2005 SUCKED Can I have a Refund?

I don’t know when I have had a worse year, than the past year. Well, I suppose I have had years that were just as bad...but I am so fresh out of this one, that I can only relate to what I can remember. And I can remember a lot of the details of this year 2005. I have done a good job at surviving all the trials and tribulations that both my relationships and my relationship to the world has brought this year. Now, I can see a change in me, a little more clarity but I do not know my place in the scheme of it all. I hate being constantly in the dark and not knowing. Which direction should I concentrate my efforts on now? My mind wants to get philosophical about it and says to just face whatever comes next and not worry about what happens but I feel like I have already done that, and done that quite bravely. In the beginning of 2005, when I first had to move, from a live-in situation to being totally by myself, I faced it with all the strength and conviction I knew I had, even though I was hating the whole experience. Making it work financially was a huge hurdle. It had been over 25 years since I had been really on my own and didn’t have someone to share expenses with. For some reason I had faith that things would not fail for me at that time. I got up every day, although I was filled with anger and sorrow and I walked on. A few months into that adjustment, thinking that this was just a "waiting period" before some new life would start, I loose my job, my main source of income. That was a huge setback for me, for matters of money and humiliation can eat at the roots of all of my weaknesses as well as my most solidly built foundations. Going through the summer, unemployed, fresh from the break up of my relationship, without a lot of money to sustain my expenses was grueling. I was trying to make things work every way I could but continously kept experiencing setbacks. Inside my frustration was on over boil. I wondered when the end of the road would present itself and I would be packing again because I couldn’t keep it going. I wondered most of all why I had chosen this swanky apartment only to have to leave it. I wondered why everything that I thought was going fine, really wasn’t going fine and I was the last one to know it. I wondered how life could be so secretive and not let you in on its plan. But, none the less I just kept going....there was nothing else to do but keep going. Just dust yourself off and get back up on the horse regardless of how bumped and bruised I felt inside.

In the fall, a minute breakthrough came just like a rainfall after a huge drought. At last I thought. Here we go, this is the next adventure.Things are moving. But why is it that something comes along to save you and it’s the last thing you really want to do? It started a turn of events that came to rescue me, most of which I did not like or want to be involved in. But, I couldn’t afford to ignore any offer nor to be emotionally or financially stubborn, prideful, or ungrateful. So I went along with everything that came my way just to rescue myself. I stuck my nose to the grindstone and just did the work with everything I had placed in front of me. I got my head above water. But my vessel is far from being patched up and in good sailing order.

Now, Christmas has come and gone thank goodness, and I am still here, like I was at the beginning of the year doing the exact same thing..... scratching my head, puzzled, with many questions still on the tip of my toungue, and asking myself not just "why am I here" (in this new scenario) but now its "what was that all for?" Was I supposed to have learned from all this crap? And did I? Have I changed from the experience? Have I gotten better? I suppose the answer is yes. But how much? What I do feel is that I spend too much time just surviving only to hand it all over to bills and the rent. No other area gets as much attention because I am too busy just trying to pay for everything. What kind of life is that? I am still feeling very angry but it gets put aside. At least I can pay for some of my maintenance I proudly proclaim, unlike before. If I didn’t keep doing the things that bring me money, I wouldn’t be able to maintain anything I need physically. Such a catch 22. So much maintenance at the sacrifice of everything else. Why is it like this? It’s become a sore spot. An underlying dissension that is always there. And where is love? It’s like love has vanished from my world. Sure, sometimes I smile and laugh, but that’s usually when I am starting to crack from the pressure and I just get loopy. What fun is that?
So here we are now right back at the beginning of another year AGAIN. How quick we can observe the time pass. Here I am again, maybe not so puzzled like I was last year at this time, but still asking the same question...OK what now? I found from my experience last year that I just had to keep going and not worry about how it would all unfold, because I had no choice but to do so. But this year, I have some aspect of choice it would seem, I just don’t know what the choice will be. But I want it to be something good. There are a lot of things I want, and from all the trials of this year I have really narrowed down what areas I want to make manifest. My energy wains when it comes to more toiling and effort to get somewhere. I can’t take anymore strife. I’m getting pretty tired of all the broken pieces, unfinished chances, and constant lack of joy my life seems to have become and I just want to make it peaceful, loving, and abundant. I don’t think that that is too much to ask. And I want to be able to easily afford my basic expenses-what’s wrong with that?

I want to ask for a miracle, that some how magically all of my dreams come true and are precisely what I want. I want to ask for my "stuck" patterns to change, I want to ask for an end to suffering, not just in my life but for all of mankind. I want to ask for love and blissful days and nights. This constant barrage of struggle just wears you out. How can your spirit soar from constant adversity? 2006 is looming over my shoulder, but what it will bring is still hidden, obscured from my view. I deserve better this year. And so I journey on once more.
To be continued.......

Lost in the maze AGAIN!!

It’s been a rough and bumpy year for me…and I don’t feel like its over yet. Recently, I have been faced with a lot of things I have not liked. And a lot of things I have had to get use to liking. Call this year my 911, or my hurricane Katrina, but the happenings and events have affected my rhythm of my life in a prominent way. While it was all going on, I questioned all that I was experiencing, especially since a lot of it was forced onto me. I watched everything I was feeling with a Sherlock Holmes scrutiny. I suffered greatly in my heart over many issues I could not understand. Nearly a year later I still don’t understand, and have not concluded any reason or answers as to why any of these events happened. I have looked for other things to crop up as the reason for the “one door closes and another opens” type of thinking I tried to uphold in the beginning. But nothing happened to fill in the blanks. I have only awoken to find that I have just been existing and so locked in this place of despair and disheartened living that I haven’t looked out further than my immediate dilemmas. My heart is just not in it.
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There is much inner dialog happening within me, seeing things from both sides and I know that age has some part in this play. Trying to accept what is…..and wondering where next I should turn my attention. Again, my lack of interest in practically everything can be quite the deterrent. The “should have” guilt mongers hang around my thoughts like the Dementers (from Harry Potter). They hover, waiting to suck any bit of spark I do get by convincing me that those should haves and could haves are all totally my own fault and my destiny just did not lie there. I see it everywhere in the creative sense. Things I could have made, designed, drawn, or started as a business, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE TO REMIND ME OF YET MORE FAILURE. The changes in my mind, in my thoughts, and how I view things are subtle but obvious. Dreams I have are profound but quickly forgotten. “I wishes”…long forgotten and unfulfilled. A very jaded and bitter character walks the world each day. This same person never wants to rise from beneath the sheets. Time has become too valuable to let slip by. But it eludes me except on a very rare occasions. So as the days go on, I am finding I want to walk down a different road. But I am jaded. I have known better. I still don’t know which road that is but I want to find it. And I want to find it soon. But sticking my head out…well from experience I know it’s not all its cracked up to be. I almost don’t want to…but the world I am living in now is outgrown and done. Some other level of searching needs to take place. It’s not like a searching when you’re young. Its not a thirst to know, to feel, or to experience, nor to posses….. its more a search of remembrance. I have forgotten so much…and now start to forget even simple things like the names of things…adding my own misinterpretations into words and it leaves me wondering why I can’t make sense of anything. Where is my mind these days?

Meanwhile……back in the world of living in the body, being human and having to deal with the ridiculous insanity of it all, I want to give the illusion that I am in complete control. For once. Like I have some element of command about the way things are for me. And I want it to be evident in a subconscious way. Maybe I can even convince myself as well as others who meet me. Like I had actually been a success in whatever it was. That my life isn’t a complete waste of time. Actually in essence I do have what I think of as control, but as a Gemini I dwell in the land of opposites, so I also do not feel as if I have any control at all. My life consists of one long extended “to do” list. I am sure you too can relate. A consistent exercise of running on the hamster wheel. A culmination of forced choices and I have toos. And that’s all I think of every minute of each waking hour of each passing day of all of my years. The wheel that I am stuck on. Sometimes I allow myself to rest, but not often. It is when the body and the intellect cross wires that I have to retreat, and stop, and just exist as is. I feel like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, always in a rush, always too serious. I have seriously forgotten the wonder of my so called wonderland.

What happens is, like most of us in today’s modern world, I just go, go, go, in a quest for accomplishment. Not necessarily to reach success but always making attempts, as I try to complete a project, a task, a thought, trying to put it behind me and being pleased with myself about the result. These attempts are mostly in vain. There will always be something new to follow, something else to get rid of, something to screw up inadvertently, something your not doing that you cannot see and of course some chemical spark that entices a smidgen of excitement in this weary and worn old soul. I wish I understood why those sparks only comes so rarely now, and why my life is so consumed with work, money, my bills, driving, maintaining a posture of good health, maintaining a cool temperance, and maintaining a place to live. So much flippin maintenance!! And lets not forget all those “to do’s. ” I am always trying to recover from the race which is the daily pace of the city. Running from all the rats and always in recovery.

That brings me back to the control question again….because I am in control to some degree, but in my mind I am an unwilling participant. I have lived a life time of mostly forced choices, to survive or to fulfill a need. Then there are the other choices to stop myself from simply dying inside. But everyone has their vices, and since we cannot always rely on anything external to supply us with what we need…..we create our own cup of the holy grail inside our minds and chase after it. Unfortunately, like most humans I have a mountain of bad choices, that have taken a part of the spark that use to light my way, with each wrong turn.. The spark of inspiration that use to convince me to continue on is no longer there……at least I cannot see it anymore.

Instead of doing all this mindless pretending just to survive and pay the rent, I really want to do something I like with the few people I enjoy and can laugh with. I think adulthood is a huge trap, and I can really understand why Peter Pan wanted to stay a boy all his life. Once you cross over from child to adult you’ve sealed your fate. You can never see the world the same again. I want to stop worrying so much how I am going to survive. I don’t think I remember how to have fun. There are too many other things to do. But those other things sustain my life as an adult. It’s the ultimate catch 22.

So you find me this December trying to get back to myself, being stand off-ish….confused, unhappy (still), and just generally unenthused you’ll know that I still haven’t found that old map that leads me outta here, and I am really lost in the maze. No need to send in a beacon....Gemini's love the puzzle.

Survival and Perspective

While I am by no means as misfortunate as the New Orleans residents who are now homeless and displaced all around, I am still feeling quite displaced myself as I go through another day in my own life within what I consider “the dark of uncertainty.” The Katrina Hurricane has actually temporarily allowed me to feel like I have it all, by diverting my attention from my own dilemma of jobless-ness, limited income and single-hood to that of people who have it much, much worse. As I am watching all this probably like most other Americans, glued to the TV every day, I am seeing something that the whole of America needs to also see from this unfortunate tragedy. What I am seeing is normal everyday people holding out a hand to another human being in need. This is something that we have almost forgotten unless such a tragedy comes along. In everyone's day to day we probably wouldn't be shaken if someone fainted in front of us. But similar devastating situations are all around us if we were aware of it. At least in reference to that, and in hopes within the United States, those people involved in those everyday troubles would have a home to rest in, water to drink, and clothes to wear, no matter how impoverish their conditions. If I have nothing else right now, I have the sanctuary of my apartment, which is definitely comforting, I have food and clothes to wear and air conditioned shelter from the blaring heat that is the storm where I live. I also have a monetary means of support for another month or two before that support goes away and my life gets even more uncertain. I can’t look any further down the road than that. And neither can some of these survivors. When it comes to the other side of the coin, the mental and emotional side, I feel completely confused if not completely void. Uncertain of direction that I am even interested in going, confused about having all this time alone and to myself, and very unsure of where I will land in my next venture of employment. And once I land there am I even going to want to be there? All too often I have taken a job I really didn’t want and been miserable and trapped by the need for money to survive. When we are all so preoccupied with just surviving the day to day, how can we attend to our spiritual and emotional needs? Even with so much alone time on my hands, you would think that I would be busy scrapping all my broken dreams together and forming another game plan to get me through the next hurdle but I am not. I am not enthusiastic nor motivated to move forward out into the world again. I am not getting any “light bulb moments” of inspiration, or anything that even remotely pulls me towards it. And I am viewing the world so much differently from this mid-aged, jaded, been there done that, been burned too much, perspective. It’s not always a positive outlook from behind my eyes. I’m worn out. And I am stressed out by the demands of society. I cannot imagine being 70 or 80 and sick on top of it…by then I am sure I would go to the extremes, either give up and die or go postal.

I often wonder if it is because I am totally by myself, with no other support system that nothing inspirational is filtering through. I mean, because I am so all consumed by just surviving, keeping creditors off my back, and keeping my electric bill paid. I would feel guilty if I went out to a restaurant to eat or rented a couple of movies. Money and how to get it, has become my biggest priority. My big weak spot has always been keeping the income coming in. I seem to go through fallow periods every couple of years where I cannot generate income on a steady basis. Something always happens….I loose another job or have a big car or medical expense that just taps everything I have. And why am I always creating this pattern? Or is it just bad luck? I would like to know the answer, not just sit here constantly guessing. So here we are again. Only this time I truly do feel on my own. I am no longer living with someone who can cover the rent while I look for another job, no longer living with someone who is willing to buy the groceries and pay the electric bill for me while I pick up the pieces. I am the chief cook and bottle washer, income provider, head of household and decision maker. This is a big, big adjustment for me at such an age. Loosing my job at such a time of adjustment just did not help.

My family’s circumstances aren’t much better. They are such that they too are barely treading water just meeting their day to day requirements of survival in these modern times. There isn’t any extra room in their houses, extra money in their wallets, or extra energy to attend to my problems. Doesn’t that sound like the story of everyone these days? But somehow we all seem to survive by the skin of our teeth. So, I am curious as to what will happen if I actually have to leave this apartment in 2 months time. This apartment that I had only just moved into 8 months ago, when I was “divorced.” This apartment I had only been living in 4 months before I lost my job. When I first moved in to the apartment I had so many things to adjust to that I wasn’t accustomed to. Just the break up of my relationship has still left me with a residual trail of particles I am still trying to dust off! The biggie was of course paying for every thing, completely by myself. But, as much as I hated it, and hated the thought of being alone, when I landed here, I felt that everything would be all right and that I shouldn’t worry. And while there is something inside me that isn’t worrying there is something else in the back of my mind that is fearing the worst. Who’s right then?

When a person who is in a position such as myself, and of course too, the Hurricane survivors, how can you be in a joyous state about the future? Just because you have your life, what else do you have? How can you go down the street smiling when you are distressed inside? Uncertain? Despaired? Distressed that things aren’t going to be alright?….that things as they stand are not alright. That your whole life as you know it, has been changed for you? Abrupt changes are just not good for the human psyche unless you’re the one initiating those changes. For me and for them, it’s still a forced choice. We have survived, but hope is damaged and fortitude is just about depleted. How do you carry on without being affected in who you are by what has happened to you? I ask for everyone here (from an everyday perspective), not just me, not just the hurricane survivors, but everyone that struggles with misfortune. How does life NOT change your perspective? How do you keep positive when you’re not rich? How do you keep your chin up when it seems you have nothing but bad luck? How do you remain honest in a world of dishonest people? Asking from the reality of living….how do we survive?

Down and Out in Unemployment Blues

In today’s world, the way people are being viewed by employers is changing rapidly. The ‘person’ in personnel is being omitted. Employers are loosing the human factor in their recruiting practices, especially in the blue collar and lower management and general job categories. With more of us in the work force and most of those being in the 18-30 year old range, the competition to land a job is tougher now than ever before. Employers are more likely to downsize or fire people easier than in past decades. If you go out and apply for a job today, regardless of how old you are or what work experience you have-be prepared! It will be an exhausting search, and a long one for many people. The big question remains in my mind is….”what are employers really looking for? This inquiring mind wants to know.

Before I plowed ahead into the languid sea of employment opportunity I thought it best to investigate some of the tools currently available for successfully landing that dream job. All the experts say that these are the things to have and do in order to get the job you want. Since so many changes have taken place in our modern world, I would have to update myself in the protocol required when looking for a job. I went first to the INTERNET. Four million of us turned to the Internet (A 33% increase since 2000), when initially beginning a job search. The Internet offers a plethora of information and examples on preparing yourself for an interview and how to have a fabulous resume in hand when you get there. On the Internet I could post my resume to thousands of prospective employers. Hummmmm. It seemed all I needed then was a great resume, having brushed up on my interview etiquette and the job was mine. Or so the story should go…………

I then decided to take the plunge and try and secure a position by applying in person. There were plenty of ‘help wanted’ signs posted in windows and doorways around town. I had polished up my resume making sure it was just right. Giving pertinent information for my prospective employer to see. Off I went then….bravely, confidently, dressed to kill with trusty resume in hand. I went to local businesses I felt qualified to work for in malls, strip centers, chain stores and offices. I also went to new businesses, hotels and restaurants opening up in my area. I diligently continued on, resume in hand. After going into a few dozen places to apply, I started wondering where this resume myth had come from. As you may have already guessed, I spent
a-l-o-t of time filling out that same generic job application for each place and receiving the same response over and over. “We’ll review it and call you.” If you apply in person (which many businesses request that you do), you are instantly handed this generic job application form and the person handing you the application insists that you fill out every little crevice, which is of course “their policy” whether you have a resume or not. Why do they need to know where I went to grade school? Do I really need to put down hobbies and civic activities? It made me wonder why I had spent hours on the resume at all. No one seemed interested in it. This was the norm when I went out time after time. It wasn’t long before my enthusiasm started to wear thin. I wanted to know what was wrong with looking at the resume first, then, if you were being considered for an interview or a job, asking you to fill out the appropriate form (this for those who DO have a resume). I surmised, contrary to popular belief that the resume is not your general calling card and will not necessarily get you through the door for an interview.

Not being one to be easily discouraged, I continued my quest. This time I scoured the want ads, both in the local paper and online classified as well through various employment websites. I hoped this would save me some time from going around from place to place. At least I knew these employers were hiring because they had placed a help wanted ad. I applied to many of the positions, faxing my resume to them (ohhh, so this is what the resume is for?) I wondered who these companies were that I was floating my resume out to. How many thousands of other resumes would end up on top of it? Would they even take the time to look at mine? Most of the ads did not say the name of the company, where it was located, or even who to address it to-just a fax number to send it to. I secretly hoped that I would become selected out of the thousands of resumes received, so that the HR manager could actually connect a face to the fact and call me in for an interview. I waited by the phone like a Pavlov’s dog, waiting for a chance to interview! So far, I have watched a lot of daytime TV! I quickly learned to let the answering machine do the waiting after that.

Another popular option for employers today is the job fair. This enables several companies or large companies to “bulk interview” This, I suspect, is another way employers have learned to cut both time and costs by prescreening applicants, inspecting us like a bunch of cattle looking for those who make the cut and those who don’t. These job fairs are always cheerfully manned by overly happy personnel people! I often wonder if these people are just clones from the shows ET, Access Hollywood or the local news station? They just seem too happy doing their job. However, since my job search was whittling down to a rationed level, I decided I was going to have to attend a few job fairs. One job fair I went to was for a well known airline. The HR people rambled on vaguely about the job description, but gave a lot of PR bull about how great this company was to work for. We were all asked to stand up, give our names and tell a little bit about ourselves in 2 minutes or less. There had to be at least 50 people in the room at the time. Afterward, names were called of the people who were to be considered for further interviews and the rest of us could leave. I had serious flashbacks of being back in school and not being picked for the team. Talk about not making the cut! But….there’s more!!! Another group interview I attended was for a large upscale department store. Most of us were applying for a sales position. I was also applying for a position in gift wrap. Individually, but in front of everyone else, we were asked to give our versions of what we though a good sales person should be. Those happy personnel people must delight somehow in putting everyone on the spot. We gleefully gave our definitions of good salesmanship hoping we would be saying the right things and be chosen for the job. I felt my own individuality slipping away as I heard those contrived answers coming from everyone’s mouth. What could I possibly say that was different after six other people had already spoken?

Once you actually get an interview, companies will have scripted questions they will ask you. Some of them will pertain to the specific job position you are applying for, but most of the jobs I applied for, the questions they asked me did not pertain to the job. I wondered if I wasn’t auditioning for a part in a movie, rather than interviewing for a job. Despite the many ridiculous and nothing to do with the job questions you get asked, my absolute take the cake Nobel Prize winners are the companies that use the computer application to determine if you are hirable at all. This is a test that you take before you are allowed through the golden doors of the personnel office to the real live human personnel people! This test will really push your buttons and get you going, no matter how much of a happy, positive and determined to succeed person you might be. This one will stick you like a burr under your saddle. Sure, it sounds efficient enough for today’s busy computerized world, but this test isn’t just about typing in your information. They want you p-e-r-s-o-n-a-l get into your head information. Seriously, the computer application not only “rates and scores” you, but will kick your butt to the curb like a bent up old IBM card if you don’t produce the right score with your answers. This whole job search was now becoming reminiscent of the TV show Big Brother 6. I cannot imagine anyone answering these questions in a negative manner but the test is so psychologically generalized you still endure 20 grueling minutes of a pretzel twisting, 46 question personality test. Some questions do not allow a neutral answer. Talk about frustrating!
I felt like I should have been applying to the FBI. I am surprised that I wasn’t asked on the application if I inhaled! I took five of these such tests. For one company, a nationwide retail department store, I went through the entire process for “any” miscellaneous job only to be informed by the computer at the end that I did not rate for ANY job in their company not even a janitor position!! Now that boosted my confidence and self esteem alright!! Another place I applied I also took a 45 minute computer application, which wanted the last three addresses I had lived at as well as the name of my landlord. I wasn’t applying for a loan, just a minimum wage job at a video store. I though the help wanted sign was at the ‘Blockbuster’ not the pre-screening room for a nuclear testing bunker!!

At this point, I was becoming a little discouraged, having done everything possible to be ones of today’s savvy job applicants and not landing a job, let alone that dream job I had been lead to believe was out there. I often did follow up calls like all the experts suggest, and even sent a thank you note or two. So why hadn’t I been snatched up for the charming and creative person I was? I wondered whatever happened to just calling an employer for a prospective job, talking over the phone briefly some of the surface points of the job in order for both you and the employer to weed out unlikely candidates, then making an appointment for an interview? Isn’t that what those happy personnel people are hired to do? Screen people? Back in the old days, that use to be a common practice with employers. Well, it isn’t that way anymore. Nowadays, a lot of employers still put ads in the paper but seem to neither have the time or the interest in speaking to people in person. And does every job applicant have to be humiliated and be subjected to a humiliating drug screening, or background and credit check before we are offered a interview? Are we now going to be a society that judges, brands and rejects solely on the basis of our answers to a computer test? Nowadays, it seems you need the right ‘look’, the right ‘rated’ personality, and the to the letter right qualifications. Not to mention being in the right place at the right time. If your points don’t ad up you aren’t going to get past the receptionist. The whole process of securing a job in today’s world has become like American Idol TV show where every avenue of your talent and personality is scrutinized down to the microscopic level in order for you to win. Except your not winning a million dollar contract here, you are just trying to win a job. The ratio of competition and credibility has crept too far into the minds of HR personnel and it has become unbalanced. There is an abundance of talented people out there. Lots of people enjoy working and want to do a good job. Are those good people really given a fair chance? Or has the other percentage of slackers now determined the standards for everyone from an employer’s perspective?

So keep in mind what you may be up against next time you go job hunting, especially if you are not just fresh out of college and have a good amount of experience behind you. Hopefully, when you land that dream job you won’t be subjected to an economic layoff, a nasty boss who has it out for you, or cutthroat fellow employees. Instead, you will have what has been promised to you for all your hard work, that dream job of being happily employed in something you love doing. Is there such a thing in today’s world?

Better Get The Breakdown Squad Out

I have definitely lost the spark that once resided within me, I can barely remember what it is like to get really excited and jazzed up about something. The gap between my divine essence and my everyday conscious existence is so wide I can no longer see the other side of it. It shouldn’t be like that, but that’s what this backwards planet does to you. The good news is that I have survived and I am still here. The bad news is my light is dim and my essence of love and kindness is drained from the constant battle of life. I feel like Krisna’s Ajuna, constantly feeling in the dark about which way he should turn in life and seeking guidance for the confusion and ignorance that being in the human body entails. But at least with Arjuna, Krisna is for the most part by his side guiding him along. Can’t say that I’m so lucky, and sorry, though I am graced in many respects, there’s no Krishna at my side. In fact it’s the opposite. I seem to be walking around these days with only a constant sigh and permanent frown on my face and in my heart. Fallow is the breath I breathe in and out. Its as if the streamlined download from the divine heavens is on hold. I seem to getting the same message….“Please hold for the next available download of grace, pure bliss and unlimited joy.” What’s going on up there? God must be on the golf course, and my angels have got to be stoned on heroin somewhere. Here I am, stranded again! Better get the breakdown squad out. Nothing seems to lift this continual inner frown, and this monotonous joyless drone of a feeling from me. It permeates everything. Drenching me like a Monsoon rain. I can feel the mental drip, drip, drip. In everything I do I feel as if I am completely despondent. But I am not really depressed or at least I don’t think I am, and I can usually recognize that chemical based female depression that comes and goes in a girl’s life because I have learned to recognize those hormone fluctuations. Guys will never understand, but I understand it on those days when it looms over me, and I accept that it will pass and it always does. The next day I always wake up and I am somewhere else in my head. Sometimes that’s a good thing. The funk is gone for the moment and on I go with life. But that’s not what this is and I cannot shake it. It’s there every day. It’s hard to force a smile to surface, and I feel as if my dog just died. Tragically, I don't have a dog.

Now, being in the wonderful position that I am in, which if you haven’t been following my blog, I am, 1) in fallow times, 2) painfully unemployed, and 3) very much without a lover. You would think that these three things are the causes of how I feel. And while they do throw some troubles into the brew I know it’s much deeper than that. It’s as if all the disappointments or regrets, bad choices, or experienced injustices have come knocking at the door like a telemarketer. You just want to hang up and ignore it. Inwardly, I am so calm, and practically despondent…still emotionally frozen and becoming all the more part of the big inner freeze I seem to be living in. Outwardly, I am not showing any signs of stress. But go past that veneer of calm and there’s a raging hurricane, a screaming child, and an angry, angry person rattling the cage just beneath the surface. Psychoanalyze that all you want but I don’t feel quite justified. How can I be in such a failing position so much? Could I possibly be in denial? Could I possibly be completely freaked out by my continuing fallow circumstances and not telling myself? Could I just be throwing an adult style tantrum behind closed doors? Well, a little. I know part of it is that I don’t like to be pushed so close to the wall. Squeaking by on the survival scale is not a pleasantry. It takes all the joy away, and you become more and more jaded until finally you just don’t care. I want to tell all my creditors hey, I am peddling as fast as I can here. Treat me like a person, not a numbered sack of coals. I’m a good hard working person who wants to pay their bills. I am not a scammer. But I cannot pay everything all at once. Especially when my income has been greatly reduced.

On one hand, I am wondering where I am going to end up, and if I am going to continue to keep it all together. But what leaks through most of all is not liking where I am now. And I am not a fan of waiting. I think life is too short. You blink and 10 years have passed. I don’t like stagnation…it gathers resentment and robs you of your confidence. I certainly don’t like it when the rug gets pulled out and everything breaks down. It’s so unnecessary so many times, and if it is necessary, I am not seeing the value of it. I now have an “I could care less attitude” about doing the right thing anymore because no matter what I try to do (and haven’t we all been at this point some time in our lives?) I still get lost, I still get in trouble, I still get dumped by job and people alike, I still get in debt, and I still get fucked over. I didn’t think I really felt that way anymore, but boy did it surface back up and swallow me whole with this last episode. People wonder why I have such a bad attitude? Why should I bother to do the right thing? It doesn’t pay off for me in fact, it always backfires.

It’s been a full two months since I was sacked from the job, and now 6 months into the break up and the big move. Being fired just buried me. The financial implications just blasted my world with a Sherman tank. With nothing going on in the job scene, being that it is the middle of summer in my town, there are no viable prospects on the horizon, I feel like I am just doing time, like John Lennon. Waiting for something that will never come. Watching the wheels. Wrestling with patterns I have, demons I recognize, and things I’ve wrenched my guts to try and change but can’t. I could easily be the poster child for Lennon’s poignant song “Working Class Hero.” Off and on the feelings of resentment and anger surface and subside, surface and subside. A lot of it is directed towards the working world out there and what a load of bullshit the majority of it is. I am sure everyone reading this can tell a tale or two of business incompendency that they have had to put up with. Right now though, with this working dilemma, I am beyond the last straw. I am sure a lot of people would say “oh, get over it, its just life” and I would reply “I’ll get over it when it changes” I am sure they would say “you’re the one who can change it” Really? I would say, “Prove it!” And while I know that what you dwell on manifests for you…I cannot dwell on a future that I can’t even imagine having. People have asked me, “well, what do you love?” and “what do you want to do?” To those questions I have no answers. Some of the answers are so far fetched they could never become reality. Some of the answers are branded into my brain. And that slows my progress. At least that’s what I believe. I am obviously within the throws of pessimism, and self-righteously say, “Dam right! Whether or not I am subconsciously punishing myself for something, or sabotaging any success I might be capable of, I don’t know. But I am really, really tired of it! I haven’t figured out the key to this Jumanji puzzle my life is yet, and I will die trying to do so. I go off and on with thinking its funny but I am not laughing and I certainly am not having any fun.

Jagged Uncertain Unwilling Unpleasant

I am being told right now by all those “celestial whisperings”, the obvious signs, observances, dreams and horoscopes that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. There’s that word again……Supposed. Its been coming out of my mouth a lot lately. Supposed. I have been using that word a lot. I catch myself saying, “I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do”. This is how I have lead most of my adult life, thinking I am doing the right thing, working hard when I work, twisting the rules to fit me ever so slightly, but still I cannot seem to make things work successfully. And while I might beg to differ that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, the changes have most certainly been made for me, and here I am again.

Yes, I am still not settled with all that has happened to me in the last 6 months, still adjusting, still struggling with the issues, the finances, and the heartbreak. Right now is especially difficult because things keep stopping and starting but never going very far. I just don’t understand. While I am enjoying doing a whole lot of nothing…. I still need to survive. Am I the one doing this? If so, someone tell me to stop and tell me where the emergency break is! I don't know what it is about being rejected by someone that causes you to just manufacture bitterness making it a popular pharmaceutical and the main one in your medicine cabinet. When every thought of why they don't want you any more just makes you madder and madder. Or, even the thought that they aren’t calling you sets you off into a raging tangent. You manufacture more bitterness. Its like you are turning the knife in your chest with your own hand. I tried, I really did, to just suck it all in and just carry on, and maybe if everything else had not changed around me then maybe I could be processing and directing all this bitterness into something that would bring positive results in my life. It’s interesting right now, because I have been here before, and repeated a lot of what is happening to me right now, about 5 years back. And I can see times before that that I have also visited similar experiences of the same nature. The same repeat loop....looping as it was called by a lady who did a Spiritual Response Therapy reading on me. she said I was always looping. The indefinite repeat. Funny how I handle it now though, so calm, so collected, so very polite…but storming underneath it all desperate to bring balance to the opposing forces. Back then I could have gotten a part on “Days of our lives” for the Drama Queen I was. I was a master of Disaster…. but I kept seeking a calmer, better existence. But this latest episode, where the rug got completely pulled out from under me…well, hasn’t changed that disaster factor much…just made me better at handling it all. If you have read any, even the past two postings previous to this one you know it all just followed suit and turned into one big mudslide. And it just kept going…even in the silence of no postings. I just became emotional frozen inside and couldn’t budge a word. I am so angry still, but I am attempting here to bust through this barrier.

I've been trying very hard not to be bitter, as I get older. It's not a hard thing finding bitterness. If you don't have any now, just wait, you will! I have been trying also not to hold onto things that have molded me in the past to have such a jaded view. Even though I cannot do that with everything. Give yourself a few more experiences, let downs, misfortunes, and accidents, and you will start to see what I mean. I have been trying very, very hard to accept that there are so many things I cannot change, that I really would like to change in my life. But changing things is a gradual process. Ever so many little steps taken very slowly. Things decided, directions taken, and definitely walking away from things that just do not serve me. I am talking about my life, my world, and who is in it. I am talking about how I would like to help my daughter out more. Be a better supporting family member. I’d like to actually enjoy being a little more socialable. I would love to live my life without worrying about being fired or having to leave where I live suddenly. I'm talking about being secure for a change in whatever vocation I am in and enjoying myself being there! I am talking about being able to plan and actually take a vacation like other people and still have money left to live on when I got back. I would like to not be the victim in my life, and having the changes mostly forced on me. But then again, when I have tried to make changes, even if I try to choose wisely…. somewhere down the road it goes arye. And I end up loosing in some way. My guy, my house, my job, my money, mostly my self-esteem. This time it’s all at once. I sort of lost everything all at once. Still, I always go merrily along, like the fool in the Tarot deck, rather innocent and naïve about the world, not necessarily in denial but thinking that it can be different but instead of being lucky (like the fool in the right place at the right time) I walk off the cliff by accident into a pit of alligators. You would think it would be somewhat easy to just shift when you want to...but no, it has to be just the opposite. It has to be all jagged, uncertain, unwilling, and unpleasant.


So it’s been a lot of stops and starts for me since I had to break up, move out, and then become all of a sudden unemployed. I call it joyfully unemployed but the job search is a another blog in itself. I loose something, like a job and say to myself, “hell, I’ve got lots of qualifications in this area” and then I go out there, and go out there, and go out there some more and come up with nothing months later. By that time my confidence is shot. Chaps my hide like you wouldn’t believe. I went along with anything in the beginning, doing odd bits of things with people I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang around with. Stuff that I thought I wanted to do, for a little cash-ola. But soon enough I just kept putting things in front of me that I really didn’t want. It always happens this way usually, I didn’t see it though, because I was too much (and still am) in survival mode. One of the big themes that fuel everything I do in my life is a resounding shout of "SURVIVAL". It never used to be that way, I use to live for LOVE, but I suppose that is easy when you are young and someone else is paying your bills and your responsibilities are low. My idealism about love quickly turned into cynicism.

I am more than puzzled as well about where I am supposed to be going. Oh, there’s that word again. Truly instead of a light bulb over my head there’s a huge question mark. I don’t understand why I was “put” in such a great living place only to have to move out a few months after. That’s what I am thinking I may end up doing. I am questioning why I got this place right around the corner from where I “used to” work…and was forced into “self sufficiency”….only to loose the dam’d job 3 months after the fact? Plus live this solitary confinement! And the solitude, I am sooo hating the solitude. I don't need to be alone all the time. I catch myself pacing from one room in my apartment to another. From the computer to the TV. Nowhere to go, No one to go with. Even better, no money to even get there. The story of my life is “all dressed up and nowhere to go”. I feel it is a sort of a stifled attempt to live, like a horse with a bit. The horse can only do what the master allows. That is how I feel. Money is running out, and bills are high but they still keep showing up in my mailbox. The cell phone has just been a nightmare and the credit cards are just squeaking by. The job loss is what did it…and then those stops and starts I mentioned earlier…. all of them were financial and they just dragged me behind the horse. All kinds of shit comes flying at you from all directions and you cannot see it coming when your life is dragging you behnd the horse while you are all bound up!!

The hardest thing about this ongoing fallow episode is that I cannot seem to get excited about anything. A lady I know who is like a life coach said to me…. find out what you are jazzed about, what you really dig and what you are good at. Well, finding out what I am jazzed about and what I dig is actually a hard thing for me. I have become so jaded and emotionally subdued for so long that even a new Mercedes Benz wouldn’t get my blood going! Sometimes I can feel a little something come near to the surface, but I am so use to pushing everything down, (especially from being at work and having to stuff it) that I just have a hard time being excited, or jazzed. That energy left in my early twenties. I have never gotten it back, and it has been so long (years and Years) since my life has actually been fun that I hardly know how to be happy anyway. As usual, in the same place…the infinite repeat over and over again.

OK, Your fired!

Ok, what’s really needed here is faith. It doesn’t matter what kind, whether or not you have faith in God, faith in yourself, or a spiritual force, faith in your family and friends, or just an optimistic faith in life……….faith is something that we all need to have for certain. The reason why is that everything is so uncertain. And I am not just talking about today’s world either. It’s been like this since man first came about being on the planet. There had to be some faith inside of us to have ventured out of the cave to search for food. Faith that we would survive. There had to be some faith for the many travelers and explorers who quested out beyond the world’s boundaries and sailed the high seas. You need not only the faith to know that you can handle whatever you perceive to be difficult, but faith that you will get through it alive, and somewhat intact. Now you may not be the same afterwards, and you may be a little scarred emotionally, hell maybe you’ll be a lot scarred emotionally and jaded as well…. but if your paying attention and you have learned how to learn from any experience albeit pleasant or NOT……..then your doing pretty good. If you can incorporate that into something that stays balanced within you-then your doing ok. I think people place too much importance on the solidity of any given thing. Their job, or career, their house, their marriage, their bank account (and how much money is in it), how much money they can make and most of their entire image to the world/as the world sees them. That is why some people commit suicide over something that has happened to them. The pain of it shatters their world completely, what ever it was. Someone doesn’t love them anymore. They’ve been caught embezzling, a prominent politician is found out to be gay. Put any label on it you want. Most of it was outside of them……..what they had most put their energy into hiding. Putting all their eggs in one basket. They are living an image. They are not living true.

Now with all that said, lets apply that to a more personal less vague situation, or should I say series of situations that have been happening to me lately. If you look at my previous posts, from the very beginning, even the titles reveal a progression. Definitely a progression in thought. One that is clearly visible to me anyway as I plod through the experiences that have indeed left me rather jaded and at times without faith. But there’s more…..(there always seems to be more), so I will just review it in short for you gracious reader. OK……First of all, my live in lover of 5 years breaks up with me (note that-he breaks up with me). Whoa Nelly, I don’t want this at all! This means I not only have handle that rejection from someone I am still pretty fond of, but now I have to move out-his request, find my own place and start all over again (all I had was my clothes and my books). This left me in a pretty sticky financial situation at the end of it having to buy all the necessities that one requires to re-set up house. We all know as well, the huge and unrealistic costs that are asked for when one move’s into a place. Yikes! If only it was like in the movies where they plop down the credit card in one huge spending spree! Nope, it didn’t go that way for me. I have no TV, couldn’t afford to buy that. No furniture for the first two months….finally had to finance that, cannot sit on the floor at my age-more debt I don’t need. I negotiated the computer, so at least I have music and some sort of communication with the world. Borrowed some money to buy a few other solid necessities and voila! There I was.

So as the previous posts reveal…I’ve been having a bit of a time dealing with those two major biggies. The break up and the move. I have questioned myself, tried to understand, hoped for it all to be undone, and reluctantly accepted that here I am-somewhere I really do not want to be. Looked at it emotionally, looked at myself and my own patterns and behaviors, as well as screamed at the Universe for a reason.

No answer.

I pick myself up, chalk it up to this is the way it is and continue through my day to day. Not trying to push the river, not trying to do something I will regret, knowing better than to go down certain paths and just trying in general to keep my head above water. Working as hard as I can to accept everything that is going on. The internal battle is very fierce, like a hurricane swirling with many differences of opinions. It’s like that final scene in Terminator II where the bad Terminator is struggling in the molten metal, screaming, fighting with its last bit of energy to survive…yeah it has been like that inside me. The inner scream. And of course, I have hated every minute of solitude. Still though not being overly social and retreating into my Ivory Tower from the ravages of work stresses. Longing…lots and lots of longing. Wishing, lots and lots of wishing that I could change things, not only for myself but for those I really cared for so that we could all have a little happiness within the craziness. I realized however that the patterns I had set up at some point in my very early years would stay intact, ingrained into my very cells, and would always manifest if I ever got to be too successful and too ahead of the game. Pessimistic you say? That maybe, but I really was trying to be more optimistic about what was going on in my life. Really I was.

And then… out of nowhere, after a stressful month at work that was a kin to the agony of a childbirth experience, I get fired from my job. Now if that wasn’t the topper! It came out of nowhere, and everyone around me, well all of our jaws just dropped. The reasons of course were lame and fabricated, but the reality that reared its ugly head was that I was now on my own, really on my own with no income. It could not have come at a worse time, living alone in a swanky apartment that I was booked into for a year’s lease. Up to my neck in credit card debt once again, I mean this was not a good thing. Everyone was really good around me though, I had a lot of emotional support. Even customers I had served phoned me up to see if I was all right. No one agreed with the decision and tried to reinforce to me the usual tripe “when one door closes another opens”. Yeah OK, spare me. This is my life you’re talking about here, and I am not 21 and cannot just spring into another job.

Not three days after that episode I had a milestone birthday. You know, the 21st, the 30th, the 40th and the 50th (I'm not telling!) It made me really wonder once more if I had any control at all and definitely started the year off with a bang. Three decisions made for me, totally out of my control because if I have had my way I would still have been there with the Mr., living in the house with him, and working away at this job. It all changed in four months time. Now I don’t know if it’s a sense of denial that over came me right from the beginning of all this…but as much as I have hated everything that has happened, I have really not been worried about making it.
I was living alone, totally alone and paying for it myself, every penny for the first time in my life ever and I mean since I was 21 (being far from that now). When I got fired, which was the proverbial icing on the cake, sure I was pissed off about it, and rather on the floor for a day or two…but again, I found myself calm inside and walking around with this mental filter on. A filter that had me not worried in the least about being unemployed. Does this mean that I finally have some faith like I did when I really young? I use to say to my mother when I was a teenager, “oh don’t worry…something will come up” and I use to believe that back then. I don’t know how I lost that. Along the way somewhere though I lost that unbreakable faith and as life went on for me I would be overcome by some of the many unpleasant experiences I had. Unable to function and paralyzed from the pain I felt, physically sick, and at times in a mindset of suicide. But I got through it, though not un-scathed, but here I am. No longer thinking or feeling bad now. I have always felt graced, like I have some sort of built in safety net that seems to emotionally catch me when I am about to step off of the cliff. Buried faith? Unknown inner strength? Those dam’d angels who have been sleeping on the job? Denial? Something…because I am not worried, and I really am OK. Maybe not about the love affair breakup thing, but I’ve gotten through things like that before. I’m not going to get all positive about this loss of income thing right away, until I see that door right in front of me waiting for me to turn the handle and walk through to something that is supposedly better for me. I have to trust somehow that it is, because when I have tried to control my life in the past, it has failed to succeed more often than not. These decisions were made for me that is for sure, and I am going to give it its chance to prove itself to me. Don’t worry, I’m going to be watching for the signs, and watching for the results. The faith test is on! I am challenging those invisible forces to come through for me. Meanwhile I better get creative because although I need a miracle right now, I am not one to believe in them. But at least I have some faith-because I have been in corners before and always gotten out of them.

We’ll see.

Meltdown

I can hear the wind calling, on this humid summer evening. I am sitting inside my apartment, away from the heat, away from the world outside, away (finally) from my work, but alone with my angst…there is no escape from it…it’s within me and without me as well. It fills every crevice and cell inside me. Like the air, it’s everywhere. The wind starts gently at first, then becomes more restless as I strain to listen. Maybe it will rain I think to myself. That would be perfect. I would like that…but no, it’s just the wind-restless at heart like me. The subtle sound of the rustling leaves seems to call me to the window. I get up from the computer, just like in a movie…mesmerized by what might be “out there” and I walk over to the window to look. For a brief minute I see the beauty of the night sky and the bright illumination of the full moon lighting everything up with it’s brilliant gaze. I see the shadow of the moonlight on the leaves……and I feel the stillness of the night. Then I see myself standing there, unable to enjoy it. My small patio on the second floor is like a hollow hole in the wall, uncomfortable, and definitely not nature friendly. And I stand there alone. The trees start to sway side to side, and the leaves and branches are tapping at my window as if to beckon me to something waiting out side. But nothing is waiting outside, at least not in my mind. There is nothing outside but the insane world that I deal with every day. A world that is truly not my home, but I live in it and I wake up here each day. I wish I was somewhere else.

I am on the verge of a breakdown in my ivory tower. The Queen’s crown is falling. Total Meltdown.......All the things that I feel could go wrong have gone wrong, all my insecurities and needs have risen to the surface, and the mudslide I feel that is controlling my destiny continues. My world is a flood, and I have become one with the mud. But it’s only the things that are my own personal pitfalls, that I feel are important, that may not even trouble someone else, and they dig into me like a burr under my saddle. It’s like the fat that rises to the top of the pot when boiling meat for a stew…it has all just come to a head. I am boiling underneath, and creating all this “uck” that is showing up on the surface. Feeling lots and lots of “uck”. Including of course the after effects of the recent shift in residence and in love affair (or lack there of). I am both physically sick and deeply troubled by where I am. I am overwhelmed by anger. Overwhelmed is an understatement. I would say the same for the anger, so very understated and valid only to me but it is indescribably fierce at the same time. I cannot smile. Everything and everyone bothers me. I think of where I am and where I would like to be. I think of how trapped I feel, and I think of the people who keep telling me to get over it. How could they say that not knowing why? And how could they expect me to just snap out of it? I think of London, my original home where I was born that I loved so much. And the London rain. The sound and feel of rain comforts me. The sound of it falling onto the concrete….the drains on the roof spilling over with that waterfall crashing to the ground sound. Why doesn’t it rain tonight? Of course it won’t, I am in the desert. Why am I even thinking it will? Like everything else I want, it just doesn’t happen. I catch my thoughts rambling away and I go outside and brave the 100 degree heat. The heat doesn’t bother me. Indeed, summer is here, but inside me I am in the middle of a winter storm. Time to make tea. In England, where I was raised, when ever something needs to be worked out, a crisis presents itself, or someone comes round to visit, it’s always tea time. I grew up with the notion that a cup of tea would sooth just about anything. Calm the most savage beast, and relax you despite your troubles. So still to this day, I put the kettle on and brew a cup of tea every day of my life. Trying to comfort myself in the middle of a mess, in the middle of the hot summer, in the middle of my own personal crisis. There is nothing else to do. There is nothing that can be done. There is nothing I want to eat, nothing I want to do, nothing I could buy and no one around who would understand, just my restlessness as I search for the comfort. There is nothing else that I want than the feeling of a loving embrace inside a place of love. To stay there a little longer than intended, to be in the glow and spirit of love. And to know my life will not continue to be so painful, so dull, and so jaded and such a struggle. Something about that would make it easier to continue out into the world we live in day to day. I need that inspiration and that love for without it there is no foundation. I have become so strong over these past 10 years so…..no this won’t break me. No, I won’t loose my grip, sure, I can still carry on…..and I will carry on without heart. Because the way it is right now, I can’t resolve it, I can’t resolve it. And I cannot get it to go away. It’s something I am not willing to forgive just yet. Even if I try and forgive myself.

If there are angels among us, then they need to put the neon light above my head, as a beacon for the other angels…to say ”hey, this one really needs us right now, though strong she is.” Send me an Angel. My attitude is not going to instantly turn around to positivty by itself. Not at all. I am going to need some solid loving, wonderfully magical experiences to lift my spirits up from this last dragging behind the horse. Send me an Angel right now.

Still Not Settled

Is anything working for me? Would I consider my life RIGHT NOW a success by any measure? Well that would depend on how I am feeling on a certain day. I have had some pretty low days lately, and hormones and headaches can put me even lower on the floor of despair. But do I think everything is OK? Inside it’s a unanimous NO, even though I am not hungry, homeless, or ill. It’s just that my life the way it is is so obviously dull and I feel continue to feel frozen and spent. Work and home are the two environments I see each day. On occasion I will trek to the grocery store. Whoopee! Nothing going on, no distractions, no playtime, nothing in sight….nothing working for me. If all the external stirring up of dust would settle…and life’s little inconveniences would stop pissing me off…then I could…………..huummm fill in the blank here. Then I could what? Be happy? NO…Then I could get on with my life? NO…..Then I could maybe see through all the emotional obstruction? NO. I’ve got it! Then I could change my attitude! YES. But, changing my attitude equates a changing of my experiences or at least that’s the way I view it. To me, my experiences jade my attitude. It’s a double-edged sword. I don’t think I have had the best experiences in the last couple of years and I think my “lot” has been upped an AMP in the last year. I don’t consciously wake up and expect to have a bad day. But it’s become a real crapshoot. You go out there everyday, even if you have a smile going on inside…and you never know what will happen. It can turn real sour real quick as I have come to know well. To give you a few examples, I was fired from my job the day before 911 and subsequently the next three jobs after that. I got in a mild car accident just driving home from work one night a “victim” of a domino effect. I then got 5 tickets in 3 years time just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and definitely on the wrong road. My latest relationship ended in me moving out unwillingly using up every last cent of cash I had saved, placing me in huge debt again after I had diligently worked to pay ALL the debts off. Currently I am working double hours to cover a coworker who quit because my company will not advertise for someone to replace them (FYI-there is no one else to cover). These examples are just the tip of the iceberg if you will and also just the external stuff. How much lies beneath it all?

So, even though the dust has yet to settle on me…. I still consider my life dull? Yes, DULL AND BORING. And it’s not like I cannot entertain myself, or that I am a basket case being alone. Au contraire! I suppose I am just not into reinventing myself again. Life has beaten me to a pulp and I haven’t the will. I am just not interested in listening to pep talks about exploring in your 30’s, the fabulous 40’s and that life begins at 50-who’s life are they talking about anyway? What a load of magazine dribble. There is nothing exploratory, fabulous, or anything beginning to look up about my life. I think they make it all up to convince themselves that the sleek world between the pages is really theirs, like a sense of denial as if they know deep down their life is complete crap. I use to always rely on the New Age hopeful pep talk about what’s coming in the future. The planets are shifting, and life goes in cycles. All that stuff. This time I don’t feel like being pacified with the excuse that “this is just a fallow time”, or a “time of introspection”, or that I am just in preparation for the future. What future? A future I cannot see, and have no direction to strive towards? NO. I’ve been shifted enough, done too many things I never did intend to do, too many times. I’ve never gotten to do half of the things I have wanted to do. It all seems so backwards to me. The future to me is here right now. I couldn’t tell you where my future path will go, but right now it’s dull, lifeless, and monotonous and not really where I would like it to be. I know we would all say that but I suppose I need a little more inspiration and spark to carry me through in this loveless existence. I am not just saying that because I am single either, all of us are lacking lots of love. Yeah, can’t live without that love. I can see very clearly, that I am not the only one with this gripe, just one of the few who is willing to admit that I do not want to have a life without love.

Shaken and Stirred

It seems I am in a swirl of my own enigma. Catching myself coming and going, tripping over my own inadequacies, and smashing the mirror. I have so many different themes and thoughts buzzing rapidly through my head, that to catch one to try and expand and experience it takes stillness that my mind does not allow right now. Everything around me has become too much, and quite a drain on me, in both an emotional, physical, financial, and spiritual sense. With so many things to do, the days pass as quickly as a dream, and all I really want to do is be still for a bit and complete a small project regardless of how simple or trivial it is. Not have to “be” anywhere. I feel like George Harrison, in his song “My Guitar Gently Weeps”, as he looks at the floor that needs sweeping, but still other things call him. I feel the same way. There are so many things I want to do, and need to do, no matter what order of importance they might hold. I am doing none of them (maybe other than writing this). And I feel I am doing none of the important things to nourish my spirit. I see the split in the seams that hold me together and I think, hummm, I should tend to that, but then off to the races I go each day just to keep my head above water. How can I find my sense of humor again? When can I take a day to sit in the park and just enjoy the sunlight shimmering through the leaves of the trees above? Not be irritated by children laughing or crying. Maybe have some money to take a small vacation and go somewhere and just do nothing but leisurely things? I keep asking when?

I feel once again in a place of great intolerance-all the while tolerating it all. Here is that duality looming over my life again torturing me like it always does. I need something, anything to take me back to a place of feeling centered, happy or interested in life and what it’s living has to offer. Sounds like I am depressed, and maybe I am, but why wouldn’t I be…. when all I do is work, and come home, and work and come home and work and come home. Where is the point in that? It creates a monotonous trance that I walk around in all the time. This leads to indifference, which makes me numb. Some would call that a good thing. Many live in denial and are perfectly happy there. I cannot relate being numb to being happy.
I say if you cannot feel anything anymore, then you are not living. So what is my life about then if I am the writer and director of this script?

There is a battle going on within me, and I cannot still it, rescue it, nor appease it. My interest wains in anything at all…and my inner scream is floundering like a fish in a net to get free of everything that traps and holds me to this insane existence!!!!! I have been in this place before, and I recognize it…but now I do not know where to take it, or what to do with it. And what I have to do each day just seems to cover it over more and more. I hate it. Lately, I have watched myself tuning people out when they are talking to me. I am not interested in being around them, seeing them, hearing them or entertaining them. I have nothing to say. Nor do I care to be cordial. I don’t want to give an automated response. I want to live more genuinely than that, even though I feel very anti-social. But, then my own duality slaps me down and says “oh but you don’t want to be so solitary either!" My obvious fears and dislikes in being social seem to rear its head at that point. I don’t know what they are about. This seems to be a very strange time for me because I cannot settle inside. I want to know what is going on! I want answers to my questions, and I want to feel better.

And tomorrow is yet another day……………………….here we go again.

TOUGH IT OUT

It had not been a very good health week for me, so I had booked a much needed Colon Hydrotherapy session with a lady who had over the years become my mentor. I found that if I allowed my internal system to back up too much, my emotional health would start to become toxic as well. I would get angry quicker, and emotional unnecessarily, not to mention irritable 24/7. So I needed not just a physical cleansing but a mental one as well. We spent the session, cleansing the body of course but also discussing where I was right now and why. During the therapy she said a simple truth to me that really stuck with me, even though I knew it in the back of my mind it was so much clearer to me when she said it. She said “ You are the writer, producer, director and actress in your own life script. You must have wanted to be where you are, because here you are.

Well…..it took me long enough to create it if that was truly the case…There I had been…always screaming and kicking in my own head. Trying to make changes, but taking baby steps. Did I want to continue to beat myself up over mistakes I had made? Was I suffering from unnecessary boredom and was trying to stir up a little trouble? I had a hunch every now and then that my life was supposed to be going a different way, but I am a person who can get too comfortable sometimes within a situation, and stay there way to long. I pretended I knew there was some kind of plan behind the magic curtain for me but since this great shift that I just went through, I have felt completely kept in the dark about what it was and what was going to happen next.

I have been consciously trying to create some fun for myself ever since I moved from my last “pull my heartstrings apart situation” to this ever so solitary one. In the back of my mind I had been thinking that I wanted someone to recognize my work talents and recruit me to something better. And also in the back of my mind, I wanted a lover. Nothing serious, just someone to enjoy and break up the solitude every now and then. So between my need for distraction, and my need for recognition I have been playing mental ping-pong. My life hasn’t changed that much, since the move, it has just become more solitary. I realized that I’d forgotten how to have fun, and gotten all tied up within this jaded mindset, constantly bah hum bugging everything and just hiding away in my own insecure blanket. Needless to say, I have been pounding my head against the wall trying to create something. Trying a little too hard I think. Sending it out there, the wish list of the things I think I need. All the while having counter productive self doubting thoughts that there is nothing out there to even tag my interest….no one that would suit me. From what I had met of men in the last years, it’s looking all the more like three word grunting Neanderthals, or those who are just plain afraid of me and won’t try. Then on the work front, no matter what tap dance I did for anyone, there was not an offer in sight that would serve me or catapult me further up the financial ladder. But, I shouldn’t let myself get caught up in this kind of thinking because I should know better…and I should also know by now how to attract the things I want, and mostly importantly, the people I want. I have done it before, and I know I can do it again. It seems to be a matter of fine tuning and tweaking the knobs a bit to get it just right because it’s not that easy. I cannot figure out why I am giving in to all this self-doubt?

Often you have to dig through layers of beliefs (your own) that you often don’t realize you have. You have to face some of your inner demons too. You have to start to think thoughts in ways you cannot imagine doing. Yeah, right, Miss pessimist here start thinking “shiny happy thoughts.” I don’t think so! You’ve become so use to just being you, almost robotically…thinking your way, experiencing things you always do…and then wondering why your life doesn’t work. Or why your life isn’t what you want. Sounds confusing I know! But it’s very easy to loose faith and not have the foresight and patience to just wait knowing that a new adventure might just be visible on the horizon. And all I need is a little patience. It’s so easy to get lost when life shifts, and the shift wasn’t planned by you. But me, I am not patient at all. Life can beat that patience right out of you in my opinion. As I wait, for what is coming next my inner Genie is chomping at the bit. Maybe that comes from being born into our world of instant gratification. It’s the instant gratification thing staring you in the face. We are all guilty of it. We want it and we want it now. The media, advertising and social propaganda tell us we can have it now. Let’s not forget they tell us how special we are, and we can make our outer world experience any way we want it. Have you looked at those God awful Bank posters, telling you “we can make your account to suit your needs”-yeah, if your depositing lots of cash-ola all the time! We have to have it our way though, personalizing our online home page to show what WE want to see when it first opens up, We have the rings on our cell phones and caller ID to screen who we talk to (not to mention text messaging, picture phone, and email through the phone). Of course there is still Burger King, where we can have it our way. We think we are in control. We are told we have choices in how we want our day to go.

So it would seem logical that it would follow suit that this concept would spill over into our personal lives don’t you think? But it doesn’t always work that way…at least not for me. In our personal life it seems it is much harder to get what we really want. And why is that? Is it because all this other outside stuff is just hype and isn’t really of any importance anyway? And the things we want for ourselves personally, is that stuff really important? Do we treat it like it isn’t? And if it is important, why isn’t it as much a priority as the energy we all put into our jobs or into that project we are doing for some boss somewhere who doesn’t really care what we can do. We are always trying to prove ourselves in work, why don’t we do that in our personal lives as well?

From the experiences I have had lately, I have concluded that I need to learn to be still for a second, whether or not I want to be. I cannot push the river, and I cannot and most importantly do not want to create the wrong thing. I have done enough of that in the past, and also had many of the wrong people approach me. It’s a big lesson for me, not to chase those rainbows that I know are wrong for me, but I am going to have to just tough it out! Growl as I will, and you know I will, I am going to leave well enough alone for now and just sees what happens. Lets see how long it takes for something juicy to pop up. The challenge is ON!

Shift happens

I thought that I had pretty much given up the fight when I surrendered with white flag in hand to the inevitable situation of having to move out leaving both house and relationship…after all,
I had lived the last 4 years with the Mr. and was still ok with continuing on with him. But after kicking and screaming inside about it, and just procrastinating on the outside about it, I reluctantly said “OK, I will do this”, even though I whole heartedly did not want to…and reluctantly I moved. Now, I am three months into my new surroundings, have gotten settled in, got a routine started that serves me and so far have held my self together very well both financially and emotionally. I have totally accepted that here I am, and I am meant to be right here right now. Like it or not. Or have I?

Right now, my underlying anger is back. I have felt it slinking around dodging itself through the tiniest of cracks of my emotional dam. Like a fiery ball of energy that cannot be contained, the intensity of it has started to break me down. I evaded it for so long, thinking I had dispelled much of it and now it has caught up to me once again and found my hiding place. It’s hard sometimes, being caught up in this world of over stimulation, rationed time slots, and “to dos” to even identify what the hell is bugging you, and why you are upset in the first place. I really agree with Dr. Phil’s words, when he says to people “Ok, you got mad because she didn’t fold the laundry right”, and then asks the same person what is the real issue behind your being upset. I can relate that to my life very easily, even though sometimes I too, cannot always put my finger on the exact causes of my irritability and dissatisfaction.

I know a lot of my irritability and dissatisfaction has to do with control…how much control you have over what happens to you and what happens in your life. I know that I need to have control over certain aspects of my personal life and preferences, and when I don’t get that control, I do get upset. It’s my way of avoiding a lot of conflict and being able to keep an even keel going. Making my experience pleasant rather than complicated and full of aggravations. Even if it’s a simple thing, like when I placed a flowerpot full of flowers outside my front door (I now live in a condominium where they asked me to take it down.) But that’s another subject entirely…I believe that everyone is a little controling to some degree.

I thought that I would give myself some time…. and get more comfortable living solo, meaning that I would just spend time doing things I enjoyed, needed to get done, or to rediscover. That’s OK up to a certain point. Its like you get too much of yourself and you get emotional cabin fever. You need a distraction, or someone to make you laugh. There isn’t much time for anything in my life right now. I work way too much, because I have two jobs. One job is outside the home and takes up way to many hours and one job is home based and requires way too many hours. I have numerous projects going on, family to contend with, and Yoga classes twice a week that take up an entire morning. Trying to get with friends is near impossible due to my work hours, and then what about fun? Relaxation? Leisure time? Shopping? Or a lover? Forget it…all those things just don’t fit in to my run rabbit run schedule.

So how do you find a happy medium? Like most people, I have to work for the money to maintain it all. How do you get all your work done and still have the time and energy left for feeding your soul? I feel like that is what I am trying to do right now, after this huge shift in my life…. I am trying too hard to push the river as it was and create a little fun for myself. So far much of it has backfired…and once again I am back where I started in the first place-irritable and dissatisfied.

Standing within my own shadow.

How do I get back to myself is the burning question, that keeps seeping in through my pores, invades itself into my dreams, stares me in the face in the mirror each morning and shows up every where in my sensory filters. It stares me blankly in the face whenever I am alone. And I happen to be alone a lot lately after leaving a 5 year live in situation rather unwillingly. But wait, no, I am not crying in my beer, or acting pathetically needy and ridiculous like some do after going through a break up that they didn't want. No, I am doing rather well considering.

Its been so long since I have actually lived alone and not had anyone around. To come through the door after work, to nothing but the stillness and the solitude of stationary furniture, dishes in the sink....everything as it was left hours before-all of my own doing. No one to greet me, or to vent onto and of course no one to look forward to hanging with. What I experience instead has only been the satisfaction of knowing that I am in my cloister, surrounded by things I love, and no one can ask anything of me here.

One of the things that was an issue in my previous situation was that I could not be myself at home....that I had to pretend that everything was fine or that I felt ok, both physically and emotionally even if I wasn't feeling that way. So here I am now in my own place, where I can be exactly who or what takes me over for any given moment. But despite the fact that I have unpacked most everything and everything has found a place......and though I have set up a routine that I can live by, and have everything I need within reach, a huge question mark hovers over my head. OK, here I am....what now? I feel like I have forgotten how to be alone. That I have gotten lost in the fabric of someone else, and mine has become transparent. Forgotten how to entertain myself. Forgotten many of the things I liked to do before it all. But have I forgotten because I no longer have the interest for most of them? Like I have had in the past? Or is it that I have changed and have not noticed? Or maybe I do not need those things anymore? I don't have an answer. But my inquiring mind wants to know.

When ever I have gone through any "major" changes as the world dubs it,..it has always been for a purpose, or a goal, or to escape from something I could no longer tolerate. Off I would go, on any whim or any prayer, and down any road if I had the conviction for it, with no fear and ready to really risk anything just to force the change. But this time, I feel that the Universe has put me here quite intentionally, and is not letting me in on the secret of how to be here now.....how ironic I would type that. "Be here Now" isn't that what we are all suppose to be doing? And here I am, right here, right now...supposed to be "being" me?

Still I am quite restless within my own skin....lots of Scarlet O'hara sighs and objections to lots of things.....And no proverbial Rhett to say "oh just settle your ass down." So again I send the question out into the ethers, OK...here I am what now? Hoping that I will recognize what ever sign presents itself...as something worthy of pursuit.