Tag Archives: friendship

Letting Go Challenge: Week Nine

November 29, 2015 N J Ray Leave a comment

Eight weeks down, and no end in sight. I don’t know whether to be excited or sad.

For the next four weeks, I’ve decided to change things up. I’ll be getting rid of 21 things a week (seems like a step back, eh?) but adding filing to it. I want 21/21: 21 things out, 21 things filed.

For those of you who know me and/or have been to my house, yes, this means I’m taking on tackling my office, the big void in which I’ve tossed stacks and stacks of things to be filed “later.”

So, gulp.

I also have gremlins in the house, apparently. The number one thing on my toss-out list is a picture that I loved so much that I gave it to my mother for Mother’s Day one year. When I bought the house, she gave it back to me so that I could hang it over the fireplace.

Sometime this week, it fell, taking a candle with it.

I’ll really miss the picture, torn beyond fixing with its wooden framing broken. It’s light through old oak trees–one of my favorite things about the South. But it was also the give-and-take between my mother and me that made it so special.

Alas.

So, the things for this week:

Filing:

I “filed” 21 prescription receipts. Twenty-two, actually.

I’ve decided to go gently into the office, starting with my so-called medical file, which is really a hanging folder stuffed with mostly medical paperwork and some other stuff, too.

Earlier in the year, I started a binder of my prescription receipts, taping them to sheets of paper. They’re so small and annoying, and end up in all sorts of places I didn’t imagine. This way, I can simply photocopy the sheets of receipts for FSA reimbursement.

I just added 22 receipts to it this week. It wasn’t as painful as a catheter. I was pleasantly surprised.

For my toss-out:

1. Tree picture
2. Electric blanket cord (the electric blanket has long been thrown away)
3. B-12 supplement
4. Book: The Night Manager by John Le Carre
5. Book: Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
6. Book: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb**
7. Brown purse
8. Black purse
9, 10, 11, 12. Four Seasons of True Blood
13. Salt light
14. Red nail polish
15. Yet another spool of thread (this time, regular-sized)
16. Suntan lotion from 6 years or so ago
17. Holly Blues by Susan Wittig Albert
18. Bra that never fit
19, 20, 21 Phone Books

The new phone books came in, so out with the old ones. Progress, I suppose, considering I had phone books from several years ago on a previous week’s list.

The past two or three weeks have been a struggle over balance. What to keep, what to toss.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit with a friend whom I haven’t seen in far too long and to meet a new one.

Some people put off a certain je ne sais quoi that my being in their presence feels like coming home. My friend is such a person, as is her friend, as it turns out.

It was so out of character for me to contact her and say, “Hey, I know this is horribly rude, but I heard that your awesome friend was visiting. I’d love the opportunity to meet her.”

But I did. And I’m so glad I did. You can never know too many awesome people.

Plus, I had the opportunity to try gumbo over potato salad, something I had not even heard of before Friday. And really, really awesome deviled eggs made with chipotle pickles.

So there’s that.

My “old” friend was the one who inspired me to start an organized system of purging, and I told her so. We talked about her challenge and my adapted one. We talked about how it’s made us really look at what we’re attached to, and why. How it’s been a true meditation in letting go, and the freedom that comes along with it.

I talked about how one week, it turns out, was less about stuff and more about a strange flavor of forgiveness.

I am truly honored to know her, and grateful that I have people in my life that challenge me, even unintentionally.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “letting go” is causative of opening up to the new, but I will say that it just so happens that I’m doing things I’ve never done before and trying things I’ve never tried before, all the while I’m letting go of things that no longer have a purpose in my life.

And that’s pretty damn grand indeed.

***(The ONLY reason I’m getting rid of Hobb’s book is because, while dusting my still overflowing bookcase, I notice that I had two of the exact same book. Apparently, I do love her that much.)

Challenge, Letting Go

Letting Go Challenge: Week Six

November 8, 2015 N J Ray 2 Comments

I apologize for the low quality picture. I took it at night because I wanted to make sure I got the stuff that was going to be dropped off at work out the next day, and the other two weren’t taken under the best photographic conditions, either.

28 Things:

1. Storage container for my medicine
2. Magic Wand
3. “I am loved” button
4. Downy packet
5. Bag of cat food
6. Button
7. Arthritis patches
8. Phone Charger
9. Single Knee Hi
10. Mini shampoo
11. Mini conditioner
12. Big bottle of conditioner
13. Book (look, i’ve started!) Zach’s lie
14. Top of a candle
15, 16, and 17: Three broken and/or empty pens
18. Alarm company security sign
19. Laptop box
20. Purple scarf
21. Alcohol bottle
22. Empty hair conditioner tube — found in a drawer
23. Black pants
24. Blue pants
25. Bra that has never fit
26 and 27. Two pairs of shoes
28. Writer’s Market 2013

One of the things I’ve discovered this week is the joy of seeing reaction of someone when I pass something on. I had the chance to see it twice.

The magic wand was given to me by an incredible lady when I was having a rough time. She is my purple fairy godmother. I’ve had it for a few years, and, as I was cleaning up, I discovered an old pin that said “I am loved.” I’m not sure where I got that from.

Someone I have known for over ten years–one of my first friends when I came to work for my employer–was in the hospital. We have had a tumultuous history, most of the tumult resulting from the fact that I really, really hated myself and had no idea who I was. Well, I knew what I was: I was venomous, but I couldn’t do anything to stem the flow. It just poured out of me, infecting everything I touched.

I was the opposite of Midas: Instead of turning things to gold, I turned them to shit.

Except for her. The thing was, she kept reaching out again and again and again when I really, really didn’t deserve it.

We would hang out, then not hang out, then hang out again, mostly going our separate ways when I got a transfer and she started attending church. We would see each other or text once in a while, but mostly it was space. A lot of it, I think, was because I couldn’t look her in the eye.

But then I found out, quite by accident, that she was in the hospital, in isolation because her condition was so dire. I waited a few days before contacting her, hoping she’d be out of isolation. It was within this span that I found my magic wand and the pin.

And so I contacted her and found that she was able to receive company. The first thing I did after giving her a hug made awkward by her hospital bed, and only a little bit by tension, was to give her the magic wand with the pin stuck in it.

I told her a little about the wand, but I don’t know if I told her that I didn’t need it any more. I guess the assumption is there since I was passing it down.

That was a bright moment: when I found it, I realized that, no matter what circumstances look like, I really didn’t need a magic wand. Now, the joke is that there is no magic wand that makes everything better; it’s just a representation of good wishes from a lady who wished she could make everything better for me. But the thing is, I really don’t need a magic wand. That wand became my wish I could make everything better for my hospital-bound friend.

I don’t remember what we talked about, mostly catching up, with my attempting to apologize for how shitty I was to her. Back in the day, my “personal space bubble” was nearly infinite, and I didn’t tolerate anyone invading it very well, and made sure everyone knew it.

At the end, she said, “That what’s you do when you love someone. Give them space and hope they come back.”

Anger, I’ve found, doesn’t have to be a way of life. It’s much better when it isn’t. And it’s not that I’ve changed–I haven’t changed. I just lost a lot of the garbage that wasn’t me.

Life is really, really good.

Also, the “ice chest” that my Enbrel came in served another purpose. My nephew received a bike for his birthday with a platform on the back. With a little bungee-cording, it fit perfectly.

So this:

Became this:

And life is really, really good.

Fabulous Friday, life getting better

Fabulous Friday: Loving What Is

November 6, 2015 N J Ray Leave a comment

I’ll admit I stole the title from Byron Katie’s book of the same name, but I’m sure it has something to do with flattery.

Or something.

It’s been a bit of a rough week. I’m on my (I hope! I hope!) final leg of my prednisone journey, and on Sunday I started a 5mg dose, down from 10 mg. So much for that “uphill battle” thing: the trip down is far rougher than the trip up. Including the ‘roid rage and my flipping out over the bullshit mockumentary of the horrors of Planned Parenthood, which ended with my yelling at someone I really respect, realizing I was yelling at someone I really respect, and hiding away for the rest of the day.

Not my finest moment.

But going down is worse.

Because I had calmed down (way, way down), I had missed how much I had been “propped up” (almost quite literally) by the prednisone. A couple of weeks ago, I went from 15 mg to 10 mg, and I could feel a difference energy-wise, but it wasn’t a huge deal. I wasn’t flaring up every other day, so I knew the Enbrel is working. Going down another notch on the steroids, however, has pretty left me dragging myself around, kinda-sorta moving from task to task. A bit of swelling started on Wednesday in my hands, and I’m hurting.

Not all days are good ones; not all weeks are good ones. And yet, here I stand, A little over 9 months since my first flare-up, and I’m in better shape than I ever would have imagined at that point.

When I’m asked how I’m doing, I answer, quite honestly, “I’ve had much worse days.”

Because I have. Much, much, worse days. I have constant nausea; in fact, I’m recommending to all my friends that they buy stock in Coca-Cola because I’m pretty much living off of Sprite and plain saltine crackers.

And yet, here I stand.

I am grateful that I have such a great boss. I’m grateful for my coworkers who, despite the sheer chaos of their days at times, still check on me.

And I’m very, very grateful for my friends. I’m grateful when I see “long-lost” ones and play board games with them, and I’m grateful when I lose by negative 78 points because I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m very, very grateful for like-minded people and the ability we share to lose ourselves in laughter.

I had committed to NaNoWriMo this month, and my goal is to lay down another 50k words and just trudge through the rough draft. I want it finished. Considering I barely broke 30K all year, though,it’s a long shot.

But I seem to excel at longshots. I’ve only written about 3k so far, but it’s more than I had written in all of October. So it’s something.

And it’s pretty fabulous from where I’m standing.

Challenge, Letting Go

Letting Go Challenge: Week Five (Upping my Game)

November 1, 2015 N J Ray 2 Comments

I didn’t realize until after I had posted last week’s toss-out that I had actually made it a month. Four weeks at 21 items a week.

My house is now 84 items emptier.

For the next four weeks, I’m going to shoot for 28 things a week. That’s just one more item a day. 28 x 4 = 112. Add that to the previous 84, and I’ll have 196–almost 200 things–NOT chaos-ing up my residence.

For this week, it’s:

1. Ripped Dress
2. Nail Polish
3. and 4. Two huge boxes my dog food had been shipped in. I was going to put….something… in them, I know.
5. Egg crate. I had been using it as a lap top cooler, but it’s not really useful if you can’t stand typing on them.
6., 7., 8. Shirts that no longer fit. Donating them to work.
9. Pair of pants, also donated to work.
10. and 11. 2 pairs of shoes.
12. and 13. 2 boxes of unopened tampons (not pictured), also donated to work.
14. Happy Shack tie-dyed tshirt, sadly torn beyond any decent use
15. Torn pink bag
16. Hat that doesn’t even fit to the top of my ears.
17. Chipped coffee cup
18. Generic decongestant meds–expired 2007
19. Facial cleanser–proof I’ll really use anything. It only has about 1/20th of a bottle left, but it doesn’t actually do anything but make you feel cleaner. Using astringent and a cotton pad right after I had washed my face showed that this stuff really didn’t work.
20. Work lanyard (I think I was going to wash it once upon a time? Instead, thrown in my old junk drawer.
21. E-cigarette liquid. Caramel Cappuccino. It WAS a favorite of mine until I spilled it all in my purse and couldn’t stand the smell of it anymore.
22. Rubbermaid lid. (Dog, again.)
23. Dog calendar. I was holding onto it because I was going to turn it into hand crafted paper–something I may or may not get back into in the future.
24. Eye drops for pink eye. It took me over 40 years to get pink eye the first time. I think I’m pretty safe in throwing them away.
25, 26, 27 spools of thread. I swear, these damn things keep multiplying. I didn’t even count the last ones I found and handed over to my seamstress-at-work.
28. Packet of Downy softener from 2010.

One of the interesting things I’ve discovered this week is that I’m actually looking forward to getting rid of things. I keep a box on my kitchen table that when I come across something, i drop it in there so I’m not doing them at the last minute.

Another thing is that I don’t feel guilty in buying something. At least so far.

The facial cleansing stuff. Now, for the most part, I’ll buy generic. There are some things, though, that simply aren’t worth the “cost benefit.” Peanut butter, for example. Toilet paper, for another example. This stuff doesn’t work. And yet I kept using it. Cause, stubbornness.

I hate letting go of money. Hate it, hate it. Actually, that’s not true. I hate spending money. I don’t have a problem letting go of it. (Subtle, but distinct difference, I guess.) But when I had enough of using astringent right after washing my face–the pad looking like I had been working in a coal yard–I tossed it and got some stuff that I’ve used in the past and knew it worked. Sure, it’s more expensive, but perhaps not as expensive as facial cleanser and astringent every single face-washing.

A friend and I were celebrating her acing her statistics class on Friday, and, as I told her about the Letting Go challenge, and, the face cleaner in particular, she told me about her hair drawer. Hair bands, hair clips, many with the tags still on. “I need to do this,” she said. “But I hate getting rid of stuff.”

She’s a book hoarder like me. We have many things in common.

I told her to start small: maybe 7 things a week. Just one item a day. Not too painful, not too hard.

I told her I have too much stuff. Stuff I love and want but have forgotten because it’s been buried under or packed behind stuff I
don’t want but couldn’t stand to get rid of.

I am so very glad my friend told me about her own minimalist challenge.

This is downright liberating.

The lagniappe for the week is that I cleaned out my refrigerator. Since I’ve been stocking Sprite for nausea, a LOT of stuff had gotten pushed to the back. Out it went. I didn’t think to count it til I had forgotten how many things I threw out.

Journey, personal

Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace

July 26, 2015 N J Ray 4 Comments

Today is a day of frustration. My body won’t do what I need it to do; my head won’t do what I need it to do.

It’s a day of frustration and unknowing and a good dose of fear.

My attention won’t do what I need it to do. It’s like buckshot; I send it out with all the focus I can muster only to have it spread out, landing on shiny and unshiny alike.

I’m frustrated due to limitation, but that will pass. I’m frustrated due to seeing otherwise intelligent people lose all reason when it comes to pride.

Pride of what?

I’m frustrated with politicians and pundits acting like three year old children, unable to discuss straight-forwardly what they are for, instead, countering and insulting their opponents. I’m frustrated with people who mistake opponents for enemies and sound bites for reasoned argument.

I’m frustrated with the celebrated repetition of falsehood: you know, the bearing false witness thing. I’m frustrated with the fact that we have lost our ability to consider the source.

Not all sources are equal.

I’m frustrated that parroting what so-and-so said or such-and-such did has become an art form, and when the parrots are confronted with contradictory data, they view facts as an assault on their character.

I’m frustrated with people who have appropriated the term “family values”: where once it meant honesty, integrity, good citizenship, and compassion, it has been reduced to “one man + one woman.”

I’m frustrated with the blame-game, this activity of (insert word here)-shaming, with finger-pointing and the utter, utter lack of accountability.

I’m frustrated with people who won’t do what I need them to do–return a phone call, fill a prescription.

I’m frustrated with myself–and it’s so much easier to find frustration with other things. I can’t seem to get a single word down about a cat I miss more than I thought I would. A cat whose timing was so precise, our evolution so cosmically timed, that her going off into the woods, ostensibly to die, coincided perfectly with my first RA flare up.

I’m frustrated.

Two strange things happened this week, both involving a single word “peace.”

Continue reading Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace →

personal

Connection

June 28, 2008 N J Ray 1 Comment

My phone is dead, dead, dead. Dried out and flipped open, it still wouldn’t turn on. I keep thinking that I’ll get it taken care of, but I’ve been turned on to the Iphone which would require my changing carriers, and I have a single month till my contract expires.

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do. I check my messages daily, and it seems strange that no one leaves their number despite an explicit request to.

“Hi. This is Nancy’s phone and she killed me. She drowned me in the swamp at the DeSoto National Forest, so please leave your name, AND your number, and she’ll get back to you as soon as she can.”

Most of my messages are along the lines of, “Haha! You killed your phone! Call me back.”

Ugh.

Continue reading Connection →

Eat Pray Exercise

Miracles Part II (Orig: March 7, 2008)

April 6, 2008 N J Ray 1 Comment

When ink joins a with a pen, then the blank paper

can say something. Rushes and reeds must be woven

to be useful as a mat. If they weren’t interlaced,

the wind would blow them away.

Like that, God paired up

Creatures and gave them friendship.

Rumi, Essential Rumi, trsltd by Coleman Barks

I read over the Part I part, and I realized I went no where near where I meant to with it.

So I’ll try again.

Apparently it takes a really long time for something to slip down between the folds of my psyche. I’m slow like that at times.

One of the big sayings at the Unity church which I attend is “Know that you know that you know.” Which, on an intellectual level, I got. There is a difference, obviously, between intellectually understanding and really, really getting something.

I don’t know the particular moment that I got that I got that I got it, just that I didn’t at one point, and then I did.

There was a particular moment when I realized something absolutely wonderful, though. There was a shining, singular moment when something spectacular and fabulous and utterly wonderful occurred to me. There was a shining, singular moment when I realized something so profoundly simple.

That I didn’t have to be fat anymore.

Continue reading Miracles Part II (Orig: March 7, 2008) →

relationships

Words, words, words

March 6, 2008 N J Ray 1 Comment

Meh.

I wrote something once, “Words will be the death of me, and in Truth I shall be reborn.”

I think it’s fitting…the difference between words and truth these days, or, perhaps more accurately, Truth these days, is astounding.

We’re talking about style in ficiton writing class last night. What’s style? Out of all of the elements of fiction, I think style is the most difficult to define. It’s more than grammar or syntax. More than mere word choice. But it has little to do with storyline or plot or even character, I think.

If you find that one writer that just zings off the page, it doesn’t matter if he or she rewrites a nursery rhyme or a short story — her style is there, and you know who wrote it.

Mark over at the Naked Soul wrote this post about fingerprints, and it made me think. It made me think that style and fingerprints in that sense, aren’t really all that different.

But back to words.

Continue reading Words, words, words →

relationships, semester break

And So it Goes

January 12, 2008 N J Ray Leave a comment

I knew 2008 would be a year of loss. Of “positive” loss, I thought.
I just didn’t know it would be this sort of loss, or of this magnitude.

They say you find out who your friends are when times are bad, not good.

When I hit bottom on Wednesday, and I was at my absolute worst, I was lectured by a Carpe Diem girl. While I cried (and, oh, did I cry, knowing the whole time that one cigarette of hers — which she had been smoking around me — would have made it better), she lectured me on what a shitty person I am.

She then left me stranded: all of my stuff’s in bags and boxes and my rooms are filled with organizational stuff that I have no idea how to implement. I can’t find my socks. I can’t find my school supplies.

Hell, I can’t even find my brain right now.

Continue reading And So it Goes →

personal

The Carpe Diem Girls

December 24, 2007 N J Ray 7 Comments

So I met up with the girls last night. It’s been a long time, far too long, since the three of us were together. There’s such an energy there, I get giddy just thinking about it. There is something that hums inside of me, something that seems like it’s tangible when the three of us are together. It’s present regardless of our moods, our temperaments, or our circumstances.

In Lit class, we learned about the “True” woman and the “New” woman. Granted, this was early 19th Century, but it still loosely applies today. A true woman was comprised of purity, piety, domesticity, and submission. Sounds a bit patriarchal to me, but who am I to quibble with the source? It’s been a while since we’ve covered new womanhood, but what struck me most was that it wasn’t the antithesis of these qualities, but rather the choice to enact them as they choose them.

I was hit by an image of a quilt coming home from meeting the girls. One piece of cloth being stitched to another, some more closely and, as you get away from the first piece, some further away. The needle goes in, and it pinches; it goes out, and it’s pulled.

Continue reading The Carpe Diem Girls →

Lyrical Fool