and suddenly summer has passed

Always asked every year, where did the time go? Finally I got up the energy to push things out of the hallway and into the garage to go through. I have a few friends to thank for that. Starting with one who nags at me to put a studio in the garage and the other person because they want to keep discussing something that happened decades ago, so I need to check mydiaries to get the right quote from back in the day. That sounds so funny and it is. But whatever motivates. I suspect that I shall be writing more about how this shall get underway.

time travel

Looking back at my diaries, I came away with the feeling of having travelled and made impressions while fully aware of moving on.It felt as though very little time had passed, although so much indeed has. As I look forward, I am optimistic about the things that I plan. I still have so much that I long to do. There is also a sense of having been a survivor.I am wiser, sadder, happier...you name it.I am here.

existential thoughts

What I was feeling while my two friends talked shop was the feeling of being close to where I would like to go and better. The last time this was the case I was in Glasgow. In my field there are millions of people hoping and for successes of all kind. One of the conversations I had with my friend was the fact that the Arts in our country is not affixed to activism and should be, This has resonated with me because a lot of my work is hinged in it. It is sort of strange to be in such an orbit...I want my work to be seen. I want to make more work and of course I want it to sell well and to create a legacy. I had that usual wobbly feeling of where am I in the context of this experience where it seems that the two parties are successful and uber aware of where they are going, and I am a bystander to it all, so I feel weird. I was talking with a friend the day before about women in our profession...where are the exceptional ones in terms of powerful work.

So much was learned today.It began with a very different and good experience with the hairdresser who did a home visit. Her perspective on a variety of subject matter was refreshing and informative. Then I decided to go for a new look, I have not done that in ages! I went out later with two friends and at first I began to feel a bit intimidated as they were talking a lot of shop. But then I decided that I was not part of the conversation by chance.One of the things being spoken about was the challenges associated with getting work sold. We then left his shop and went to a restaurant that I have always liked, but had not been to in years. We had very invigorating conversation. I ended up telling my friend that yet again we needed to do what we were discussing as a podcast.Now written it doesn't sound remarkable...but I know that my mind felt massaged and illuminated today.

post, post

I am back. I am refocused. Thank you.

Different day

Unlike the last few days, I am fresh faced and bushy tailed. I am smelling the roses and seeing the horizon as past the hurricane. I got here through patience and that old optimism. As Dane Cook the Comedian said in one of his acts, after crying your eyes out you have to get better again. This is so true. Today I can write that I am now focused as I was doing before the crisis and triggering.

A word came to me as I was about to go to bed last night. That word was dissatisfaction. I feel that most of the time. I believe that that was one of the things that connected my ex husband and I as a mentor of ours had said to me decades ago. He said we were tied by misary. When he had made that statement, I was naturally offended.At the time he was my boyfriend, and I listened to his story with an ear of wonder and wanting to comfort him. But now, I see that connector. I see it because I am always at odds with myself. I cannot recall a time where I was satisfied with myself fully. I am also so conscious about everything to do with me. The way that I look. What I say. How I feel. I worry constantly about putting the right foot forward in a conversation. What happened last week really set an example for me to be more mindful of and challenged everything that I think that I am. This year I have also had a moment where I questioned whether I should just quit my field! I was just overwhelmed and devastated by the constant juggling to make ends meet. Even as I write right now, I know that I shall not ultimately achieve what I set out to in my psycho-analysis because I am writing from within a framework of so much bias and hurt that the most I can expect is to observe this and to do my best to do better. Does dissatisfaction help propel me forward? Perhaps? It has its advantages. Without it I may become so set in my ways, so comfortable that I might not strive to do better.

one more thing

after all of that griping, there is a sense of resiliance. There are no guarantees. I am proof of that. But also, there are no endings as long as you decide to change the story, the game, the thinking...whatever you want to call it. At my age, I can look back and remember what I was thinking when I was starting out. I can see how I put my footing. How I dealt with failure aplenty. I cannot then say that that is all that I am if I am truthful. I am way more than a one act. I feel down today and I will feel down again. But guess what, even within the down the up is always somewhere close.

...and so...

As I take care of myself, I take a moment to mull over the statement...TAKE CARE OF MYSELF. I sometimes find myself quite moved by someone saying 'I' or 'Me.' It sounds so poignant to me. I marvel at the self possession of those pronouns. It tells me that there is a nurtured side to all of 'us'. Here we are, in this world at this time and 'we' believe that we are who we identify ourselves to be and we use a simple monacher to make it clear. I almost want to walk alongside a person and say 'we' and 'I' to their 'we' and 'I'. As 'I' too. It is delightful. It is an assurance in an unassured world. But, going back to what started this very longpost...in my trauma and my reaction to my friend/colleague...I had a flash back as well as a gradual coming forward, and in coming forward I was a bystander to myself. I saw how I react to certain things. I saw how I was wrong, or oblivious at times. It all felt as though my naivity was only a few years old instead of decades of my existance. Young, yet old...knowledgeable yet absolutely clueless. I can always cut others some slack...myself...not at all. I do this because I want slack cut for myself. Today I even felt weary about putting yet another desire into the world. I find that I ask for a hundred and I get like one percent. It is said that you must shoot for the moon to get that one hundred. So I wondered about whether my mindset is the cause of my one percent? It has to be? When I see so much success coming from everyone else around me, it has to be me who never got the rule book or memo or hints. ...but again...I am going down another road that I cannot navigate today. So I shall leave the footnotes here for another time. This may most likely read like a seesaw. I am up and then I am down, and this is what I am trying to come to terms with, this war with myself. These 'people' who are having all of their wild successes...I think that they just set their intentions and things work. I don't think that I cannot do that too. I just have to not be so splintered...too much of my resources are being used. I am heamorriging as it were. I must conserve my energy for the things that can benefit me. I am too drained...I cannot be of my best when I am doing so many things trying to make ends meet and none of the ends are catching....that's it for now...I wrote a lot, and I have much more to consider...but for now...this is what I have to type here.

alighting

What can you do when you feel disappointment with yourself? You can say, I will try again. As I stated in the last entry, a relative of mine is a good example to me regarding how to climb out of the hole. Yet, I am now faced with other holes. There are things that I confront every day. Exhausting things.Things that I wish I could shake off and laugh at. But the effort to ignore them ...and that's just it...ignore suggests to me to pretend that I don't see them. Again, that trauma from childhood worked itself very well into my psyche...that sense of failure...that belief that I was just no good! It made a permanent stain on me. But I was also lucky because I found early successes too. I had some very strong moments that I pulled out of myself. I am writing this morning to remind myself of that part of me...and I also remind myself that I was having a conversation on day two of said volanteerism about being mindful of one's confidence, one's strength...cultivating a sense of wonder and acceptance of who you are and all that is possible through you is key. I think that that is my saving grace. I also said that acknowledging the sides of myself that I struggle with that I just don't like...like the tantrum throwing...it came about because that is also me. When people say, 'that's not me.' To me that is always absurd. Of course it's you! It is very you. I cannot accept myself and ignore the parts that make me feel that my veneer is slipping. I am ugly, I am cranky, I am stupid, I am lazy, I am a lot of things along with brilliant and kind and funny and charming. So, I was done in by my absolute acceptance that I was worhtless in the eyes of other children or authority figures who judged me.But I also deflected the blows by sensing that those words could not hurt me. I was way more than those words could dent. I am never to forget that. It is only that sometimes, that old gramophine plays and its dented melody scrapes across my emotions and leaves a whiff of doubt and fear and I sometimes don't feel that I am nimble enough to remind myself of better, and that comes about when I am so high in my thoughts about getting to the finished line only to see the horizon change on me. So, yeh, I act as one would expect...I rail, I weep! I throw a tantrum! I have said to my students. it is ok to throw a tantrum. To scream and cry and say it is unfare. But it is not good to live there. PART 5

the void or avoid

This lack of belief or confidence or whatever it is that creeps up on me as a mascot for failure that I accept as fact has worn me down. I know all too well that thinking on what isn;t working only continues to give you more of the same. But this morning, I want to turn around and fight that monster and kill it for good! I have a dear relative whom I am fortunate to see this similar architype in. I have seen her tie herself in knots to make decisions.I have seen her be wishy washy and taken advantage of. She is the most beautiful, kind and wonderful person I know, and I can see from her that when she is in her moments where people ...including me, are not leaning on her for support. she can flourish. It is her very supportive ways that do her in every time. It is her wanting to be agreeable, wanting to help, wanting to please others that gets her in a place where she has to forego being herself. I see it becuase that tantrum I mentioned before had a lot to do with me overextending myself yet again. I can't seem to find one thing to pursue, excel at and be richly rewarded. My mind starts out with one task and then I splinter off into many directions trying to be all things to all people and mastering none. I have even found that sometimes I want to quit a conversation in the middle. Not because I know what the other person is going to say...but because what I am going to say is so shallow and stupid! What I mean by that is, I am paying lip service to a conversation that brings no solution to the topic...no change for the better...It is just me making small talk...even if I do have solutions I know that they are not going anywhere because the other person isn't going to make any adjustments either! Now to be fair to myself...I do think about ways I can take steps that I discuss. I do. I do try! I do splinter myself off to ponder and even act. But I splinter myself off so much that I also get nowhere because my efforts are only from me...so I really don't see any reward, any improvements after all my posturing! Now that is a hopeless statement I am giving about myself. But perhaps I should confront it. I do all of these things, thinking that I am making a good difference. But I am no better off for it. The hole that I am digging here is falling back on my head...I may be going too deep in the wrong direction...but this morning I want to peel back all the layers of this onion and get to the bottom of what is going on with me. So this is now....PART FOUR

see the hole

It is also easy to do what my ex-husband would do, believe that he was striving so very hard and others were reaping the successes and not him. I am glad for the example right now because it shows me the absurdity of that feeling. Of course it is easy to believe. But it sin't the truth. As I stated before, I instantly went back to a past when my world felt absolutely shattered. I also realised that I also had to confront all of the work that I thought all this time that I was doing to be better than that. to have 'gotten' over being sensitive and shattered and feeling like a victim and sorry for myself. But then again, I have always had a small compartment in my mind that believes that all I can do is shrink those feelings, never really get rid of them and the reason being....repeat above....if only this or that would work out....I could feel better about where I am going. All of this is exhausting. But it is also my belief. My life. My way of seeing through my eyes. I come to my online diary this morning because I want to make sense of all of this as much as I can. I only know that I just have to do something for myself here. Approaching issues in my life with old tools is not working. I think that getting these feeling out of my head...clearing the decks, is the way for me to go. Being at war with myself is a defeat. PART 3

the shovel

I decided that it went way back. Particularly when later in the evening, when the whole volanteerism was winding down, my friend changed the arrangements we had earlier that day. All of a sudden he was suggesting that my daughter get a lift with another colleague or with her friend who showed up about an hour after my tantrum. This about face was so startling that my daughter and I had a greater conversation about it. I discussed my tantrum with her, told her what I felt was going on with me and now ...this weird situation. After making me feel somehow in the wrong and telling me things like we are doing this for the project and yadda, yadda, yadda...he was very glib about changing up plans and not taking anyone else into consideration! He did apologise to me later, but it made me feel icky about it! I thought, here we go. I am beholden to another person here! Why are things this way? I had every reason to feel like that because this is the second volantary thing that I am doing when it would feel so much damn better if I were being paid! The spiralling was at the tip of my tongue or gut...I was a ball of trauma waiting to erupt, yet, as he dropped me home, I began to snap out of the sense of discomfort and confusion and then as I was getting into the house my mother made a comment to me that started out so wonderfully...she mentioned when I was in college and told me that she recalled me coming home for a weekend. I was feeling great hearing the recollection and then just like that, she punctured my baloon by saying fifteen, twenty pounds lighter! That stabbed at my heart so hard! I called up my daughter, she had arrived home and everything was good. I knew that she'd be fine, it was just that I do not take things for granted. Then, I got online because the same friend had sent some images to me from the volanteerism and I saw in full color those fifteen to twenty pounds of myself standing from the back and sides! It knocked the wind out of me. My baloon is in my gut and not my head! Lol. I can't do both. I can't feel both mentally and physically poor? That makes me laugh! I am crying and laughing! Today it was just a lot. I felt that my structure, sense of self, my confidence ...whatever makes me feel stable, was being rocked and crumbling. But, I also did not feel that I was somehow being annihialated because of it. Somehow, by gods grace, I intuited that I was also being moved to know something else. When I used the word trauma in connection with the exchange between my colleague/friend and I, I knew that it ran deeper than the moment. It took me back to when I didn't feel in any way in control of my life. I find myself stating many times, if only this or that had worked out...I would be feeling better about what I do next. PART 2

the year of digging

Remember the intervention I was part of on my birthday? Well it seems that I have now added some new discoveries to that awkward confrontation. But this time it came from me. Today I had a tantrum and it was a public one. I don't remember the last time that I had one, apart from when I was married. This was caused by overextending myself on the one hand. I walked into a conversation between two people, my daughter and a colleague/friend of many years. He and my daughter kid each other all the time. So the conversation that they were having involved a third party and my daughter was saying that she can't rely on her friends all the time. You see we were all volanteering at a place where getting others to help had proven to not work out. in fact as I write this, many people who are also involved in our ngo didn't show up or help either coming to think about it. Anyway,they were talking and I intervened because I had something to add. At first I was generalizing and then I was empathizing and then I was justifying. My friend said something about the person, my daughter's friend who had offered to show up, a number of statements, like...what kind of firneds do you have? My friends would never say that they are coming and not show up or call...to maybe she's left her house and is on her way and had some calamity happen to her. This is where things turned strange. I was suddenly called into the conversation by being told that I need to call her parents to find out if she is ok. My daughter had already made it very clear that her friend was being dropped by her father and was not coming on her own. But my friend kept insisting that I do something about it! He was so insistant that I began to feel pressured by it. He was not listening to my saying that her father was bringing her. Somehow I found myself stamping my feet and getting very irritated by the conversation. I ended up relenting, calling the parents....the friend of my daughter's had overslept, was absolutely safe at home and her mom agreed to have her come down and volanteer. I then decided to 'fix' the whole discourse by apologizing, stating that in the future I would handle the whole thing differently and still could not catch a break. This whole scenario sounds kind of silly, but in the moment it was furthest from silly and closest to a traumatic encounter for me. I had to take many steps back about what the hell is going on with me? My first thought was to defend my daughter's friend's absence. Then, I felt that my professionalism was being called into question! Then I felt sleep deprived and just weather worn...I had started the last two mornings getting up very early and doing two loads of laundry by hand because the washing machine isn't working and getting the repairman to fix it is turning into some sort of Kafkaesque drama! I realised that I am also very stressed and have no time to process all that is happening. But, I was not satisfied with thinking that that was all. I don't normally behave like that. Why was I feeling so peeved? So triggered? PART 1

recent bad mind turns good

Recently I agreed to do some work for someone based on another job that I am doing for the group that I am part of. I am being paid for it, so I assumed that the request was for something reasonable. NOTE TO SELF: Always ask about the job in every detailed form!!! I ASSumed that the document was a small one. It wasn't. It turned out to be a hundred page book! I did it for free! I didn't expect to, but here I was! Notwithstanding, the person asking was making all sorts of contorted faces about having no money etc,etc..anyway...yesterday, my mom and my daughter were tag teaming about what happened. They both were very concerned that I had found myself in that predicament and wanted to literally shake me. I felt the usual sense of embarressment and worthlessness begin to creep into my mind, then something interesting happened. I observed everything instead. I listened and I saw and felt how I was feeling. I was able to have a sort of outer body experience about the whole thing, and while there, I asked myself not only how I was feeling, but that the usual feeling was not one that I was choosing to accept today. Instead I asked myself how can I change this outcome in the future? How am I going to act the next time someone wants to get something free or for cheap from my expensive working ass! Lol!

Getting on with it

It is one of those things where after such a long time, and by this I mean decades of doing things with the play of common thoughts...you reach moments where the record shifts and changes its rhythm. You stop believing everything you think and thank god for that. You also stop considering anyone elses constant verbage that rhymes with garbage btw! Opening up thoughts to words like...suppose or what if is so excillerating!But one of the very big things learned this year came from a friend. He and another friend of mine met through me, and proceeded to have a good relationship. This went on until he pushed his luck with her goodwill. He literally pushed into her privacy and thought that his folksy nature could heal all ills. She was pissed and gave him the back the devil kneeds. (I think that that is the phrase?!) Anyway, she talked to me about him and he talked to me about her...and I was particularly not up to hearing any side! But nonetheless, there I was trying to appease them both.When he started going on and on, I realised something quite big. He was already past the situation. He had come to terms with the fact that they argued. He saw it as a tiff. I felt in my mind that she was taking it way further and feeling way angrier than he realised. I asked with trepidation...but suppose she doesn't want to make up with you? Suppose that this is it? He replied, nah, and if it is, I will always be ok with her. With that, I came to the most unexpected conclusion. So what? SO what is the big revelation? Yes, so what is a big, big deal! It is a big deal because I have always been of the persuasion that sometimes you can't go back. You can't blow something up and expect that it can come back together. It is not an unrealistic view. However, with his actions and words, I saw that sometimes when you blow up the bridge, it can blow up. it can slinter into a million pieces and you can be alright. It can be appropriate. It can be all that smoke and noise and then it can and does calm down and life hasn't ended. Waw! So many times when something that you hold on to inevitably breaks apart. It just does, and many times, it is the breaking apart that creates the growth that is so necessary for all involved.