Video du jour

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The irony doesn’t escape me. It’s 5:15 am and –thanks to our dog — who refuses to sleep, I’m wide awake.

It’s not as if I’ve had a dif­fi­cult time falling asleep … it’s more that I can’t seem to stay asleep. If any­thing, all I want to do is climb under the cov­ers and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Depres­sion can obvi­ously do that.

And with me, depres­sion can cause waves and waves of anx­i­ety, which only add fuel to the insomnia-​​fire.

Recently Hubby and I had one of our long dis­cus­sions (one of many we’ve been hav­ing lately). This one hap­pened to start off with an inno­cent com­ment our 15-​​year old nephew had said last Sun­day when we met them for lunch.

“Aun­tie,” he told me, “you look sad” . And I couldn’t tell him any dif­fer­ently, other than to say that I’d been tired a lot lately.

My hus­band brought that up dur­ing our dis­cus­sion as a means to show me how even a 15-​​year old could see my depres­sion. And if he could see it, how many other peo­ple would see it as well?

All I know is that over the years, I have changed. Oh … I think the heart of me — my cen­ter — will never change, but the way I’ve looked at things or approach things have def­i­nitely been altered from my life experiences.

I know these thoughts are no dif­fer­ent than any other per­son in their late 30’s/early 40’s. After all, isn’t this when we begin to look back at our lives to where we were and com­pare them to where we are now? Isn’t this where we reflect back on those dreams we had in our early 20’s and think about whether we’ve achieved them or not?

You see, as I approach 40 this year, this is one of the anxiety-​​ridden things I think about fre­quently. I think about our early post-​​college years where then-​​fiancé and I would dream about our future together. We’d dream about our mar­ried life together; of kids and the large house in the sub­urbs. We’d talk about how our kids would be into sports or some sort of activ­i­ties where we would be the proud par­ents who’d show up with video cams in hand to record such moments. We talked about vaca­tions as families.

And, of course, I also had my dream of want­ing to be a Stay-​​At-​​Home-​​Mom for a spell, while wait­ing for our four (yes, four) kids to all be old enough to go to school. I also dreamt about mak­ing friends with other Mom’s; friends of our kids, where we could hang out and com­mis­er­ate about daily life with kids. I dreamed of arrang­ing play­dates and birth­day par­ties and all these won­der­ful things I could do when I became a mother.

But we all know where those dreams went. Our best laid plans … right down the potty.

While mak­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free has less­ened the “blow” to my need to mater­nal­ize (is that even a word?), it hasn’t taken away the fact that I have had to face the “Boule­vard of Bro­ken Dreams” when com­ing to terms with my infertility.

In other words, in order to fig­ure out what our next step in child-​​rearing would be … Hubby & I had to walk that “boule­vard” alone. Together, yes def­i­nitely … but alone.

So now that the we’ve passed that boule­vard … and even though it’s been almost two years now … what do we do now? What’s our next step? What’s our goal? I know that chil­dren aren’t in our future, but so what is our new future?

It’s all of those wor­ries that keep me from hav­ing a full night’s sleep. It’s what causes me anx­i­ety in the mid­dle of the night.

Which direc­tion in life do we need to be head­ing? What we can do with our lives now that we’re clos­ing in on 40 … the decade where we should feel more “set­tled” in our lives?

It has all the mak­ings of a dream­less night. A night where I’m not sure what our new dream is going to be.

Which, again. The irony doesn’t escape me.

How Winter Kills

Like the snow in Metro Detroit, I’ve been in and out of every­day life. And like the snow, my mind should be ever present dur­ing this par­tic­u­lar month, since it’s sup­posed to be the month of new begin­nings; of mak­ing res­o­lu­tions to change things.

But like the snow, I’ve only sur­faced in bits in pieces when­ever life seems to be most inconvenient.

This depres­sion sucks.

No. I mean lit­er­ally. It sucks the life and energy out of me. And throw in a (un)healthy dose of anx­i­ety with it … well it just makes life all the more interesting.

I’m try­ing my best to move past this depres­sion; doing all that I can phys­i­cally and clin­i­cally do, but the weight of this sad­ness seems to be omnipresent.

Thank God for an under­stand­ing Hus­band; one who has stood by me through thick and thin. He’s been there through the low-​​hanging, non-​​anxiety moments and all the way through the high-​​octane drama-​​fueled moments. Some­times I won­der – scratch that – I always won­der how I’ve man­aged to find my soul­mate and my best friend who still loves me despite all the bag­gage I carry.

If any­thing, Hubby (and the furkids – although the fur-​​dog has been on my last nerve lately … ) is the rea­son why I keep get­ting out of bed every morning.

Even though I’ve writ­ten the occa­sional post about the grief I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing, I know I’m not usu­ally so out­right with my depres­sion. But it has been sug­gested to me that I start writ­ing more about it, because this seems to be the only out­let where I can openly talk about my struggles.

And although this blog is (and always will be) about liv­ing child-​​free after infer­til­ity, I thought that this was my lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse where I can tell you about my life, both good and bad. So here’s where I lay it out on the line:

  • I’m still griev­ing over the death of my father. Between my two par­ents, it’s become appar­ent to me over the past year and a half that I truly was a “Daddy’s Girl.” I thrived in the moments when my Dad would play around with me and tease me. And there were the silly jokes the two of us would play on each other that only the two of us would get. And I miss those things horribly.

 

  • In the same aspect, I real­ize how much dif­fer­ent my rela­tion­ship with my Mom has always been; par­tic­u­larly now that my Dad had passed. I’ve always known that we never had that “Mother-​​Daughter” bond that is con­stantly seen in movies and TV shows; we’re just two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And with­out Dad being there as a buffer, this rela­tion­ship has only inten­si­fied … and not always in a pos­i­tive way.

 

  • Even though it’s been over a year since decid­ing to move back to Detroit, not a day goes by that I don’t miss liv­ing in Chicago. I miss the city and the atmos­phere. I miss the late night trips to Dim Sum or Korean BBQ with my cousins. I miss walking.

 

  • But what I miss the most is that Chicago rep­re­sented a new life for me. A life where Hubby & I carved out a place for our­selves; where the two of us really started focus­ing on us as a “Fam­ily of Two.” And while I love my home­town and take pride in telling peo­ple that I’m from Detroit, I miss that part of our lives where we were just far enough from “home” where Hubby & I could be our own family.

 

  • And finally … even though Hubby & I have decided that child-​​free liv­ing after infer­til­ity is our life, there are still those days where I worry about our future and what other things in our lives we can con­tribute to the greater good of our world. Will all I have to show at the end of my life is that I’ve worked hard for a liv­ing? That I loved my fam­ily and friends to the best capac­ity that I could? What about my legacy? What will I leave behind? And will I have made a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life? I know now that hav­ing kids won’t nec­es­sar­ily “sat­isfy” or pro­vide answers to all of those ques­tions, but hav­ing lost my Dad … and know­ing the per­son he was … this is some­thing that weighs heav­ily on mind.

 

I could prob­a­bly go on with more “issues” that seem to run end­lessly through my anxiety-​​ridden head, but these are the ones that are con­stantly in my stream of con­scious­ness. These are the things that keep me from doing the things I would nor­mally enjoy doing.

Like read­ing.

Or knit­ting.

Or tak­ing pictures.

Or writ­ing.

Or sim­ply watch­ing TV.

But I’m try­ing … at least I’ll try to work on the writ­ing bit.

And maybe Mother Nature will be kind enough to work on a mild win­ter for the rest of us.

Too Pieces

The day stretched on as if it were the longest day of sum­mer; yet it was the mid­dle of win­ter. It was only 4:30 pm, but dusk was around the cor­ner; the clouds in the win­tery sky mak­ing it seem darker than it should be.

She should be doing some­thing to keep her mind busy; any­thing to take her thoughts off the shades of grief that lay inside the pit of her stom­ach. Instead, she sat at her local bookstore’s café mind­lessly flip­ping through the lat­est gos­sip rags and fash­ion magazines.

Nor­mally read­ing such things would enter­tain her; would make her laugh at such ridicu­lous­ness. Or at the very least, inspire her to change her wardrobe to some­thing other than jeans and a t-​​shirt. But today, she nei­ther felt nor heard noth­ing but the silent hum inside her head that told her that some­thing about her was defective.

That silent hum had always lived inside of her for as long as she could remem­ber. She never felt pretty enough or smart enough to accom­plish any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in her life. And although she had a good career and an incred­i­ble hus­band, she never thought she could deserve to be happy.

At times in her life, the silent hum would sur­face out­wardly. When she and her hus­band found it dif­fi­cult to start their fam­ily, that hum became a silent roar. When she lost her job, the silent roar returned. How­ever, even­tu­ally that roar would once again return to a hum.

She knew that her antsy-​​ness today was because that hum was slowly turn­ing into a roar. She even knew her actions over Christ­mas was its root cause. But just like those other times, she had no idea how to silence the roar. She had no way of stop­ping such neg­a­tive, self-​​defeating feel­ings that lay rooted inside of her.

Although she knew she had the sup­port of her hus­band, her best friend in life … her fam­ily … she also knew she would ulti­mately be the one respon­si­ble for tam­ing the beast inside herself.

She also knew that in order to tame the beast, she had to get rid of the hum all together. She had to stop depre­ci­at­ing her­self and start to build up that self-​​esteem.

This will prove to be a dif­fi­cult task for her; espe­cially since she never par­tic­u­larly had con­sis­tent, ongo­ing self-​​confidence. Her entire life had been rooted in self-​​doubt with only fleet­ing moments of con­fi­dence. It would take a lot to rid her life of that silent hum.

What could she do? What *would* she do? She had already sought the help of pro­fes­sion­als; she already had the sup­port of her lov­ing hus­band. The only thing she could do is uproot those thoughts of self-​​doubt and self-​​deprecation and replant con­fi­dence and self-​​esteem in its place.

It sounded sim­ple enough; replace the neg­a­tive with the pos­i­tive. Believe that the glass is half-​​full rather than half-​​empty. Begin to believe in herself.

But why then, did it seem so much more com­pli­cated than that? Why does the silent hum persist?

Now Comes the Night

One Year Later from Emily Ty on Vimeo.

 Cel­e­brat­ing the life of my Dad … One year later.

Up and Away …

An Apple A Day

The first com­puter I ever touched

The first time I ever touched a com­puter was as a third-​​grader in the small Catholic grade school I had attended. I remem­ber being intim­i­dated by the big machine in front of me with a key­board that didn’t seem to have the let­ters “in the right order.” Or at least that’s what my 8-​​year old mind thought.

But what I do remem­ber is the black screen with the green let­ter­ing. And the game that our com­puter teacher-​​slash-​​gym teacher would have us play.

“Open apple” to catch the falling apple in the bas­ket, he’d tell us. “Closed apple” to close the bas­ket from ani­mals try­ing steal the apple.

It was a large bulky piece of equip­ment, that Apple III com­puter; but it was the first com­puter I ever touched.

And as I sit here typ­ing away on my Mac­Book Pro, I can’t help but reflect on how much Apple has been a part of my life.

Open Apple, Closed Apple

Okay, so maybe for a spell of time — let’s say  back in the mid ’80’s — we owned a Texas Instru­ment com­puter. And maybe those high school days were spent work­ing on an IBM com­puter. (I’m sure Steve Jobs would have for­given us; see­ing that he had left Apple dur­ing that period of time.)

But you see, I count those days in our grade school’s “com­puter lab” as the moment I became a “loyal” Apple fan. So loyal that, even though my university’s com­puter lab had rows and rows of PC’s … I would patiently wait for one of the 5 or so Apples to open up to type up my term papers. Or I’d wait to use one so that I could fig­ure out how to work this “new tech­nol­ogy” called “elec­tronic mail” … a way that I could save money from my phone bill so I could com­mu­ni­cate with future-​​Hubby at his university’s com­puter lab that had rows and rows of Apple Computers.

Mac­in­tosh SE 30

(Yes kids … what’s com­mon, every­day tech­nol­ogy for you today was brand-​​spanking new for us back in the early ’90’s!)

Even after grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­sity … the first home com­puter I owned was a “hand-​​me-​​down” Mac­in­tosh SE 30, loaned to me by future-​​Hubby when I moved into my first apartment.

Hubby, too was a big Apple fan. Of course, his started at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan and con­tin­ued after­wards as one of his first jobs after col­lege was work­ing for the now defunct Com­puter City store. And because of the nature of his career, Apple Com­put­ers were the most preva­lent work-​​horse when it came to Graphic Design. So once he bought his first Mac, we never looked back.

Apple web­site home page for Oct 5, 2011

Today, our house­hold is filled with Apple prod­ucts:  from the first Mac SE 30 (that stills sits on our kitchen pass-​​through) to the shini­est biggest iMac that Hubby uses for work on a daily basis. Not to men­tion the “com­puter grave­yard” we have in our base­ment (or in our home office) that con­tains bits and parts of Apple stuff. (There’s even two old 2nd gen­er­a­tion iPods with the clas­sic “click wheel” lying around some­where … Don’t judge — one of them was a gift from a dear friend that didn’t know we already had one!)

And then there’s our iPhones (old 3G ones) and iPads … things we now feel like we can’t live without.

By now you’ve gath­ered that Apple has been a big part of our lives, espe­cially over the past 20 years. And I’m pos­i­tively sure that we’re not the only ones that have been loyal to the com­pany. So yes, read­ing about Steve Jobs pass­ing had really affected us … and, by see­ing all the FB posts and tweets, his death has obvi­ously affected the rest of the world.

Hubby’s trib­ute to Steve Jobs

I’ve said it before … maybe not any­where here on my blog … but I’ve always said that Steve Jobs is the Walt Dis­ney of my gen­er­a­tion; the great­est inno­va­tor of the lat­ter 20th/​early 21st cen­tury. While he had already cemented his place in his­tory by being one of the co-​​founders of Apple Com­put­ers (along with Steve Woz­niak) in 1976, he will always be remem­bered as the man who suc­cess­fully merged high-​​end tech­nol­ogy with every day life.

As I said above, I can no longer live with­out my iPhone or Mac­Book Pro … but I’ll have to learn to live with­out Steve Jobs.

And because this is still my favorite commercial …

 

 

 

Round Peg, Square Hole

I admit … I haven’t been doing much since being back from vaca­tion. Which I sup­pose is a good thing. I’ve done a lot of read­ing lately; def­i­nitely more than writing.

Which is a shame, because I do have some fun pic­tures from vaca­tion to share with you. Unless, of course … you’ve seen it on my per­sonal FB page! :-)

Instead, I’ve been on a read­ing kick. I fin­ished “The Cast­aways” while in line at Uni­ver­sal Orlando. And yes­ter­day, I just fin­ished “The Help” … a book I had wanted to read before see­ing the movie. Today, I start “The Soli­tude of Prime Num­bers”.

I’ve not felt inspired to write lately, and I’m going through one of my phases where even FB or read­ing other blogs doesn’t sound appeal­ing to me right now. What I do know is that it likely has to do with those emo­tional peaks and val­leys I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing lately.

I’d elab­o­rate more but … quite frankly, it feels like I’m beat­ing a dead horse.

So instead … to honor the “retire­ment” of Steve Jobs from Apple, I decided to post one of the company’s older com­mer­cials; one that I have always loved. And see­ing that there are many times (espe­cially lately) that I feel as if I see things so much more dif­fer­ently than oth­ers, I fig­ure that this should be my inspi­ra­tion for the day.

My Favorite Song This Time Last Year

Day Thirty – My Favorite Song This Time Last Year:

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been 30 days of post­ing songs and videos on my blog. Okay … so I’ve inter­spersed a few posts in between the 30-​​Day Song Chal­lenge, but they were for good rea­sons. At least I think they were.

Regard­less, this now means I get to post another NaBloPoMo badge on my “Badges of Honor” page. Woo-frickin’-hoo!

Any­way, I hope you enjoyed fol­low­ing along with my music posts. As you can prob­a­bly gather by now, music has always played a big part in my life. Some­how, I can’t see my life being com­plete with­out hav­ing a song in my head and in my heart.

But today, really is about the last song I need to name. I have a hard time remem­ber­ing what I ate last night, let alone try­ing to remem­ber what song I liked this time last year. I mean, give me a break … I’m get­ting senile in my older years. Espe­cially since I have a birth­day com­ing up this week.

So instead, I’m post­ing my favorite song once again. Except this time, I actu­ally had time to put a video together for myself. So enjoy the slideshow below … as the descrip­tion I added on YouTube says, this video is:

A pho­to­graphic tale of my per­sonal rela­tion­ship with Hubby & with kids … and the fact that we can’t have any of our own. Resolv­ing that part has been hard on us, but now we know … “Apron Strings can be used for other things than what they’re meant for.” But I would like to think that other per­sons (whether they’re kids or not … ) can still be hap­pily “wrapped in my Apron Strings.”

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

 

A Song From My Childhood

Day Twenty-​​Nine – A Song From My Childhood:

I’m not sure why I always think of this song when­ever I reflect back on my child­hood. I could prob­a­bly bring up a ton of songs from my younger years, thanks in part to my par­ents’ own love of music. Or I could bring up some old sto­ry­book songs that my par­ents used to play on our record player.

Yes, oh younger ones, that’s what us older kids had for on-​​demand enter­tain­ment back in the day. No VCR’s back then, and TV pro­gram­ming that was dic­tated by the TV stations.

Which is prob­a­bly where I remem­ber see­ing “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” for the first time.

But really, the rea­son this song has such a firm grasp in the recess of my mind is because of this mem­ory I have of singing this song with my par­ents in var­i­ous loca­tions. I remem­ber singing it at home on the morn­ings or after­noons when Mom would put some Bea­t­les on the record player. And I remem­ber singing this song in our old sta­tion wagon while my Dad played his 8-​​tracks on those road trips to Lon­don, Ontario (or even that famed trip down to Dis­ney­world in the late ‘70’s).

So now every time I hear this song, I remem­ber singing this song at the top of my 5-​​year old lungs and hav­ing such a blast with my parents.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty

Day Twenty-​​Eight – A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty:

Once upon a time when Emily was a young lass of twelve, her brother brought home a cas­sette tape by the Vio­lent Femmes. The emerg­ing 80’s alter­ative music lover (thanks in part to her older brother’s taste in music) loved the infec­tious songs recorded on that now-​​classic album.

There was one par­tic­u­lar song that cracked 12-​​yr old Emily up every time she heard it. It was a song that her brother loved to play over and over again, just to get a rise out of his “baby sister.”

One fine day, while blast­ing out the Vio­lent Femmes’ “Add It Up” on the stereo sys­tem, the sib­lings’ mother came rush­ing into the room. She pressed the stop but­ton on the cas­sette tape player and then took it out of the stereo sys­tem. She then pro­ceeded to throw said cas­sette tape down on the ground and smash it with one stomp of her heel.

From that day for­ward, every time Emily hears that song … she can’t help but feel just a tad guilty.

The other part of her looks back at that mem­ory and GRINS. Because really … how smart were those two sib­lings to play such a song in front of their mother?

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

Who knew that one day we’d be delin­quents in our Mom’s eyes?

 

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