Fear and Politics

I didn't sleep much last night my mind locked in on the uncertainty of my life.  Sometimes sleeps has a way of showing you really how you feel as I have mentioned before. My worst fear right now is that I can't make a living in my current job. That I have made bad choices and they have resulted in a life of worrying about how I will make ends meet.

I woke up this morning with a sense of doom.  Nothing has changed since yesterday just my the insecure demons living in my head that want me to be afraid. When this happens I repeat to myself I have everything I need at this moment and it is true.

A self professed million came into the showroom today full of fear. She told me that we were nearing the end of time and over night we could be socialist. Someone had made an unsolicited offer on her house and felt it was a sign from God that she needed to prepare financially for the impending doom. She found a new house she wanted right down the street from her daughter and she might need a new kitchen. Good for me.

I said maybe God was making it easier to move near her kids and grand kids. She said she never thought about it that way her husband had died last year and she really didn't need such a big house. She said she was so glad she had stopped by and then she asked me if  I was a Democrat. I laughed and told the truth that I am and added that I was also financially conservative. I am watching every penny right now that makes me very conservative.

I told her that I believed that we were all in capable hands and that we have to have faith that God was in charge.

I guess fear is a part of all our lives no matter who we are it tries hard to control us. For me I just want to feel safe and I haven't felt that in a long time.  Even when I am fearful just for today I won't let it control me.

Prograstination and manipulation

It looks like we have to use the new blog format.  It is just like me to wait until I am forced to accept something new over something old.  I have accepted that that is the way I operate.

Sometimes my procrastination to try new things works for me. Especially when it comes to electronics and all things computer related. If you jump too quickly the creators haven't worked out all the bugs yet and you in up enmeshed is problems no one is sure how to solve.

I usually just hang back for the 2nd or 3rd generations before making the leap. In the case of my phone it died and over night I leaped into the iPhone.  It was the 3G and free because 4G was  the new thing. I will probably never be cutting edge in the electronic world.

In the spiritual realm I am more cutting edge. The lessons I have learned from the program have shot me so far in the future it is mind boggling. I have come so far from the way I use to think about everything I can't even imagine how I lived the way I did before.

Driving in the car on a business trip with my partner this weekend made me realise how different I am than I use to be. I was telling her how the program made me see just how crazy my thinking was and how I use to think I had to manipulate people into doing what I wanted. Instead of just asking for what I wanted. She does this sometimes.

I told her I learned this as a child with my stepmother. I learned how to play the game to use the back door to get what I wanted. I don't need that now. I had to un-learn that over the years. I am not that kid anymore never getting anything I wanted. Ask and you shall receive. It isn't so easy to ask for what you want you first have to feel you deserve it.  That is another post entirely.

I wanted her to know if she wanted something to just ask me. She didn't need to manage me that I would prefer an honest and open relationship. I am a reasonable person and we could talk anything out.

I was always good at playing God manipulating people. Sometimes for my own benefit but other times I thought it was what was best for them. I couldn't just live and let live I thought I knew better. I always thought I was humble and thoughtful but it takes a big ego to think you know what is best for someone else.

What you do is  really none of my business unless you ask me. I can offer my views but what you do with them isn't my responsibility either.

It is pretty freeing to step out of the God role and let life just happen.

This of course is just my opinion. Take what you like and leave the rest.


I

Finding nothing - uncomfortably still

I have been off the last two days and feeling pretty restless. I did have a tile emergency to resolve yesterday when one of my customers thought we had installed the wrong tile. I went by the office and picked up the sample and all is well.

I spent a few hours reading the Steve Jobs biography yesterday. I had reserved it from the library and had forgotten about it. I was number 247 so I thought maybe next year I would get the notification.

It mostly covers his career and towards the end the dynamics of his family. He authorized the book and didn't ask to review it before it was published. I didn't really show him as a thoughtful kind person. It showed him as a brilliant driven perfectionist with only one goal in mind the ultimate product being constantly improved.

I don't think that you can have it all. When you have great success in one area in your life then something gets left behind. If everything gets equal attention then you end up with everything falling in the middle. So how do you choose between your passion and the rest of your life. Is if fair to those in your life to get short changed.

I have been that person many times. I can become obsessed and so totally focused on one thing that the rest of my life gets ignored. Looking back I can see that I have live my life mostly out of balance. With my husband I was obsessed with him and my career suffered. Later I was obsessed with my career and my relationship suffered.

I have also been on the receiving end of that scenario too. Being ignored for alcohol, work, sports whatever the latest shiny thing was. I realize now I was living with myself all that time. You spot it you got it as they say.

I am more balanced now but miss the intensity of the one thing the current obsession. I no longer have extremes in my life and it makes me feel strange. Like I should be on the hunt for something new. Instead I am living in the moment and trying to accept that it is enough for today.

I have lost the drive to sacrifice everything for one thing anymore. Even my quest for spirituality became an obsession. I didn't want to see that the answer was to just stop looking for answers. To be still and be comfortable with being uncomfortably still.

picture 2012scenario.com

Jumping to conclusions -Teeny tiny task and dogs

I went outside this morning and everything was wet. My first thought was oh no I left the sprinklers on automatic and I have water the grass on the wrong day. But after I stepped back and looked around I realized it had rained.

That is always the way for me. When I first look at a situation I jump to conclusions and usually think I have made a mistake. If I don't react and take a moment to look around I might see something totally different.

Why is it we always assume we screwed up instead of assuming we didn't and waiting for that to be proved wrong.

I didn't sleep much last night. I am keeping my friends dog while he is on vacation. I don't think it was her although she was sleeping in the bed with me. I have never done this with my own dogs but I know that is her normal routine so I made and exception. She slept like a log, whatever that means.

I am busy at work and at home and next week looks even busier. I finished the upstairs yesterday and got over the gloom of the past. When I look at what needs to be done in my house I wonder if I made a mistake staying in this business. I really need extra funds to repair things around the house.

My horoscope says I am experiencing a lot of doubt these days and I should keep it to myself. It is unfounded and like the wind is just blowing through. I will keep that in mind with the real world. Not that you guys are not real, you know what mean.

When I left the house this morning the dog was howling in her grate. If I wasn't familiar with dogs I would have been in a panic. I did for one second think about bringing her to the showroom, so it almost worked. She small and I will probably be alone most of the day. But I didn't give in.

I did go back into the house and told her that she had to stop and that it wasn't going to work and that she was just going to make herself sick. When I left the house was silent. She can make it for a few hours and I am off the next two days.

That it for today I am going to focus on the many teeny tiny task I have to get done today. Have a fine weekend, unless you have other plans.

Going upstairs - This is not my life anymore

I having the first guest in my house next weekend. I have been working on preparing the upstairs where she will be sleeping. I am the only person that has ever slept up there and I did that because my groovey waterbed sprung a leak.

I think that was a couple of years ago. Grieving the loss of a relationship, depressed and menopausal I have no concept of time it could have been three years. I will have to check my blog to be sure. Pretty pathetic but at least I can laugh about it now.

When I go up there it feels really oppressive. It is full of things from the past which are still useful but don't necessary go together. Some things I keep for sentimental reasons others because it seems wasteful to just get rid of them.

The friend that is coming to visit will not understand the sentimental part related to stuff. She has been on the move all her life and told me once that her first thought when she acquires something is how will she get rid of it.

She has had commitment issues but strangely enough she told me last week she is getting married. Progress for her I think. I will be happy to hear the details.

When I go upstairs it reveals a lot of things to me. First it reminds of my past the things that represent something or someone that is no longer in my life. That's it, writing those words brought emotion. The tears are about the life that I am no longer a part of a dream that has been washed away.

It also reminds me of how sick I have been the past four years. Just barely able to get through each day. I feel like I have recovered from a long illness in that space and I want to do something drastic to erase the memory of past. There is just a bigger dose of it upstairs more relics.

It makes me mad that this still bothers me after all this time. It is a process I know but at least I know why I am feeling this way, but is always surprises me. Everything heals in time if you let it.

What are the magic words?

Every Alanon wants to know what the magic words are to stop someone they love from drinking and doing drugs. This is what my friend ask me today because she is confronting her husband tonight about his addiction.

I said say what ever makes you feel better because it really doesn't matter. The addiction is in charge and will not be listening. Don't attack or make idle threats. The person you love is in there somewhere but not in charge anymore.

I remember before the program when my husband was leaving me. We would meet at restaurants and I would prepare my own magic words. I would actually write them down. I would pray and ask God to let me say the words that would make him see how sick he was and how he was ruining our lives. He was listening.

I always came away from those times feeling worse. Like I missed my opportunity to convince him to change. He wasn't interested in changing he blamed me for all our problems and I knew he was right. Back then I did believe it was all my fault. I made him drink, I made him find someone else because I wasn't the perfect wife. News flash he was not the perfect husband.

After I found the program I realized that I lost the man I married to alcohol. I realized couldn't help him and trying to get him to see just what he was losing just made him want to run away and drink more. I would never be enough to stop him from drinking.

This is what I was trying to tell my friend. You can never be enough. You have to just be enough for yourself and let God do the rest. It is not about you anymore it is about the addiction.

The begging and pleading falls on deaf ears. It has all been said before many times.

I wish I had some magic words for my friend. She is just beginning this journey and she still believes he doesn't care about his family or he would make better choices.

The good news is that she has been to Alanon and knows where to find help when she needs it.

Pride verses Self Worth

Over the years I have worked hard and sometimes that work was appreciated and sometimes not. I know I never made what others made because I wasn't willing to toot my own horn. I thought that it was being prideful to appreciate myself or to point out my own accomplishments. I kept quiet and hoped I would be noticed.

It is my fault because I make things look easier than they are and I don't like to let on when something is way more work than it was originally thought. For me it seemed petty to point out the extra time it took to get the task accomplished. It was about the finished product.

Working for myself has made this even harder for me. I can't work for nothing and I have to put a price on my time. It is not that I have to convince the customer that I am worth it it is that I have to convince myself. I have to get past thinking I am being prideful when I value what I do.

I have a friend that charges a lot for her time. She never thinks twice about it. We actually graduated together. She does have a back up income if she doesn't get work. But it is really me and not valuing myself.

When I like someone I want to make them happy and make their dreams come true. Kitchen and bath dreams that is. That statement is also true personally. When I am in a relationship I want the other persons dreams to come true for them even before mine. I of course think they feel the same way but that has been a fairy tale.

This whole way of thinking I realize now is wrong. It is good to be supportive to be a cheerleader on occasion. But when you spend your life on the sidelines cheering at someone else's game there is no one playing your game because you aren't there.

I have to believe that I am valuable. I have to appreciate my own talents and if necessary point it out to others. This isn't pride it is having a since of self-worth.

On the job I save my customers headaches they will never know they would have had. The details of what I do saves both time and money. Yes, you can get it cheaper but you will never get anyone that cares more about you or your project than I do.

Pride goest before the fall. This is what my daddy always said to me.

Expectations - Peace and the joy of a nap

I felt overwhelmed and exhausted yesterday and left work at 5PM, went home and crawled into bed. It was an hectic day and I thought I was going to be alone in the office but instead and parade of people, not customers, were coming an going.

My partner had texted me that she wasn't coming in because her mom couldn't keep her daughter. I had and expectation of quietly accomplishing everything on my list. This did not happen and I ended up in a swirl all day with no food.

The air was being fixed. How many people does it take to fix an air condition? They fixed it on Monday and then it was decided that if we are going to cage the two units that a slab must be poured to accommodate both units and to be able to affix the $800 large welded cage being built to protect the $20 worth of copper inside the unit. It makes me tired just writing that.

After I woke up from my nap I made myself a burger. A rare thing for me to have fresh food in the house especially meat. I had some squash and then grapes for dessert and watched my favorite show Idol. I felt like I was on vacation.

I did get a call from my friend that I painted with on Monday. She was concerned that I left suddenly that afternoon. She thought is was something she said. As I was driving home that day it did occur to me that she might think that.

I use to think like that that everyone was always reacting to something I did or said. I sadly found out that everyone is really just thinking about what is going on in their own head and their moods rarely have anything to do with me. I am only the center of my own universe.

I explained to her that I finished my painting and felt too tired to start something new and went home and took a nap. It is allergy season and I have a lot on my plate these days. I haven't been able to nap the last 4 years. During menopause you are just happy to sleep at night. But I am returning to normal and the joy of a nap has returned.

I finished the evening with an hour of yoga and Pride and Prejudice. I bought the book a long time ago and never read it. After watching "You've got mail" a half a dozen times it occurred to me that I had the book and decided to see if it could hold my attention. Not an easy job. Tom Hank and Meg Ryan read it together in the movie.

The past 4 years I also haven't been able to do any recreational reading either. I was only interested in reading spiritual text. I was surviving day by day and wasn't interested in fiction for fun. It seems I am past that now and getting comfortable with the person I have become and the life I have now.

In my post yesterday I was writing about the voice in my head never ceasing. That isn't really true anymore for me. Sometimes it is eerily quiet in there with little or no commentary. I didn't think that was possible and it had taken a bit of time to get use to to it. I think they call that peace.

It feels good to be happy again and feel like I can handle life's normal ups and downs. It was exhausting living on the edge and I thought it would never end. Peace at last.

Photo aplacetolovedogs.com

Voices in my head - Friends forever

I spent the yesterday with a former client and current friend painting on canvases. She lives in one of four houses she owns it is very beautiful and sits on the water over looking a big man made lake.

For lunch we split a sandwich on the veranda next to the pool. The weather was awesome and we finished our meal with Key Lime pie. A perfect day really.

During our painting somehow the topic of making money came up and she said she wish she could think of an idea that would make a lot of money. I thought that was strange given her life circumstances.

I thought about how sometimes the life in our head conflicts with reality or at least what other people see from the outside. How we are never satisfied where we are no matter what. There must be something more somewhere out there. A longing that never ceases.

When we paint she is never happy with what she produces and spends hours on one little area. I remember when I was like that. I was so critical of myself and had so many rules. For years I never started anything unless I knew I had the time to do it perfectly.

I spent a lot of time doing nothing and beating myself up about how lazy I was.

She spent the three hours I was there working on a couple of clovers. I painted a lovely turtle painting and gave it to her as a gift. She loved it and put it in a frame while I was there.

We are all the same no matter what our circumstances are. We each have 24 hours to make the best of what we have or fight with the voice that lives in our head.

I spent so many years, just like that, being mean to myself. Never a kind word but the program helped me to see why I was so unhappy. It helped me to see that I could change from constantly abusing myself. I could learn to see I was perfectly flawed and still lovable.

I started by making friends with that voice in my head. I might as well we spent so much time together and evidently her opinion was really important to me and she never stopped talking. It didn't happen over night and started with if you don't have anything nice to say then say nothing at all.

I realized there was no grounds for most of the criticisms and a lot were the voices of other people from my past. A child hearing and believing everything that was said.

We are best friend now. Me and the voice, we have grown up together. She is my cheerleader and I even on my toughest days she is to assures me that I did my best. Even if I don't totally believe that all the time.

I am happy to be me today and see how far I have come on my journey.