August 5, 2009 - secret entry
I’m noticing a shift - I can actually feel the fact that I'm holing up (for the sake of writing) while remaining positive about the possibilities.
And it feels good - even with the ups and downs a big writing project triggers. This year is my window and I must use my time effectively (she says to herself bravely and repeatedly throughout the course of each day).
But that doesn't necessarily mean everyone understands. It's something they'll have to get used to.
The boys get it - they like the fact that my life doesn't just revolve around them. They’re practically guilt-free (very unusual when you have a reformed Catholic for a mother). As for my accountability partner? She’s even stricter than I am about this little experiment. Bless her Olympic trainer heart.
But other people just don’t get it and I can feel the cold shoulder even when it’s draped like a sofa cover. And ever notice the same people who tend to give you the cold shoulder when you’re trying to achieve something out of the ordinary are also the ones who regularly embrace drama in their lives? And eat it up? What would life be without drama?
Bloody awesome, that’s what.
So I've decided to limit my interaction with such folks - even though I love them - because I need to sustain this energy as long as I can - like the rest of my life. Lucky for me, that accounts for a very small percentage of people. Very small. Tiny. Almost insignificant. They’re like ants.
And besides, I don’t do drama. I’m more of a comedy person. Drama is so yesterday.
Ever notice how some people are at their best when they see you working too hard or suffering because you’re overwhelmed, or in physical pain- like from migraines? Not that they want to see you suffer. And to prove it they will offer you that leftover T3 from last year’s root canal and give you a glass of Chardonnay to down it. But to some extent - even with people you know love you - misery loves company and they’re way more comfortable if you’re all in the same boat.
And if they like to gossip and you don’t? They pull a disappearing act and vanish faster than a prairie dog that spots a hawk right before your eyes because there goes your common ground.
And if you call them on it like a ref at a soccer game? It’s over before you know it like a day at the beach or good sex.
That's the only part of this whole thing that's tricky. And it's becoming impossible to deny the fact that I don't want to live my life with any more self-imposed limitations and no amount of bitching about it is going to change that fact.
Only 'doing' does the trick. And that seems to alienate some people.
You can find way more company if you only talk about what you want to do and about what bugs you. And though I think venting is an important part of being a healthy person (cause that's what I'm doing right now), an excessive amount of it never gets anyone, anywhere.
So I’m limiting my bitch sessions to five minutes.
And time’s up.
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August 6, 2009 - Horoscopes and other necessities
Yesterday I did nada. Nada damn thing.
Except go to the gym where I hurt my knees because apparently it’s not a good idea to do knee presses using one leg at a time.
Whatever.
But today I’m on it. And check out my horoscope!
Aug 6th, 2009 -- Restless emotions could raise your anxiety level today, but they might also be accompanied by a fantastic idea that has the potential to change everything. Don't worry about the details yet. There's no need to be concerned now with whether or not your stroke of genius will even work. Just revel in the light of your own cleverness and imagine how a clean break from your routine might feel.
Does that rock or what? And I always ignore the negative aspects of a horoscope. As a matter of fact I pretty much ignore the negative side of most things unless of course my life would be at stake if I didn't.
Just look at the two Cap images I've uploaded here. Guess which one I think I am? It's all relative darlin'. Einstein was right. You see what you want to see, you feel what you want to feel, and by golly if you think life sucks then it does.
So as far as I’m concerned ‘restless emotions and anxiety levels’ are living somewhere in Oz. Matter of fact, I don’t even open my horoscope if the tag line reads something like, A dark cloud hangs over you warning of impending doom. Frak doom.
Ever hear the song “I feel lucky” by Mary Chapin Carpenter? In the lyrics she gets up in the morning and reads the paper:
It only took a minute for my finger to find, my daily dose of destiny under my sign... My eyes just about popped out of my head it said, ‘The stars are stacked against you girl, get back in bed’ (chorus)... I feel lucky... oh oh oh... i feel lucky.. yeah. No professor doom’s gonna stand in my way.... yeah, I feel lucky today....”
Needless to say she plays hooky from work and wins the lottery.
That's how I feel.
And I know what you’re thinking. For your information I didn’t scour the web for my horoscope (thus breaking my rule of no more surfing the net looking at dumb stuff).
It comes daily to my inbox.
And it’s darn good thing too. How else was I suppose to know that I must “revel in the light of my own cleverness”?
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It’s still August 6th and only 9 am.
I’ve already checked my email twice. This information diet is going to take some discipline. Rats.
The good news is, I’m writing. Which reminds me...
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Aug 7, 2009 - Please excuse my excuses & Freud was weird
I got some writing done.
Sort of.
I edited my book proposal, reworked my table of contents and thought about writing more on chapter six.
Yeah, the writing sucked.
Yesterday was a 5 out of 10 kind of day. (I never dip below 5 - it’s bad for morale).
But, I had a tiny bit of a (somewhat) valid excuse... gee, I feel guilty even saying that. (Jack would not be pleased). Gulp.
At this point, if Jack were headmaster at a school for wayward girls in England and I was his student, he would take out a riding crop and rap me across the knuckles with the venom of a psychotic jockey pissed at his thoroughbred for losing a race. NEVER MAKE EXCUSES! he would say, wearing that gorgeous navy jacket he wears on the cover of his book The Success Principles. (And yer welcome for the plug dude.)
It’s against the first rule of following your dreams which is: take 100% responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you from now on.
Which really is a nice way of saying - get off the pitty pot.
Okay Jack, I will. After I wallow a bit in these feelings wondering if I’m good enough.
‘Cause today, I was distracted by those pesky things called memories. And not the good kind. And those were triggered by dreams. And not the good kind either. And it matters not what the content was, or even what the memories were. Because I know that Jack is 100% right.
But the fact remains that even though you can deny, transmute, change, alter, even fix everything you knew in your past, sometimes when issues creep in (like they often do in your dreams), it temporarily paralyzes you from moving forward. And the worse thing you can do, is deny it.
Rather than ignore what you’re feeling, your best bet is to accept it, let it wash over you and do something completely different to shift your energy. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. But doing something physical or outdoors usually does the trick.
So I went to a soccer game. Then for gelati. (Lemon and raspberry). It was the bomb.
It’s damn hard for me to escape my dreams. I remember them all. Thanks to Freud.
When I was about 14, I started reading Freud. Not such a good idea since alot of his theories revolve around subconsciously wanting to have sex with your parents. I couldn’t look at them for months after that. The sick bastard. “He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire” (thank-you Wikipedia).
In any case, use what is useful and discard the rest right? So I discarded that part. But, he was pretty good at interpreting dreams using archetypal images and I for one, learned how to do that. He also taught a method for waking yourself up at night so you could write them down and proceed to analyze them in the morning. (And hopefully they weren’t all about wanting to have sex with your parents).
What he didn’t say was if you did this enough times (it took me about three months), pretty soon you wouldn’t have to wake yourself up but you’d remember your dreams anyway.
It’s like hitting the pause button on your dvd player because you want to get some Chubby Hubby chocolate covered pretzel ice cream with caramel and nuts before you get to the best part of the movie.
I can do that. With my dreams I mean.
I put my dreams away into a memory box that I can retrieve later for analysis. As a result? My sleeping moments are as full as my waking ones. That’s not always great. Sometimes sleeping wears me out. Especially those dreams where I’m Rambo.
And like I said, the content is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how quickly you learn to process that crappy feeling so you can get back to what you’re suppose to be doing. And that process is different for everyone.
You know what happens to me? My arms get heavy. They feel like lead. And I sigh alot. And when people ask me if I’m okay because my eyes look glazed over, I say “yeah yeah, sure sure” like some broken record.
Then, I usually try to ignore it and do some work. But that NEVER works. And if I’m smart enough to figure it out before bedtime, I can get rid of it pretty fast. Then I can get back to the business of being alive instead of a zombie.
Today, it took me about five hours to shake it off even after soccer and gelati. But I was good to go when I got home.
And that was good enough for me. Sometimes it has to be.
Part of this process is about being human.
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