Read a good article on CBS about overcoming obstacles and one graf provided quite the a-ha moment for me:
“(Y)ou can only regain your balance by realizing you’ve lost it and recognizing that you need to achieve some perspective and objectivity. You get that by shutting up, asking questions, and listening to what your stakeholders say. Then you stop what you’re doing, become silent, and listen to what your inner voice says. If you can do those three things, you’ve got a chance of regaining your balance and overcoming your obstacles.”
These days, I constantly fluctuate between “my life is awesome and it’s all thanks to God” (because it is) and “wow, how did I fuck things up so spectacularly and how do I even begin to fix it?”
Perhaps if I spent half as much time on my vocation as I do on my relationships and a handful of truly go-nowhere friendships, I’d be pretty fuckin’ productive.
I try to be gentle with myself — that I am God’s special creation, that I try my best, that I care, that I make the best decisions with the best information available at the time, that I have my act together more than many others, etc.
And then I get caught up in the “many others” — Desiderata tells us not to make comparisons because there will always be greater or lesser than ourselves. So while I feel like I’m giving more (and in most cases, I AM), I also feel like I have to GET more from some and to LEARN more from the rest.
Basically I am OK at what I do, whether work or relation-/friendship wise. Nothing to write home about. But at this point, do I work on getting better at what I have or do I dare to wonder whether excelling with what/who is in front of me will fulfill me in the end?
I read another great article in Self magazine today, particularly a survey about women and money. And I found myself in the 19% who are perennially terrified of losing a job and becoming homeless. (Their words, not mine. But it fits.)
The article said what you’re really afraid of is being alone. And the cure was to take inventory of all your friends and family who would take you in, should the worst happen.
*looks around* Yeah, I don’t see myself losing that fear anytime soon. My industry is a mess and I can’t get most of my friends to meet me at an agreed time and place, let alone say to them, “Hey, Mom and I need a place to stay.”
I know everyone’s scared. It ain’t just me. I know of people who try for years to get pregnant and then lose their jobs when the pee stick comes out with a plus sign. I know people who marry their Prince Charming and then realize the fucker’s an alcoholic, usually after they’ve distanced themselves from family and friends.
Shit, we’re all lucky we don’t end up in a swamp or tossed off a boat somewhere, with the lovable (at first) lunatics some of us seem to attract.
I guess what I’m saying is that I know the only person I can rely upon is myself. And lately, I have lost my balance and wouldn’t feel 100% confident in trusting myself to make a great decision about anything.
The initial article I quoted said that balance comes from doing ALL these things in tandem: work, play, learn, exercise, nourish, chill out.
When your chill-out time is stressful and work is your only “nourish” time, that’s not balance. But it’s been the formula that has kept me alive all this time. I don’t know any other way to survive.
Funny how when things were at their worst, I didn’t worry this much. Now that they really are pretty great, more or less, I worry that the usual ebb-and-flow is about to ebb and it all goes to shit. Of course, that’s what the universe does — it kicks your ass and lifts you up and cycles back again when you start to feel like you’ve regained your balance.
Maybe the second article holds the key to my sanity. I need to meet a (good) man. One who can distract as well as provide, if need be.
In the meantime, I’ve been doing (I think) an OK job of channeling my old Goddess self. So what if I’m scared; I’m still pretty awesome. God will provide. Only good lies before me. The stronger I am, the less rattled I’ll be when I hit the next speed bump.
And to quote some silly slogan I saw recently, “Treat (a girl) like a game and she’ll show you how it’s played,” it’s game-on mode, world. My best still hasn’t come out of me, and I’m gonna be damn selective about who benefits from it.
Maybe then, too, I’ll finally feel like I can take a vacation or buy a car or fall in love without waiting for the rug to be yanked out under me like always seems to happen. Because I will know I can live through it, just like I always have. And maybe, just maybe, things WON’T come crashing down for a change.
Perhaps that’s why I have to keep trying … to live to see that day that things come together instead of coming unglued. …