I think I’m figuring out what I want to do. February is a bust. I’m going to survive it and get on with my life.

I’m going to keep seeing my therapist every other week and I am not going to continue the group. I don’t have it in me to try and guide them towards being a semblance of support for me. Right now they aren’t. It isn’t their fault. It’s that whole GU(Geographically Undesireable) thing.

I like where I live. I want to build community here. I am trying. I am working hard on that. There are a few projects I have in my head. One involves asking my next door neighbor and probably Tay if they will donate a few hours of labor towards building a play structure in the back yard. I know what I want. It isn’t that complicated. They both have more tools and experience doing what I want to do. They won’t do it for me but they will guide me through doing it. But that’s in the summer when my neighbor has more time. He is drowning right now.

What I can do right now, is go talk to my other neighbor. I don’t know her name yet and I’m going to have to figure out how to memorize it. I may ask her to write it down for me and I will call Pam and ask her to help me practice so I can be not-insulting when I try to speak to and about her. I want to talk to her because her fence faces the elementary school and is a regular target of graffiti. I would like to talk to her about painting some kind of mural there. I will pay for all of the materials.

Let me break the plan down more. If the woman agrees to that I would like to walk across the street to the elementary school and conveniently talk to my next door neighbor (who is a lovely woman–we exchange a lot of food through the year because of gardening) who works at the front desk. I will tell her I would like to put forth a contest open to every child in the school. The best design for the fence will be painted on the fence and the say… top three best drawings otherwise get to help me paint it on the fence.

The parameters are: the picture needs to be simple and clear. I’m not good at fancy shading or anything you can do with a pencil. This will be done in fairly simple paint. Unless you are that good with spraypaint–which I’ve never used so I would hesitate to use it for a project like this. So it has to be something that will handle the transfer of medium. There have to be clear lines.

I would like it to be about living around here. What are the things you like to do that people can walk to. Why is living here fun. Why do you want people to like it and be nice to our neighborhood?

I’m still working on the exact phrasing of that. It has to be something where potentially a kindergardener could produce something workable or it isn’t fair.

We will do the painting as it can be scheduled with the kids sometime around April or May when it is dry enough to let the paint dry. I have no idea what would be best in terms of the school schedule. Maybe they have a week of minimum days at some point and this would be a great time for a project like this?

I think it is bad advice to always tell people to run away from their problems and only be around people who make your life easier. It isn’t anyone else’s job to make my life easier. I don’t live in a culture who grants that to women in my position. Sometimes I seriously wish I was Chinese. My close friend is Taiwanese and when she talks about her family I feel a lot of envy. I wish there were people in the world who love me the way she is loved by her family.

But I compare my envy of that and my relative position with articles like this one about lynching in America. It is very weird thinking that the right to grow up and walk away from all the terrible evil shit from my childhood is a right I have because of my face. Watch the music video at the bottom of that article.

There are a lot of people in my neighborhood who don’t look like me. I could choose to feel uncomfortable about that or I could work to meet their children through community projects and get to know them as human beings.

I’m going to ask permission to use the school parking lot for a block party after graduation (not the same day. obviously.) because I want the parents to meet one another. I like that so many kids in my neighborhood ride bikes outside in the afternoon. I wave at a lot of runners.

I want to live here. I want to keep getting ridiculously unhealthy frugal advice from the dear lady a few blocks away. She lives on a very fixed income so she tells me about every deal. I thank her. And bring her oranges.

I think I feel mortally offended by the idea of leaving the trees I planted. I want to eat that god damn fruit. Some mother fucker would buy this house, chop the trees, level out the dirt and put in a god damn lawn.

No. Those are my roots. I planted them. If I want community it has to be near me. It has to come to me. Sorry. That’s just how life works out sometimes. It’s not a personal affront. I just find I don’t enjoy travel much. It takes a really lot to justify it. I need to believe that and make a choice. It’s not that I will never visit anyone or that I will never leave my house except on foot.

I need to act like staying home is a conscious priority. It’s a choice. It’s something that dramatically makes my life better. If I am not home I can not do my work. If I can not do my work I feel rather bad about myself as a person. LIfe is not meant to be a long string of tiring days spent “entertaining” myself or my children.

I have a few painting projects in the house I’ve been thinking about. Doing them will make me happy. I have to be home in order to do that. I have to choose to not have engagements.

I need to not blow with the winds of change. Change needs to happen in the world around me. I need to keep to my work. I need to make measurable progress in my own estimation or I won’t respect myself as a person.

My daughter is right on the very cusp of being able to go run around playing out front basically unsupervised. She’s not quite trustworthy enough. She’s close though. I don’t taunt her with this difference I just think about it. It’s time for me to get my head out of my ass and meet the neighbors.

The awesome thing is we have a family to model off of who live (depending how you count)  three or four perpendicular blocks away from us who have behaved the same way. They have already talked to the city about this kind of organization stuff.

I need to start building more community where I am. You were right K. I need a project.