What it takes

So I did the usual this morning, I got up and stayed in bed and gave thought to what I am going to do next. I worked myself up into a lather following my wild thoughts around and it was fun. I focused on a project that I shelved so long ago, I cannot recall when I first came up with it. What I do know is that it is still viable. I am looking at forming my studio like I'd planned to. All of my plans culminate in a space in which to work. This entry is just my preamble. Lol.

new year/new work

The world seems completely out of control. If I believed in it, I would agree with the doomsday sayers that WE ARE IN THE LAST DAYS....All of Australia is on fire. Donald Trump and the nation of Iraq are staring each other down, not budging about impending World War III and it is not even mid January 2020.I am grateful for one of my favorite sayings...when nothing is promised...everything is possible.. That brings we some reprieve. Also, after always being terrified of what can happen next, there comes a time amazingly enough, that fear becomes the charge by which all actions can spring in a good way. By terror being fed everywhere to everyone all of the time, one can say, oh, it's like the landscape, familiar and a bit distant, but I could easily touch part of it. I will not be doing my usual work this semester. I found out a few hours ago when I checked the schedule. This means that I have the opportunity to do all of the projects I set out for myself. It also means that there is no more time to be unsure about my next steps. I am excited and I am terrified at once. I am so glad that terrified no longer feels the way it used to. I know to take everything one step at a time and all will be well. The other day I was thinking about my life and I got to a stage where everything just felt so heavy. There seemed to be a huge map before me of confusing steps and mis-steps. I had to tell myself that my musings were unfair to me...what was the purpose of focusing on everything with regret?All of my life has not been a waste. Slowly, I perked up as I thought about my child and experiences that mean a great deal to me. Eventually, even the things that have made me doubt and question did not seem only about pain, but about growth too. I am such a solitary person that ever so often I am reminded that I experience the life of the hermit...I have a great deal of time with my thoughts. I think that I spend more time with myself than with any other person. That of course is a factor in the judgements I place on myself. PERSPECTIVE...is everything.

what you resist persists

How many times have I read that whatever you want in life you must embody it first?A ton of times!Now that I take my emotional and energy temperature all the time, my eyes are opening wider and wider. I see when I experience conflict in others, the importance of letting them speak, so I can see where they are coming from and what they are saying and not saying. I now am able to onserve without feeling that I need to fix their problem. I also know now how to not absorb their anxiety. What has been interesting too is observing where I connect or attract a particular energy. My mother and I had a funny incident that proves this. She bought a large container of milk with a screw cap and I kept it to put n the kitchen cupboard. usually I know that she doesn't keep them because we do try to keep plastics, but we just can't keep everything for re-use. So she saw it and told me that she was throwing it away. I took it up and stashed it in the laundry room next to the iron. Hours later, she's back from the super food market and has two large containers of the same milk. They are joined together by a hard plastic ring like the kind you see for six pack beer. She is able to push one open, but the other one gives her trouble and the black clasp to open the milk breaks off and is nowhere to be found. What does she need? She needs the cover of the milk container I felt somehow compelled to keep...but she has thrown it away in the trash. We had a good little chat about intention, hunches and blind faith. That made us feel a sense of spiritual support from that experience. I have had this also happen with other little things, like taking too many paper towels in the morning and then realising that I need it for something completely unrelated, or someone needed one. Those little moments of kismet are beautiful to behold. Everything feels like it has lined up and that your intelligence is way greater than you actually give yourself credit for. If only you would tune everything out all of the time and focus squarely on the natural rhythm of the world!Perhaps I have to confront what I receive, more. I have so many moments where I could have acted, but chose to decline. I know that I am improving. Once upon a time I would have pycho-analyzed everything I just wrote. On yet another note, I had a situation happen yesterday where I met an old colleague. I had not seen him in a few years. I had gone to the pharmacy with my aunt. I saw him first and approached to wish him all the best for the new year. He was so rude and obnoxious, thinking he was being complementary and ...I suppose clever. It was horrendous. I told him point blank that he was being mean, but he just kept up his onslaught until I finally made an escape. I have to note that I had a similar odd energy from a guy I paid to drop me to and from on or before New Years Eve. It is as though the person doesn't like me. They don't wish me well, but they are attracted to me. I am thinking that after all of tis time there is something in that sense of rejection. Attracting rejection...I used to be loathe to be in a situation where someone showed that they didn't like me. I can recall one or two experiences where I was bullied, and the person, a bigger girl terrified me in primary school. But with that guy at the pharmacy, I heard everything he said and I had the best reaction I could not have imagined in the moment....I said to myself, I don't care what he thinks or says. This certainly isn't about me at all. I stepped back from all the trash he was spilling. Earlier that day, I was not feeling one hundred percent about myself. I was doing the negative self talk, but by the time we were on our journey my mood lightened. Clearly, that person picked up on it and matched his with mine. I believe that that is why so many of us believe in bad luck, karma or black magic. The body reacts long before the mind processes the pros and cons of a situation. What I really love about the way that I think now is that I know that I do not have to believe everything I conger up. I don't have to believe everything that I think. I don't have to imagine that someone is talking about me negatively...it doesn't matter if they are, that is their right and none of my business. Even if I am the worst person someone can encounter, as long as I am minding my own truth, my own concerns and not pushing my emotions on others...that's what matters. I have never understood why anyone feels that they have to have other people to be able to be at their best. However, as much as I enjoy my time, I do miss my best friend...gone a decade now! How absurd is that! Ten years in a few months... I do miss my ex- husband as well sometimes. I have decided to confront all of the things I cringe about and find my way to the other side. if I don't do that, I will just be making a bigger deal and building a threat to myself that I will then have to deal with. Right now, my desire is to focus on my very,very best.

seeing double

I had my first day back doing my exercising and was graced with a fantastic sight of a full rainbow and three-quarters of a second one above the first to nearly equal chromatic splendor. It felt as though I was walking inside a film set. It was perfection! The year has begun with a sleepy, quietness that cannot last, but is deeply appreciated.

A new decade approaches. To look at my life in terms of ten is something I have never considered doing. However, if I give myself a moment, then it feels like a progression to mark my personal growth that way. The next decade...hmmmm...all one knows is that you know nothing (John Snow) you want to afford the future. You want to be healthy, happy and confident that life has given you more successes than losses.All of a sudden life seems so damn fast. It is as though I cannot keep up ,and I am being pushed along with the crowd. More than ever I am conscious about taking care of my thinking... I have to work on maintaining a good attitude about things. I cannot go through life using my thinking to perpetually hash up the past. I cannot live there. I am now also finding myself asking what is happiness? I don't have to be constantly entertained? Solitude is very enriching to me. After a year of uncertainty for a large part of it, and watching people plot and scheme to insinuate themselves into positions, I am entering the next decade with a shift in my focus of what matters to me and how I am going to work now. A dear friend very kindly told me that what I experienced is not as uncommon as it feels.I just felt let down and tired...overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. The situation I realized was a wake up call. I can be doing other things, and that's the direction I will be taking.

Devastated

Over the last month my family and I have been faced with coming to terms with the swift yet slow, painful death of my mothers youngest sister. One year ago she was diagnosed with Liver Cancer. From then on we all formed a group for prayer and support. My middle Aunt finally travelled to see her a few months ago. We have been communicating with them all of the time, and as they news became more and more bleak, we spoke hourly. and then half hourly and then fifteen minutes apart. We have been devastated by this death. My Aunt was never ill. She had retired from Nursing, and was one of those people who was always so conscious of her health. She ate organic stuff before it was even popular to do so. I shall be writing about what her death means to me for a long time to come. ............

debris

I was speaking with my mother a few days ago and I was telling her that she and dad brought us up to feel very optimistic and confident about the world. I internalized everything as terrifying though, and very early my sense of perfection coloured how I viewed my own efforts. I believe that only now do I feel the confidence that came from theorizing things, Life and experiences gave me a sense of the pessimism I expected. I see it in others too. I think it comes from a number of places. Internally from family experiences, but also from what you are listening to and reading at home and then hearing from people in and around your family, including Teachers and aquaintances. I think that the subtle self talk and ambient noise of the world can settle like silt at the bottom of your consciousness and get stirred up whenever another type of stress gets to you. It is a constant struggle. I have written here over the years of looking in on the lives of people I know and of strangers, observing the knowing smiles, the everyday normality of a hug, a good talk producing laughter, a parent lifting a child into the air, and wondering about the fragility I felt at being on the other side of that. I asked myself many times what was it about me that was leaving me feeling as though my world of happiness had been blown up and I was sitting in the debris. I was sitting in it. Most definately. My mind was sitting in it, trying to find the horizon that shone through it. I kept asking myself, when would I become friends with the only person I could not ignore? When would I just trust myself all of the time? When would things someone said off-handedly not wound me and leave me in a ball of pain? When would I take up those great moments of confidence as a permanent battle cry? Then, very, very slowly I saw myself as a person for real. I saw that I will have moments of doubt, of setback, of pain, of confusion...but it would not have to hang around me like a bad smell. It is life happening, and I am inside it and part of it and I am a shard of that energy and refraction and reflection and I am right where I need to be.