Commitments to myself - Entertainment

Here we are on the eve of another year filled with potential.  I am usually anti resolutions and try to not set myself up for failure and just promise to do my best. This year I have decided to write a few goals down.

Now that I am out of the danger zone emotionally and not worried that depression will return for a long term visit I feel more free to make plans.  With a healthier mental state my work doesn't seem so overwhelming and I can live with the constant uncertainty.  It is just work and luckily for me I enjoy what I do and I am good at it.

I am making a few resolutions this year or maybe I would rather call them commitments to myself. First the usual health I want to start eating less sugar and exercising more. I have gotten into the habit of eating something sweet every day and since sugar causes cravings for more sugar it has just gotten out of hand.  I also plan to watch less TV horizontally. I have a stationary bike so I am committing to riding it while watching.

The next commitment to myself is to promote my business.  I thought I would set up a face book page and put all my pictures out there.  Since I work for someone else I will just state designing for "____".  Also I am going to contact some of my old customers and let them know where I am.

The final commitment is to improving my house.  This I have already started in fact I just about finished my kitchen floor. It isn't the kitchen I would design for my customers but it will get me by until I am ready for the big redo.  I already have a guy coming to give me a bid on painting the house on the outside on Monday. I want my house to be ready to sell or just nice for me however that works out.

I really feel ready to run my life instead of my life running me. I think my on spiritual quest for peace confused me for a time.  I think realizing that the world and all our wants and needs are rather fleeting and there is no road that leads to permanent happinesness made me feel like putting more energy into to maintaining this illusion was real waste of time.  Over time I have come to terms with this and have realized I have to do something with my time.

I use to be mostly a doer getting lost in doing to avoid thinking too much about the underlying suffering that was going on. When life broke me I couldn't function in that place anymore I could no longer push the pain down. I stopped doing anything.  I drowned in sadness after fighting it for so long I let go and to my surprise I floated to the top a different person.  Mostly blank which really scared but I got use to it.

Today little pieces of me have returned including the desire to get things done.  I don't have the ego I use to have which included pain and insecurity. The desperate need for other people to validate my worth when I couldn't.  I have mostly let go of the past and of the imaginary future I thought I would have including bonding with my own family. I know now I can be whole without validation from outside myself. I can do for the sake of doing instead of doing as a means of escape from pain.

I am going to live this year open to what life brings me. I am mostly healed and ready to go back to being a doer and a little less of a thinker.  Thinking about the past or the future is really just my mind needing entrainment. It is a habit and works as long as it doesn't cause me pain.

I can plan and dream but I know that when I arrive at those destinations that I will be no happier than I can be if I want to in this very moment. Nothing out there will make me happy long term. It is all just something to fill our days and entertain us until our time is up. So I am committing to enjoy the moment and spend less time thinking about enjoying the moment.

I wish for you to find a way to accept that we have the power to heal ourselves by realizing the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves controls our happiness. Letting go of the truth that only exist in our mind is the ultimate path to freedom. We have power to create a better story for ourselves by letting go of the ones that have defined us our whole lives. We have that power to let go and be free. .

Happy New Year

Food - Kurt - The most wonderful time of the year

Here it is upon us once again the season to be jolly. It is 80 degrees today and I have been shopping most of the day.  First for flooring for my kitchen, the first selection looked too pink and then for groceries.

I am fixing a traditional fish taco Christmas eve dinner.  I am sure it is traditional some where but that is what sounded good to me and made with fresh local seafood it will be really good. Avocados were on sell and very ripe for the roasted corn avocado side dish. They are not in big demand for Christmas day I guess.

Tomorrow I am eating with some program friends and we are having hamburgers.  I guess you can tell none of us are much for following traditions. It should be a fine day with a variety of food including a few vegetarian dishes.  I am making lentil salad with roasted red peppers and feta cheese.

Getting past the talk about food and on a more serious note today I watched part of the Kurt Cobain story on HBO and the underlying theme was that he felt his family rejected him. His dad and stepmother with their combined children couldn't meet his expectations of how a real family should be. He turned angry and they decided to send him off to different relatives who rejected him after a short stay and he eventually he ended up back home with his mother. We know how the story ended.

Of course I could relate to the rejection part and I have to admit I do feel the shadows of rejection during the holidays. My family didn't reject me they were indifferent to me and still are. I spoke to my sister last night for over an hour. She told me about all their plans for the holidays. I does hurt that she doesn't even consider wanting to spend the holidays with me.

We have both created lives without each other. I know now some of this is because she lives with addiction and it is just easier to manage everything without an outsider.

For some of us the holidays bring up the lack in our lives even though it is suppose to be "the most wonderful time of the year" according to the song anyway.  I can't help but wish things turned out differently for me and my family but it didn't and come Monday all these feeling of lack with be gone until next year.

I am happy to have the time off we are closed this weekend and I don't have to be back until Tuesday. This will give me time to finish my work around the house and have enough time to recover physically before returning to work.

I am grateful I have my friends to spend tonight and tomorrow with.  I wish for you my blogging friends that you spend this holiday feeling peaceful and wanting nothing which is the same thing. Just knowing if your holiday doesn't resemble the one you pictured in your head that it is just one day of the year and by Monday it will be mostly forgotten.

Merry Christmas.

Who am I really? Fighting with yourself

I finished the downstairs bathroom except for hanging a couple a retro pictures.  I tried to hang them last night but they were crooked and I was too tired to spend any more time on them. My body is tired today but I am happy with the results.

Working on the house gives me the opportunity to listen to audio books. I usually listen to self help or inspiring cds yesterday I was listening to an old Napolean Hill book about how the tycoons of the past and how they found success. I was surprised how much of the principles they talked about are spiritual.  

I love this kind of stuff I think because I didn't have many positive influences in my life I let books and cds shape my thinking. These recordings were and still are my teachers.  Some of the advice is for those climbing the corporate ladder such as practicing greeting people in the mirror. All the little nuances that give someone an advantage.

My love affair with self-help started with counseling and then Al-Anon. Until that time I really believed that you couldn't do anything to change who you are.  Your born with certain personality traits and you were stuck with them. You just had to work with your limitations.

You do inherit certain dispositions mostly habits and some of them are actually good. Like for me my family passed down the task oriented Amish like work ethic. We like to be do something all the time. It is a good trait but it kept me from facing my true feelings and helped me to avoid unpleasant situations in my life.

I lost this doing part of myself during my wandering in the desert these past years.  It was awkward and painful to have no familiar place to escape to. I recently accepted the loss of that person and started to enjoy the coasting I feel I have been doing or at least compared to before.

I guess because I wouldn't voluntarily do this my spirit gave me no choice. Just when I finished grieving the loss of who I was it seems that part of me has returned. Grief is so tricky isn't it?

I do think all that has happened to me spiritually is for a purpose I am not sure what that is yet but for today it doesn't matter I am just happy to have found my way back.

I would like to use my experience to help others see that it is our own ideas our own stories about ourselves that keep us stuck and unhappy. It is hard to give up the identity you have made for yourself but for the most part this identity is only maintained in your own mind and reinforced by the people around you.

You have to literally fight yourself to change these ideas. You are not the sum of ideas you have inside your head this is just entertainment for your mind. A story that every day you work on and you can change that story if it limits you. It is a story based on the habits of the past not the potential of today.

I have am happy today to be released from feeling lost. As I approach the day I can decide who I want be today and this makes me feel light and free.

Christmas Past - Living with addiction

I  sitting here looking out the window and it looks life it could be September. You have to look closely to notice the slight yellowing of some leaves. It is hard enough for us here in the south to get in the Christmas spirit in the first place but with temperatures near 80 forget it.

I am not much of a holiday person.  When I was younger and just starting to create a life that looked like everyone else had I did the big holiday.  That is what you do when living with active alcoholism you go full in and make your outside world blemish free.  Anything to get lost in so you don't have to think about that deep unexplained sadness you have on the inside.

For me I didn't have any idea that I was living with addiction. In my mind an alcoholic didn't have a job and spent most of the their time passed out. This was what I saw as a child with my uncle.  He was an alcoholic that when he had money he was drunk. It was confusing though because sometimes he would stay sober for six months and then he was out drinking non-stop until he was in jail.

Alcoholism is a cunning and baffling disease. My husband wasn't like that I never saw him falling down drunk.  I think he drank to feel normal and to be normal.  Otherwise he was angry so angry he was scary to me. I remember after we split his friend calling me and telling me he was picking fights with the neighborhood guys at the "Y" and it was getting pretty ugly.

I wanted to rescue him but I didn't he had a girlfriend they should call her. I was so clueless about how emotionally sick we both were. Two people with severe emotional deficits trying to make a life. Our mothers died when we were both 11 his dad drank through his grief leaving his kids to take care of themselves.

I loved him more than anyone I have loved on this earth. I would have done anything to make things work between us but luckily for me he moved on. I think the love I had was because we had the same emptiness the same wanting. He was happier than I was because he found escape in alcohol it gave him the ability to pretend that everything was alright.

It didn't work for me I tried to keep up.  I wanted to be free of my own mind but drinking made me sad and made want to talk about our problems.  This is not appealing to someone trying to escape.  I remember feeling so bad about myself because I couldn't stay up all night doing shots with our friends.

We get into relationships that involve addition and we think some how we should have the skills to manage what is going on alone. Addiction is an intimate relationship and doesn't like outsiders it convinces those involved to keep it just between us. I think that is part of the appeal the intensity of the feeling that the other person is depending on you.  They feed that feeling because they need someone to take of them and we someone to take of.  Avoiding the real problem. Two egos with needs.

I have unraveled the mystery of how I became person.  I have lived most of my life with the wanting of a child looking for someone to make me fill I was worthy of love.  Someone to hold me and tell me everything will be fine. No one can fulfill that promise we have to learn to live with the uncertainty of life. You can spend your life preparing for one thing and then something else is bound to happen that you never expected.

It is true that everything will be fine after you have been broken in half and your laying on the ground with the crap beaten out of you. You will (after a long while ) get back up dust yourself off and be fine. Just my experience.

I was intending for this to be a post about Christmas maybe it it. I remember my last Christmas with my husband I forced him to go with me to a tree farm and pick out a tree. His obvious seething anger towards me didn't phase me. I was pretending  this was the perfect Christmas.

I would have done anything to not look at the truth. Ironically I have spent every moment since that time trying to find a relationship where I felt safe and I finally have.  That relationship is within myself I will love again I know this but it isn't to have someome complete me. I will always have that child like longing but I think that is normal.

Today I will  not to get too far ahead of myself.  I can relax and take in the day and maybe go out and find some holiday cheer.

A healing has taken place - There is always more.

I am in full blown remodel mode starting with my kitchen and the downstairs bathroom.  I look at everything in my house and it all feels very tired just like I have been.  I feel a new vitality after the Thanksgiving dip maybe because a more healing has taken place.

I am always surprised that there could be more healing at this point.  I thought I was done. I have been floundering here for what seems like forever waiting for inspiration. I didn't think that I was waiting for more healing.  

In my mind  I have been telling myself I should want more or at least have some kind of idea about what to do next but there has been nothing. I thought maybe my spiritual journey had taken me to a place where I know that finding the next thing won't satisfy me for long so what is the point.

I do know it isn't about the next thing for me anymore but then what should I be doing with my time. It doesn't help that the self-help motivators say "what is your dream - follow your passion?" Without a goal or passion there is something wrong with you. Is that true?

While drywalling and painting this weekend I was listening to 50 Spiritual Classics.  A collection of Cd's about the lives of great spiritual teachers.  I have listen to the Cd's several times during my own spiritual journey and it seems each time I hear just what I need to hear.

This time it was how one person being freed of the ego was an empty vessel waiting for daily direction to fulfill God's purpose for their lives. I heard that it is okay to empty and not in the pursuit of the next thing.

I want permission from someone to not be concerned that I don't have a passion or goal to strive for right now and if I never do then that is alright too.

I feel good right now mainly I think because I have forgiven myself for the mistakes I have made that led me to where am today basically alone. There is really nothing to forgive.  It is just my unconscious  belief that I some how could have prevented it if I had worked harder been a better person then I would not have been rejected.

I realize I have been punishing myself by not letting myself enjoy anything.  I think I divorced myself along with the relationship.  Accepting there was nothing of that person I wanted to keep.

I think I have finally let myself off the hook. I have gone from rejecting myself to being blank to finally starting to take back the pieces of myself that I do like.
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I feel ready to be happy  and whole again I don't feel like parts of me are missing any more. I am especially happy to get my house in order. Less internal work means more time for external work and I am ready.

Emotional Hangover - Healing in pajamas

I had a nice Thanksgiving but I wasn't totally able to avoid feeling down.  It didn't really hit me until the day after and then Saturday.  I would like to think all feelings are cerebral and be overcome with thought control.  These feelings are ego driven and relate to some story we have about ourselves and for the most part I think it is true.

I can't  buy this theory completely because it is not my own experience.  It is of course in our minds but I believe we must have levels memories as well as levels of healing those memories.  We can address them as they come to the surface.  Sometimes we know what triggers the memory of  hurt and sometimes we are taken by surprise.  For me it is Thanksgiving.

I say to myself that I have a good life and that I am a better more healthy person spiritually and emotionally but I was still hurt by what happen to me. It changed my life whether I admit it or not. Those feelings of self doubt surface and I am down for the count.  Saturday I slept until 11 and never got out of pajamas.

I was experiencing an emotional hangover and decided I needed to write in my journal.  I wrote about how I repelled the people I loved  in my life and that is why they left me. When I write things like that I feel worse because I feel I haven't made much progress. How can this be when I remembered feeling so good last year.

I decided to see what I wrote last year.  There is was in black and white slept until 11 and still in my pajamas along with some other bleak stuff.

Reading the words from last year snapped my out of it almost immediately.  I realized this is just a weekend of mourning for me. I shouldn't feel like it is a set back it is just me taking a moment to grieve some pretty significant losses in my life. To honor two major relationships that ended abruptly at Thanksgiving.

It is the thinking I shouldn't still feel this way that really bothers me.  If I could just let those feelings wash over me they would pass just like they did this year.  By Sunday I was painting the kitchen and feeling pretty good.  Can I just accept myself where I am at any given time especially at Thanksgiving? Maybe next year will be different. I don't think so.