Meaning comes later. No one gets to come into life with the teachers' edition with the answers at the back. Meaning comes from doing. We figure it out as we go.

I don't think I'm much of a comfort seeker.
I loved working at the nature center here. Initially I just worked with the herps and even though I've never been a person with an aversion to snakes and lizards and things that creep and crawl and skitter, I had to come up against how different and foreign they seemed to me, especially when handling them. I fell in love with this one corn snake who loved me back and it was delightful. I love that overcoming of barriers.
Next we added the raptors and then the smaller predators - a red tail hawk, a great horned owl, and then the foxes, the coyote - and with the raptors part of the gig was picking up whatever was left of the food they'd been given and weighing it, to compare to the original weight and monitor their food intake. Bits of chicks, parts of rats, some mice leftovers, all pretty oogey by the next morning and I have an aversion to things that smell bad. The great horned owl hissed at me for a year every time I went into his mew before he finally agreed that I was alright. The red tail hawk was a fast friend right off the bat, but she would fly past my head so close her wings would hit my face or shoulder and then sit on a branch next to me, staring at me. This is not an ordinary experience.
I loved the challenges to my assumptions, I loved learning about these animals, I loved overcoming my own hesitations, and although I've never gotten over the aversion to bad smells I loved going right on in spite of that.
I don't think I have a strong desire to be comfortable.
We bought this house that needs an enormous amount of work, we have an entirely unreasonable number of animals, I have a list of projects that goes on for so long I can't see an end to it. I don't seem to pursue comfort.
I suppose possibly I'm comfortable  with being a little frustrated, which seems contradictory. I don't seem to be comfortable with everything going along easily and being familiar.
I do prefer fabrics that feel good, cottons and silks and hemp, but I also like scratchy woolies so no, not even there. Hmmm. Foods? No, I'm not a comfort food sort, I like very spicey or very odd foods, bitter foods like raw greens, peppers so hot they make me cry, and I can sit and eat a lemon as if it were an orange.
Oh, I've got it!  Footwear. I prefer barefoot but second choice is earth shoes, which are my absolute fave and TOTALLY comfortable. There, I'm comfortable with my feet. Knew there must be something.

I am obsessively listening to/ dancing to/ playing to Azam Ali - she is the voice of Vas, for anyone who doesn't already know that, and Niyaz and Axiom of Choice...I'm totally in love with her voice and with hearing words I don't understand and loving the mystery of it, hearing voice just as sound. The music is so sensual and liquid and lovely. I've listened to her forever, but this has been a revisiting and I think everyone should hear her voice in their dreams.

Reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and also in love with that. This is an amazing and mesmerizing little book, the kind that just sticks with you and haunts you in a very sweet way. Highly recommended.

And spending my days with my little autistic friend and trying to get something done for our house each day and thinking about food - my favorite foods right now are fried plantains from this fabulous El Salvadorean restaurant here and always uni, although the last time I went to our fave sushi place the rice was too sweet and I hope they fix that. I can forgive them once.  But just once.

In the summer I mostly only like salad and smoothies but I know that pretty soon it will be soup season. I can feel it coming on, winter squash and root veggies and lots of garlic, that's the essence of fall. Today it's supposed to hit 90 here, but I can feel fall falling. It's hovering out there, standing on tiptoe and balanced precariously on the hot ending of summer. The plants know too - they're moving toward their last show off moments of the season. I love the transition times.

I'm at the near end of working full time or more than full time hours over the summer. Krissy has been working more than full time since, well, always. I'm looking forward to school kicking in again and having a little more time for all the things that have slipped through the cracks lately - I have a stockpile of fun art things I've been doing with Little Bit and billions of ideas and right now I can barely get the animals fed and our lives balanced on the head of a pin, but in just a minute time will open up again.  I am counting the days until school starts, and this comes from someone who homeschooled her own child and I'm sorry but oh my goodness, I'm glad school is starting.

I like how things keep turning over and over again.

It seems so silly to assume I know something, so smug and blind. Because I've been here before, this time it's the same? More unprepared then than if I were lost somewhere I'd never seen before. At least then I would understand that it's all new instead of blindsiding myself with my own assumptions.

This moment, never this moment before now. Anything can happen. And then another moment. I can change my mind. The world can shift around me. A tree that's stood for years can suddenly crack and fall across the road. It's always unknown and whatever stories I tell myself about what I already know are like wearing sunglasses at night.

We are always feeling our way through the dark and twisty mysteries, even while we make rules and tell ourselves how much we know and try to read the map right side up. It's only the real thing, the exploring and playing in the dark, that really matters.

Definitely the superpowers.

Do you know I can balance on one foot? My hands can do these amazing things - type really fast, knit, purl, make artwork, catch lightning bugs - not all while standing on one foot usually.  I can learn things, forget things, remember things,  find things, lose things and think about it all. It's pretty incredible, but true.

I can put words and ideas together in ways my dogs and cats can't even imagine. But they're better at other things.
There was some study recently that concluded that dogs have the equivalent of a human two to three year old intellect, because of the number of words they understand and because dogs can apparently count. As if a dog's intelligence is measured by completing human tasks. I thought it was a very funny idea. Species-ism.

I have fabulous dreams at night and wake up and write (actually type) them down. What an amazing gift. I can play card games, play scrabble, backgammon, and video games. I'm kind of a freak for video games. I can read books!!!! Wow, that one is amazing. I can take photographs and solve problems and learn languages. I can draw things and paint things and build things and fix things and sometimes break things too.

I do love the superpowers.

About a million years ago I was at my friend Dani's house, and she said "I have an invitation to this party" and it was Halloween so of course I scavenged through her daughter's dressup box and I went as the bad fairy - tattered black wings, torn up tights, a little short skirt, a denim jacket, I was set. My friend spent the night out in her car talking to her twenty something boyfriend and I went to this party where I knew no one. Someone said, "have you been in the maze yet?" and that was it for me. The maze was this incredible thing, pitch dark like where you can't even see your own hand in front of your face, crawl-through sized, and that first year I didn't know to bring knee pads. This kid offered to give me a guided tour of the maze and I managed to ditch him as soon as we went in. It took me an hour and a half to find my way out and then I went right back in again. I love love love playing in the dark. I love being in the world when most people are sleeping, I love hidden things and mysteries and surprises. I love everything that hides in the dark and catches me off guard. I love night, very much, and it loves me right back.

Ummm, stop thinking about yourself and about questions like "how can you become more confident.?".

Look outside instead of only navel gazing and whatever you do, stop reading self-help books. Build a compost pile or a bookshelf or a crazy looking dress. Eat something good for you that you also like. Have more sex, even if you do it by yourself. Wear comfortable shoes that you love. Read a children's book. Write a children's book. Get a llama or a goat or do something totally outrageous and wrong. Paint your car, by hand, really badly. Wear colors that clash. Get a tiara. Decide that you love the people you love whether or not they love you back. Take big bites. Do pushups. Play with fire - poi twirling is a good starting point for that. Learn to juggle or walk on stilts.

Don't ever ever ever ask yourself  "how can I become more confident?". Totally a kiss of death kinda question, that one.