Tag: dreams

What Keeps Me Going

Posted on By jennego

Photo edited by me but not taken by me. Me & Sparkles. June 2014.

This is what keeps me at going, I guess. Or at least attempting to move forward.

Even though there’s no certainty. Even though I’m not sure if my dreams can come true. Even if there is no promise at the end. Even though it may never happen.
But the possibility of my dreams….to even go halfway….it would be enough.

My outlandish dream is to own a horse. Of course I’m not even sure that is remotely possible myself. My more realistic and shorter term goal is having my dreams go about halfway-ish and be able to maybe half lease (or to ride at least 2-3 days or more per week).

Still the glimmer of it, the possibility is enough for me to try to keep moving forward even when it sometimes seems impossible. (And many times it has. There are just so many barriers it seems.)

I feel like I’m very slowly attempting to take the first small steps towards what could be my dreams. But I didn’t realize how hard it is. Or how much that even how much it logically may make sense that emotionally, the process of progress is overwhelming.

From here on, the text has kind of gone out of control and slightly off topic…

Horses are expensive (I’m often struggling to ride weekly as it is) so short of winning the lottery (that I don’t play) or some other highly unlikely (preferably legal) lucrative scenario, employment is integral to my dreams.

It’s easy to admit that I don’t have social skills as I’ve always felt like I have the social skills of a pet rock with legs (for fleeing of course) anyway. But it’s quite another to seriously actually work on it….instead of just talking about working on it (which is way easier). I know I don’t have really have the social skills for most things right now. Working with people I don’t know well is incredibly awkward. Greetings are an unnatural chore. Introductions are next to impossible. I still have an aversion to phones and so on…and that’s with the simple things. To say nothing of any of the more complicated intricacies of things like power or dealing with conflict (besides angrily walking away and/or ignoring) and so on that I feel like I have little understanding of.

I am trying to push forward but I’m also finding myself planting my feet and stopping at anything that seems scary. (I’m not quite spinning around and bolting but….)

I also don’t really feel really prepared for anything. Currently, I don’t feel like I have the skills for employment, espeically the social skills part. I’m not completely sure about any sort of major group work either in any setting. Transitions to the unknown are hard, especially when I don’t feel ready. But I’m not sure if I’ll ever truly feel ready, I’m not sure if is the sort of test that I never feel ready until after I did it and then it’s okay (even though it may not have felt that way at the time).

I have been stumbling around in this void, this in-between for slightly over a year now. Previously, I was in university. School was relatively safe and predictable. Since I was so socially isolated throughout most of my school years (grade and post secondary) I never really worked with others in person.
The possibilities are of course exciting but the uncertainty is terrifying. Yet possibilities and uncertainty are seemingly irrevocably entangled. I’m almost 25 now (in early Nov) and for some reason, it feels that time is ticking. I don’t know if it actually is but it feels that way.

I am eager but terrified to move forward. The contradicting desires are confusing me, pulling me in multiple directions. I’m not sure if I’m flying or falling or neither since I never managed to leave the freaking ground in the first place (I might be crawling).

Yet, the possibility of horses in my future keeps me wanting to go forward. Somehow. Even though I’m not always entirely sure if I can and even if I’m not even sure if horses would even be there. (My other goal is to move out but I don’t find it quite as inspiring as horses most of the time).

*****
Ok, I know this kind of drifted off into a slightly off-topic rant after the first photo and turned out way longer than originally intended. Oops.
I pretty much spent this entire week at home over-thinking (plus a bit of writing). I’m a good complainer, can get fixated on things (usually the things I shouldn’t be fixating on), tend to write more when I’m confused and mix that with the fact that I’m kind of in a weird phase right now. If I don’t make sense it’s because nothing much is making sense to me either as a whole (separately things make sense).

Me & Czar. Sept 2012
Me & Czar. Sept 2012

Me bareback on Czar, Sept 2012. Czar being an awesome couch. 🙂

PS: I know I’m wearing the same thing in both photos haha.

The Paradox of Progress

Posted on By jennego

I want progress, but I am also terrified of it! I want things to change, but I don’t want to change.

I discovered that this past week, resulting in somewhat of a mid-week crisis. I don’t know. It’s all just very confusing and conflicting still.

In general I am not a huge fan of change. Yet, I’m tired of continuously going nowhere. Things are finally starting to happen for me – as I wanted. But I did not expect how overwhelming it could be – when I’ve barely started. But even talk of Telephone Dragons and Teamwork Dragons are enough to rattle me…..yet alone someone going “we’re going to extend your comfort zone”. Uh oh. That usually means it’ll be broken first. I like my comfort zone intact, thank you very much.

Ok, so I did more or less stay in my safe zone for a long while. Did I really do anything? Not really. That was the problem with the last employment program attempt – we were kind of just doing….nothing really. I don’t know. If they did something, they sure didn’t tell me.

I don’t have a good history of programs since I left university. I was really not so happy the first time that the person for the provincial employment program gave up on me due to inadequate social skills. There were so many things wrong with that situation that it’s a wonder we lasted a little over a month. I would change support agencies soon after anyway.

Looking back, at someone’s original plan a little over a year ago –  there was no way that was happening without having some sort of massive meltdown. Dumping me in the deep end doesn’t work. I just seem to get more unwilling, more fearful of it – espeically when it doesn’t even go right!

I know it’s not the same now. I’m with people that now understand me and mostly know me (well, one just started so…). I have more support. It’s one thing to push – but there needs to be a way to deal with the aftermath (also known as when I basically flip out more or less…).

But I still want things to progress and not progress at the same time. I would like the progress without the side-effects, without the growing pains, without the unease and without the anxiety.

If I can’t have my job on a platter, can I have progress on a platter?

Apparently that’s not going to happen.

But I still wish to fly. But I don’t want to fall. I want progress but….I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all.

Breaking Away

Posted on By jennego

Well, not literal wars, thankfully. More like imagined ones to me.

The last two weeks have been crazy. It all started on July 25 with a splat with my employment service. Initially, it started with a dispute about paying for a criminal record check BEFORE anything was or is secured (I have still yet to hear back about that one by the way and I’m STILL peeved about that!!) and just just spiraled out of control from there. Things were already sort of going not so well and it just got worse. In the end, I had little faith in them and things clashed. I know that believe differently but it felt like I was grilled and then ejected out. I haven’t been back since. Now I’m trying to figure things out.

In some ways I’ve been here before and I think I’ve chosen right.  Last year I switched agencies and workers. That worked quite well.

I’ve been out of school for almost 1 whole year and I’m still not employed in any way, I’m haven’t done any work experince or internships, I am still living at home, I’m still barely able to ride (I’m lucky if I get my weekly lesson) and generally, I feel like I haven’t achieved anything. Which is not totally true but it feels like it.

True, I’ve only been with them for 9 months, so not even a year. But I don’t feel like it’s working and I need a job. One can make an entire human being in 9 months but not any sort of job for me?

It’s time for a change I think.  My logic is questioning it but my gut feels that it’s necessary. I don’t think I’m going to go much further doing what I’ve already been doing.

I guess it’s time to breakaway.

I’ll spread my wings and I’ll learn how to fly
I’ll do what it takes til’ I touch the sky
And I’ll make a wish
Take a chance
Make a change
And breakaway

I think I need to breakaway from that employment program

I don’t know where this road will go and I don’t know if it will be any better than before. But at least then, I’ll know that I tried.

Buildings with a hundred floors
Swinging around revolving doors
Maybe I don’t know where they’ll take me but
Gotta keep moving on, moving on
Fly away, breakaway

No matter what, I need to keep moving on even when I don’t know what’s at the end. I need to not lose sight of my dreams but it’s hard when it feels like all your walking into walls. But I generally know what I want in general, I just have no idea how to achieve those things. I can’t predict what’s at the end of the road. Nor can anyone. But ultimately, one must submit to pure, informed but unsubstantiated belief that everything is going to be okay. Even though there’s no way of knowing.

But that’s okay. It has to be. There isn’t any other way. Is there?

It may not be okay.  In that case, it may be time to re-evaluate at that point. It shouldn’t be a path that one is unable to change paths or walk back from.  But it is also may be okay. It might be even more okay.

I don’t have anything to lose. It’s time to fly.

Today, we finished the paperwork. Now all I have to do is play the waiting game for a few weeks.

Quoted excerpts from the  song “Breakaway“. Made famous by singer Kelly Clarkson. Written by Avril Lavigne, Bridget Benenate, Matthew Gerrard. Also in Princess Diaries 2. 

(I’m sure not from a small town – I want to go the other way, actually from big city to the country….but everything else is pretty spot on 😉

A Window to My Life

Posted on By jennego

This is what my life looks right now. This is the window to my future.

Everything ahead is a mass of blurred grey and other colours and the rain is all I see. The rain that never ceases.  The rain the blurs vision. The rain that just makes you wet, cold and grumpy.

I can’t see the future. The future that I imagined, the future that I dreamed for myself – is just that. A thought. A dream. No matter how big or small, realistic or unrealistic.  Meanwhile, nothing is moving. Or everything is moving. In both ways. Good and bad. All at the same time, perhaps erring more to the side of bad. As if it was slowing drifting there, somehow.

Things seemed poised for collapse. All see is rain. Washing away all that I wanted, all that I’ve loved. I don’t know if it can wash passion away. Perhaps I wished it can at some level, in a  way. That way, it’ll hurt way less to lose anything, everything when it all comes crashing down in a mudslide.

But things are easier to lose than to gain. It’s easier to criticize than praise. Dreams come so slow and can be transient, gone so fast that you’re not quite sure what replaced them. Optimism can quickly feel like false hope before it quickly descends to pessimism. It’s easier to destroy than to create. There’s more ways to die than to be born.

And still the window offers me nothing, but the distant hints of colour out there. I know there’s something perhaps, but there is no detail. No detail of whether it will be good or bad. Everything is a blur. Water drops obscures my view although I’m not quite sure if they are drops of rain, tears or both.

Maybe it’s alright to be worried that I’m going nowhere. Maybe it’s alright to be scared. Maybe it’s alright to have a looming sense of doom. Maybe it’s alright to feel desperate.

But I’m tired of it. I’m tired of all of this.

I’m desperate for change. Hungry to chase my dreams.  Hope that something good will happen to me and soon.

But I’m not too sure about that. The grey blur of pessimism lingers.

I want to know what’s beyond the window. I want to see that the skies are blue and maybe one day the dreams I may dare to dream, could somehow come true.

On the Cusp of Collapse and Coming Together

Posted on By jennego

Everything is of the verge of falling apart. And everything is on the verge of coming together.

But I feel the collapse imminent. It’s like what WILL happen if nothing happens. What will happen if I don’t stop it.  Somehow.

Yet, there’s hope of greater changes. I guess. Maybe one day soon, I’ll have a job (or two). Maybe one day soon, I can move out. Maybe one day soon, I can be more involved with horses and riding.

But I don’t know. There’s somehow that maybe the first two things may happen. But I don’t know when and I don’t know how.

I have been a bit more successful with the volunteer thing lately. I’m going to volunteer as a photographer this weekend. I did some things with a computer refurb/recycling organization. And most excitedly, I have volunteered with horses – for a few months in a therapuetic riding program and possibly in the future with a pony rescue. Granted most of these things are either not long termed and have not yet happened yet or both.

But I still feel like everything is about to fall apart. That there’s no horizon and the world is flipped on its head. I’ve been out of university for over 8 months and I haven’t done much. Meanwhile, it’s been an insane 7 years since I’ve graduated high school. How does that even happen? It feels like it was just a few years ago I was a schoolgirl wandering through the high school corridors. Time doesn’t explain it. It seems so fast.

And still I haven’t done much. I have completed a degree and that’s about it. Definitely not much to write home about for a 24 year old.  I feel like I’m getting older, that the time and the window for success is like somehow running out. I’m not quite sure where or how I got to the conclusion.

I guess I’m a results-orientated person. I might have been ambitious, had I had more success in…I don’t know, life?  Forcing things don’t always work. I know. That’s what riding has taught me….you can be so determined to “fix” something that everything winds up totally unravelling. But it’s what else do you do? Wait until they come to you? That approach doesn’t really work either, it seems.

Everything seems to be on the verge of falling apart, hanging by its last threads. A big part of it is uncertainty. It’s like I know everything is going to fall apart but I don’t know if anything or everything will come together. The hope is promising but I feel the imminent collapse is looming.

I haven’t even thought much of July yet, other than I hope that I get my crap together…for some reason July seems unplanned, devoid of anything and I just can’t really seem to think much beyond the first week or two of July at all.

I hope that things will work out. But I just don’t know.

I miss school. I miss horses (I haven’t ridden or seen horses in about 2 weeks). I’m tired of arguing at home about stupid things. I miss the structure that my life once had.

I had more in my mind, but somehow this was all I managed to write. Amazing.

Floating and Sinking

Posted on By jennego

One day you’re floating. As if everything can come true. As if wishes were horses to canter along the clouds. To scoop you up and fly you to all that you ever wanted.

The next day you’re sinking. You feel the undertow dragging you down, lost in the dark water and caught drowning in the undertow. Wondering what it felt like to breathe. Again.

I’m not sure what I’m doing. Not sure what I’m here for. That all of my dreams are silly, that they’ll never come true. That it’s pointless to dream of my dressage pony (or other equid) near where I live, of where I cannot escape, that I seem to be  ineradicably stuck to thus far. Despite my pastoral longings, I am stuck in the city where my self bounces against the walls longing for greener pastures. To be at least closer to horses. Yet I dream of a place close to where we’ll attempt dressage  some days and play on the woods other days.

Some days are hazy, whereas others I can see the dim light in the fog. But it’s like I’m living in a hazy water and nothing seems real. I don’t know what I’m doing, suspended in the thick water .

I’m done school but I’m stuck. I don’t have the social skills for most programs…or jobs it seems. Having come from nearly an entirely academic education, I feel that I don’t really have many employable skills either. Although I have it fairly narrowed down now (writing/digital or new media), I’m not that quite sure what I want to do. Some days I want to be a content or copy writer/web editor and other days, I want to be a front-end developer (though I don’t really have the skills. JavaScript? Ugh!). Some days I’m not convinced that I’m good at anything.

Things move fast but the right things seem to move slow. Too slow.

And I drift in the undercurrents, waiting for something. Waiting for dreams, that I’m not sure will hold. Waiting for a future that I so want but seems impossible now. Waiting, waiting.

I’m not always quite sure if I’m waiting for anything.

All of Us Dreamers

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Picture: Drawn/made by me. 

I can be a dreamer. Other times I can be a pessimistic realistic. I seem to jump wildly between the two, not trusting if I am worthy enough for at least some of my short term dreams to come true. I don’t know if I’m a dreamer anymore. I don’t know if I’m a realist or a disgruntled dreamer who has spent too much time on the ground.

I can’t seem to find a happy medium.

I’m either hellbent towards every step of my plan, convinced that everything will work and everything will come true. Or I am convinced that nothing will come true and there isn’t much point in dreaming for things that will only disappoint you.

I want a horse (or pony) one day. No one believes me that it’ll happen. They just smile while secretly snickering how much of a dreamer I am.  How I will get burned for flying too close to the sun.  So I back off, unsure if it is my business to have such aspirations. My mom told me that it wasn’t to happen. As did my grandma. And my dad told me that dream-chasing is exhausting and something you won’t have time to enjoy once you have it, hinting that it’s not worth it.

Dressage. That’s what I want to do (admittedly, since I’m not much of a jumper). But every time I speak of it, everyone tells me it isn’t possible. That it’s far too outside my class. That’s it’s too expensive – which it is true. I’m a once a week rider stagnating on school horses – and really, I can’t even afford that I don’t ride enough and I don’t have access to the right horses.  I need to get off school horses first and ride more. But I don’t know if that can happen anytime soon.  So I back off, convinced that those are dreams that will not happen, that will just wither and die. For jumping, I need a Dory (a horse that is fairly slow and that I’m mysteriously not scared with over fences).

Okay, so apparently dressage is impossible and I’m too neurotic to jump most horses. What about trail riding? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know if there’s brave, not-spooky horse for me out there (sand pile of doom….), not close to real trails (and not sure of places close to trails), and I don’t have friends to ride with me. I can’t make friends to ride with me either.  I’m not even sure what I want anymore.

I am terrified that I’ll just fly into the sun again. It’s happened before – I once thought horses will be something I was good at, that I’ll have some sort of belonging. But that didn’t happen. Not quite. 11 years later and I’m trotting around on beginner-suitable school horses still. Occasionally we attempt circles or go sideways.  I am madly infuriated that it seems that anyone that has been riding weekly for about a year becomes more advanced than I am….or more, much more in some cases. I’m not good with handling horses either so that argument is out.

There has been times when I thought about giving it up. That maybe nothing is worth it because it will not come true and that I suck anyway. That it isn’t today. If tomorrow never came, will it be worth it? I don’t know. I can’t seem to think in the frame of today. It’s always tomorrow, tomorrow.

Because I don’t like it here. I feel confined in my current space. My current place. I think back to those winged horses and the castles in the sky and wish I could go there. Away from here.

Sometimes I’m a pessimist. afraid of disappointment. Afraid of everything not coming true, not working out. Beleaguered with the harsh world of reality of the world.

But at heart, I am a restless dreamer.

I’m just too afraid to truly believe so I make sure it is wrapped in a cloak of “realistic pessimism”. I am not sure what I should be believing anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There are too many changes at once.

I did keep riding – although it was largely due to my instructor in some ways.  So I did bail out of jumping but I still ride. But now everything is changing. Everything is changing. I’m also almost out of school for the first time and I feel like I’m being sucked into a void. My dreams feel like insufficient crazy notions that may never come true.  And I’m not sure what to believe anymore as reality seems to shift.

I am confined in my current space, still looking for greener pastures….or castles in the sky.

Or purple pegasus ponies. There’s a reason why I like that kind of imagery – it takes you back to a place, where everything is still possible. Unlike this world, in which sometimes everything seems impossible.

Paper Purple Peggy

On the Edge of the Unknown

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I couldn’t find an appropriate photo for this post (and don’t have enough inspiration to take one at the moment).

But yeah, I may have been more annoying than usual. I will admit that.

Lately, I’ve been edgy, impatient, more anxious then usual. I have a desire for instantaneous answers. As if I’m trying to secure some sort of certainty, trying desperately to tie peices of what I know to the trees with the prospecting hurricane of change.

This is me on the edge of the unknown. Filled with uncertainty, it feels like the end, even though people may assure me it’s a new beginning (although they actually haven’t thus far). I’m not sure. I don’t like change and someone has unleashed a hurricane on me. Oh I knew it was coming but didn’t think it’ll come this fast. I’m not longer quite sure who I am or what I’m good at or what I want. Everything feels impossible and so far away. As for me, I feel incapable and unwanted.

I feel so out of touch with everything and everyone. Most of my family seem to be on a planet far from my own. They don’t understand me or what I do or what I want to do. I feel so disconnected to them yet reliant. It’s not a good combo. I don’t really have friends. I have made zero friends in high school (maybe some loose acquaintances through) and I have certainly made zero friends in post secondary. While people talk about  the great social lives of high school and college/university, it can also be extremely isolating for someone with little to no social skills. I had more of a social life in elementary school.  By high school, my social life had died.  Now, I’m used to it being dead as I can’t imagine it any other way. If it’s activities where you make friends – well, I failed at that too (although I guess I made some loose acquaintances). Keep in mind that my loose acquaintance is very, very, very loose. It’s someone that I’ll know and the person will know me and I may exchange a few words (possibly a conversation but not required) but that it is. It is very, very, very loose, superficial but it’s at least a step up from pure alienation (I don’t know you and you don’t know me and we’ll all just ignore each other) which pretty much sums up my undergrad career.

I’m not sure about the horse thing, having attempting a sport that is way out of my league and class although maybe I just need to get a different side of it. It’s certainly not about the ribbons (I way prefer to ride more than show right now). There has been many disappointments in the realm, but I still love the feel of the horse underneath me (not on top, though I’ve been there too – avoid if possible) and the reaction when I find the “funny button” like a scratchy spot on the wither or wiggle of the muzzle (I’m not describing that well but it was so much fun) and the furry muzzles under my fingers (and on my face…yes, some bite…yes I generally know when they are going to bite). I’ve mostly given up big fantasies of showing, at least so I’ve gotten a little closer to earth in that way. I know I’ll never be an amazing rider or horse whisperer and my delusions of doing seem so mind-bogglingly naive .

I’m not naive anymore. I don’t want dreams to come crashing down again  or the flicker to gently peter out to the point that I shouldn’t care anymore (it doesn’t mean I don’t though). I had enough of that. The world is now a cynic’s world. The idealism of the future  – not just for me but the world as well has now faded.

But I don’t know how much longer it would be before everything will begin to unravel. When it would be clear that some things are dreams for another lifetime just like my family have hinted.  When everything falls apart, collapsing into a rubble of unfulfillable dreams.

Everything is spinning around, each piece of the wheel is threatening to break.

I’m at the edge of the unknown and I want to scream and cry and disappear (perhaps a wormhole will come…). There is too much happening. I want answers. I want a inkling of the known. I am lost and confused. I am also freaking out.

I don’t know where I am. I am wandering the deserted, dead landscape alone. I watch childhood innocence and idealistic dreams begin to smoke, desperately hoping it won’t alight. But the world is dark, cold. Everything is on the horizon. This is the event horizon. There is no going back. The days childhood have long past, even though I still essentially live like a teenager (that doesn’t mean I want to though but I don’t know any other way  and I can’t deal with it now with so many other unknown factors at the moment). But the bubble between youth and adulthood is about to be broken.

Somebody, please find me and take me back to the known. Or at least take me by the hand through the unknown.

I am terrified. (And edgy, anxious and about to freak out sooner than usual).

Dreams of Hornless Unicorns

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Filmed Sept 2012 by my mom (I don’t actually bareback that often, it was just one of those days)
Horse:Czar
Fonts: Alegreya and Note This (both are free)
Done mostly in Adobe After Effects CS3 with a bit of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
Somehow had a render time of 5-6 hours, even though it’s only 2:10 minutes and although has a fair number of effects, it isn’t too crazy and the datarate isn’t that high…

This is a more personal video than my last few videos.