on a smile and play along when the right people are around. They may know that there’s a contradiction buried inside them [I hate doing this but I’m going to fake liking it anyway] and yet they keep going. When there’s a question burning within them that they want to shout at a manager, they simply don’t.

I’m terrible at this. I hate wearing a mask. I hate putting on a personality at work, or in front of friends, or honestly, anywhere. I simply can’t live with the contradictions.

I’m no good at being someone I’m not, and while it often makes me an abrasive person, I still think it’s a good thing.

Trying to hold in my opinions makes me stressed out. I bottle it up, I get frustrated, and then I unload on my husband at night. I don’t like that. I understand it’s how so many people live their lives, but can’t I just be me, the whole day, every day? Shouldn’t people be allowed to just be themselves?

I’m not sure if we are afraid of what others will think of us, or if we are afraid of ourselves. Maybe they both amount to the same thing.

I have some advice to you, my readers. If you’re living in a contradiction: stop. Even if it means hurting someone, even if it means leaving your safe and secure job, even if it means finally admitting to yourself something you’ve been running from.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even have a chance to figure out why you let yourself live in that situation. Maybe you’ll allow yourself to learn something about who you actually are – the good and the bad – without hiding behind who you wish you were.

“Fake it til you make it” isn’t always a good strategy, because there’s a big difference between wanting something you can achieve and pretending to be someone or something that you’re not.

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
– Jake Chambers, The Gunslinger by Stephen King

In my industry, you hear a lot about people leaving and then coming back. As more people find out I’m leaving, I hear this on a daily basis in various forms. I get to hear lots of stories about how so-and-so went into ‘the commercial side’ but came back because the money was better. Or the benefits were better. Or they just didn’t like the other culture.

It’s a warning people feel they need to give me. I’m young, I don’t know what I want, and I will come back. So I shouldn’t burn any bridges.

But there’s a disconnect – and a big one – with how people at work see it and how my long time friends see it. My friends know that there is no way, and I mean NO WAY, that I will ever go back to working for another giant corporate aerospace company.

Simply put, it just isn’t me.

I’m a person who makes decisions quickly, because I think about things from every side almost obsessively. I’ve put an extreme amount of thought into this decision. I’ve also considered a lot of other options over the last 4 years. I may be young, but this is what I want.

I can’t guarantee it’s what I want in the future, but after years of being in aerospace, I can say with absolute confidence I know what I don’t want and there is no way that’s changing.

If you didn’t attend my wedding, you wouldn’t know that the rabbi told a version of a story about how my husband and I came to find each other. She learned this from our multiple [required, per Jewish custom] conversations before our wedding. While my husband dated whomever came along and eventually happened to stumble upon the woman for him, my path was far more deliberate.

I learned from each relationship I chose. I didn’t stay long if I knew it wasn’t going to work, even if I still liked the person. I learned what I liked and I didn’t like, and I didn’t settle for someone with characteristics I’d already ruled out as desirable. When I wanted someone, I went for them.

My career is no different. I know what I like and what I don’t, and while I know people are going to continue to look at me and think she’ll be back, I know they’re wrong.

I move forward whenever possible. There are new things to learn, new places to see, and other worlds to experience.

There’s more to life than this.

And there’s more to life than waking up every day knowing you’re not in the career you should be in.

“When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake” – Fight Club

Depending on how well you know me, you may already understand the title to this blog. It’s about time I explain it for those of you who don’t.

Since high school, I haven’t slept well. Actually, I thought I slept just fine until sometime during high school or college I started talking to people about their sleep. I was absolutely floored to find out a few things about sleep that don’t apply to me at all.

1. Falling asleep takes 20 minutes or less
2. Waking up during the night doesn’t happen often, but if it does, they fall back asleep quickly
3. They wake up feeling refreshed
4. Having control over your dreams is uncommon (actually, really uncommon)
5. Dreams are often mundane

The more I talked to people, the more I was generally shocked. I take generally between 45 and 120 minutes to fall asleep. I wake up 5 – 25 times a night, and while this didn’t used to be as much of a problem, in the last year I’ve been having a much harder time falling back asleep. I don’t think I’ve ever felt refreshed upon waking up. I’m not even sure I believe people who say they feel refreshed when they wake up because it just seems so unbelievable.

And when I do sleep, I lucid dream. I’m going to make up some numbers since I have never tried to track this accurately, but I would say that I am aware I’m dreaming about 90% of the time and have control (to varying degrees) over what’s going on in my dream about 70% of the time. Most of my dreams are pretty intense. Full on adventures in crazy fantasy lands where I can fly and there’s some goal I’m trying to accomplish. Or people/things are trying to kill me. Or there’s some puzzle to solve.

It’s pretty exhausting.

I feel like I’m tired all the time even though my body is just used to it. I’ve been in  situations where I’ve dreamed something so real that I’ve woken up still believing it actually happened. I’ll check a drawer a day later to get something that doesn’t exist. I’ve even forgotten if a conversation I had with someone was real.

Sometimes, the lines between what happened in real life and what happened in a dream get blurred.

I have finally started down the path of getting all of this sorted out. I had my first sleep study a few weeks ago to rule out sleep apnea as a cause of insomnia. There’s probably more sleep studies in my future.

But the thing that is guaranteed to make me instantly annoyed with you to ask me what I’ve tried and to have me try your home remedy. I promise you, I’ve tried most of them. I’m sure they work for people who on occasion take 30 – 40 minutes to fall asleep. I’m sure it’s even worked for you before.

If I could fix my sleeping problems with hot tea, reading before bed, no ‘electronic screens’ for 30 minutes before bed, a darkened bedroom, a quiet bedroom, melatonin, sleep aids, Zzzquil, more exercise, healthy eating, not eating immediately before going to bed, going to bed around the same time every night, no alcohol, etc. etc. etc.
…don’t you think I would have tried that already?

Oh yeah, I have. Because I can’t sleep and it totally sucks.

I promise you, my insomnia isn’t fixed by a combination of all these little tricks.  I am though, currently trying the ‘if you can’t sleep, just stop trying to force yourself to sleep’ method because, well, why not keep trying things? I’m a little desperate.

Anyway, this isn’t my most motivational or uplifting post. I suppose it is simply an ‘explanation post’ of where the title came from. Lucid dreams are sometimes called waking dreams since you are ‘awake’ within your dream. I want to take control of my life the way I take control of my dreams. I don’t want to float through life watching things happen to me the way a lot of people feel when dreaming. I want to wake up every day feeling like I’m in control of what happens to me, because that’s what makes me happy.

And with that, it’s probably time to (attempt) to get some sleep.