It will be worth it...

This year is flying by, and at the same time it is slow as molasses... It is already the last full week of March. A quarter of the year over. But I remember feeling, when the snow and ice and general unpleasantness were all around, it seemed that spring would never get here.

So far, it has been a crazy ride.  A lot of continuing drama and angst (I will be MUCH happier when it is over and done.) A new grandchild (Welcome to the world, Paris Kimball Thomas!) And some changes that have been a long time coming (health, writing, wardrobe, stuff...)

One change that has been very good, but difficult at the same time, is that I stopped working through the book The Right to Write that I mentioned in a previous post. Instead, a friend and I are going through  The Artist's Way by the same author (Julia Cameron). It is very similar, but much more in depth. And harder hitting. There are times I feel like she is peeling off my skin, layer by layer, without the benefit of anesthesia... It is forcing me to look at my life in a whole new way; to examine my motives and beliefs and desires. So, so hard! But I trust that, in the end, it will be worth it.

At the end of each Week (chapter), Julia has laid out Tasks to complete. Sometimes there are also activities to do within the chapter. Week 4, which I just completed, has a couple of these. One is fairly innocuous: four or five times she says to write down five things that fall under a heading that she gives you (an example would be "Five things you enjoyed doing as a child".) These are quick, don't think too hard about it, go with your first thoughts type lists. The second activity, however, is anything but innocuous. It is a challenge to take part in a Reading Depravation Week. Actually, however, it is a bit broader than the title suggests. No reading, email, social media, or tv for a week. When I first read this, I almost yelled "NO!" However, I refrained, and merely started breathing very quickly. I was so shocked that for a few moments I just reread the section a couple of times, sure I had misunderstood. However, I finally realized that I was correctly interpreting what she had written. As soon as I realized that, a thought hit me totally out of left field. "I understand what she is saying and why. And she's right..."

Her reasoning is that people (especially creative people who are just learning how to release their creativity) often fill their time with words to keep from having to acknowledge and live into the promise of this creativity. We read voraciously. We binge watch tv shows and indulge in movie marathons. We spend hours on social media and exchanging emails with people. None of this is bad in and of itself. But when it is used to hide from what's inside us needing to get out, it is not only bad, it is destructive. I can totally relate to this. I am guilty of this. Regularly. Her answer is to take a week and turn off all the extraneous stuff and spend time thinking and doing and getting in touch with your inner artist.

So, starting tomorrow (Thursday), I will be shutting it all down. No books, magazines or newspapers. No emailing or spending hours trolling through Facebook. No tv shows or movies. Instead, I am hoping to get my room straightened up and all the junk weeded through and outta there. I am going to spend time going through my clothes and paring down ruthlessly, saving only those things that I truly like and feel good wearing. (Google Capsule Wardrobe to get an idea of what I am trying to accomplish.) I am going to make some lists of things that I want and need to do to make my life more sane and joyful (including one with books I want to read in specific genres and on specific topics.) I am going to take a few walks around our neighborhood and maybe go check out what's new at the museum. And I am going to make a 30 day menu to help jumpstart the Whole 30 I am beginning on Monday the 6th. (You can Google that one, too.)

I know this isn't going to be easy. I will probably curse Julia Cameron more than once. I am already feeling the withdrawal pains (and at the moment I am on the computer writing a blog, for heaven's sake!) But, I know she is right. And in the end, again, I trust that it will be worth it.

See you on the other side...

Ugh...

Sick, sick, sick...

I woke up Wednesday middle of the night and felt like a Mac truck had run over me. So bad! It has been 48 hours and I am still not 100%, but on the mend.  I feel like the light at the end of the tunnel may actually be the sun and not the before mentioned truck...

Whatever this is, it has been running through our house. Grand kids, Mike, Paul, Katie, me. Yuck. 

That is all. Out of energy. Will try this again when I feel better.

Stay well, everyone. Stay well.

50 Things...

I am working my way through a book on writing named The Right to Write. It is by Julia Cameron. I have been enjoying reading her thoughts and working through the exercises at the end of each section. 

The most recent section I read is titled “Valuing Our Experiences”. The opening paragraphs say: “We do not see our size. We do not view ourselves with accuracy. We are far larger, far more marvelous, far more deeply and consistently creative than we recognize or know. We do not credit ourselves with what it is we can - and often do - accomplish. We are blind to our gifts; we are deaf to our voice.  We do not hear our magnitude. Why is this?” The exercise at the end of this section is to take a piece of paper and number from one to fifty. Beside each number we are to write something we are proud of about ourselves. She says this should take about an hour. Sounds fairly simple, right?

Wrong. Oh. So. Wrong. At the end of an hour I had 22 things written down. And, I had been sitting, stuck, for a few minutes by that time. I finally wrote this note at the top of the page: “This is a work-in-progress. It will take a while. I will add to it as I continue to live my life.” I am close to 54 years old and I couldn’t think of 50 things I am proud of about me. 

There are a couple of ways to look at or explain this. I could say that I haven’t done much to be proud of. Unfortunately, that is the way I see my life at times. Sometimes, I honestly don’t feel that I have accomplished much, especially when my life is considered in juxtaposition to others’.  But, even if there is some truth to this, I know it isn’t the whole truth. 

The second way I can explain this is that I have been consciously trained over the course of my life to think less of myself. This has been accomplished in a couple of ways. One is that I have been told by my parents (my mother in particular) that I am not enough. My mother wanted a boy and was disappointed when she had a girl. I was never pretty enough or thin enough or smart enough or hard working enough or compliant enough for her (and through her, for my father.) Through this “not being enough” I learned that I was not worth much, not valuable as a person. (I am not crying 'poor pitiful me' by saying this, and, my relationship with my mom and dad is better now. But the messages that I have received over the years are deeply embedded and have a profound impact on my thinking and beliefs about myself even now.) 

Another way I was taught to “think less of myself” is that, as an adult, I was involved for several years in a church that was diligent to teach/preach/press/exhort/etc. that we human beings are worthless. We are sinful and rotten to the core. We are worms. (We even sang a song that contained the line “that He would give His only Son for such a worm as I…”) There is NO good in us. We have nothing to be proud of and if we think we do, then we need an adjustment  in our thinking. It was extraordinarily debilitating to listen to this week after week. And, I didn't hear it only on Sundays, but also during the week at Care Group (weekly small group meetings) as well as in many casual conversations.  And, in case that wasn’t enough, if you lacked a Y chromosome (as I do), then it was worse. You see, women are worth even less than men. I’m not sure how one can be worth less than a worm, but women are. This church subscribed to the Patriarchal Society world view and taught and lived it diligently. 

This teaching from the church, added to my already low view of myself over the course of my life, has created a huge black hole where my valid feelings of self worth and self esteem and even self acceptance should be. It has brought me to the place where, tonight, I couldn’t even think of 50 things to be proud of about myself and my life. Now, you need to know that this wasn’t a totally new revelation that happened tonight. I have known for quite a while that my beliefs and feelings about myself are skewed and desperately need to be changed. The exercise from the book just brought it home in a forceful way once again.

I have been working diligently the past few years to correct these feelings and beliefs where they are wrong. and do something about them where they are right. I no longer allow my parents to speak into my life in such a way that it has the potential to hurt me. Our relationship is shallower now than in the past, but it is also much more pleasant and “doable” over the long haul. I am no longer in the church that was so toxic, but the roots from the teaching planted there are deep and I am still digging and pulling and chopping at them to kill them off for good. I am trying to be kinder and gentler with myself when the feelings of being worthless descend. (I try and look at whatever the situation is through the lens of truth and not past false teachings and messages.) And, I am trying to look at the future as an opportunity to live my life as I feel called to live it, not as someone or something outside of me expects me to. 

If I am able to do these things - to see myself accurately, to learn to listen to my voice (to no longer be deaf to it), and to be most concerned with fulfilling what I discern I am called to be and do - I will be able to live my life knowing that I have worth, and, will be able to look back at the end of it with few regrets. I truly want to come to the point in time when a page numbered one to fifty won’t be nearly enough space to write down all I am proud of about me and my life.

An Auspicious Day

Today is an auspicious day. It is one I am certain I will remember long after the sun has set. I know I will smile at the end of it. So, what is so special about today, you ask? Answer: we will have heat on the lower levels of our house before this day is done!

Yes, heat. The reason this is so wonderful is not just because it is chilly outside today and I would like to be warm when on the lower three levels of my house. (We have two zone heat which means that all the bedrooms on the top two levels are heated by a heat pump that is working just fine. The bottom three levels are heated by a gas furnace that is seriously falling down on the job.) It is not even just because it was cold last night and cooking dinner was an uncomfortable endeavor. No, it is because we haven't had heat on the lower three levels of our house since fall of 2013.

Last fall when it started getting colder and we realized we had a problem, we were really tight money wise. So we decided to suck it up for a while and make do. And we did. Then came the Polar Vortex. We lived in our bedrooms and the den which is on one of the lower levels and has a gas fireplace. We were cold, but decided we could tough it out. And we did. Then, when the weather was warmer and the heat not necessary, we basically forgot. You know, kind of like child birth, where you forget the pain and the work (and did I mention the pain?) And you don't remember how hard it is until the first contraction of your next pregnancy hits... Yeah, we were like that. No memory until this fall, when cold weather hit again. And it hit earlier than last year.

We had talked a couple of months ago about getting the furnace fixed. But it wasn't cold yet, and we had other things going on, so it didn't make it to the top of the To Do List. Then, the end of October it got cold. And in November, it got colder. By the time this month rolled around, I was getting cranky and was really tired of being cold. In addition, our middle daughter, Katie, and her boyfriend Paul, moved into the bottom level of our house. They have a couple of space heaters, but it is still chilly down there. And still way beyond chilly on the main level and the den level. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, we have a tri-level that kind of exploded. Five heated and cooled levels, well, usually heated anyway...)

So, I decided yesterday that it was time. Late in the afternoon I looked up the phone number for the HVAC guys and placed the call. They had closed 15 minutes earlier. I almost cried. I had decided it was time, and had begun to believe that we could have heat the next day (today). But they were CLOSED! I took a deep calming breath and set my alarm to remind me to call this morning. I woke up earlier than I intended, so I decided to call earlier. Within a half hour of their opening, I was on the phone. Fully expecting to hear that they were slammed today and it would be tomorrow at the earliest, I told the very friendly woman that our furnace wasn't working and then waited for her response, which was..."Let me tell Scott what is going on and see if he has any questions for you before he heads out to your house today." TODAY!!! Yes! Heat in the house by the end of the day!

I am a HAPPY person right now. Something as simple as heat is making me smile and want to do a little victory dance. So, as I finish writing this, I am preparing myself to brave the cold downstairs for hopefully one of the last times. A couple of Thomas's Cranberry English Muffins and a mug of Irish Breakfast Tea are calling my name. Of course, as soon as the muffins are buttered and the tea bag is in the mug with the boiling water, I will be hitting the steps to come back upstairs to my bedroom. I'm not going to hang out in the cold any longer than necessary. But tonight, for dinner, we might just all eat in the dining room. In the warm dining room. Assuming I can get the table cleared off...

Not Too Long Ago...

Well...
It's been over a year since I wrote my one and only post.
Over a year.
Only one post.
*sigh*

Not too long ago, if I had managed to find my way back to my blog, I would have been sorely tempted to just quietly shut it down and hope that no one ever mentioned it to me. I certainly wouldn't  mention it to them. But, this isn't 'not too long ago'. This is now. And I have made some decisions since 'not too long ago'. One of those decisions is to write. So, I am writing...

I have decided to write regularly and to read and do activities that help me in my goal of writing more often and becoming better at it. One of the first things I am doing is working through the book The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. She is the author of the best selling book/program The Artist's Way which includes the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view and perhaps what side of the bed you got out on) Morning Pages. The Right to Write also has Morning Pages built into it and I am looking forward to writing those three 8 1/2 x 11 pages, long hand, every morning. But I am not to that point  yet and since I have decided to be faithful to her intentions for the book, I am reading and doing the exercises in her order. I have only read/written for two days, but I have enjoyed what I have done so far. And I am WRITING!

The second thing I am doing to keep writing is posting regularly here. I cannot promise that what I write will be worth reading, but I am going to push on and hopefully be lucid and maybe even entertaining as I go forward.

As for right now... It is 11:00 and I am exhausted. Today I wrote.  Washed several loads of laundry (even put away the clean clothes :). Started trying to find my floor under all the stuff that has piled up. Sorted through a huge pile of magazines. Got dinner on the table. And, found all the Christmas presents I have bought so far and corralled them all in one place. Tomorrow it will be more of the same with the addition of starting on cleaning out the pantry. Fun, fun, fun :)

So before I fall asleep while typing, goodnight to one and all. I hope you had a fun and productive day and that tomorrow is even better :)

I have no idea what I'm doing...

I really envy my kids sometimes. They grew up in the "information age" and the "computer age" and hence seem to be able to figure out how to wing their way through all things computer and smart phone and tablet and...well, you get the idea. 

I, on the other hand, grew up in the age of the dinosaur. Well, not really. But it feels that way sometimes. 

My dad has always loved all things electronic and, when I was in school, his law firm had the first word processor in town. He loved it from the get go. It took his legal assistant a little while longer to come to grips with the thing. But eventually she mastered and did well with it as well as his later electronic acquisitions. Unfortunately, I did not live at his office, but in his home, so I didn't get to play with the neat new electronics he purchased to use at work. 

So, as an adult, I am now playing catch up and trying to muddle through all the new and exciting things available to me...and trying hard not to totally screw something up in the process. 

I've never had a blog, though I am a writer. Writing is in my DNA. Buried way down deep. I have written almost as long as I have been alive. Poetry. Articles. Newsletters. Stories. You name it, I've probably written it. But I've never had a blog. Why? Well, it looked complicated. Intimidating even. It required that I sit down with my MacBook Air and actually poke around and figure out how to do it. 

Well, today I bit the bullet. I was on my sister's blog reading some of her back posts. She is a wonderful writer, almost 11 years younger than me, and a different temperament. Much more like our dad. Her blog is beautiful as well as well-written and humorous. But as I read through her posts, I realized that I just needed to jump in and do it. So I did.

This is my first foray into the blogging world. I have a feeling my blog will look a bit boring for a while as I try and figure out how to spice it up. I will probably end up on the phone with Marybeth as she walks me through the process. Whatever. I have made the first step, and I am not quitting.