One Debt or Another

I am in an awful mood. It is kind of fascinating. Been awhile since I have felt the way I do right now. And you know what the highlight of my day has been? Going to the bank.

No, I am not being sarcastic. I really enjoy managing money. It feels like a very big, important game that has awesome outcomes if you can wiggle your way around the rules. I don't mean AROUND the rules as in doing anything remotely illegal or unethical. I mean...well...let me give you an example...

Today I paid off my credit card (which was the soul source of my Europe financing) with my credit line. My Visa's interest rate is 11% and my credit line's interest rate is prime + 2.5 which comes to 8.5%. That is the first step. In a few weeks I will then pay off my credit line once again with my Visa, but using my promotional Visa cheques which allow me to consolidate debt at a rate of 2.99%!! It is truly brilliant! So, as I pay off my Europe debt, which I will undoubtedly do quite quickly because Chemainus is paying me well, I will be accruing hardly any interest. I love this. I love flipping and flopping my debt around and paying it off and then getting into more debt and then flipping that around as well. This is very un-artist-y of me, I know. This is the part of me that prefers my MacBook to people and gets horny color coding files or organizing supply closets.

I also kinda like tax time. True, this could be because I am almost always certian of getting money back and am sure that If filing my taxes meant forking over a bunch more dough to the government I would feel differently. But there is something so satisfying about pulling out my yellow tax receipt book where I keep my receipts organized in seperate, labeled, plastic sleeves and adding up each sub-category to make a total. I enjoy that it makes me look at the past year being that I am addicted to nostalgia. I like the methodical nature of adding and ticking things off and stapling the neat little groups of papers to each other. And obviously, I love the tax refund that all this effort seems to cultivate.

When I look at these aspects of myself I wonder how it is I became a tap dancing, highly emotive, gypsy nuthead. My gemini nature is evident --- I have two distinct KJs. One the them wants to work with people and entertain and storytell and commune with spirit in flowing skirts and paint to african drumming music while burning armomatherapy scents and live in a cottage and work on creative, ethical contracts and make crafts and drink tea. The other wants to have an obsessively decorated and organized home office where I conduct a career based around my MacBook and see very few people and make a crap load of money that I can spend time investing and managing and watch my wealth grow and wear crisp white blouses and drive a Mercedes convertible and keep my life in neat little columns that add up.

Sorta like this blog...sometimes I just write because I like the thought of communicating human truths and thus connecting in a very real way to anyone who might read my words. And then sometimes I wonder about how I could jam this whole kjkonkin.com Finding Me Live Out Loud stuff into a money making equation and live off the profits.

Woohoo!

Suddenly, I am not in such a bad mood.

I think

It is late February and it is snowing out. I sit here typing this in front of the fireplace at my boyfriend's condo in Surrey. I have a boyfriend. Last year at this time I had a different boyfriend who was getting up the guts to leave me. Now, I have a boyfriend who rushes home to see me and can't keep his hands off of me. Last year at this time, I hated myself. Today I sit here in front of the fireplace while it snows outside and I am happy. It's all kind of boggling.

I think about Darren who is unable, yet, to let go of his ex. I watch his suffering and I do not judge it because I was there, not so long ago. I remember logging onto Skype just to see HTSNBN pop up on my contact list. He is an addict and she is the drug and he is hitting rock bottom, but at least he knows he is. I would never think of preaching at him that it all gets better and that true love waits for him, like it did for me. Because it is not that simple. Letting go is fucking scary.

I think about how everything is cyclical. Doors open and close, loves begin and end and nothing at all stays the same. I think about how much I miss certain chapters of my life that will never be again. I think about how curious and excited I am to venture into my very uncertain future.

I think everyone should go and see the first part of my Europe Photo Gallery. It is tres fun.

I think about Sara-Jeanne. I sit and laugh with her again and I am well aware that she is one of the great loves of my life inclusive of all the closeness and quarrels. Being around her gives me permission to be as Big as I want, as Loud as I want and to never worry that I am stealing the spotlight...because she can hold her own, she is never put off by my brash craziness and can dish out twice as much as I can. As a woman who is often criticized for being 'too much', being with SJ is like unbuttoning my pants after a large meal. It is sweet relief.

I think about a year ago this day. Instantly all the images that have maimed me for so long start their ever-destructive slide show. The apartment suddenly half empty, filled with boxes screaming of my failure to be enough for him. The letter he left on the coffee table the night he packed those boxes, filled with such anguish that I was given false hope. The couch strewn diagonally across the hardwood floor like an angry scar. For weeks, for months, I saw the world through a smear of tears. I remember not being able to eat and losing tremendous weight. I remember being sure I would not survive. God, how badly it
hurt.

I think about how I did survive. It almost killed me, but not quite.

I think about having a baby. I wonder if I have just met the man that I am supposed to have a baby with. I try to figure out how I could possibly be ready for a baby and then I remember that I am not 18 any more, but 30. Thirty year olds are not too young to be mothers. I question just how much I have grown up.

I think about my friends. The centre of many different social groups, I have tried for so long to weld them together and convince everyone to love each other. Thing is, they do not. Jax says to me 'not everybody has to love everybody else' and my heart hurts because, even though I know he is correct, I hate that truth. Upon returning to Vancouver, it feels like my social network is catawampus and the only thing I know to do about it is Let It Be. Hard for a control freak.

I think about whether or not I should keep subletting my apartment or move out all together. In a good moment with Jax I feel like moving out, letting him use all my stuff while I am gone for the year and then reassessing my living situation in 2008. Of course, that reeks of me already planning to live with him which is very rushy rushy. In a less than good moment with Jax I am once again convinced that It will be empowering to keep my own place and independence and not get myself into a situation where I am beholden. Not sure if this is the one-foot-out-the-door kind of thinking that I use to employ in my younger years or the has-learned-her-lesson-and-knows-that-the-most-important-thing-is-to-not-give-away-any-of-her-power kind of thinking that is simply hard earned wisdom.

I think about Kyle and Dashboard Confessional and the smell of sugared fig and wet cedar. This summer was an amazing summer. I was in pain but fully alive and as deeply happy as I was sad. Now Kyle is planning to have a baby with the love of his life and our twelve hour seawall walk plays in my memory almost like it happened to someone else. I think about a butterfly emerging from her cocoon and I think that that was what was happening to me this summer.

I think about flying now. I think about Europe and all that I learned in those jammed packed seven weeks. I think about how far away Surrey seems to me and I think about whether or not I am going to love my room mates in Chemainus and I sigh at the thought of spending this whole year in a 'long distance relationship'.

I think about what Maurice Atkinson - Jax's dad - said to me in Gloucester...that I think too much.

(there is that 'too much' thing again)

I think I like thinking and feeling too much.

I think I have decided to just commit to being Me from now on. All parts of Me. The thinker, the feeler, the 'too much' and the 'not enough'. For those who can take it, they are invited to stay awhile. For those that wish to edit Me, I hope they have infinite patience 'cause it ain't ever gonna happen.

I think that's what is called a spine.

Good to have it back again.

A Summary Of What I Have Learned So Far This Year

1. It is when you don't really want it all that badly that you get it.
2. If you call yourself KJ, 9 times out of 10 people will ask you what it stands for.
3. When in Europe, think very carefully about where you intend to have a bowel movement. The toliets do not like to flush poo very well and you may be stuck there for hours, staring desperately at the toliet bowl, pumping furiously away at the handle, hoping to God that somehow, someday you will be in a country where even the largest dump is swept away with the flick of a wrist.
4. You DO want to have sex more in your thirties.
5. One can always choose silence, sure, but if one wants to take part in the conversation and still isn't quite sure what to say, the best solution is to ask a question.
6. Falling in love can be fun. Falling out of love can be hell. Letting go and moving on can be the hardest thing you are ever asked to do.
7. You will not have an easy time finding peanut butter over in Europe or the UK. I seperate Europe and the UK because, for some odd reason, the UK does not consider themselves European.
8. When overseas, wear your Canadian flag all the time and in a prominent place. Generally, Americans are not liked.
9. Love who it is you are and make no apologies for it. If your partner can not accept it, thank them for their time and move on. It is not worth selling your self-esteem for companionship.
10. Making a top bunk bed while balancing precariously on a rickety metal ladder with your head smashed into the ceiling is less fun than it sounds.
11. If you are going to be co-dependent, be co-dependent with your MacBook. A MacBook will never let you down.
12. Whenever people tell you that something will be impossible, a line up too long, a train too packed, a dream out of your price range, a show sold out - ignore them. 9 times out of 10 it is all hullabulloo. You'll get in no problem, someone will give you free tickets and the money will show up. Where there is a will, there is a way.
13. First come first serve seating on an airplane is a baaaaaaad idea.
14. If you were hoping that while backpacking through Europe during winter you were going to look pretty, think again. (Unless what I am saying is all just hullabulloo).
15. Kissing a man passionately for an extended period of time who has stubble can cause cold sores.
16. There is no truth, just perception.
17. If they didn't or don't love you enough, can't love you enough and ultimately are choosing to leave you - IT IS THEIR LOSS.
18. The dictionary widget on a a Mac Dashboard is a must have for bad spellers.
19. If your 24 year old boyfriend is saying he is not ready to get married and have children then, well, okay. If your 34 year old boyfriend (or god forbid 44 year old boyfriend) is saying he not ready to get married and have babies, worry.
20. Be prepared that ordering Macdonalds french fries in Rome may cost you just under six Canadian dollars. Then question why you are eating at Macdonalds in the first place.

I am sure there are a few more things that I have learned, but a sampling will have to do...I am off to the Centre which I haven't attended in so long and is missed by me. Check out my new Konkin Question - inspired by a question asked in an Edinburgh newspaper and, of course, Cracker The Crazy Dog.

It is good to be home.

Good to the power of fantastic.