Sunday evening, Dec.21^st, 8:30pm:

Sitting in the airport in Dallas, I’m surrounded by what has become part of the normal ‘sounds of the season’ for me since I moved away from home. Chatter, flight announcements, the score of the local football game, passengers bantering back and forth with the ticket personnel about delayed flights…yada yada yada. I’ve always liked to fly. When I was little I would jump at the chance to go with my parents to pick someone up or see someone off at the airport. I think I just always liked the thought of going somewhere. I wanted to go somewhere.  Now that I am somewhere, or somewhere else I should say, I have lost a little of the excitement I had before, but still enjoy walking by myself through the masses of people with their different colored bags and watching cities get smaller and smaller outside of the little window.

It was a little bit after Christmas 5 years ago when I moved to Nashville to start school. The day before I was supposed to fly out, we got snowed and iced in and my flight was cancelled like 15 times. Portland doesn’t usually get very much snow so it was an unexpected (and unwelcome on my part) storm. I had been waiting so long to move to Nashville, and it felt like the weather was plotting against me to stomp on my dreams! A little dramatic I know. After a couple days of eating soup and checking the flight status every half hour, we were finally able to get to the airport. The trip that was supposed to give me several days to get settled in and sight see before school started, turned into me finally getting to Nashville with only one day to find my dorm before classes started and my mom had to turn around and fly home. What a way to start out.

Almost every year since then, when I’ve gone home for Christmas, we have had some sort of weather difficulty getting to and from the airport. In a weird way, it kind of serves as a little reminder of that first trip when I moved to Nashville and how far I’ve come. It’s become part of my Holiday season, part of Christmas. Fly and reflect. Today is no different.  My flight is delayed about an hour and a half and dad is at home right now getting the chains put on the car so they’ll be able to make it to the airport to get me. Yup, every year the same thing. But this year I don’t have the frantic feeling I did five years ago. This year I am enjoying my extra time with the traveling people. I feel satisfied that I’ve had a busy and full year of music and work and friends and I’m ready to get home and spend time in my home town with my home people. Yeah a little delay is no biggie. Fly and reflect. I am blessed.

Sausage balls: Bisquik+sausage+cheese whiz

Forgetting that I don’t like touching raw meat,  I committed myself to making sausage balls for my work’s annual Christmas ‘treat week,’ where each department is designated a day to bring in food for the company for the week before Christmas. Sausage balls are just as bad for you as they are completely delicious, and a holiday breakfast situation is not quite the same without them so I volunteered to make them.

Well, Journal Communications (my treat week destination) doesn’t know how lucky they are that the sausage balls made it to their paper plates this morning.  Not only did I almost quit the baking process while wrist deep in raw sausage and fake cheese due to my gag reflex, but I had a little run in with our wintery weather on my way this morning. Sausage balls, purse, gloves and book in hand, I stepped out onto the metal stairs in front of my condo. Not being able to see that the stairs were completely encased in ice, I slipped. Before I new it, my glasses flew off my face, book, purse, and yes the sausage balls, flew out of my hands and I landed at the BOTTOM of the stair case…hard! I wasn’t sure If I should laugh or cry, cause man that hurt! Without getting too graphic, lets just say I have a 6 inch bruise that got bigger by the hour throughout the day. Luckily the container containing my special treat was air tight and still attached when I finally made it to solid ground, and we both made it safe and sound to  work, a little late:)

After my morning mishap, the rest of the day went pretty smooth. I ate my fair share of treats, I got a little Christmas shopping done, made a stop at Kroger to get supplies for a quiche for tomorrow (tis the season for potlucks) and ended up meeting up with some friends at Cafe Cocoa, a coffee shop in Nashville, to listen to some music. All is well that ends well.

Today started out very unclear. It was foggy, work felt jolty and altogether annoying, I got lost in a city I’ve lived in for several years now, and I couldn’t find my glasses (which I don’t need all the time, but they would have been very helpful while looking for unfamiliar street signs in fog on the way to the county clerks office.) 

Usually, when I find myself feeling foggy or stressed, I do one of two things: bury my head and hide from the world while contemplating my life, or become Miss. Productive and start doing as many things as I can till I find what needed to be done. Both tactics make me feel better in the end, but today I chose number 2.  

As I went through my day I became a snowball of tasks and thoughts, tasks and thoughts. Attach order numbers to contracts, get coffee, file, organize, file, run out to my car, still foggy, 65n, 40w, Rosa Parks blvd, turn right, SHOOT should’ve turned left, get back around, stand in line, wrong line, get my tags, back in the car, wait for a spot, idiot took my spot!, go inside, wait, get my stamps, foggy and dark, get my mail, sort the mail, pay some bills, go to my desk, when did that get so messy, back to the kitchen, put away clean dishes, mugs don’t fit right, organize my cabinet, back to my desk, dust, throw away bits of paper, still feeling foggy, overwhelmed, underpaid, nothing fits right, not enough room, still haven’t taken my new hard drive out of the box yet, better do that, I hate technical stuff, where to plug it in, of course the outlet that I need is already full of plugs on top of each other falling out of the wall, there is NO ROOM for the ONE thing that I’ve been NEEDING to plug in…

And then it hit me…I have a major outlet situation!

Running around like a mad woman today with my mind going a mile a minute, led me to one outlet. It wasn’t rocket science or a really deep meaningful insight into my life, or even something that I hadn’t thought about before, but it did put a level of clarity into my fog today.

I am an outlet. I only have a certain amount of energy. I have one Job that gives me benefits and a relatively flexible schedule, one job in the music industry, and one job doing the most important thing to me, music. Unfortunately the last job is one I don’t really get paid for yet, forcing me to prioritize differently than I want to. I have been juggling plug’s and draining my energy.

Problem not solved, just identified, but that’s good enough for me this evening. At least I got my dishes put away and my tags renewed. I think I’m going to go pick up my guitar now. I have a meeting tomorrow at BMI.