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.