Sun

"Fast on Pessimism; Feast on Optimism"

I think that I might have done OK with this one. I was still plagued with episodes of modified road rage (albeit there were some pretty crappy drivers out there with me today) but on the whole I tried to maintain a relatively sunny outlook. I think that was helped immeasurably by the fact that it finally actually was sunny(!!). After an estimated 30 minutes of sunshine to date for the whole month of February (and only a couple more hours of sun in January) today's bright blinding sunlight bouncing off fresh white snow felt like the world had received a good scrubbing overnight.

Also, today's presentation at SJB went remarkably well. Considering that presenting is definitely not my forte, receiving compliments for something that will also hopefully help a bunch of kids was kinda nice too. So sighs of relief all the way around. Finally, a good day. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the trend will continue...

Discontent

So my Lenten directive today is “Fast from Discontent; Feast on Gratitude”. While in truth I didn't pay it much mind for most of the day, I’m guessing that it is not quite the challenge here at work (Not that I’m not perpetually discontented here, but I can usually put it in perspective) that it will be once I get home. That is probably why I got this particular card today – because I’m supremely discontented at home, and in need of a fast.

Dealing with the effects of depression (definitely my other’s, and quite possibly now my own) I struggle to discern what is acceptable behavior considering, and what is simply uncalled for. I alternately face declarations of love and snide comments that I would not tolerate from a stranger, yet I tolerate at home. Last night’s barb of “sometimes a yes or no (not to a yes or no question, mind you) is all that’s wanted. Keep it up and you’ll run out of words before you run out of life” caused an actual physical burning sensation to my body. And what confused me even more is that I’m not loquacious by nature. If anything, the problem is that words have to be dragged out of me. So the randomness of the remark just made its innate cruelness that much more pronounced. The level of hurt was so great that I prayed to God to tell me that there was more to my life than this.

I am at a loss for what to do.

So I will work to Feast on Gratitude. My ridiculous little black dog, a roof over my head, a job, - all these things I will try to cherish, for they are in fact good.

I’m also working to run toward healthy things when episodes like these happen, rather than running away from them and toward things that do not serve me. I must remember that I’m staging a comeback. Crafting a persona that is representative of the me I know is somewhere inside. And if I’m forced to wear sad, gray garb, I must also be sewing new bright clothes, so they are ready when I need them.

Open your heart to possibility...

Purposeful Silence

Today’s Lenten meditation is “Fast from Idle Gossip; Feast on Purposeful Silence.” Fitting that this is the initial charge, being that I think that it will also be one of the more difficult. (My obsession with news has of late spawned a sub-obsession with celebrity news. Why? Who knows what insecurities drive us to live vicariously through the lives of others? But that is another post all together…)

But while I can quit caring about the famous and infamous for a day, the more interesting element is the idea of purposeful silence. As someone predisposed to hermitude, I frequently trade in silence, but rarely is it purposeful. In yesterday’s Thirteen Tips for Dealing with a Really Lousy Day, number six is a perfect illustration of this dilemma.

6. Exercise is an extremely effective mood booster – but be careful of exercise that allows you to ruminate. For example, if I go for a walk when I’m upset about something, I often end up feeling worse, because the walk provides me with uninterrupted time in which to dwell obsessively on my troubles.

This is me to a tee. Most of my opportunities for silence not only lack purpose, but often end up as futile exercises in self-pity, rage, or despair.

So my challenge today is multi-fold: be conscious enough to recognize opportunities for silence and not squander them to meaningless noise of life, refuse to submit to the easy lure of despair, and embrace purposeful silence as a tool for examining ideas such as gratitude and my spiritual path.

Somehow I think that physical fasting might be easier...

Three Things

So as my quest for reinvention still lives only in my radically untrained and self-indulgently scattered thoughts, today I thankfully received three opportunities to disengage from my own personal melodrama and think a little more about purpose.

One is from the pen of actor/author Chazz Palminteri regarding the inspiration from his father for A Bronx Tale in the form of the phrase “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.” When asked for autographs following the performance of this play, now back on Broadway after 20 years, Palminteri instead signs a card printed with this saying. It is his hope to see if he can inspire and change some people's lives and have them realize that the talent inside of them will bubble to the surface if they have faith in themselves and persevere. Talk about thinking outside of yourself! I printed myself one of those cards today.

The second comes from Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project blog, and is a list of thirteen tips for dealing with a bad day. No revolutionary information here, but on days when it feels like the world is out to get you, it is a refreshingly nuts and bolts reminder of how to avoid the funk and some of the poor choices that can go along with it. I’m posting it both in my office as well as at home as a reminder of HOW to sweat the small stuff.

The third comes from my friend S. A Bishop in the Free Episcopal Church and a wealth of real-world advice for traversing a spiritual path, she helpfully forwarded me A Lenten Prayer: How to Fast. In a twist on the Lenten staple of fasting, with suggestions such as “Fast from complaining; feast on appreciation” and “Fast from lethargy; feast on enthusiasm” it provides a compelling new road map for the next 40 days. (Thanks S.!)

All three of these opportunities encourage the act of doing to overcome some of the struggles of being. Maybe this is where I’m floundering. Hopefully they will offer a little traction to my spinning wheels.

Mud

Well reinvention as a process was definitely in absentia this weekend (although I’m gaining some not-much-needed confirmations on what my triggers are). I’m not sure what the problem ultimately was – whether I just chose wrong in terms of a jumping off point or if I psyched my self out with the magnitude of my plans, but it was something akin to an abysmal failure. Even still, I am maintaining an attitude of acceptance in that I’ve not failed, but rather have gotten off to a slow (SLOW) start.

I think that the scariest part of this undertaking is the fact that I’m now relatively certain the person that I’m hoping to become/trying to be again, wouldn’t be any too excited about living my life as it is. So, what makes more sense in this grand experiment? Change myself first or change my life first? Which of these choices has a greater possibility for success? Is one the more logical first step over the other? Which one would really have the most impact on my happiness? Do I even know how to assess my own happiness?

This stuff always bubbles to the surface when I’m slogging through a day riddled with melancholy and disgust. ("Now I'm not one to make sweeping generalizations, but I just hate people...") So here I am, mucking my way through an existential quagmire, losing my boots, getting mud all over my socks, and experiencing a general dissatisfaction with my environment. Hopefully this mud will eventually harden into a new path…

Launching My Personal Comeback

As of late (and perhaps longer than that) I have felt a disconnect between the person who is walking around this world in my body and the person I believe that I am, or rather could be. I was not been blessed with an innate spontaneity or an abundance of self-esteem, and have often tip-toed around the edges of my life afraid of being thrust in the spotlight. Even still, through a pleasant predisposition to listen rather than talk, and a generally genial nature, I have managed to find myself in the midst of some wonderfully unusual and often exciting situations. But as I look in the mirror at a reflection that seems dull in every sense of the word, I find that this ability to quietly saddle up to the magic in life has been shut down completely.

I find myself wearing a self-suit that does not fit. Uncertain of what I like and dislike, how I’m perceived or even of what I really look like, I am uncomfortable in my own skin. And while I certainly have no glory days to cling to, this sad nostalgia for the past that seeps in through the cracks on the gray days of the soul, recently came crashing through in a torrent, like a breech in a dam.

The powers that be have arranged (if I allow it) for G, a voice from my past that lives auspiciously on in my “what if” life, to once again intersect with my real life. And while this intersection would in no way alter the overarching path that I am on (hopefully sans the melancholia of course) I find myself questioning whether this opportunity is really a hint from the Cosmos that I need to exorcise this part of my past in order to jump fully in to the future I want to have. Whew – heady stuff.

But here's the problem – if this intersection were to take place tomorrow, I would not attend. The burden of the ill-tailored self-suit and the M.I.A. identity have me stymied in such inertia that any opportunity for constructive catharsis would be forgone rather than expose this lesser version of myself to my past.

So I find myself facing a paradox.

In order to move forward in my life, do I need to in some way re-fashion a me from the past to do it? It is an idea that runs contrary to logic, but is it true nonetheless?

After ruminating on this riddle, I have decided, for the time being, yes. Great undertakings in life often require great effort. Just as the hero must undergo rigorous physical and spiritual training in order to face his quest, I too must suck it up and do the physical and emotional work necessary to allow me to face my nostalgic past and find my fulfilling future.

And so it begins. Mea culpa for the melodrama…

Rage

I was trying to find a pithy quote about rage that would help qualify the seething agitation that has been bubbling just beneath my surface today. But as I started looking, I realized that I cannot muster the effort necessary to sift through the emotional wrecks of others that resulted in such articulations.

So, I will just say that today I was mad. But not just mad – mad to a disproportionate level with the causes, off the charts mad, mad at the world mad…

It is amazing that people can maintain this level of anger and rage for months and years at a time – often dedicating their entire lives to the substance of this immense anger. It is amazing because it just made me tired. Tired and sad. Something’s gotta give…

Note on the Most Depressing Day...

It seems that the most depressing day of the year isn’t in fact January 24th, but rather the third Monday of January (the 24th in the year of the reference). So instead of celebrating early, it appears that my bout with the blues was right on time.

The Most Depressing Day of the Year

As blog entries from Monday 1/14 and Wednesday 1/16 were left unfinished and inevitably deleted in disgust, I wonder if I have the stomach for this writing thing. Perhaps I need to lower my expectations about what is blog-worthy, since right now everything in my life just seems too painfully pedestrian to place pen to paper (so to speak).

Today, while I have ingested no more caffeine than I normally do, (and certainly less than I have on frequent occasions) I am feeling jittery to the point of distraction - after a frustrating, yet not particularly terse exchange with tech support, I briefly found my hands shaking uncontrollably. And while not even remotely suicidal, I am struggling to anticipate with pleasure, any event in my immediate future. What is wrong with me?

I am growing tired of malaise, tired of melancholy, and tired of the monotony of this same discordant tune that is playing behind me. I need better background music!

It turns out that several years ago, hired by the British tourism industry, a researcher named Dr. Cliff Arnall came up with a mathematical equation that takes into account things like weather, debt, salary, time since Christmas, etc. and calculated that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. Perhaps I am simply celebrating early...

Sherpas

Two nights ago, as I was temporarily driven out of bed with aggravation at my two bedmates (one human, one canine) I found myself in the unusual position to do a little solitary thinking.

And at 3AM, as I sat on the couch deciding whether to just sleep there, I started thinking about the image of a Sherpa. Not something I ever think about, and I’m sure not an accurate image, but what folks generally picture when they think of Sherpas. I was thinking that, while vital above all else to the climb, the Sherpa is not only denied the glory of the accomplishment (often solely lavished on the foolish European/American climber), but he is usually denied the view to the top as well. Carrying supplies, measuring each potentially perilous step, always staring up to gauge the weather or down to gauge the ice, he is never afforded the splendor of the journey. And as I sat there wrapped in the chilly darkness thinking of my “expedition” as a partner, I felt very much as a Sherpa. While I may end up somewhere “important” (a highly subjective idea in itself), have I spent so much energy securing the safe passage of my companion that I will not have my own experience of the journey - or for that matter even have journeyed to the peak of my choosing?

Albeit an abstract an image to pluck from the darkness, it was, to say the least, somewhat sad. But the oddest element of my musings was to then receive TWO subsequent references to Sherpas on the two days following my dark night. Both involving Sr. Edmund Hillary – one a brief mention in a random National Geographic documentary of Hillary and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal and their climb of Mount Everest, and one today as I read the surprising notice of Hillary’s death this morning.

While I often maintain the belief that there are no coincidences and I believe that these three uncanny occurrences must be related, I’ve yet to figure out how.

However it feels as if there is gravity to the unusualness of the situation, and I am scared that I will miss its message.

It is unsettling…

Surveying the Frozen Horizon

As one year ends and another begins, there is the inevitable social discourse that involves questions such as “How were your holidays?”, “Did you have a good New Year?” etc. Niceties that serve less to elicit actual information than to fulfill expected obligations. After being lobbed one of these random and meaningless inquiries, this year I took to volleying back with something along the lines of “Oh fine, but I’m looking forward to the vast social wasteland that is January.” Glib? Probably, but more often than not it garnered a knowing smile, asserting that while festive, a little holiday goes a long way.

But as I actually settle into January, I’m forced to consider what I really meant.

Part of me (the part predisposed to hermitude) knows that I was wistfully envisioning mythical bright winter days spent alternately tromping through snow-covered woods and curled up in front of a fire with my four-footed familiar Dougal. A fabulously false image, about as real as the Emerald City, without the benefit of a poppy field to dull the true drudgery of the journey.

Part of me knows that with the passing of the holidays, my “vast social wasteland” was shorthand for hope that the anxiety and strategic preparation that marked this year’s obligations has passed on for at least a bit and I am offered a reprieve from tense gatherings.

But was I actually more prophetic than glib?

Right now, due to a bit of poor planning mixed with a boatload of bad luck, January finds me (us really, but for these intents and purposes, me) financially f*#@&d and trapped with nothing but time to contemplate how much of a wasteland January (and more than likely February) really might be. And while I haven’t hit rock bottom by any means, every now and then I do catch a glimpse of it in the distance and think “What the hell am I doing?”

So as I stagger through storms that are starting to swirl across my January wasteland, I’m not adopting cute little resolutions like I will lose 10 pounds (which I certainly need) or I will get organized (which is highly unlikely). Instead I am, if not tackling at least pondering the question “What the hell am I doing?” And hopefully if I’m not doing the right thing (which is pretty apparent) this will be the year to change that.

However I am adopting the resolution to give this blogging thing one more go…

Busy and Uninspired, or Just Lazy??

It makes me wonder if the discipline that seems to be required to propagate ones ideas on a successful (or even not successful) blog is actually not discipline but an intense hubris.

I am NOT a disciplined person. I am not organized, despite the fact that persons constantly, with no reasonable evidence to substantiate such a though, insist that I am. I procrastinate, usually to my own extreme detriment. I have no willpower, no follow-through, and suffer from the distraction ailment called (as by divine friend P calls it) “Shiny Object Syndrome.” I recently referred to my inability to remain focused on one particular topic for any longer than it takes to learn the most rudimentary elements of said topic as Intellectual ADD. I am not proud of these faults – they induce much personal shame. But I have yet to cultivate the level of awareness that allows me to avoid these missteps rather than just recognize them.

The quintessential example of this struggle is contained in the date of the previous post. A five month distraction interjected by the brief creation of another 3-post blog that I ultimately deleted upon realizing that it was a cheap attempt to keep musing without acknowledging how un-disciplined I am with this blog.

And yet everyday around the globe, thousands of individuals, many with horrid things to say, many with nothing to say, manage to eek out one revolting or bland, or inane post after another. Does this mean that they maintain a hyper-high level of personal organization? Or is the need to hear (type) their own thoughts and opinions so strong that blogging becomes like breathing –each snarky opinion sent out onto the worldwide web really an insidious form of life-support.

Or perhaps, despite my disregard or often abject disdain for their opinions, I am jealous of their commitment to their blog. I walk a fine line between being technologically savvy and technologically stupid. Maybe my inability to achieve what the smallest schoolchild, the silliest celebrity and the sickest psychopath do with such ease just make me feel more the latter than the former.

Words

Perhaps tied into the complete avoidance of the financial tasks to which I should be attending, today has been a bubbling font of all things literary. Beginning with several highly articulate and interesting blog entries listed on the amazing Fearless Voices section of the Huffington Post, to the wealth of words that is the New York Times online edition (sorry, the paper version is sometimes hard to come by in my neck of the woods), through two separate reviews of the increasingly intriguing book Cultural Amnesia by Clive James, my attention was finally directed to D.H. Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan and her amazing house in Taos which now hosts writer workshops.

Whew!

It is a rare day when I am not delighted by an influx of the well-written (and sometimes not-so-well-written) word into my little world. An impassioned op-ed, a crisp, concise news piece or even the enticing advertisement of an artistically inclined workshop makes me long for an occupation that involves this daily wordplay. But alas, I have never been able to parlay my enjoyment of words in to a personal practice.

Yesterday, post-Easter services, my lovely friend G. and I were musing on our ideal occupations (mine first and foremost being a tie between owning a farm and working for National Public Radio) and in jest I mentioned that I would like a job as a trivia researcher. After today’s wordy wonderland, I realize that that is only partially true. Perhaps it is not trivia per se that appeals to me, but the access to the vast catalogues of information and opinions that over time have so inspired others that they felt compelled to document them for cultural consumption. To inhale years of passionate pursuits like an exquisite gourmet delicacy is made better only by knowing that another fabulous course is on its way.

Rebirth

How much can happen in three months? Oddly, a lot and absolutely nothing at all.

It has been almost three months since the last post and I feel like I’m simultaneously mired in the muck and slowly slogging my way out. These past weeks have been perpetually overshadowed by the rampant dysfunction that has been left in the wake of my mother-in-law’s passing. It has been said that something like a death will either bring a family together or drive it apart. But is it possible to do both? These exhausting inter-personal relationships reached a psychotic crescendo at a family wedding in one horrible drunken flame out. Since that time, whether it be from the meritorious standpoint of self-preservation or the completely selfish standpoint of “enough is enough”, I have found it hard to muster the desire to engage with any of them on anything more than a superficially courteous level.

Intellectually I know that this attitude is cruel considering the circumstance, but even still I felt like Robert Shaw in “Jaws” sliding off the edge of the boat to be consumed by the shark. (Highly melodramatic I know, but metaphorically consumption is consumption, and if not film sharks, than fire or some other cliché) Is there such a thing as compassionate detachment? Is there a way to offer love and support without being drained by the vampires of grief? And how much bad behavior can be chalked up to pain and how much is just bad behavior? This is my struggle.

Even still, I am hopeful for me. This is the time to take ownership. Elaborate dreams will never see reality without pedestrian effort, so this spring is all about rebirth – mine. Where it will lead me, I don’t know. But this time, I want to remember the ride. And when I arrive somewhere – even if it is just a way point, I don’t want to think “How did I get here?”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
- Mary Oliver

How do I love my sparks as much as I love my bonfires?

I was talking to my divine friend P. on the phone today and discussing the idea of whether it is wise to revisit things later in life that profoundly affected you when you were young (i.e. literature, music, etc.) for fear of being disappointed in who you were then. A thought which not surprisingly spring-boarded to the question of whether in revisiting things later in life that profoundly affected you when you were young, is it possible to also be disappointed in who you are now. P. thinks definitely no – all life experiences, for lack of a better phrase, increase one’s value rather than detract from it. Myself, I am not so sure. Sometimes I look back on the person I was and see a glowing individual compared to the dim figure that I currently cast. But then again, am I just glowing in hindsight? Was I just as dim to myself then as I feel now? Are we ever really able to gauge our luminescence, or is it only truly captured in the eyes of others or in the spectral photos that are our memories?

My lovely Mother-in-law passed away on December 27th. I know that she felt herself to be dim in comparison to her radiant past self. This is so sad because in truth, until the end, she possessed a beautiful inner light.

How do we teach ourselves and others to recognize the ever-evolving light within? Perhaps not as bright at certain times as others, but always captivating. How do we appreciate the moments that are raging pyres without discounting those that are flickering flames?

Since more often than not I feel inferior to my past selves, perhaps this should be a focus for my new year. How do I love my sparks as much as I love my bonfires?

The big thinker for today:

"We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness - an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here, and how we are related to others.”

But what happens if we lose our awareness of this seed, or even worse, if we had no awareness of it to begin with? If we do not tend it, do we kill it? Or does it merely go dormant, waiting for us to reestablish the conditions necessary for it to germinate.

I would hope that this seed of selfhood, the design of our very nature, is perennial – with the ability to weather the harshest winter of our soul and grow again stronger and more vital when the warm spring of possibility blows across our consciousness. That a glimpse of familiar leaves and stalks reminds us what is planted and allows us to imagine the scent and beauty of our inherent bloom.

It is an interesting thought considering the gardens of summer are dying off and the land is growing stark. Perhaps even rumination on this idea needs the quiet of fall and winter to truly take root and yield understanding.

Deep horticultural metaphors – self-indulgent musings or a yet untapped vein of insight??

Adding yet another layer to the speech conundrum...

Words are a heavy thing...they weigh you down. If birds talked, they couldn't fly.

"The question is not is there life after death but Is there life before death?"
- John Kabat-Zinn

Hmmmmm

Not all of the important changes in your life need to be dramatic, Hollywood-like moments of revelation. Having a major turning point or epiphany is nice, but it can be overrated. You don't need to make a splash to make a change.

True growth happens slowly ... so slowly that sometimes (like now) you might not even be aware of it. Look around today -- did you realize that right now, you're in one of the biggest transitional periods of your life? Let it unfold -- enjoy it.

This thought was provided courtesy of Astrology.com. Sound advice – especially in an era where even the smallest event is dipped in glitter and trotted out to the masses as a pivotal point in the history of man.
But is this really one of the biggest transitional periods of my life?
Perhaps (how scary is that!!)
There are times when I see glimmers of where I think I would like to be, shining through cracks in my usually muddled existence. Words or phrases ‘click”, coincidences - and yes, I know, there are no REAL coincidences, adopt a karmic sheen, the right message comes at the right time...

Lord knows that my dubious mental default setting assures me that I am stagnant, but I don’t think that that is true. Maybe “slowly” is slowly like the grass growing or an apple ripening – not visible to the naked eye. Maybe the time-lapse record of hindsight will reveal today to be a glorious streak in the sky of self-actualization. But if my pace is so languid that I can’t yet see my footprints in the soft earth, am I making progress?

An email I received today highlighted this quote:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
You are the woman who'll decide where to go."
- Dr. Seuss

Believing that this is the right message at the right time, I have decided that I do in fact have confidence in my ability to decide where to go. Now I must choose a direction.

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”

- John W. Gardner
author of Excellence and Self-Renewal

So begins a public documentation of the journey to reveal my path to a place of purpose…