AWOL

So, I'm back again.  I keep making these random disappearing acts every time I really want to get started on this.  It seems like something happens and a lot starts going on in my head.  Sometimes, I get scared that I'll post something that perhaps is better kept on the down-low rather than posted live to the internet, so please excuse my absences, no matter how often they happen or how random they are.  It's all a part of a growing process.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching the last few months.  I sense that at this time, there are about to be a great many changes in my life for one reason or another.  Much has happened since I wrote here last.  Things are constantly changing`as it is.  And I must learn to deal with that over time. 

One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately is writing.  Because to me, writing and my love of dogs have both saved me from so much heartache.  They've never been the cure for heartache, or the eraser of it... but when needed, they were there.  I'm trying to re-invent my journaling, as well as myself, in some ways.  Over the last few years, I've had several journals.  Two of them have ended abruptly mid-entry... a third, I just felt I got too angry with a situation I was trying to write about, so I took a break.  Now I have to delve back in time to figure out what I was trying to write about and what my feelings were at that time.  While this isn't difficult for me to do (thank God for a long-term memory), it doesn't seem quite practical beyond the idea of sharing my life with others, and getting it all down on paper, if that makes sense.  Something about writing it all down just makes it real, I guess.  Or maybe it becomes more personal, and so I am better able to see the "big picture" after the fact.  I'm not sure. 

I recently bought a new journal, and I'm going to buy another very soon.  You may wonder why it is that I need two.  Well... everyone journals differently, but here's the thing:  I think of EVERYTHING.  Imagine going through a day which you journal.  But at the end of it, there are still some additional things that didn't exactly register on the radar of daily events.  You still need to hash those things out too.  Sometimes, I'm good at seperating such things out.  But when they're really big things... I just need the extra space.  But then again... I just like to collect really cool looking journals :-p.

As I said earlier, the last few months have been really tough.   I cannot go into all of the reasons here.  I'd rather some things be kept private.  I'm thankful to have the friends that I do.  I'm grateful for my family as well.  Everyone's been a huge help throughout the things that have happened.  I do, however, have a few things that I would like to say, though:

1. As a Navy wife, it is not deployment which has gotten me down, though I do believe in the "deployment curse".  But rather, some people's actions during deployment... not so pretty.  (I'm only technically 'calling out' one person in particular here, they know who they are, so please don't worry about it.)
2. As a person, I feel a little... un-fulfilled.  I feel that there are things I should be doing that I haven't or for some reason or other cannot.  And that's something I hope to get over... soon.
3. Life is confusing and painful.  But in the end, we'd never be happy without all of it.
4. Still up at 0400 is no joke... neither is still up at 0530... neither is the fact that deployment apparently breeds insomnia.