Change - transformation - design

I have been transforming my house. This is what I do when I want things to be different.  I figure changing my space will help to make things fresher and it really works.  I started doing this when I was old enough to sit on the floor and lean against a wall and push my twin beds to their new location.

My mother didn't seem to mind that about every month I re-arrange my small bedroom. I had two twin beds a dresser, night stand and a small desk.  Given that my room was only 10 x 10 I really had to get creative.  The walls were covered with posters, drawings and anything I wanted.  One time I made spirals from paper and covered the ceiling. My daddy wasn't too pleased with all that scotch tape.

Towards the end of my mothers sickness she decided that we needed to properly makeover our bedrooms.  We picked out our color scheme and we would get new carpet, drapes, paint and bed spreads. This was strange for our family since we really didn't ever buy anything new.

I thought long and hard about this because I didn't like things to be the same especially in my room. I settled on a Holly Hobby theme.  Hot pink and lime green would be the color scheme. Holly wore a little lime green bonnet and it matched my lime green carpet perfectly.

I have had a lot of time off this holiday and I have had to fight the stories in my head about how I got to where I am today. I am alone but I feel okay unless I think of how things could be different if I had made other choices but I didn't and here I am. I don't think this way except during the holidays. No one gets the perfect life like those Hallmark movies.  My mother certainly didn't.

I know now that she was preparing for her departure and wanted things to be as nice as possible for all of us. She picked red carpet for their room and my sister picked blue. I can see those little rooms in that house and the happiness and sadness we all experience there.

I she was here now she would roll her eyes seeing my house turned upside down.  She would say "nothing ever changes". 

Family - Our original tribe - War

It has been proven scientifically that when you spend time with a person or group of people that your brain chemistry starts to change to match each other while you are together.  This is why when people gather in large groups who already have similar ideas about things can be powerful.  This is why religions through out history called people to come together as an act of commitment to their beliefs..

Even in smaller groups we take on the outlook of the people we are traveling with through life.  The day to day similarity makes us feel like we belong to something our tribe. It isn't acceptable for someone with different ideas to join unless they are planning to assimilate.  There is strength in numbers and if someone doesn't get on board they will be pushed out.

I was listening to an interview with Byron Katey yesterday. For me she really has the answer to mental suffering and it is pretty simple. But that is a different post.  Yesterday she said "when you think someone is wrong it it just because they do not agree with you."  This assumes we are somehow superior in our own beliefs and ideas. She calls this "war".

During the holidays some people end up spending a lot of time with there family. This is when our differences tend to come up.  These people might be our original tribe but now we have moved on and found our own tribe in our everyday life. It makes us feel unsettled that the people we spent our early years with are not like us and and we want to take this one day to try to change them.

With my own family they live in a different world than I do.  Do I think they are wrong? I think they mean well and are passionate about their own beliefs and it is not my responsibility to convert them to mine. If I am pressed I am happy to let them know my own beliefs.

On my recent visit I saw a lot of pain and suffering mostly caused by fear.  Fear of crime and all those people out to get them. Ironically they all live way out in the middle of no where and the likelihood of any of those things happening to them is remote. The mind is always looking for something to do and leans towards fear and negativity.

When I am with my family I imagine that  my own presence of love and acceptance will have an influence on them. It is hard see them suffering but I understand it because I have suffered myself.

Let's face it we all live alone in our heads or with those nasty characters we have created to live with us.  We don't know what is in some one's head or heart we can only bring love and acceptance to the table and be the strong force that makes an impression. This is better than war.

I am spending Christmas alone and happy this year.  I can make a big deal about this or I can enjoy my solitude and know that I am loved from a distance by my original tribe. I have learned how to let myself be happy where ever I am. Merry Christmas.

"I am enough" - short cut to happiness

I have spent a life time wallowing in my own recovery.  I know it had to be done so I don't fault myself but I feel I have missed a lot during my suffering.  My desire is to somehow help other people take a short cut to finding healing for emotional trauma.

I think it is important to know where you come from and whose words shaped you into the person you are today.  Sometimes it isn't words it is maybe a look or in my case a lack of interest in me at all. As kids we take this stuff in and we believe it because it is our only experience.  We think it is true because it was one on the first things imprinted in our little minds.

To find happiness for myself I have had to look a my own thoughts and the phrases I say to myself to find out what opinions I have of myself that hurt me.  At first  I had to stop the negative comments I constantly made to myself.  I had to make friends with the woman in the mirror.

That was a good start and gave me a lot of peace in my life but I still felt like something was missing.  I knew there was more because sometimes I would feel sad and lonely and words of blame would surface.  I would go over everything that brought me to the place I am today.  All the mistakes I made and the people I trusted with my heart.

What I have realized this past year is that I can't change the past but I can stop blaming myself for where I am today.  I am only suffering because I chose to feel the weight of not only my choices but the choices of every other person in my life.  Life is messy and people are messed up.  We want to fix the past so we stay there too much.

I don't believe that regurgitating our past does anything to heal us. It is a bad habit that must be broken to move on. It is narcissism at its best and will keep us from finding happiness with where we are today. We can identify the beliefs we created from those events but then let them go. We are no longer experiencing them unless we relive them in our minds. It is a story and telling our story over and over gives it power over us. We are not our story unless we want to be.

I have been lost for a long time believing that I was somehow "not good enough" and this was why I didn't find the life I imagined I would.  But really it is this believe that kept me from enjoying the times in my life that were really wonderful. I wasn't emotionally engaged and surrounded myself with people just like me. It was where I was comfortable being invisible lost in my own painful thought.

I have had a good life and even though sometimes I wish it was more like a Hallmark movie - who doesn't?  I am thankful that I am healthy and my mind is good and I have a job that I love. I know now that I can decide to enjoy the day and not wish for something more.

Panic - Flow - Spiritual Awakening

I was planning on writing yesterday but had a little scare with my computer.  It crashed and wouldn't even turn back on.  I jumped into action and got dressed and drove to the Best Buy like a maniac.  When I got there the guy said well if it won't turn on then there is no hope.  He proceeded to plug it in and like magic it came on as if nothing was wrong with it.

I felt relieved of course but decided to start moving my stuff to another computer which took most of the day.  I have had that one so long that a few of the keys have stopped working but did that stop me? No.  I just bought a wireless key board. Why do something now when you can wait for a crisis to motivate you into a quick action.

I have to admit that I deleted a ton of stuff yesterday mostly pictured from hundreds of jobs I have done over the past 10 years.  It felt sad but liberating to purge the past. The only jobs on that computer were before the place I am working now. 

It did give me time to wallow in my personal photo past too.  Looking at the people who are no longer part of my life and letting that go again. Sometimes you are just there and you have to it ride out.  I was in a funk the rest of the day with my to do list left untouched feeling flat.

I woke up today feeling like a new person.  I watched Joel and his message was inspiring. He said once we ask for forgiveness the slate is clean. There is no need to mull over our past even to ourselves.  Rehashing the mistakes we made is something that we do to punish ourselves.  It isn't loving and kind to ourselves we need to move on and let go.

It was what I needed today because sometimes when I am alone I think "how did i get here?" and I want to blame myself for bad decisions I have made.  

I have done my best and I am alone because other people decided to move on and I was left behind.  Also I have decided to move on and left other people behind too. Sometimes holding on to something that doesn't work because it is better than nothing isn't good for anyone.

I had an spiritual awakening today with my own tears and forgiveness. In my mine I kept hearing "remember the date"  I wasn't sure what that was about until I remember that today is my mother's birthday.  I am sure she was smiling and consoling me through my tears. 

I have had a life that has dealt me some blows but I feel grateful that I am from sturdy spiritual stock and that I have chosen to search for strength through the pain.  I do believe that if you are open to it you can have a life that is divinely guided and you move with flow instead of against it. 

Dreams - Reality - Green Beans

I had a dream this morning that I was in a cafeteria buffet line and a older guy had put a serving of chicken on my plate with some green beans.  Suddenly he decided that he wanted me to have fish and took my plate back and gave me a piece of fish but in the process threw away my green beans.  I ask for more green beans but her refused and I had to ask for a manager to get my green beans.

Dreams are so real sometimes and I wonder are we really living in a second world.  I know when I dream like this that I have stayed in bed too long. The details were incredible and I remember when I got my green beans I thought this has taken me 45 minutes to get through this line.

I guess it is Thanksgiving bringing on food dreams and I do prefer fish to chicken but I do like my green beans.  I am on my own this year without plans for the day but feeling okay with it.  I have cooked and served hundreds of people on Thanksgiving mostly spending my time cooking and cleaning alone in the kitchen.

For many years I enjoyed the process of cooking a big meal for the people in my life that I loved. Feeling productive and making sure everyone had a meal to remember. When I was young my husband and I cooked for 20 - 30 people some of them strangers to us but without a place to go.

In my last relationship I cooked for my ex's family and my friends.  It is strange to think about that now.  It has been over a decade and the person that did that no longer exist. I don't feel sad today being alone. I think for the first time I don't feel lost and wanting more from my life than what is right in front of me. I am off work until Tuesday and have a few projects on my list to keep me busy.

I have found that only resisting your current situation will bring you unhappiness.  We are taught to want more dream more and I agree with that but not at the expense of rejecting today.  Enjoy the day and if your with friends and family try to not want them or the day to be different and enjoy those green beans.

Depression - Fighting Back - Lies I told myself

My friend who is going through a bout of depression and grief called me yesterday and wanted to spend the night.  It is a good weekend for me since I am off today and tomorrow.  I want to help but not feel responsible for her.  We talked a lot about what she is thinking and saying to herself.  I know all those thoughts intimately since I experienced them myself and really couldn't convey to other people the total lack of feelings I had for life or anything in general.

It was like going down memory lane for me and I showed her the cartoon by Hyperbole - Depression - Part I and II.  Until I saw this cartoon I thought that what I was feeling was unique to me the lack of desire or even sadness virtually no feelings at all.  Until the point of feeling nothing I had longed to stop being sad and stop crying until there was nothing. Nothing felt like a relief at first and then it stayed so long I didn't want to live anymore.  The idea of doing something about that thought seemed like too much work.

A wanted so bad to be somewhere else or really to be someone else.  I wanted a different life somewhere in the future.  I wanted time to just move on.  As long as I wanted something else I stayed stuck. It was only when I finally gave in and just laid in the nothingness and accepting that this was my life that I started to feel better.  I stopped beating myself up for not being someplace else.

I should have gone to the doctor but I didn't have real insurance and didn't want to pay out of pocket. It was the recession and I felt like I couldn't afford to pay for it.  I was at the lowest place in my life and my judgment was bad. 

I am not against medication I do think that sometimes it dulls people down so that the real issues don't get a chance to come to the surface.  With my friend I keep these opinions to myself. She is grieving ending a 25 year relationship and starting over.  This is the first holiday solo and that is always harder than you think it will be. They have her on many meds at this point.

I have suffered a lot and I have also learned a lot from my suffering. I am happy and free today for the first time I don't feel like I need to work on myself.  I just feel like I can enjoy the day as a whole and complete person.

We are naturally self - absorbed and being depressed can magnify that to a point that you are living in a bubble and for me I really didn't want anyone trying to break that bubble.  Every suggestion or idea that someone had for me my mind rejected.  I had to find my way out of the darkness sort our the lies I was telling myself about the mistakes I had made in the past or the idea that I wasn't lovable.

I had to fight back and start being my own Prince Charming and love and take care of my own needs.  You need to be healthy to attract healthy.  You need to be healthy to be free and happy with the life you have been given.  I can love myself now whether anyone else loves me or not.

I feel strong enough to emotionally be there to support my friend without taking on her sadness. It was grace and hard work that brought me back from the darkness and I hope she will find her way. 

Flow - Distraction - Multi Tasking - Compartmentalizing

I have been back from my trip for a week.  It turned out to be a great healing trip for me and I feel freer than I ever have.  Only one call from work which in itself was a miracle.  Last week was quite drama filled but I was rested and not affected by the normal parts of my job.

When you are designing and bringing many people together to create the customers vision it is like running a department where none of the people actually work for you.  I try to be clear and straight forward with how things work but sometimes people aren't engaged.  Both customers and contractors want things to move quickly and rush through the planning process and when something is not like they imagined it was going to be they are upset.

It doesn't matter how many times I repeat it or show them it is like they are too busy at that moment to listen or pay attention.  Not everyone is like that and I can usually tell who will come back to me and plead innocence and expect a miracle.  Luckily I know that I have done my part to insure that everyone is on the same page.  I can't make someone listen that is lost in their own personal version of life so I just try to get through it as peacefully as possible.

I use to think I was always the person that did something wrong. The first call I got last Monday was " You have made a serious mistake on this job."  The old me would immediately think I am so stupid I messed this up.  Now before I have that thought I get more details and I trust myself.  The doubt comes because once I complete a task and move on to something else I file it away.  When I am working on something I give it 100% and shut out other distractions so I don't make mistakes. Then I move on and when a question comes up it takes time for the details to come back to me.

I think they call this compartmentalizing and it really works.  Today we pride ourselves in multi - tasking but all that means is no one or task is getting 100%.  Everything is getting sloppy seconds.  You can't take messages on your watch phone while listening to details of a month long project and not expect to miss a critical detail.  "Hey - You are spending a lot of money - Pay attention."

People shouldn't say "I have lost my mind"  they should say " I am lost in my mind".  I cover myself at work with lots of pictures this seems to waken the other half of the brain. Even though I am complaining here this isn't a regular problem for me but I wish that people were less scattered.

It isn't healthy to live in such a high stress environment created by our own behaviors.  In the past when my phone pinged I felt like was one of those mice in the test maze that was shocked every time the bell rang.  I always think about when you actually go to a store and stand in line waiting and the phone rings and the clerk takes the call and writes down that persons order or answers a long question. It seems you are not as important as the person not willing to even come to the store.

Okay that it enough ranting for one day.  I know I sound old but I cherish peace above all else in my life.  My nervous systems is burned out from all the fight and flight I have subjected it to over the years and I am not interested in making everything life and death anymore.  I will accept what is my responsibility and when it isn't I will do what I can to help get things back on track.