Tag Archives: frustration

Challenge, Letting Go

Letting Go Challenge: Week 16

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The Junk

  • 1, 2., 3., 4 Lampshades
  • 5. Camisole
  • 6. Make up bag
  • 7. Empty packing tape roll (Really!)
  • 8.,9., 10., 11., 12. Medicine bottles
  • 13. Rusted butter knife
  • 14. Rusted fork
  • 15. Broken Otterbox
  • 16. 17. Two purses
  • 18. Eyeliner
  • 19. Old nail polish
  • 20. Big Book
  • 21. Old blush brush

Filing:

Only 19 this week. I did well last Sunday, and then just didn’t have it in me for the rest of the week.

So much for upping my game. The RA decided to throw a hell of a tantrum this week, and I barely made it with the items themselves. (It’s Sunday as I write this.)

No shelf. No drawer. No getting healthy. Although I did lose a couple of pounds, there was no specific action put into it.

I had the opportunity to catch Michael Hyatt’s webinar called The 10 Biggest Mistakes You’re Making in Goal-Setting (and How to Fix Them), which, incidentally, I really recommend. It helped me specify 7 areas of my life I really want to see improved. I was able to set specific goals for:  Writing, Health, Home Organization, Relationships, Finances, Education, and Renewal.

I was psyched. I was organized. I was en pointe.

And then hell broke loose.

But still, 21 things out. 19 things filed.

I’ll take my victories where I find them.

Bonus:

I did find most of a book of stamps and seventeen cents while clearing out a box from the garage.

Seventeen cents richer.  I’m on my way to financial independence now!

 

 

 

Journey, personal

Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace

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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 →

Journey

30 Day Challenge

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On the night I visited my grandmother in the hospital, I stopped by the church on my way there. They were having a class on Ekhart Tolle’s New Earth, which, to be honest, I didn’t have any interest in. But I just needed to be there. Family drama was expected, and I needed a bolster of good energy before I waded in.

As odd things go, it was exactly what I needed. They talked about the ego, about role playing the victim, about repeating patterns and getting caught in high drama. I profess to hate it, and, for the most part, it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, but there is that part of me that just craves it, even if it’s just to show my superiority in how I stand above it.

That night I went out and bought the book.

Now, I can’t say that I whole-heartedly agree with everything he says. There are instances where his definitions are wrong, such as

“…and since the mind is conditioned by the past, you are then forced to reenact the past again and again. The Eastern term for this is karma.” (p 129).

As far as I know, the Eastern term, karma, means cause and effect. Not necessarily repeating patterns.

The way he describes the pain-body conjures an image of something from “Alien,” this ugly tentacled thing living in my body, and yet separate from it. While I understand what he’s getting at, that you are pure essence and everything is not you, there is a certain lack of personal responsibility that he seems to favor, as if murderers and rapists aren’t responsible for their actions. (He makes some reference to that, but I can’t find it off hand).

So, I read it all a few weeks ago, with a interested but somewhat ho-hum reaction to it. Not being able to find the book I’m reading now (Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston), I grabbed it for work and read it all night long.

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personal, Uncategorized

Chop Wood Carry Water

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I keep thinking I’ll blog, get around to it, so much going on, I need to say something, dammit.

But then I don’t want to because, well, that would mean facing it.

Graduating, I thought, would change a lot of things for me. Magically, I suppose, and so very unrealistically. It wasn’t just a triumph over my attention issues, my lack of stick-to-it-tiveness, but also conquering this melancholy that leaves me, well, incapacitated at times.

I thought of all the nights I sat in panic, fumbling papers and re-reading illegible notes, trying to put a paper together that would mean something, be coherent, get a good grade. And I was proud. Like it was over, like I wouldn’t have to deal with that any more, like demons were gone.

I want to write. I want to write well. I don’t dig the tortured artist motif; I don’t want to be that person.

But here it is, weeks after graduation, unable to find a job, still trapped in the hell of flipping nights, and I realize that nothing has changed, other than I have a piece of paper (presumably, I still haven’t gotten it in the mail) and I’m horribly in debt. The melancholy remains and is, if nothing, exacerbated.

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Journey

Back From Black

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This morning, I had trouble getting up and walking. I was looking forward to it. I bought new shoes yesterday, and, while I tried them out yesterday evening, I was really looking forward to doing the just-woke-up walk and see how they feel.

But I couldn’t get moving. With any sort of expediency, anyway.

I drank more coffee than I should have. I piddled around here and there on the ‘net, and I took a long time to get dressed.

When I finally made it to the park, I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t walking; I was trudging.  After having trudged about 20 minutes, though, I noticed my pace increasing. By the time I hit 30 I felt okay, and by the time I hit 40, I felt pretty damned good. ‘

I think that’s exactly how things are right now.  Post-graduation, I’m at about the 25 minute mark right now.

Okay, so I’m not officially here quite yet,

But I’m not falling all over myself avoiding things, either.

Continue reading Back From Black →

musing

Scream Worthy

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So I went walking this evening. I needed to get some of this frustration out. I needed to get some of this panic and anger and utter disappointment out.

I needed to move, and I needed to move fast. I went to the park; there is something very calming (and relevant) about walking in circles around a track that has honeysuckle and various fragrant flowers along the path.

I got maybe — maybe — 20 minutes in, if I was lucky.  I was first stopped by the sight of a man showing his daughter how to drink honeysuckle. She was maybe five. This was a big deal, and he taught her with all the seriousness of an esoteric lesson.  I had to walk around bikes strewn along the track. Apparently everyone in the city decided to ride their bikes (or at least throw them down along the walking track) today for some reason.

Continue reading Scream Worthy →

college

First Paper

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So I’ve been struggling all morning trying to finish my first paper that’s due today. Still more to do with the class, but this is the beginning of the end. I struggled all weekend and had trouble with it.

I struggled last night and fell asleep. I woke up at 430 this morning and struggled with it again.

And I can’t write.  I am saying the same stupid crap in different stupid ways. Over and over.

And I realized…this is the part where I panic, where I pace and drink much coffee and smoke dangerous amounts of cigarettes as a means of coping with the stress of so much writing.

I refuse to smoke, so it would appear that I can’t write.  I’m getting that “Just one won’t hurt you, and you’ll be able to write” voice in my head.

But I know what happens when I just have one.

I want to scream. Seriously.

It doesn’t help that it’s writing about writing, which is the dullest topic ever.

ARGH.