Ink Blot

How do you label yourself? What’s top on the list? Name. Stutter. Job title. Spiritual path.  Relationship status. Geography. Sexuality.  Dreams.

I still can’t (won’t) identify with my married name, perhaps since Q identifies with it SOOO very strongly. My first name is all mine, you can’t have it.

I speak with a stutter, which I am afraid of. Means I don’t speak when I should. I don’t speak when I want to. Blog don’t require speaking.

I tend to hold a lot of value in my own job title. I am a career girl, and I need to keep it that way. Not that I know what I want to be when I grow up. That would be too easy.

I am Pagan both because it is a consice word for what otherwise is very longwinded explaination, and also because the original meaning of the word is Not Christian. Which matters to me. Sorry, Q & J.

I am a mother of 2, which some days still surprises me. I love my kids more than words express. We’ll leave it at that.

I am an Oregonian. I can live elsewhere for the rest of my days, and I will always be an Oregonian. The rain water has seeped into my soul.

I am bisexual. Duh. And apparently, more butch that I thought.

I WILL own my own business someday. Making something useful.

I have *always* known that I do not DO confrontation. I would rather jump out of an airplane than confront the person who curses me out in the store for whatever trivial offense someone committed. It’s not that I *can’t* stand up for myself, I just don’t. Unless you are my Mr. Ink, and then I will argue insignificant and trite things with you all day long.

In my somewhat successful attempt to psycho-analyze myself on this issue, I follow this train of thought. Confrontation = standing up for myself, which not everyone will agree with. So if someone doesn’t agree with me, they might get offended, or WORSE, I might be seen as rude (a grave sin, my mother assures me).

Confrontation also works better with practice and I have not had a great deal of practice talking in general.  The first time I ever spoke up in school voluntarily was as a freshman in college.  I don’t know that I suck at it (I hope not all the time) but I am certainly less than good at it.  I am usually happy at living in my head, with minimal interference from the outside world.
Also, for those who don’t know me, I speak with a stutter, which does not help my cause any.  In most debates, it is important to at least make a clear, concise point. Try doing that when it takes 10 seconds to say the word ‘What’.  Really. 10 seconds. Stop right now and TRY taking 10 seconds to say 1 syllable.  I’m not saying this happens every time I talk, but it happens often enough that it is prohibitive from getting me to voice my opinion in a crowd.

So far we have me scared to be rude, out of practice and very often physically incapable of speaking fluently.  Though really, if I could fix the first one, the second would come in time, and people can just deal with the third.

The inspiration for this entry is Mr. Ink. Who is my hero for many reasons, one being that he is absolutely unafraid to say what he thinks to whoever is before him, all else be damned.  Today he did something I consider truly heroic… he went to the home/place of business of a former associate. One with whom we had a grave falling out with. He did this with no build up, or air of concern or really much thought to how the meeting would go. He was able in 20 minutes to re-establish the relationship (or at least the beginnings of it). I would have fretted about such a meeting for a week, gone in, tripped and tumbled over every third word that I spoke and when nothing good came of the event, gone to my car to cry.  Very sad.