break the rules

I am not even allowed to watch M rated movies and im 14yrs old they are tight cunts

I hate the rules dont do this dont do that close the door wash your hands dont fuck teddy its so fucking annoying my carers should shove it where the sun dont shine. They are so annoying.

on the wall of a sketchy parking garage :)

i think its a bore to live in the lines to much im going to break them more

it may not seem like a lot.
and i guess it was kind of a joke.
but it felt real enough for me to check this goal off my list.

first off, my mother is a psychotic control freak.

she has silly rules about me and my boyfriend, the silliest of which is that we are not under any circumstances allowed to be in public together without other people with us.
so the other day, we were out with a couple of our friends and we decided once rachel and rachel left we were just going to go back to his house.
we called my mother and his father.
they both said it was fine.
and his dad was going to come get us.
we did not mention to my mother that we would gasp be alone for at least ten minutes before his dad got there.
so, technically speaking, we were breaking my mother’s rules.
which made me happy.

in addition to all that,
my dear friend rachel and i were burning things in my backyard just for the hell of it.
something, once again, expressly forbidden to me by my mother.
and later we were sitting on the roof (also forbidden).
it was kinda great.

to say that my work here is done, for now. From here on in, I will opt for bending, twisting, and otherwise reshaping. Or perhaps re-inventing altogether.

Forgive me, o Universe, for I have sinned. No, seriously. I’ve been breaking some rules lately. Not huge ones, nothing that could get me divorced or arrested (yet … of course I do live in a blue state, after all ;D). But for the past few weeks I have been letting myself goof off a bit, or as much as one can with work and children and holiday prep. I have blown out the boundaries of work, writing, and at-home time in favor of a “do what works” approach to living within this chaotic season, giving myself the emotional room to recover from recent losses and the fluidity to cope with existing constraints in my own unique way. I have let myself roam free of my benchmarks and routine, no doubt in compensation for the rigidity of schedule that has characterized the year thus far. I can’t say that I have been overly productive, or exceedingly functional. I have drunk a bit too much alcohol, and not enough water, eaten outside my nutritional norms, foregone exercise in favor of other pursuits. I have disrupted my SO’s workday in favor of sexual play. I have not spent much regular time writing. I started a blog after countless avowals that I did not have time to indulge yet another online “writing” project. Despite my intent to utilize 43T as an organizational tool, I have spent some truly delicious time playing and flirting, and getting to know the wonderfully diverse, sexy, and playful inhabitants of this landscape.

Indeed, I have broken countless “rules” (more norms, perhaps), but the process has been both fun and fulfilling and, dare I say, healthy. I have made some new friends through this process, and made some interesting discoveries about myself as well.

I am aware that I will have to get organized come January, and my goal is to revamp my time to make real room for the pursuits that are most important, not just to my family or my life, but to me. I have a feeling that I may just be smart enough, or mindful enough, this time around to build some playtime into my schedule, and take into account the expansion of social norms, so that at least some of what has looked like “breaking the rules” in the past will fall under the category of following them in the future. Some very wise friends mentioned something recently about the need for new rules. I heartily agree. New rules it is, although I am not marking this goal off as finished. There is still some value, I believe, in finding new rules to break from time to time, and in breaking them.

Now I need to unpack the difference between irresponsibility and defiance. Is there value in both rule-breaking qualities?

It’s 12:45 AM, and I’m writing a report for work, struggling with each word, straining against the desire not to write this, not to think the thoughts required to finish, or even deal with the subject matter. I would rather be sleeping, or writing, anything but this. 43T is all about goals, meeting and exceding them, and at first I thought that meant playing by the rules, be they society’s rules, family rules, work rules. It occurs to me that all my life I have been playing by the rules. Why? Because the few times I did not do so I spun mildly out of control, or disappointed someone. I have often harbored this irrational fear that the sky will fall if I fail to hold it up, that something terrible will occur if I do that which I am not supposed to do, or do not do what is expected of me. There is some level on which I actually fear that the sky will not fall, that my actions are so unimportant that not doing my job will have no effect. What if the sky will not fall because it’s up there on its own, and I’m not the force holding it up after all?

Finally, at 40, I am beginning to realize that the times I have been at my most emotionally healthy have been the times I have listened and responded to my own needs and desires on my own terms. The times I have subverted these needs are the times I was least healthy, the times I acted compulsively or self-deprecated. An insightful friend suggested recently that my failure mode is doing what is expected of me, following the rules. So in order not to fail myself, I must break the rules. (Strangely enough, based on a recent discussion, a more minor failure mode of his may be similar).

I wonder what will happen if I don’t finish this report tonight? What if I save my work, shut down the computer, and climb blissfully, exhaustedly into my bed? Will it make a difference? Only in my dreams….

So me and my amiga Megan…both not rule breakers. BUT, we stayed in a Motel 6 in Carlsbad for a few nights this week…there’s no breakfast! So we decide to walk into the La Quinta, 2 hotels down, and snag some. Haha! Awful huh? We just act like we stayed there…and then had breakfast on the beach. Beautiful…