I’m not much of a pacer. This doesn’t mean I’m judging my pacer friends/family who enjoy a good power walk from A to B to A to B to… (you get the idea – you all know what pacing is.) It’s just that pacing isn’t my particular go-to stress move. Personally, I prefer internalizing the pace – mental pacing if you will. Where you may not mind seeing the same door/hallway/window on a loop, I don’t mind retreading the same paths in my brain. I’m actually an unheralded marathon pacer from way back. Fact. I regularly reach my mental daily 10k step goal (usually in the middle of the night when I’m trying to sleep and my brain says, “You awake? How about that thing… right? GIRL!” Go me! And I can go over a thing, pick at it, tease it apart, and stitch it back together for hours, months, or decades.

I ruminate. I’m a ruminator.

I also feel things in big ways and express them in bigger ways – all of the emotions from joy to sadness and everything in between. (If you’re an enneagram person, like my counselor, that’s all the information you need to conclude, “ahh, she’s a <insert #>”) Just one of the fun things I get to work with/on thanks to finally finding the right person to talk to about all the things.

So, a little over a month ago I was feeling things in a big way (in this case, anger) and I was pacing back and forth in my mind like a caged predator – barely restraining tidal waves of energy and looking for an avenue to explode. Oh, and I found it. My brain kept screaming, “Tear down The Big Blue Mess. Let’s just do it. Burn it to the bloody ground.” Y’see, I was irrationally angry over an incident that actually didn’t warrant that kind of extreme reaction, but there I was mad.

Now, as I mentioned, I talk to someone, and thankfully I have a nice little notebook filled with strategies for those moments when I feel things in those big ways – alternative courses of action that I can take before I react. And still, even with those in place, I wasn’t ready to stop combing WordPress for some big red “Nuke” button. The act was calming. Thankfully for me (since this blog is actually for me, and I’m super lucky to have you guys follow along), I took a deep breath; I have nearly 19 years’ worth of stories here – stories that started on Blogger in 2004 before there were transferred over to this platform. I wasn’t going to throw all of that in the bin. I breathed a bit more, calming down, and then I nuked a post like a person who is mature and in control would do. Whoops. Hey, I may have strategies in place, but something I have to flip a side table as I let something go.

My eldest cousin took note of the missing post. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but thought, “I’m going to check in on this because something seems a bit off.” She poked her head into my room, noticed I was sitting on a ledge, and crawled out there for a cousin chat. She sympathized, empathized, (and all the -izeds like a supportive cousin does), growled in support allowing me to breathe. She then patted me on the head and tugged me back inside. Cousins sometimes have magical powers that go beyond notebooks filled with strategies.

In the weeks since I’ve thought about the direction of this blog – where it is and where I want it to go. The truth I never share: I actually wanted to be like P.J. O’Rourke or John Kelso – both recognized humorists – one nationally, one more locally. However, I acknowledge that rediscovering my voice since Jay’s death has been a struggle. I miss him every day – that’s 2,551 days as of today. He’s a part of the fabric of who I and because of that, the blog has had a strong focus on grief and suicide awareness. Those conversations are extremely important. However, I don’t want them to be the only conversation or theme for The Big Blue Mess.

So, I’ve decided this blog needs to return to its roots – letters to friends and family. That may never get me to P.J. or even John notoriety, but maybe I’ll make a few of you laugh along the way, and that works, too.