Category Archives: self improved

When skin gets thin

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I cannot change the moods or the behavior of others.  I can only control how I let those moods and behaviors affect me.   Today, however, was a glowing example of how that ideal can radically fail.

If I were superstitious, today would have been my Friday the 13th.  My black cat was the neighbors dog, who, first thing this morning, managed to soil, not one but, two pairs of my shorts on my way to work.  The ladder I walked under was the exit door from my house.  And the broken mirror was the negativity that continued to rain throughout the day like the shards of glass falling from that broken mirror.

I am usually very thick-skinned.   Most of the time I can deflect negativity and remain blissfully unaware of the antagonism that tends to eddy in the normally calm waters of my life.  But the vortex of that disapproval became too much.  I, without my life-preserver, was pulled under and was out of breath.

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A little positive reinforcement can go a long way.  As an adult with a great deal of life experience under my belt, I know life is unfair and the wheels can fall off the bus at any given second.   But to focus solely on the loose lug nut that made the wheel come off is negating the safe driving before that wheel fell off and the work that the bus driver had to do after its liberation to safely get that bus to the shoulder of the road.

Thick skin can actually be quite tenuous and a little praise goes a long way.   If criticism is deserved, than criticism should be administered.  But if praise is deserved, it should be just as easily passed from the lips of the people who need to say it to the ears of the people who need to hear it.

Embracing the sum of my parts

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I’ve learned a few invaluable truths over the last four (plus) decades of my life.  Each stage our lives requires a different version of ourselves.   We grow, we adapt and we transform.  Slowly and steadily we become the person we need to be for the next phase of our lives and, perhaps without knowing it, we evolve into the person we need to be to acquaint ourselves with the person we shall finally become.

I can look back at my life and recognize the divisible parts of myself, the bits that have led to the present sum of who I am today.  I may still resemble a modicum of those versions of myself but the me now compared to the me then are vastly different people.

Through each chapter of the syllabus of me, I have gained a confidence that I only once professed to have.  I have finally gotten to the point in my life where my opinion matters, if to nobody else than, to myself.  I have reaped the rewards of struggle and adversity.  I have calmly assumed a new sense of who I really am and I am very selective with the friends allowed behind my strategically built walls.

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At this stage in my life, I have truly become the sum of my parts.   I have taken the best bits of myself, learned from and discarded my errors in judgment and created the person I am now.

Would I change anything from my past?  Perhaps.  But if all of those equations – the fractions of time, the roots of my problems, the addition or subtraction of friends and family – meant that I would not be who I am today, I would probably answer all of the test questions the same way so I could calculate the same remainder.

 

 

I am my mother’s daughter

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Admittedly, I am a creature of habit.  I am predictable to a fault and I enjoy the lack of spontaneity in my routine.  It is how I am comfortable and it is how I live my life.  But recently I have done and said a few things that make me look at myself in the mirror and think “who are you, and what have you done with the real me?”.

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As my mother used to say, I was once a girl who wouldn’t say shit if her mouth was full of it.   But somewhere along the path that has carved its way through my life, thankfully I have learned to be much more vocal when it comes to standing up for myself.  I used to let emotions fester under the surface, bringing themselves to a boiling point before I finally exploded from the pressure of not dealing with things as they happened.  I am no longer that person.

I’m not sure if I have slowly developed an unseen confidence over the years or if I am simply sick of feeling like my opinions don’t matter.  Whatever the reason, I truly appreciate my newly found voice.  Perhaps it is a wisdom that really does come with age.  Or maybe there comes a time in everyone’s life that you just realize the stress of keeping things to yourself just isn’t worth it.

Whatever the reason, I’m going to hang on to this new part of me and let it free the old me who was afraid to speak up.  It may take a while to expunge the record of my reticence, but I’m willing to do it one comment at a time!

 

The Devil finds work for idle hands

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The Devil may have toyed slightly with my resolve as I lay in bed yesterday morning, reluctant to put my feet on the cold floor, but I slipped out of his grasp as I began my day and didn’t give myself a moment for a second thought.

I have never been an idle person.  Sure, I went through moments of lethargy and reluctance as a teenager, but who didn’t?  Yesterday was a glaring reminder of that part of myself, that stubborn fragment of my psyche, that doesn’t allow me a full day to just be passive and enjoy watching life go by.

If I were being honest, I would have to admit that I enjoy being busy.  And thankfully I have many hobbies that I can choose from that can occupy a significant part of my day as well as the daily and weekly chores that come with living on my own.

Among the housekeeping and maintenance duties that come with being a home owner, today I finally finished a project that helped me feel like I fully restored the identity I had before I was married.  My new sign at the end of my driveway, painted by me, proudly displays the family name I was born with and am proud to reclaim once again.

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Yesterday the Devil realized his time is better spent elsewhere.  The house is clean, the floors are mopped, the shopping is done, the dump run was completed, two new soups were made, the dog was walked twice, the sign was painted and hung and I even had a few spare moments to watch some golf.  I don’t think I have to worry about my hands ever being idle.

 

Physics: The Laws of Motion, Part B, Subsection 2C

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I vaguely remember my high school Physics classes.  I’m sure I was busy writing a poem on the back of my binder or doodling my latest crush’s last name following my first name to see how they looked together.  I do recall a brief outline of Sir Isaac Newton’s law of motion saying something about an object at rest tended to remain at rest but the continuation of that class lecture began to sound more like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons and I lost the ability to follow along.

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There must have been a day in class that my head was so high in the clouds that I missed the fine print of Newton’s law that said: an object at rest for longer than six months will undergo much trauma and discomfort when it finally gets off its ass.

I’ll admit, apart from walking my dog a couple of times a day, for the past six months I have been quite sedentary.  This became glaringly obvious over this past weekend as I  crawled out of my cushy office life and breached the inner sanctum of our dining room and kitchen.  I don’t mind serving tables.  It gives me the wonderful opportunity to engage with our guests far beyond just checking them into their rooms.  My body, however, disagrees entirely with that philosophy.

I came home from work tonight with a sore back and aching feet, begrudgingly walked my dog and finally hobbled over to my couch.  My body turned, my back aimed towards the couch and I lowered myself to a more agreeable angle.  Similar to how my grandfather used to look getting into our Lazy boy recliner, I simply let gravity take over and allowed myself to fall the rest of the way on to the couch.  It wasn’t pretty but it got the job done.  Thankfully my arms and fingers did not take the brunt of my weekend activities or I would have been typing this post with a pencil in my mouth and banging the tiny eraser onto the letters of my keyboard.

Once I become acclimated to being an object in motion I will be fine.  Either that or I will be starting a Go-Fund-Me account to be able to afford an Indego Exoskeleton to keep me upright.  Either way, I have an afternoon off today and I will enjoying being an object at rest for a few extra hours.

 

Cut and dry

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Perhaps I spent too much time worrying.  After all, it wasn’t my problem but I couldn’t seem to stop ministering to his lack of self-control.  I care more than he ever did and in the end I divorced the bottle, not him.

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There’s a nap for that

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Most days our time is spent on routine tasks.  We get up, we have coffee, we prepare ourselves (and possibly a family) for the approaching day and we leave the house, or not, with confidence as we anticipate the next eight to twelve hours of our lives.  It seems like a standard operating procedure.

But life has a way of throwing a myriad number of curve balls into our otherwise predictable strike zone.  It can be exhausting trying to anticipate what is coming next.  By 3:00 pm, the wall looms directly ahead and we plow right into it.

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There is much to be said for getting to the point in your life that admitting an afternoon nap is acceptable.  It doesn’t make us old, it makes us smart.  If you can afford yourself a bit of a break, a 2o-minute power snooze has been proven to boost your energy level, your cognitive skills, your creativity and your memory.

So the next time your boss catches you catching some z’s at your desk, you can simply tell that executive figure that you are clearly increasing your productivity in the workplace.

How do you feel about an afternoon siesta?

 

It’s all over

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My dad was a staunch believer in always giving 100 percent effort.  His mantra played over and over in my head every time I wrote a test in school and every time I had to put any form of exertion into a task.

Somewhere along my journey through this life, that chant of success began to increase in volume and unwittingly seeped into every other aspect of my life.  Sometimes it felt good and other times it felt more like punishment.

I began to take most things to a new level.  And going overboard on simple achievements was just the beginning.  Realizing I couldn’t attain perfection led me into a pattern of over-eating.

When the over-eating became much more noticeable, I began to over-analyze and over-think everything about the problem instead of just recognizing it for what it was and dealing with it head on.

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Of all the things I do with the utmost intensity, over-thinking is the worst of them.  I cannot seem to let what will be just be.  My brain configures numerous scenarios, all with different outcomes, and will not stop when it should be satisfied.  There is always another possibility.  This is a fantastic gift to have when I am writing fiction but, when it comes to creating plot lines based on my reality, it is a detriment to normal productivity.

I expend a great effort each day to quell those thoughts.  I could take an issue so benign and have it twisted into something so distorted from its original form that it becomes a gnarled version of what it once was and something so far removed from what it ever should be.  If I could ever transfer these thoughts to pages of a novel, it would be quite the story.

For now, I will wait out the current situation that has me over-thinking.  I will listen to those little voices as they churn out ending after ending but when I reach the point that I eventually find out what will really happen, the wait will be over.

 

 

 

 

Has anyone seen my patience? I seem to have lost it.

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I used to be a very patient person.  I was never fidgety while waiting in a line.  I knew my turn would come eventually and I was okay with that.

As the years have passed, I now understand where my mother was coming from when she used to say  “my patience is wearing thin”.  Perhaps it is somehow a right of passage that we are less apt to wait today than we may have been a couple of decades ago.  My patience these days resembles something like the onion-skin paper we used to trace pictures when we were in high school.

There are still moments when I am okay to wait, moments that are fleeting and that I know will pass relatively quickly.  But I am currently caught in a circumstance where I feel completely helpless and have no choice but to sit back and wait for information to come to me.  I feel horribly powerless and that is not a feeling I am accustomed to experiencing.

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It’s hard to let go.  It’s difficult to convince myself that things are going well at the other end when my imagination continues to conjure hundreds of possible scenarios.  And my lack of patience only fuels the fire of anxiety as I am forced to bide my time until I get some news.

Until then, I shall consume myself with projects to try to keep myself busy enough so I can quell the even more impatient creative writers in my head.  My own restlessness is hard enough to deal with….they will make this waiting period intolerable.

 

 

Perched precariously on the fence

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This is a lofty spot,

this place where I find myself.

I am currently balanced for fear of falling,

but this is a spot I find hauntingly familiar.

There is no right or wrong,

only what is best for me.

And whatever side I choose,

wherever I decide to plant my feet,

that is the direction I was meant to follow.

I can only believe in my truth,

that I cannot make any progress in my life

without making the decision to pick a side.

And once that decision is made,

that fence will no longer seem like an obstacle,

but merely an arrow.

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