Halloween. 

I'm tired.
I can't sleep. 

I'm bothered by things I can and those I can not control. I have to keep reminding myself that you can't fight time.

I'm restless, anxious but unmotivated to do much.

I'm resentful. I want to do things I don't have time for. 

I'm just sayin. 

Sometimes I look at Xhusband and think to myself that he is certainly not the man I married. It's an observation, not a judgement.

And it makes me wonder if he was always this way and just didn't show me. 

I hope he changed.

Tonite I lie in bed listening to the rain. It's getting cooler and I turned the heat on for the first time this season. 

This blog post captures my ponderings on feelings - and whether one is better off sharing them or keeping them to oneself. 

By now you know I'm not a sharer. As I am fond of saying about a few other aspects of myself, this is both a blessing and a curse. Oh sure, it's easy to spill it on a website, but talking openly and honestly about how I feel to another person is difficult. I work, train and function at an overall higher level of effectiveness when I'm struggling through a difficult time. That professional boost has been rewarded time and again, so those professional successes are my drug and I have little motivation to change. But, the consequence to shutting down, isolating myself and clamming up is that my most intimate relationships suffer for it. 

I try to think about the others: the people who feel compelled to tell me what their heart feels like, how my stand-off-ish nature has affected them negatively, and feel slighted when I don't open up and share my uniquely Natalie thoughts, opinions, sarrows and successes. I wonder if they face the same difficulties in relationships that I do, only from the opposite end of the spectrum. I mean, do people get to know them and think ”This guy/gal is a little too tightly wound.”

There are certainly benefits and drawbacks to operating both ways. I doubt one way is ”righter” than the other. You just have to deal with the fallout, I guess. 

I wish Facebook had a relationsip status for ”I'm complicated.”

Yeah, it's still rainig...

Do you remember the first time you ever told someone you loved them? What about the first time someone said it to you?

If you can, what do you remember about that moment? In how much detail have you held onto that memory?

When you said it, did you mean it?
When you heard it, were you excited? Or disappointed? Or nervous? Or sad? Or relieved?

Do you still know that person? Do you still love them?




I don't remember either of those exchanges.

Last week I was in Calhoun County, IL - learning and teaching. And I had a lot of time to think.

Let it be known that Natalie Blake is a gifted flint-knapper. This simply means I'm good at fashioning arrowheads and scraping tools from raw stone just as primitive Americans did. 

As I sat and chipped away at the stones I had selected, I said aloud : ”Don't try to make the stone something it's not.”

It only took a minute for me to realize that my words weren't just about the rock I was holding.

Does your partner make you a better person?

How?

If not - then why are you still with them?

Today is Monday (18 days before my birthday *hint*) and instead of going to work - I'm going sailing!

Yeah, that's right, sailing.

My team rocked out a successful project Go-Live and this is how we're celebrating.

Nice to know this client rolls like Natalie Blake. ; D