There’s nothing you can do or say

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

2007 is going to be different. I know that’s easy to say, but that’s what I’ve decided. It’s going to be different. It needs to be different.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately (but today in particular) about how what you think you want isn’t always what you want – or even what you think it is. It’s easy to say that out loud. (Or, OK, it’s not. But it’s possible.) But it’s a lot harder to accept it and move on.

That’s where we’re at. And I do mean we. It’s not easy, it’s not what you want to hear. But it’s right. And it’s best. And we’re in this together.

The dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I was waving my shaker in time with the cheers and music, but yesterday my mind wandered from football to depth in friendships. I stood watching the most important game of the year (to me) but I was thinking of how there’s something more.

Two days ago I had one of those lunches that you leave feeling rejuvenated. A friend and I caught up on the latest in each other’s lives, which is important, and we talked about football, which is important to me. But we also talked about faith and feminism and struggles and how we don’t have everything figured out.

I left feeling that more than just my physical hunger had been met.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my relationships with other people. My very closest friends live miles away, and my friendships in town don’t yet go as deep. That means it’s easy to let things that matter go unnoticed or undiscussed, whether it’s a matter of faith or my own insecurities (or more likely, both).

But I’m feeling more optimistic than I have in a while, about relationships, football and life in general. It’s been years since I’ve stayed in one place longer than 12 months, but I think I’m there now. That eliminates a major barrier to being real, to allowing myself to feel comfortable. (I’m slow to commit, but once I do, I’m sold. That’s true for shoes and people.)

On this lazy Sunday morning, I feel good about life.

–Nov. 19, 2006, 10:40 a.m.

On a pillow of blue bonnets and a blanket made of stars

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Take me out on a Friday night. I’ll give my hair an extra 30 seconds of attention and wear a little more eye make-up. We’ll sparkle, shine and socialize.

Then we’ll spend Saturday on the couch, you in a ball cap and me in a ponytail, screaming at the TV. We’ll eat pizza and drink beer, and at the day’s end rattle off the day’s results and their significance.

I’m your typical girl-next-door, that’s all. I’m not the most driven, but I am the most loyal. I have faith but must stand on grace to survive.

I need my down time. I have to be alone, even if only to scribble non-sensical words. (It’s a life line.) I need girls’ nights out – or in – with discussion of our new outfits or new boys mingled with the things that really matter.

I am just me – nothing more or less, although I may try.

This routine is nice and clean, from dawn to dusk

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

What’s important to me?
paying my bills. Jesus. Real relationships with people – people who know me and call me out on sin, and people with whom I can do the same. Learning to expend energy for someone else’s good. Family. Sitting outside on sunny, cool days. Coffee (although I can learn to like decaf). Writing. Music. Correct punctuation. Reading. Setting an example for my sisters, brother and cousin. Learning to take care of myself. Having time to sit without feeling that I’ve got to rush to my next appointment. Church. Growing in my relationship with Jesus and as a person. College football.

What do I feel is getting in the way of those things?
Working part-time. Not having a regular schedule. Distance. My own attitude. Laziness. Uncertainty about my career goals. Fear, both of change and of money. Anxiety. Not being open with people. Not having time to be open with people. Turning to other things for comfort and guidance. Not taking life slowly enough to appreciate it.

The big question: What can I do about it?
(This might take a little longer to answer. But to start … ) Pray. Prioritize. Work full-time. Stop carelessly spending money. Develop my own schedule, at least as far as sleep is concerned. Spend less time on the Internet. Take at least one night a week for myself. Reread “Changes That Heal.” Pray about my career goals. Invest in my friendships.

“Where am I today? I wish that I knew
‘Cause looking around, there’s no sign of you
I don’t remember one jump or one leap
Just quiet steps away from your lead”
-Sean Watkins, “Reasons Why”

I miss those days, they won’t be coming back again

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I’ve had a busier-than-usual social schedule here lately. (I’ve actually started joking that I need fewer friends!) But in the midst of the parties, football games and meals out, you know what I would really rather be doing?

Playing a board game.

A friend asked last year what I wanted to do for my 24th birthday, and that was my response. She laughed and said that was lame. I ended up spending that birthday watching TV alone on my couch.

Maybe it is lame. But playing those games is one of my favorite memories from college. It seems like life was simpler then. We’d gather around my dining room table, consuming way too much coffee and popcorn, and play Clue, or a card game, but almost always Clue. (I love Clue.)

Those nights weren’t really about playing the game, although everyone knows I love figuring out who dunnit. I think it was more about friendship, and enjoying each other while listening to good music, and living in a circle of friends.

I’ve been bumming around this old town for way too long

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

When I moved to Cullman, Ala., I promised myself I would enlist a boyfriend and a U-haul the next time I moved.

I’ve moved twice in the 10 months since I set up house in Cullman. I rented a U-haul for the first move, but I didn’t have a truck or a man for my most recent trip.

And although this move was perhaps even less expected than the last, I feel like things are working out pretty well.

See, about a week ago my grandmother (who I lived with) asked me to move out in two weeks’ time. I don’t have any real explanation, other than that she felt I’d lived there long enough. (I guess that’s real enough.) But I work part-time, and I don’t have money saved up, so moving looked to be a challenge.

Call me the queen of the moochers (I don’t mean to be!), but now I’m living with my paternal grandparents. We’re just your typical atypical American family, I suppose: our household is now two grandparents who have already raised four children of their own, my 16-year-old cousin and me – the 25-year-old with a master’s degree and that part-time job. Oh, and two cats.

I’m excited, though. I enjoyed living with my maternal grandmother, and I think that time really helped me appreciate many of her idiosyncracies. Now I get to know my paternal grandparents and my one and only cousin a little better.

And I get to sleep in the basement, which my claustophobic mother thinks is nerve wracking, but which I LOVE. 🙂 Cousin Katie and I are just wondering how long it is until our grandparents’ friends mistake us for sisters, not cousins.
Cousin Katiemeeeeee

After all the dreaming, I come home again

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Somehow it’s worked out that the only weddings I’m actually attending in 2006 are those that I’m really excited about. (I’m also a bridesmaid in all of them.) The second of those three is this weekend, and while I’m thrilled to see the bride and groom finally united in holy matrimony, I’m also really, really excited to see bunches of friends.
That’s got basically nothing to do with the fact that love and marriage have been on my mind lately (and in that order). What I realized in all of this daydreaming is that while I’m totally opposed to the idea of “settling” any time soon, I am not at all against the notion of running around the world with somebody else. (In fact, I kind of like the idea of finding someone who would be up for leaving the country for extended periods of time, even though it doesn’t maybe make sense.)
On the other hand, I’m still very good at being single. 🙂
I am seriously considering doing something crazy, though. Of course, by the time I take action, it’ll be a carefully thought-out and sensible plan. This means I’ll probably wait until summer-ish 2008 to do anything, although I am also open to January 2007. I kind of wish I had it in me to just be foolish, but I’m probably better off being me.
One thing I’ve learned lately is that I’m living and working here too soon. Or rather, I think maybe I’m here at the right time, because I’m learning that it’s the wrong time. I love this city, and it’s absolutely the kind of place where I could settle (we’re back to that notion) and raise a family. It’s just that I’m nowhere near ready to settle! I want to see so much and meet people who aren’t like me (even more of them than I know now) and see the world outside my sweet Southern bubble.
I’ve got the daydreaming bug, but as a friend said this weekend, maybe sometimes you need those daydreams to keep you going.

Still I judge success by how I’m dressing

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I’m really content right now. And it just occurred to me how significant that is.

See, lately I have felt even more topsy-turvy than usual. I started a new job a month ago, and I still don’t feel settled into it. (Of course, the whole building is a bit unstable right now – we’re moving into a new building in less than a month’s time!) I’m going through another bout of wishing all my friends lived closer, and in the process I’m forgetting to appreciate the friends who are local. Oh, and I miss my parents. A lot.

But I’m also learning, and in the process, maybe even growing a bit (I hope). Maybe that’s what 25 will be for me – a year of growing, and maybe learning how to deal with things like an adult.

I’m realizing a lot of ugly things about myself lately, chief among them being how self-centered I am. (Newsflash: The world does not revolve around me.) I’m also terribly undisciplined. I have this whole silver platter mentality. Life has always come relatively easily, and I think that’s just the way it should be.

Let’s be real. That’s just not how it is.

But you know, I feel really good about these realizations. I feel like I’m at one of those points where you see your own sinfulness, your own shortcomings … and you see how God is so much bigger.

I’m OK with that. 😉

Be careful with me, ’cause I’d like to stay that way

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I think I’m harder than I used to be. But when I get my feelings hurt, I realize how sensitive I really am. Sometimes I use the sassyness to keep people at arm’s length. I think I’m more sweet than sassy, though. (But I’m not sure.)

I sometimes talk too much and repeat things that aren’t amusing just to fill silences. But I think a comfortable silence is one of the most valuable things two people can share. When I feel vulnerable, I want my closest friends around, even if we don’t do anything.

I’m a daddy’s girl. I used to regularly hurt my mom’s feelings (when I was little) by pushing her away and crying, “I don’t want you, I want GEE!” I hurt my dad’s feelings when I stopped calling him Gee and started calling him Daddy.

I feel guilty when people buy me presents that I don’t like. I cry when I get angry, or sad, or frustrated, or stressed out. Sometimes I think I should leave my stressful profession for a desk job that I wouldn’t take home with me.

I worry too much and pray too little. I’m slow to trust people, but once I do, I’m fiercely loyal. I’m also a little self-centered.

I think driving with the windows down in the rain is a good idea. It’s even better if you can smell the lightning. I’m not athletic and I hate sweating, but I like to play outside sometimes anyway.

I’m not afraid to run through leaves like a child, and sometimes I get so excited about a conversation that I talk with my mouth full. I’m kind of a nerd, and I don’t really have a problem with it.

I’m messy — not in keeping house, but in my faith and in who I am. The older I get, the more I realize how imperfect I am. But that leaves me appreciating grace even more.

Now I don’t want to beg you, baby, for something maybe you could never give

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Wow, so, I don’t know why this post has been saved as a draft for so long. I definitely wrote it in December, just after I started at my last job … which I quit earlier this month, just so you know. Anyway …

Sometimes a girl just hits a threshold where she can’t handle any more talk of weddings, boyfriends or blind dates without wanting a piece of the action for herself.

Usually I am not that girl. In fact, within days of starting this job, one of the sports guys had asked me if I wasn’t the marrying type and then decided that I probably didn’t want children. (He was wrong on both counts, and I can’t help but wonder why he thought he had me so quickly figured out.)

No, usually I’m the girl who complains about wedding and engagement announcements and loudly proclaims how much she is not ready for marriage.

OK, so I’m still that girl. But for tonight, at the very least, I’m also the girl who wouldn’t mind attempting a relationship.

The other night I made one of my typical comments about not being ready to be married and a couple of friends gave me those “really?” sort of expressions. And well, I figure it’s pretty obvious that I’m not ready, given that I have no one who I would want to marry at this point (nor anyone who would want to marry me, but y’know, one without the other isn’t much good anyway).

I read somewhere today that everyone is afraid of commitment these days. I wonder if that’s true. Are we more afraid of commitment than in the past? I am, at least a little bit – I mean, seriously, I’ve never been in a relationship that lasted more than three months.

But I crave companionship as much as the next person, and though it can come in many less romantic forms, the truth is I would like a man to spend some time with. That obviously wouldn’t supplant time with girlfriends (once I make them) or, well, with my cat, because she is the only one who travels with me from city to city on this voyage we call my twenties.

I figure I probably won’t date much while I live in this city, if at all. There simply aren’t that many men to choose from. The attractive ones are usually married or too young for me (I could handle grad students, maybe even a fifth year senior, but junior college guys are just a little green yet.) And did I mention that the first (well, only) place I’ve been hit on in this city was at Wal-Mart?

Dating isn’t everything – if you look at my past history, you’ll realize that I know that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it, especially when a co-worker proffers her newly diamond-laden hand.

I’m not looking for the rest of your life
I just want another chance to live
–Patty Griffin