Kick me please

Self sabotage is a very complicated, dangerous and persistent problem.

It takes a long time, in my opinion, to figure out that self-sabotage is what one needs to deal with... that is to say, we follow the same pattern, over and over again; we wonder, what have I done to deserve this? when we end up in the same hole we just climbed out of; and then, finally, it dawns on us that the "please kick me" sign we are carrying around on our back is written in our own handwriting.

Yessiree Bob...we wrote it, we taped it and we pick it up and put it back on when it falls off. And, we do this in a sleep walking state where we can't see that it is indeed US creating our "groundhog day" existence.

Then we talk to our friends about it...some listen in such an attentive way that they hear the pattern and after a while, tired of watching people they care about falling into the same hole in a very Pooh-like way, they try to stop us before we fall back in. Sometimes they pull us out and try to give us advice on how to avoid the hole the next time.

All of this is very frustrating for us (we don't believe we are really falling in the SAME hole each time; I mean, we really do believe we learned and changed from the last 100 times we fell in the hole) and for them (they just want to lock us in a closet and play the video of the last 50 times, thinking that will be enough to convince us that we have, indeed, been right here before).

What they don't know is that we can't really hear the advice. Partly, we are determined to get out of the pattern, and we mistakenly believe that we can solve the problem by getting back in the pattern and just doing it RIGHT, this time.

What we don't know is that solving the problem doesn't mean getting back into the pattern and getting it right. In order to solve the problem of self-sabotage, we need to acknowledge that we DO NOT need to be punished. We do not deserve punishment for our selves, our behavior or any past bad acts. It's worse than a messiah complex because we are not just saving the world, we are judging it, starting with ourselves and meting out what we think is appropriate retribution.

Solving the problem of self-sabotage entails loving ourselves enough to be open to constructive, productive and healthy interactions/relationships with ourselves and others. It is the opposite of seeking the interactions/relationships that will ultimately put us back in the hole.

Getting out of the hole and staying out of the hole can be accomplished by believing that we have no reason to be in the hole.

Generosity and compassion demand that I have more patience with myself and my friends who are struggling with self-sabotage. Today that means not feeling bad that I just gave harsh feedback to someone who keeps jumping into the hole with two feet. It also means cutting myself some slack for dreaming about my hole last night.

It is a daily struggle to stay out of the hole. For the past few months, my solution has been to limit my contact with new people. I mean, if I don't meet any new people who will potentially trigger the pattern, then I am safe, right? Wrong.

Being afraid to go out and deal with the world is a better symptom than denial of the pattern. But it is not a long term solution; it's not a solution at all. It demonstrates some willingness to recognize the problem and even to start to battle the desire to jump back into the pattern. Ultimately, though, it does not confront the underlying issue: taking head on the issue of loving myself, or rewriting the agreements about the life I deserve.

I am trying.

What would Jesus think?

So, the city of Las Vegas (aka SIN CITY) has decided that it will be ILLEGAL to feed the homeless on the street. In the myriad of acts, illegal and legal, that go on in Las Vegas on a daily basis, the city feels the need to make up a law about something charitable; dare I say, Christian. I mean, is there one of Jesus' acts (besides rising from the dead) that is more well known than the feeding the folks with the fish and loaves.

For now, it is still ok to feed them in a shelter, but we would hardly want the homeless to feel WELCOME in a PUBLIC place like a park. Parks, apparently, are only for the home-owning tax payers. Oh, and it is still legal to feed the homeless on The Strip... makes me want to go to Las Vegas just to set up a homeless feeding site on The Strip.

Favorite line from this article:

“I don’t think anybody in America wants people to starve to death,” Mr. Reese
said. “But if you want to help somebody, people can go to McDonald’s or Kentucky
Fried Chicken and give them a meal.”

Ok... who knew that taking someone to KFC or McDonald's was HELPING? Thank you City of Las Vegas for clarifying that for us do-gooders. What homeless people really want and need is fast food. So good to know. I am holding on to that tidbit for future reference.

A new verdict for Andrea Yates

I don't know why this feels like a personal victory... I have never met this woman; I probably would not have much if anything in common with her except my body's ability to birth a child.

It's just the idea that we would judge this poor woman in such a way that didn't allow for mercy that made me crazy. I mean, obviously she is mentally deranged. She killed the very thing that was her life. She killed them rather than kill herself because she thought she was sparing them. If that isn't crazy talk, I just don't know what is.

Also, in some very perverse way, I feel as though this whole need to get revenge at any cost and for the slightest thing or the most heinous thing does feel like it creeps into every day. First we are trying children as young as 8 as adults. Have of the adult population can't act like an adult from day to day, but we expect the children watching these adults to know better? We get a bee in our bonnets about something or the other and then we go off like the mob in the night with pitchforks...meanwhile we let pedofiles lead our churches, for years.

convoluted, I know. But with the recent goings on in my professional life, it just seems like we, as a society, have decided that we get to decide individually when a slight requires REVENGE and then we just do what ever we want. Recent article on a study about retribution was somewhat enlightening on this point. (I need to find the link.)

finding comfort

Monday night, at Spirit Rock, I was trying to meditate for the first 35 minutes of silent meditation and felt like I was failing miserably.

I was wondering, to myself (when I was supposed to be focusing on my breath), how the hell I was going to make it through 7 nights of this?

My back hurt, my head itched, all I could hear was the guy next to me snoring, at least that is what it sounded like.

Then Jack gave his talk and we had a few more minutes of silent meditation.

I closed my eyes and the tears began to flow... freedom, safety, comfort... how had sitting in silence for two hours become comfort??

I don't know but it did...

Reprieve

I read the headline: Elephant that Killed Handler Spared with irony and relief. On the one hand, finally, a person has decided to use some of the mercy he/she (in this case a she) possesses and "spared" the life of an animal that was acting instinctually in an unnatural setting. On the other hand, why is this the exception?

Why is it that animals automatically get the death penalty?

We never stop to think that we are the ones with the supposed higher order thinking skills that should keep us from encroaching on the wild animal habitat, putting ourselves in danger, and/or relocating wild animals into settings so divergent than their natural habitats that the animals are unable to behave naturally.

If you place yourself on the tracks with a train approaching, and you get killed, should the rest of us try to KILL the train in retaliation.

Worst, of course, is the go out and kill in revenge instinct that we humans tend to exhibit way too frequently. Someone goes out on a trail in the wilderness, in theory to get near nature; nature, in this case, turns out to be a mountain lion. Person gets killed. Now we are going to go out and hunt down a mountain lion and kill it, claiming we are going to match the teeth marks or some such nonsense. Do we honestly believe that by killing a mountain lion we will somehow deter other mountain lions from killing people on the trail??

Abundance

Just when you think you have hit rock bottom...ok, not that dramatic.

Picture it, there you are, trying to answer what seems like a straight forward question from the DISCOVERY MATERIALS (no pressure).

Over the years, you have created (and been created) from your life experiences, your accomplishments, your disappointments and your longings. Who are you today? How would you describe yourself at this point in your life?

And you are trying to answer honestly, but not too cynically. Instead, you are circling the drain, that is circling the answer, maybe dancing around the edges of what you think. In any case, at the end of too many tortured sentences, there is no resemblance to you on the paper.

Thankfully, the gong is struck and that means put your work away and get ready to meditate. Saved by the bell, for sure.

It is your incredibly good luck to be in a room too full of people who are all waiting to hear Jack Kornfield give a dharma talk. Talk about positive energy.

What is the opposite of grasping? (he asks it very innocently, and the word pops into my head: Abundance) Of course he prefers GENEROSITY. I mean, who doesn't??

Weaving in and out of stories, making his point carefully yet gently, he finally gets to the "how to" portion of his talk. There are three kinds of generosity: tentative, brotherly/sisterly, royal. He keeps telling you that it is ok to be tentatively generous, but that you will just feel more of the love when you are royally generous. Now you are just about to feel badly about yourself for only ever having been tentatively generous when he lowers the boom. With whom should we be most generous??

You got it, yourself.

Lesson learned: when you feel like giving, do it. Don't let yourself give it a second thought. Remember to be most compassionate to yourself. The more you have, compassion that is, the more you will be willing to give.

what you don't know...

I am trying to learn the maximum amount from my latest employment situation. (I wanted to say debacle, but I am trying to be less cynical and more silver lining.) Here's something I learned, or re-learned. (I wish I could say that I don't need to re-learn this, as I feel I have been in this space FAR too often.)

There is already a lot of subtext to this post, and it is only the second paragraph. YIKES.

Lesson: what you don't know will allow you to live blithely along.

Subtext: I would have done much better to note the craziness inwardly and never say a word about it...just plot my escape without ever trying to fix it or offer suggestions to fix it. I mean, so the boss may never hear from me the fascinating and fabulous idea for fixing something; or he/she won't hear how that latest idea is a dog; but he/she DIDN'T want to hear any of that anyway. What my quiet, acquiescent colleagues have on me is that they don't have to become the anti-christ, but I do. Trying to be honest in these situations was just another way for my boss to read me as disloyal, uncommitted and disrespectful. No return on my investment on truth and honesty. Write it down in your journal, tell your friend, keep it in the book of THE WAY I WOULD DO THINGS, but whatever you do, don't tell the boss. This will be my new mantra. I am going to make it into a little sign and post in near the light switch at home. I am going to make it cute and small and keep it in my pocket.

Inferred lesson: not all broken things need to be fixed; especially not by me

Subtext: I admit it, I do have an oversized sense of responsibility. After reading the OCD book, it makes me WONDER about myself. (But that might be another way for me to make this my failing; [haha, my subtext has a subtext which now has a subtext...super YIKES.] {So glad no one really reads this blog but me.}) As a result of the SUPER-SIZED conscience, when I see broken things, I want to fix them. No, I feel compelled to fix them; even worse, I feel compelled to tell people how to fix them. I just need to LET GO and let some things be broken.

Not really related lesson, but on my mind anyway: people who quietly contemplate and only pipe up once in a long while really do have the right idea. [Even though these kind of people really make me crazy, perhaps that is just me not understanding all the true lessons in the world.]

Subtext: It certainly would make my life easier to just SHUT THE FUCK UP. I am looking forward to learning about WISE SPEECH and then practicing it. Thank goodness, god, the goddess, all the little beings that make this world go round that I am going on the residential retreat. I can't wait; now I am on two countdowns.

5 work days left/11 days til retreat

m&ms in solitary

This article is not too long and thoroughly FASCINATING. Please read it if you get a chance.

Thinking about solitude or at least free time has made me wonder what I will do with my idle hands. I note that I need to constantly be handling something if I am not working on something. Sitting on the bus this morning, spare the air, I played with my earring for quite a while before I even realized that was what I was doing. Pulling my hands away from my earring, my fingers immediately found a piece of my backpack that I could fold, unfold, fold again, unfold again, etc.

When my mind is idle, and sometimes even when it is not, it is always searching for something to fill it up. I listen to the news as background at work in part so that I can focus on my work; so that I won't be searching for noises in the background to keep my mind busy. Now, I do the same thing with the clock radio in the morning. I can count on at least another half hour of sleep after the alarm goes off because the news will keep my mind busy and allow me to sleep. The stories will be folded into my dreams, but I won't wake up.

I worry a little as my residential retreat at the meditation center approaches that I will have trouble emptying my mind. I have always been unable to meditate for this reason, or at least believed myself to be incapable of meditating. Why am I going to a retreat then? Because I really want to empty my mind of the "business" -- that is the busy-ness... all of those crazy, random, usually self-sabotage thoughts that run through my mind continuously. I don't seem to have an off button and I can't tune it down; or I haven't found the controls.

In a few weeks, I am hoping to force myself to uncover the controls...to implement a quiet time; to force myself to focus on breathing, living, listening to my heart beat.

So, reading about this man in solitary confinement captivated my imagination.

Think...all you have is time, in a controlled environment with very little stimulation, if any. How many grains make up a cinderblock? I think I would have an answer if I had had to spend every day and night in a small box made out of cinderblock for 20 years. Turning things over and over in my mind, might I have gone crazy? Would I have figured out a way to see in my mind beyond what I could see with my eyes? Would the world have progressed in my mind as it progressed outside the cellblock? What kind of art could or would I produce under these circumstances?

I wish I knew without having to experience the sensory deprivation of solitary confinement.

Beyond the musing of the by-products of solitary confinement, I was also struck by the brutality of this treatment. Perhaps it is not technically torture, but it is certainly a form of psychological mistreatment. What could possibly be gained by doing this to someone? In what was is this treatment rehabilitation?

One more thought raced through my mind as I read this piece: how is this like mental illness? Is someone who struggles with keeping track of what is real and what is imagined living in the same kind of confinement in reverse? So much stimulation with few tools for filtering which is true and which is not. Do those with mental illness long for a day outside this cell? Are they so used to the over-stimulation that they would not know what to do without the extra stimulation? Would they be like the borg disconnected from the collective, bereft, alone, solitary??

What if that's all it is

Lately, I have felt, again, overwhelmed. [Not as bad as when I was having nightmares or not being able to sleep.] It is just that feeling that everyone around you is in need, and you are too. I start to feel like I might not have anymore to give. I think other's needs are only a part of this overwhelmed feeling; it is more about what their needs trigger in me.

Just when I think that I need to be mindful of reserving some resources for myself...that friend who is needing something, asks a simple question that furthers my own quest for understanding.

[Ah...it was RIGHT to give a little bit more of myself, again. Fears of scarcity aside, I usually err on the side of giving more than less, but I am ashamed that I worry about running out of the energy I need to keep giving to my friends.]

What if that's all love is?

"That" in this case is someone who likes you; the way it feels to be "adored" by someone else. At its essence, "that" was a wanting someone else to know you not necessarily anything you felt for him/her. "That" included having someone to hang out with, to be there when you get home, to be the place you lay your head. I mean, we all want someone who is FOR us, right? We want someone who likes who WE are and that looks different depending on the person. It sounds like it is about ME not about US at all. Is that love? Is there something else besides that?

Yes, yes, the butterflies, the obsession, but what about after the lust fades? Is there some greater emotion, some greater connection? I have to admit, when my friend turned to me and asked, "What if that is all there is?" I know she was thinking, what if I gave up when I already had whatever this thing called love is? Well...if you weren't feeling good in the relationship, there was something missing...but was it about the relationship? These are sticky questions, they are like gak being lobbed at you. Of course, we all have issues that we bring to relationships and these issues can cause us discomfort or downright depression. But, that doesn't mean that a bad relationship is just YOU waiting to be FIXED. So, then we are back to the original question....
who the hell knows?

I can only really say this, I know that we expect WAY too much from relationships. I have been accused of thinking of relationships through the lens of the fairy tale. Guilty. Yet, companionship is not relationship. Marriage is too difficult to try to make it work with someone who you don't LOVE. I want to say I believe that LOVE is more than companionship. But I was hard-pressed to really express what I used to think was LOVE.

But, I did come out with another view of an old picture, maybe it will become a panorama; maybe it will be a 360 view that makes more sense when I am done. [Are we ever done?]

Big Moose Lake's Miss Brown

Ok...for a lazy, summer afternoon or hectic hump day, this article is truly a must read.

To give you a sense of what you are in store for with this piece, here's my favorite quote:

boats take "the mildly curious and the recreationally obsessed to the site of Miss Brown’s death."

Sounds like just the perfect vaction spot for me.

Seriously, I am the one who picked a ring out my mother's jewelry box (at 15) because it looked like a coffin.

I wish I were taking a trip to Big Moose Lake...

What if he NEVER loved me?

Is there any thing more pathetic than that question? [NOTE: I mean pathetic to me and not to anyone else who might ask this question, keep reading, I will explain.]

Well, there may be, or there may not be.

But, it IS the question that haunts you when you are trying to "get over" the relationship.

It is actually a string of questions:

What if he (she) never loved me?
What if no one ever loved me?
What if I am not lovable? (that is, what if there is something wrong with me that makes people not love me?)

It goes from pretty bad (read pathetic) to completely debasing yourself and making self-worth nil.

It was a little too much of a coincidence when my friend told me she had been thinking about this question and her ex. I mean, for a week, I have been carrying around a letter to my brother in which I am hoping to explain to him that he doesn't need to worry about this. Somehow, though the words are right on the tip of my tongue (and obviously on the tips of my fingers), I have been unable to write the letter.

It is a little intrusive to hear these emotions from him when he hasn't said any of them to me. Ok, maybe very intrusive. It is possible that these emotions are just too close to the surface for me, so I hear them everywhere. It is definitely possible that I am the one that needs the letter.

Then again...when my friend voiced this question, out loud, not hinted about it, just asked it... it certainly validated my rumination.

Of course, though I have been puzzling about this question and what the answers might mean, I found it perfectly easy to turn to my friend and tell her, "whether it's true or not, it's irrelevant." And, "we can spend a lot of time obsessing about it, or we can work on the root issue." [Right, because I am so grounded, I can do these thing? PLEASE!]

Not that this isn't good advice; but why would anyone take advice from ME on this issue?? I heard the words coming from my mouth, and I knew I meant those words in the most supportive and positive way possible, yet I was surprised and horrified that I could turn to say that to her when I wasn't following that fabulous advice myself.

So, it wasn't about my ex-husband exactly, but I was thinking that terrible spiral of questions myself, JUST LAST WEEK...and I am not even sure what my final determination was.

I am going to now try to take my own advice: it's irrelevant. The root issue: believing myself not worthy of love, is what I need to work on until it is resolved.

what would my postsecret card say?

Apparently it's such a deep secret even I don't know.

Not unlike my desire to uncover "what do I really want?" or "what do I really want to do with my life?" -- these are all unkowns to me.

6 miles

I haven't been as faithful to the training this time around. Not only have I not stopped drinking alcohol, as I did last time around, but I also have not been faithful to the schedule.

This is the first week I have made all the miles ... and three of them were walking.

Still...since the last half marathon, this is the longest I have run in two years.

I am claiming this run as a victory, with pride.

Small steps are still steps forward.

War by any means necessary

It would appear that we can think of no reason not to war. If we have to take recruits who are clearly troubled, well, that doesn't matter as we are just going to use them as sheep and lead them to slaughter anyway.

Ok, that's harsh...but is it not true at this point? We are so desperate for bodies to push in front of bombs and guns and armed militias we will make exceptions to our recruiting rules at a higher rate.

That is bad enough.

What's worse is the number of soldiers returning from war so disturbed that they are turning their rage (and weapons) on civilians in this country.

How can we expect any different from them? In the field, they are told that it is impossible to distinguish between good civilians and bad civilians. They are told that torture is a barely ethical means to a justified end. Why should they see civilians at home in any other way?

How does anyone readjust to civilian life after spending months killing and torturing? When you mix the messages between life and death and ethical and unethical, how do you expect young, impressionable men, who are trying to make something honorable out of something deplorable, to come out on the other side as constructive citizens?

quote of the day

What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this?
- - Epictitus

If there were real hardship, I would feel justified in feeling this quote today.

These feelings are not real hardship: living on the street, watching those you love in pain, etc.

But these feelings are real and I have to live through them.

But I need to be willing to reach underneath the feelings and figure out where they come from. Why does it feel like hardship? Was there hardship once that has congealed into a mass that rises in my throat?

Today I held it together all day. Tired, exhausted, really. I didn't sleep last night. All the decongestants and allergy meds finally took my sleep completely. Then a full day of new people and then dinner with the colleagues.

Now I feel depleted and defeated. They took nothing from me, yet now I give them all the power and any sense of accomplishment I had today.

How can I let go of the pain (memory of hardship) and the bad thoughts I allow to fill my brain??

What are the steps?

Re-Opening the Third Eye

Not so long ago, but long enough, I felt I could feel and hear things about people and situations that went beyond what one would call the usual senses. I fell into it in some ways, like the trip to Idaho and the crazy mountain woman who taught me to read tarot cards; but in other ways, it had been there as long as I knew, like communicating with my dead grandparents through dreams as a child.

At the time of my greatest openness, when I walked by someone who was in pain, I could feel it, even if I didn't know the person. It was as if there were a hole in my soul that others recognized and it called their emotions. Sometimes I would just get the wash of sadness and sometimes people I didn't know wanted to tell me about their deepest pain. It never felt strange or unnatural. It was the way I was.

Somewhere in the past 10 years or so, I feel I lost it. The hole closed up or was temporarily covered by cobwebs. I don't know. I blame my ex-husband, but that is a pretty easy out. The thing is during my relationship with him, I spent a lot of time trying to bend myself into the person he said he wanted. Unfortunately, just as I would make the last bend, what he wanted changed. It took me too long to figure out that it wasn't really me he wanted to change, it was just his easy way to not have to deal with his own issues. In the process, though, so many traits, behaviors, things that were ME were trampled. Some needed to be trampled or at least reworked. But some were just naive, open-hearted loving of life parts of myself that when described by my ex sounded like psychotic behavior.

Of course, I exaggerate. But, let me give you one example. I am a talker, you might have noticed. I used to get in trouble as a child for chatting with the winos (that's what we called them, pc or not) in the park. I didn't know fear of people. I was drawn to people energy, for better or worse. I talked to everyone, putting people at ease or intuiting their thoughts about a situation and commenting. It is a gift from my father that I treasure. For my ex, this was not acceptable, particularly if the person I was talking to was male. He accused me of flirting with everyone and worse. It turned out several years later that any male with whom I had spoken, in my ex's mind had been my lover. Interesting. Instead of thinking that my ex was just CRAZY, I tried to figure out what I had done to provoke this reaction in him. Since I have never really understood flirting, I didn't know how to modify my behavior in such a way that talking to me wouldn't be construed as flirting. So I learned to not talk to men, or worse, to feel self-conscious about talking to men whenever I had to talk to men. Not surprisingly, I became suspicious of all of my talking to people I didn't know. Pretty soon I was uncomfortable talking to anyone I didn't know. Was this the same person who used to make friends with homeless people?? Hardly.

This was one way that I started to distrust my instincts.

You can only imagine how the rest of the destructive relationship messed with my ability to trust my instincts.

Slowly but surely, the third eye was closed. Every time I looked through it, all I could do was blink and think to myself, is that really what I see?

In the process of rediscovering myself, I am trying to re-open the third eye; to begin to feel and sense more than see and hear. To analyze less and believe more. To trust myself and my instincts, but more importantly, to believe that I have instincts that are to be trusted and to clean the cobwebs out so that I can HEAR the voices from within and without that used to constantly whisper to me. I need to believe they are all still there just waiting for me to be willing to listen again, but sometimes I worry that they have found other people to listen.

Skunks

For at least two months around 11:30 pm I hear someone rooting around in the backyard and invariably it is a skunk. He is so punctual that I thought he must have a circuit he does in the neighborhood. It's fine unless I am arriving home around that time and have to worry about coming face to face, or worse, face to tail, with the creature.

One night, I did interrupt his rooting around ... and he put his tail up and looked at me as if to say, "What are you going to do now?"

I very calmly said, "I'm just going to the door." And not so calmly, ran for the door.

I thought I had it all figured out.

Tonight, I came home around 9 pm, open the door to the backyard and discovered not one but two very nervous skunks. These guys looked truly dangerous, so I closed the door and listened. They went right back to work, looking for whatever it is they want from my backyard. I thought about what to do... wait, make noise, throw something at them.

I remembered that sneaking by the other skunk worked because he was closer to the far end of the yard with plenty of room for me to get to the door. These guys were right near the gate. I decided I might be able to startle them into hiding if I opened the door again without actually going in and scaring them into spraying me.

I opened and closed the door. It sort of worked. And, tired and sweaty from the run, I just wanted to get into my house. I tried again and didn't see them, though I could hear them. I ran to the apartment door and got in...then I went directly to the kitchen window so I could observe them foraging. Usually it is so dark when they are here that I can't really watch what they are doing.

After watching my personal discovery for a while, I decided these two were young skunks. I was surprised to see that they walk around with their tails up all the time...not just when ready to spray. I wished I had a camera phone at that moment to take a picture of them walking around with their tails in the air.

I called my sister and nephew to report that there were two skunks in my backyard. Mijo could tell from my voice that this was exciting news. But when his response to my news was "tractors" my sister and I decided that maybe doesn't know what a skunk is.

For mijo, a pictorial:


Mijo's personal favorite backyard pal:

Signs?!

The problem with not listening to my inner voice is that I am always straining to hear/intuit the signs from the universe.

Yeah right!

Okay...I felt overwhelmed and stressed out about the move, job change, life changes. Even though I could hear the inner voice on this issue, I ignored it. The inner voice then conspired with my body to try to get the message across. No sleeping, night terrors and nightmares yelled and screamed that I needed to slow down, listen to my fears and deal with whatever was going on.

The key here is that I am not sure what is going on. Yes, these are all very stressful situations: new job, new city, home owner, potential single parent. But was it just jitters or something deeper?

Not sure. Really not sure.

I can come up with rationalizations for all sides. The bottom line was if you asked me "what do you want?" I would have to answer, "I DON'T KNOW!"

Worse than that, I don't know how to find out.

Usually when I say things like that, people look at me quizzically, one eye-brow creeping up. I don't know if they are thinking: "SHE doesn't know what she wants!?!" or "Everyone knows what they want!" or something else. But, today, I saw a friend I haven't seen in about a year, and he said, "That's not an easy thing to figure out!" Wow...someone who gets my struggle? Or is he just the only one willing to tell me that he feels like that sometimes...that this is a normal struggle?

We talked about what I love about my current job, which will be no more at the end of the month; and we discussed ways to keep the job, but not the situation. It all sounds perfectly reasonable when you are talking about it with reasonable, logical people. I felt like maybe I should be sticking it out because the WORK is so fabulous; but the memories of the craziness are too strong. I really do enjoy the work I am doing now...more than I have ever **ENJOYED** my work since I left the classroom. (More signs?!)

To top all that off the realtor called to let me know that the ONE property that I have liked enough to buy since I started house hunting is not only still on the market, the price has dropped another 10K. It is a great house with a lot of potential just not the greatest neighborhood or schools. And, well, in the wrong city, did I mention that?

More confusion...but I am not going to retreat from my quest to silence the noise and turn the volume up on the inner voice. Tonight, first Monday night class and I got the OK to go for the seven night residential retreat. It's not completely silent, so it should be fine. Hopefully, enlightening. I am trying to look at my finances and figure out if I can afford coaching. Truthfully, I don't know if I can afford (personally and professionally) to not do coaching!

Progress is just around the corner. I can feel it. Then again, maybe it is just learning how to live in the moment and not progress in the moving forward but standing still.

hard days

...or dates, as the case may be.

Today is the anniversary of the writing of the Declaration of Independence and of my failed marriage's wedding ceremony.

That sounded bitter, right?

Every year, it's a hard day. Though, to be truthful, it was a hard day when I was married as well.

I have been trying to replace the bad memories with new ones, but every year, something comes up that disrupts my best laid plans, and then I spend most of the day remembering bad choices, ugly anniversary dinner celebrations, and worse.

It's only one day, right? 24 little hours... and there are really only eight of them left.

Convenient ways to make yourself politically appealing

I am so glad that I am not the only one that thinks this story of these disenchanted big talking dudes is not what Alberto G. would like us to think. Obviously these guys are not Al Qaeda... they went to an FBI guy acting like Al Qaeda which means acting like a caricature because when Al Qaeda was in our country, we DIDN'T notice.

But the story hit the news just as Georgie's polls were languishing with no hope in sight of getting himself back into the good graces of the American people. Let's see, I'll support the constitutional amendment against gay marriage, take a quick trip to Iraq, and, oh yeah, we can arrest those guys in Florida, my little bro's state, and claim they were planning CREDIBLE terror attacks on our homeland. Yes, that's just the ticket.

HELLO!?! I guess we did just fall off the turnip truck.

Then there's Mexico that has spend steady telling everyone in any country that will listen (what's with NY Times complicity in this trash talking, btw?) that the Leftist candidate is actually a crazy man who thinks he is the MESSIAH. Yeah, he's definitely gotten this far in politics based on his personality disorder. That might be some grounds for accusing the NYTimes for not having journalist ethics, not releasing information they've been sitting on for YEARS.

Not done ranting... that Mexico thing didn't come out of LEFT field (pun intended). What do I see when I open my NY Times today?? Oh, yes... the PANista Fox's government has decided to indict Echeverria for Tlatelolco. I remember when they first re-opened the case and pissed Fox off... and started talking immediately about how they couldn't possibly pull of any prosecutions, but it's good that it's out in the open. Now, their candidate is in trouble, it's the DAY BEFORE the elections, and they have found a way in their law books to announce an indictment. No, this is not self-serving in any way...this is about the people and how much we love and respect them, as we spit on them when we have to walk too near to them.

Oh, yucky days.

Don't get me wrong; I hope they throw the book at the 84 year old scumbag, but, it's just a little too convenient that they finally got it together two days before the election. A week ago, two weeks ago, a month ago, and all the holes in their case would be revealed and the shallow attempt to win votes would be apparent.

YIKES...are we all living with bags over our heads, or do we just appear that way to our leaders who think they can pull off all of these ridiculous stunts? Wait, they do pull them off because we are too busy worrying about Brittany Spears and Jessica Simpson.

Done ranting, for now. Have a great day.