How important is it? - Letting go - stress

I am in a better place this week even though work has been even more stressful than it was last week.  When you deal with the public it seems that you have difficult periods where you get caught up in a lot of small problems for me mostly things I cannot solve. At these times it is hard to remember the jobs that went right.

Our company does a great job of fixing whatever the problem is but not a great job of communicating what or when this is going to happen. By the time I find out about it and contact someone they have already sent someone out to take care of it.

It is way more efficient on the back side but it does cause the customer distress because they are not hearing back from anyone. It does really work out in the end. I just tell them that it will magically get taken care of if they give it a day or so. 

It is dysfunctional like a family and either you can hang with it or not. If you have got to know what is going on all the time then this is not the place to work. It isn't my responsibility to change it so I adapt the best I can. 

I am better in my old age at being flexible and not be outraged by the actions of others.  The lack of efficiency and all the time wasted re-working things in the past would have drove me nuts. When I was worked in true corporate america I worked my way up in the company so I could make changes to help make things easier fro everyone.  

My brain is solely interested in making things better whether at home, at work or even when I see problems at a store. I can't help myself but now I can just let it go knowing this is how the world works. One cashier in the garden department on a Saturday with ten people in line waiting for a manager to okay a plant on clearance. 

To be happy in this life you have to let go of everything that you have absolutely no control over.  This is the secret we don't want to accept. I can close my eyes and imagine something different but I have to accept the reality in front of me.  How important is it?  That is one of my favorite slogans from the program. It works if you work it.  That is another one. 

Order and Chaos

This is my birthday month and I gifted myself with a art workshop the past weekend.  Two full days of creating and producing are under the guidelines of a retired art professor.  The instruction given was to be loose and repetitive not really my cup of tea.  I did what I always do and just put something on paper to get me started.  As the teacher circled the room she said really nice drawing but not what I instructed.  I am new to the group and she was cautious about her direction at first. I finally said "give me direction" she said to draw the pile of bones on the table without looking at the paper.

I did it an produced a decent drawing.  My middle name is order and her middle name is chaos.  I am glad that I didn't look at her work before the workshop or I might have decided not to sign up. At the end of the first day I was tired and asking myself "do I care about doing art anymore?"

Doing art has been a part of my earliest memory.  I kindergarten we colored one day and painted the next every day they would ask us, "Did you paint or color yesterday?'  I always said, "I colored" so I could paint.  I loved the vibrant colors of the tempera paints.  In my teens I skipped my other classes to hang out in the art room telling my teacher that I had a study hall. Art was my salvation even though I never was seen a gifted by the teachers or encouraged in any way. Artist can be elitist amongst themselves it is a competitive world and insecurity runs deep just like any place else.

I feel that just like anything else the ego needs something to make it feel special.  Something to identify with " I am an __________."  This what we do not who we are and it is hard to give up if you don't want to do it anymore.  Who will I be without this label? 

When I crashed into darkness this was what I felt.  I knew I was not longer the person I use to be.  I was floating around with no identity with the people around me waiting for that person to come back.  This is a trap that makes us feel stuck in places we don't belong anymore for a really long time.  For me the change was forced on me and I felt I couldn't live without being the person I was before.

I felt I was floating out there being nothing. I knew I couldn't go back so lingered for along time in no where land. Nothing interested me for a long time.  This was so painful but I got use to it and quit fighting it and when I finally let go I felt lighter. I did the necessary things I had to do to get through the day and that was it.

We are taught that we are who people say were are or who we say we are even if it doesn't feel right anymore. Art was my salvation from those days in kindergarten.  I still love color and create everyday in my work but I don't need to be saved anymore.  I can do art because it is fun and not because I need to get the pain out. Ir isn't who I am it is just a couple days filled with art.

I loved the workshop and will do it again.  The group was very supportive of each other. It was scary at first when my own ego felt like I didn't belong there with other artist but I go over myself.

I met some interesting people and by the second day I felt refreshed and put out some nice drawings. The teacher said " I know I am intimidating but I mean well."  I said "people say the same thing about me."  I have no problem with straight shooters it is those that don't say what they mean that can blind side you.

It was good to get out of my comfort zone and I do have some ideas for art projects.  It was exhausting at first but chaos can be fun if you just let go.
  

Not being enough - Order - Life choices

I have spent most of my life loathing who I am mainly because I am analytical and seemed wired for just looking at every thing that isn't quite the way it should be including myself.  Order has always been a destination for me.  If I can just get things in order I will be ready to tackle the big stuff.

I can sit down in a clean organized space materially and really get something done. At least this is what my more intense OCD part of me would like to believe but it is just not true.  This kind of order doesn't exist in this world.   I did visit a garage recently that looked like an operating room.  You can have the illusion of order but it takes a lot of time and money and doesn't make you happy.

On the spiritual front I think it is another form of control.  It is acceptable and everyone would like to be that neat and orderly but life is messy even if you can eat on your garage floor.

The spouse of the garage owner is a very angry person it felt oppressive to be in their home. It was beautifully decorated and everything was perfect but there was an elephant in the room.  This is when I wish I hadn't taken the red pill like in the Matrix movie. I can see the pain in others so clearly and wish sometimes that I didn't.  In the past I would try to help but people have to find their own way out.  Sometime it has to be a lot of pain to make you move forward.

I have always been able to see the pain in others.  Even as a child I remember questioning the behaviors of others and wondering why they were so unhappy.  Seeing just so clearly their suffering and asking questions that got me in a lot of trouble. My daddy called it the spirit of discernment. 

We all feel trapped in our lives and our pain from time to time.  We really think that we have no choices when it is that we are not ready for the consequences of the choices we need to make.  Staying too long in a marriage or a job.  Living with a controlling verbally abusive person who knows your fears and uses words to keep you from having the courage to move on. This situation can make you think you have no choice.  That was my first marriage.

In my second marriage it was the opposite but sometimes just as painful.  I lived with someone that didn't even see me. As long as I did everything to make things run smoothly and didn't change one thing then it was great. The truth was I was happy to be invisible left alone to entertain myself I was comfortable in that role.  It was the opposite of my relationship the the explosive alcoholic and  my childhood.  In both cases I knew I was less likely to get in trouble if I was invisible. 

I stayed because I imagined that there wasn't anything better and weeks turn into months and months turned into years and I felt like I had invested too much time to leave.  Besides what did I have to complain about ?  I felt safe and I was use to the pain so I just stayed busy to avoid thinking about it. I was happy that someone would have me and worried that I would end up alone.  It felt great compared to my last relationship even if I felt alone most of the time.

Of course I blamed myself for the choices I made but that doesn't help.  I made the choices I made because of where I was at that moment in my life.  I made that choice because I hadn't grown spiritually enough to see that I was repeating the past.  I married my daddy the second time.

A kind peaceful man that emotionally wasn't there ever. He only got attached to his wives and his religion nothing else existed.  He had great wisdom to offer strangers but if you were related to him you had to accept that he wasn't capable of really seeing you.  I loved him so much and before my mother died we were inseparable. When my stepmother came alone I no longer existed.

I guess my point is that we make the choices we make for a reason.  I think it is mostly because the person or the situation seems familiar.  Even if I hadn't married my father the second time it would have been someone that would have been similar.  That relationship felt good for a long time and I got to understand what it would be like to be my mother.

I am not sure how I got here today in the post but I can feel a little healing for myself. I am like my daddy in many ways. Offering hopefully good advice to strangers.  He fell in love with my mother and her religion.  He told me once that when he went to that first prayer meeting that he knew it was what he had been looking for all his life.  I figured he was attracted to the emotional freedom of the Pentecostal church. He grew up in a home where no one was allowed to have feelings except his abusive father.  The kids stayed silent at all cost.

We all have things to understand about ourselves and the choices we have made.  We can't believe there is anything really wrong with us. It important to find out what thoughts we have about ourselves that keep stuck and hurting ourselves.  I am at a place where I know what thoughts have caused me pain and I just want to be happy.

I have reached the end of my spiritual quest. I am glad I have stopped thinking I need to change to be happy I just need to enjoy today and my freedom from not being enough.

Creative Chaos - The destination will only make me happy for a moment

It has been a good week.  I finished staining my 50 - ten foot boards for my ceiling and the guy came and installed everything in two days.  The transformation was like a miracle in the construction world.  He is going to paint the room next week and help me with my kitchen remodel.

I feel free right now like haven't felt before taking time to take care of my own life. This won't last but with the holiday weekend everyone is focused on family and friends and not on renovations. They closed the showroom early yesterday because it was so dead.  Our team was off so it really didn't matter that much to me.

I worked around the house yesterday weeding my flower beds and power washing my deck.  Both long over due because of my focus on the fifty boards.  As a part of managing my ADD and OCD when I commit to something I put blinders on to anything and everything else.  This works but when you come up for air after the main task is completed then you have to address  the fall out.

I have accepted that this is the way I operate.  I am not a clean as you go person not because it isn't a great idea but because once I start cleaning I lose myself in that task instead of the main event.  When I was younger I chose not to start anything because I knew if I could focus on it 100% for as long as I wanted to make it perfect then I would rather not start it at all.

I lived my life paralyzed by all that needed to be done and my lack of ability to do it all perfectly. I never met my own standard of perfection. I learned to let go mainly because I was miserable all the time.  I couldn't be perfect and no one around me met my perfection standards either. I didn't accept help from others because they didn't do it with the same precision I did. A no win situation.

This last part is really mental or chemical I think.  I think some of us have the predisposition to perfection magnified by events in our lives that push us into a desperate need to control. I remember sitting inside a base kitchen cabinet lining up my mother's can goods in neat rows tallest to shortest.  Grouping like items together and the frustration of some odd item not fitting the standard.   I still do this every once in a while even though I can't fit inside a cabinet.

This was before my mother died when life was good.  The process soothed me then and still does. There is an order to everything but nothing ever stays in order life is messy people die people leave so many things are out of control. When my mother died I went into my childish room and threw everything away.  It had been creative chaos up until that point but I needed control so it all had to go.

Every part of my life right now is creative chaos. I have accepted that this is a natural state of life.  I have my blinders on and can be okay with the mess.  I also know that I will enjoy the process of organizing it all in the end when I am ready. I don't devote hours beating myself up for not being neat and instead look forward to putting it all back together. I love a good before and after - who doesn't.

My mind use to be in chaos and my space was neat but now the opposite is true and I can be content where ever I am in the process.  The process part is real living and being engaged in doing instead of thinking that the destination will make me happy. I finally get that after a lifetime. The satisfaction of completion is fleeting but the planning and process can go on for as long as you want. Savoring every minute until it stops being fun.

I have to admit sanding, staining and top coating stopped being fun after the second full day and I had to think about the destination to keep working. Once I am committed I have to finish or at least this is the way I see myself as a finisher.  Although I didn't think my staining job was good enough while I was doing it, of course, it turned out beautiful and I am thrilled.