Dreams - The body - Peace

I slept too long this morning.  I was lost in the dream world and it seemed so interesting I wanted to stay so I did.  The dream had to do with renovating a very old house for some customers the house definitely had some potential but what we were doing felt like a band aid. I decided to exit the dream because I looked down at my bare feet and there was a spider biting my toe.

I wonder about dreams are they some other world that maybe after we die we return there permanently. Maybe they are just clusters of a the parts of our mind that aren't very neat and organized. All our interest and worries jumbled together and we have to be there in person to deal with them.

I have been a little annoyed since I came back to work after taking a week off. I got a taste of what it might be like to take care of some of my own personal priorities.  Maybe that is what the dream was about the biting of the spider a painful wake up call for me bring my focus back to me and maybe even my body.

I have spent a lot of my time dealing with my mind and my emotions.  I finally feel that I have found the answers that will allow me to be free of the need to continue trying to fix myself spiritually. During that process my body was never a priority.  It just followed my mind around without much complaining.

So I have decided to go to a more plant based diet no extremes just more plants.  This past month I have been just eating when I am hungry and mostly just one bigger healthier meal a day.  This has satisfied me and I have lost a few pounds and took the focus off food.  I now think I am ready to go one step further and start focusing on preparing more meals at home and eliminating meat from my diet.

In my past I identified myself as a good cook I spent years in the kitchen preparing tasty meals to show my love. When that piece of my life ended I lost that part of me along with many other labels I had given myself. I didn't cook for others anymore and if I did cook the joy wasn't there for me. I just cooked to get by the passion was gone.

While on my healing journey and have reached a place of peace. I no longer feel that I am broken and need to be fixed.  I know I have been looking for someone to love and cherish me but really I needed to love and cherish myself first. I can do that now and stop looking for the external world to show me I am worthy of love.

What does this have to do with diet and food.  I guess it is just me listening to my inner self telling me it is time to start nourishing my body and giving myself the love I so freely gave to others with my cooking. A slow migration towards taking care of myself physically as well as spiritually.

Over the years I have given up things like Diet Coke which I craved. I woke up one morning and was done. Then I gave up sugar in my coffee and then coffee. None of this felt like deprivation I knew in my heart that I was using these things as crutches or little rituals that helped me escape from a life that scared me.

It feels good now to just trust the process and not pressure myself into big changes. My inner spirit will take me where I need to go if I will just stop long enough to listen. That is what time off did for me it gave me a chance to listen.

This is an appropriate theme for Easter a time of year for awakenings. I have given up who I thought I was for a more whole less needy person.  This came with a lot of suffering and has brought me to a place of forgiveness for myself.  I was never enough for me I can see that now and therefore never enough for anyone else. My journey I can see now has been truly a miracle.

Inspired by a chair - stay cation

I was inspired to take the week off.  The timing was as good as it might ever be even if I ended up working an extra day on Sunday to accomplish my escape.

It is a stay cation that is what we call it at work. It seems boring for those that look for the excitement of packing your bags and running around some new place. Eating exotic food and being exhausted for a week and then going back to work to recover.  I have done that many times in my life and that isn't what I need right now.

I live in a beautiful place where the weather is nice most of the time so why not stay home.

This week I wanted to just get up and see what the day might bring.  On Sunday before heading to work I painted the back door.  This was completely spontaneous I was just sitting out there drinking my cup of tea when I thought "I can do that".  I had the paint from the front door and an hour later it was done.

Monday I cleaned the porch I had to the door looked so good it made everything look so bad. After that I went through some boxes from the basement and found a bag of parts that came from my grandmothers house I felt inspired to do a pen and marker drawing of the collection.

Yesterday I had an appointment to get blood work done.  Just a routine test but apparently it had to be done before 9am which I wasn't prepared to do on my week off so I had to reschedule.  After that I met my friend from work and we went to a a hard to get into restaurant by 11am the line was out the door. The food was great and we split dessert.

We then went to a consignment shop where I found a really cool industrial adjustable office chair which I am sitting in right now.  It was marked down so cheap I couldn't resist.  I can always get a deal on modern items because nobody in this town is interested in this style.

I feel inspired just looking at it.  I know if sounds crazy but I love anything that you can tell someone really spent time thinking about the function as well as the design of a piece.  Everything you touch every day was designed by someone or it is naturally created. We would have nothing without designers.  We would be still sitting on the ground or sitting on stumps ( someone even had to think that up).

I think the week so far has been successful in helping me to be inspired. I have had a few moments of fear where my mind started up about being alone with no one to spend my vacation with but those moments passed and I found something else to do.

I think it is healthy to just create a space to let things bubble up even if your thoughts are full of doubt and fear. I know I need more than just weekend to face those thoughts and get past them to a healthier perspective.  If I can trust this process and not run off looking for the next distraction I can find the person I always been beneath the fear.  Before life forced me to become a survivor just getting by.

I have been a designer from the moment I discovered that I could change the way I felt by changing my space I was off and running. I am lucky that I had the courage and felt safe enough to abandon my previous career to work in a profession where I have always belonged.

I am glad I took the week of and I think it has helped me to see that I have gotten a lot of things right in my life. Even if I feel alone and sometimes lonely for the most part things are good even if I can't always see that.

Today's happiness inspired by a chair.



 

Stubborness - Control - desire

I am making an effort to take care of myself this week.  First by going to the dentist and then visiting my counselor for a little check up after last months surge of emotions. In Al-Anon's Blueprint for progress this is some of the questions it ask you. When the last time you have been to the dentist? When is the last time you had physical?  Reading these questions I thought they were ridiculous.

At the time I hadn't really done either I was losing everything and just surviving.  This wasn't unusual for me I thought life was like that.  I thought survival was all you could hope for and the best you could do was brace yourself for the next trauma. Control every minute of every day to prevent something from ruining your life and making sure everything you loved was safe.

This was an exhausting way to live.  When things were going well I attributed it to all my great planning and maintenance but when it wasn't I blamed myself for dropping the ball.  I have spent a lot of my life retracing my steps to see what errors I might of made.  Even last month these kind of thoughts were the cause of my hurting.

Blaming myself for things not going the way I wanted them to somehow feeling like there is something about me that isn't enough. What doesn't work about this thought is it doesn't factor in that I haven't been alone in my relationships.  I can't control the ones I have loved by being so perfect that they would never leave me. People are working with there own inner dialogue and are the center of their own universe and decision are made that hurt other people.

I have made some of those decisions myself.  Unfortunately for me it was only when I was forced when the pain was so great I had to jump ship. I stayed too long every time because I couldn't choose what was best for myself and I didn't want to hurt anyone. I sat by the sidelines hoping things would magically work themselves out.

The other part of this is that I have always been a fighter.  My stubbornness got me through the worst times in my life.  I would dig in and wait out the storm and it worked. Back then I didn't have a choice to leave I wasn't an adult. Stubbornness a trait that served me as a child left me lingering in bad situations as an adult. It never occurred to me that I could make a decision for my own happiness.

It is still hard even today to not somehow blame myself for not trying hard enough or being good enough to be loved by the people of my past.  The difference is today I am no longer lost in these kinds of thoughts too long and I know that it isn't true and thinking this way hurts me.

I can see that my thinking and my desire to control the uncontrollable keeps me stuck. I am trying to solve the past in hopes of having things turn out differently.

I don't know why people do what they do and maybe some of it has to do with me but not all of it. Relationships and situations are always about timing and where everyone is at any given time. Everything can flow smoothly for a long time until someone or something changes and then a shift occurs,

My counselor said that my true desires are surfacing.  They have been put on the back burner simmering waiting for me to acknowledge that I have them. That because nothing else is demanding my attention and I am feeling settled that they are calling for my attention.  I am at a place of action instead of reaction.

This is totally true I am on the hunt for something or someone that inspires me.  I am ready to let go of the thoughts that have held me back and find something more inspiring to do with my life.

Can I really break this pattern of blame and regret? The rehashing of the past has been a constant companion a source of distraction from the boredom of ordinary life.  Maybe I need that wasted energy to focus on making life a little less ordinary and find some inspiration.

I think I am ready to move on once again.