Making space work for me - Time out

I am spontaneously taking this week off. The timing is about as right as it is going to be with work and I have some big projects coming up at the end of the month. I am not going to try to see my family - they are not vaccinated and my other family is waiting for their booster shots before seeing anyone. After my recent exposure staying home seems reasonable to me. 

I like staying home and giving my life a little space. I deal in physical spaces every day in my business but this is space to regroup in my personal life.  As everyone has learned with the pandemic space can be awkward with time and no plan.  Even though I love being on my own I have to resist just filling my day with a to list.  For me after a day or so I began to relax and enjoy the freedom.

I am working daily on honing my drawing skills realizing that practicing and studying will eventually take me where I want to go. If  I use the 10,000 hour rule and practice one hour a day it will take about about four years to get where I want to go.  This does seem daunting but really what is one hour a day in the scheme of things.

I wrote down some goals or future intentions. I like putting my intentions on paper and it has worked for me past. I have found those list years later and seeing some of those intentions did come true. I am a visual person and I like to see the words.

I am inspired right now although it feels like things in the rest of my are shifting. I have prepared the best I can without a crystal ball so that is all I can do. I feel that even though I have been through a lot in my life that I have made it under extreme circumstances.

This week I will do whatever I feel inspired to do and if that is nothing that is okay too. We need time and space to step back and make decisions on what we want and it is hard to do that when we are just getting through each day.

With the pandemic a lot people are re-evaluating what is important and have gotten use to a different life and staying home with the people they love. We have be forced to reflect on our world and decide do we go back to the way things were or do we keep this quieter world we have found. Maybe we can combine both who know. 

Space - Spiritual Awakening

I had a lot of time on my own this holiday I didn't feel like forcing my plans on the universe and decided to just let life it's natural course. This decision left me empty and a little panicked that my life has become so small. This is just my mind working against me.  I decided to try to just relax and accept things the way they are instead of wishing them to magically be different.

When the anxiety of being alone comes to the surface the first thing I want to do is blame myself.  I blame where I am on all the bad decisions I have made.  Choosing the wrong people to love or picking the road less traveled spiritually and alienating myself from my family.

If only I had done things differently my life would have ended up like one of those holiday TV movies.  This thought is about about control I tried that route when I was younger.  I was still abandoned by the people that were suppose to love me.  At that point with the help of the program I decided to let go and just go where ever life took me.  I was happier by far but in the end I was left again.   At that point I decided there was something wrong with me. Another lie I told myself.

This is just life and you just have to deal with it.  I feel I am ready to enjoy life again and feel another shift happening.  With work being slow right now I decided to clean out my office after five years. It was so busy when I started and I have had my head down learning.  Where does the time go?

I cleared out all those old files some where I had invested so much time and paperwork in people that never came to anything.  This is a little disheartening but I am seasoned now and have a different process for handling customers and purging my files. Ironically the first person I waited on yesterday I had been to their house two years ago and now they are ready. I still had that file. Funny.

Doing nothing is really scary but it can bring on an awakening.   Getting past the doer in me is hard with the list of things that I want to do along with with the things that need to be done.  I felt frozen even after lecturing myself daily about all the valuable time I was wasting.  I did do a few things like baking cookies for the office and on Christmas day going to a friends open house and then to an Al-Anon meeting. It was my home group location and it felt good.

The meeting was on the 12th step and it did give me an opportunity to see just how many awakenings I have had over the years.  Some in your face awakenings and some revealed slowly over time.  Awakenings require you to step back from your situation sometime willingly and other time by force it seems we have no choice.

Today I am feeling good.  Just writing this has made me trust the awkward space between me and myself.  It is sometimes ugly being me and I have hurt myself and other people trying to figure things out.  It was never intentional or personal just like the people that hurt me.  We are just trying to make it through life the best we can even if it isn't always good enough.  It is what we have at the moment.

I can see I needed this empty time to evaluate where I have been and where I want to go and make choices in that direction. I don't micro manage my life anymore and I don't let my life run me either so I have come to middle and I can make decision today to my life a little better.

Inventory - Imagine - spaces

I was cleaning my garage yesterday an idea I had at the spur of the moment. It was raining and windy so the temperature was acceptable. Every time I take on something like this it feels like I am taking an inventory of my life. Everything out there represents a time in my life or person or worse some unfinished project. Up until now I haven't felt safe enough to let go of much of anything.

I try to tell myself it is because I am creative person and like to have all this stuff incase the spirit moves me and I think of something cool to do with it. But in reality I don't like waste of any kind so if I think something needs to be saved for repurposing then I keep it. 

When I moved into this house my spirit had been shattered. I didn't have time to look at anything and I packed everything or I should say my friends packed everything. Over the years I have gotten rid of the obvious junk but never the stuff that I imagined I might need.  

I thought something would happen in my life that would make it clear what I would need to keep and what I should let go.  Ironically the physical path works just like the spiritual path slow and steady. We are only able to see a short way in front of us most the time so we have be happy with just moving forward.  We can imagine a big bold folk in the road with a clear sign "go this way" we can even force a big move on ourselves but we always end up right here with ourselves doing what we are doing today. 

I use to think what happened to me was unique.  This is before I grew up and realized what has happened to me wasn't a direct result of who I am it is just life. During my own inventory I was able to see how the people I chose reflected the way I felt myself.  I have been able to see my own desperate need to find validation gave away my own power. Thinking that my own worth was based on whether you loved me if you do then I am lovable but if you don't then I am not. 

I did have to change in order to love myself the way I wanted to be loved. I had to give up the dependence I had on the opinions of others. I now have to face everyday what scares me even if that is the story I have about each piece of junk I have in my garage. They represent the past which makes me think about how I got here and the people I have lost.  

Taking an inventory of "my stuff" spiritually and in this case physically gives me the chance to see where I have been and what I am now willing to let go of.  I can make space for something new or I can just make space to just breath. 

Spaces

After writing yesterdays post I wanted to look at something else. I spent my day off watching TV and one of my two favorite movies. I tried not to judge myself about it my house needs cleaning blah, blah and more blah. So I was reflecting on my lost day and this is what came to mind. Spaces, when you hang art in a gallery the vacant spaces are just as important as the art displayed. Without a place for the eye to rest there is too much distraction to appreciate the art displayed.

So this is what I am going to consider Monday as space, space for me to rest a moment and step back so I can see the other parts of my life more clearly.