Guest Bloggers

Many people who are better at the ol' internet game than I am will sometimes have a guest blogger, or will guest blog on a similarly popular friend's site. Are they friends IRL or just on the internet? Does it matter? Well I don't think my relative obscurity should force me to miss out on the fun of flaunting my friendships, both real and fake. Consider this an open call to anyone who wants to guest blog here at The Wichita Lineman. Of course, I have some deep seated control issues that ordinarily I wouldn't even acknowledge, and so you may choose from the topics I've generated:

-my boyfriend "diagnosed" me with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder


Great! I anticipate your submissions.

Losin it

I think I've lost access to some of my "inner tools." For instance, what's become of my intuition, that inner voice that cuts through all the fat and rises bell-like above the din to provide clear guidance? Lately, I hear so many voices that they drown out whatever pathetic squeak is left of my intuition. I am unable to move forward with any impulses or ideas, because I've come to mistrust my own motives.
Previously, I have found that reflecting on my dreams was a useful tool in illuminating the basic hopes and fears I'd hide from myself in waking life. After awhile, I felt interpreting a dream was easy, and the symbolism nakedly obvious. But now my dreams have taken a strange and indecipherable turn. On a Sunday night I dreamt in grave detail of a man I'd never seen and on the following Wednesday, to my astonishment, he walked into the clinic where I work. I quietly, discreetly flipped out. Another night, I dreamt only one name over and over: Pena Branca. After doing the best I could with some truly horrific Alta Vista Babel Fish translations of Portuguese websites, I deduced that he was a Brazilian indian chief at the time of early Portuguese settlement, and possibly also a spiritual figure. The name could mean white sorrow, white rock, or white feather but means absolutely nothing to me. I don't understand why my subconscious now points me towards foreign wikipedia submissions and previously unknown UC Davis employees, but I'm finding this new mode less personally useful than the old days of bland-but-meaningful symbolism. Where's a good old gut feeling when I need it?

2/3/12 edit:
Of course, I could have just been thinking about this tumblr all night long, which, given the content, might make it an even more spiritual experience. or just a sign that the rampant internet use really is rotting my brain

Little Things

How many books have I read in hopes of learning, once and for all, how to find the zen in my everyday routine? Too many. How many times have I written or said aloud that it's "the little things in life I most enjoy."? Lies! Although, it would be worth my while to appreciate the everyday more, as "everyday" stretches dully before me like a road trip through Kansas. These days I might say, "I'm doing things that my coworkers like to do so that we can talk about it later, at work," or "I tried a new recipe and this one doesn't have yogurt," or "I started drinking a non caffeinated beverage that convincingly mimics the caffeinated beverage it is designed to replace." These conversation starters (enders?) are accurate reflections of the dullness that has spread through my life like a malignancy. My life has been boring for so long, I would think I might be used to it by now. Even when I look back on times that I considered to be exciting, like my freshman year at college, a good percentage of the so-called excitement came from pre-planned "antics" at the dining hall and getting to run errands without my mom. Things aren't actually bad. The trick is to recognize that boring can be good, and recognize it before I take a wrecking ball to all of my hard-won comforts in a misguided effort to pepper my life with "excitement." I know my own patterns well enough to know that after enough time has gone by, I'll look back on this time with bittersweet longing-- this time when I lamented my boredom. I'll think it was a time of simple pleasures--and isn't it the little things in life I most enjoy?