Breakthrough

Today was a tough yoga class. For whatever reason Shannon was intent on pushing our limits more than normal - I had to really work to get through it. She was creating an opportunity for breakthrough for each of us. And we did the routine twice on each side - so the second time around we knew what was coming.

Staring down something challenging - something that might even be a little scary - creates the chance for courage and that creates the chance for growth. Doing that thing that I am scared of - pursing my art more significantly for example. That's scary because I am afraid to confirm my fear that I have nothing to say, that my work isn't actually any good.

I thought I was afraid of owning my own business -- and certainly, I'm afraid that consulting will be a series of failures -- but I don't think it's fear getting in the way there. I think I just want other things besides a start-up business. I think I just dont want to throw myself into a business that takes 110% of me when I want to keep enjoying my flexible schedule with my kids. When I want to keep practicing painting. Yoga. Walking my dogs when I feel like it. This freedom that I now have that I am desperate to maintain. I am afraid of losing this freedom. I need my consulting business to do well so I can keep this freedom-filled lifestyle going.

So - I will continue to forge ahead with my new marketing plan. I will work to put myself out there and work to win new business. I will enjoy this amazing summer I have ahead of me with my littles, and look to earn new projects come the fall. I will seek a breakthrough in my lifestyle - one that pushes me out of my comfort zone to bid on projects that stretch my ability and my confidence.

Pretty Pretty Pretty

[no, this is not my house.] [but so pretty, right?]

With extra time on my hands - and plenty of flexibility to spend that time how I want - I have been loving the chance to "fix up" parts of the house that needed some TLC. I love looking around and seeing art on the walls, pillows on the nice couch, pops of color where before it was just bland. It feels good. I would love to be expert at this and do it for a living. Just call me a Joanna Gains wanna-be.

But I notice how calming our house is now. It looks happy, organized, pretty. And I really love a pretty house.

What comes up quite a lot lately is the need to observe myself and my patterns. To figure out where you want to go, you have to figure out where you are. And that's part of the work that I'm doing on myself. What the hell do I want? Well - I gotta look at the stuff that makes me happy. And this stuff makes me happy.

I've always loved "primping" a space to make it feel fresh and pretty. Even as a child, I felt very grown-up (always the goal) when I could dress my bed up like a day bed, and organize my dresser with a display of my favorite tchotchkes (there were many). I had little plants even. What has always been missing is the massive budget that I think it takes to decorate a space properly. Those addictive decorating shows on TV make it seem so easy - they have access to crazy funding. These pillows that I fell in love with from Coyuchi, for example, they EACH cost $250. That is so not happening (well, thank God for DIY and my mom, because she made them for $20 each).

I'd like to figure out how designers do that. I guess they just find rich clients (?) but it seems to me that the budgets they work with on those darn TV shows would no way cover the furniture and all that construction work. It's a mystery. I'm intrigued...

Lifting UP

How amazing is it when you bring intention to something and it just goes? Exactly as you wanted it to. How much of our life is brought on by our own thinking? This mind that is so busy busy busy interpreting everything from this single perspective that we auto-pilot our life with.

I've been exploring this with my yoga practice and my running (okay, jogging. okay, slow plodding). I can bring so much heaviness if I let myself; trying to flow like water can feel heavy; rooting into the earth to steady myself and lock my core is super heavy. I can turn on the fire, especially with good, butt-kicking music. And I can explore what air brings - lightness - and that seems to be the most powerful. Ironically, really. The lighter I can make myself, the stronger I seem to become. The longer I can hold the pose. The taller I can be in the pose, reaching my fingers higher and higher. The farther I can run; farther than I believed possible. Lightness. Not brute strength. Not rooting down; the only purpose in rooting to the ground is to push against it for lightness. Air. Lift. Openness. Awesomeness.

How much better are those moments with my kids when I can lighten up? (!) Stop being so stubbornly serious like I have to make a point. The only "point" I'm making is that I'm not compassionate or understanding or sensitive to their point of view. And with my kids it seems like softness combined with lightness is the ultimate combo. Loving. Uplifting.

I want to think about this visually when I consider abundance. Not like an airy gaseous vapor that dissipates and dilutes into the air. But an expansive light - a halo of light - a blooming of energy.

Everything is possible when I lift up -- up and out of the stuff that doesn't serve me.

Abundant patience for myself

Why the hurry?
Trial and error sucks, really. I'd rather come out of the gate flying high and nailing the hurdles one after the other. This seems like the approach I've taken most of my life -- to fling myself into a project and not give myself the time or practice for mastery. No patience for the journey. And the end result shows it -- it's messy, sloppy, half-assed. Not that I didn't give it my all, I just didn't have the skills to do it expertly. So it comes out very amateurish.

Not attractive. Or something that I feel very proud of.

So -- Patience -- this is a practice.

I have been "out of a job" since October of 2017. That is 19 months. Holy shit. This is the source of my terror -- that I am unwanted and do not offer value. And it makes me wonder, this lifelong flinging into efforts to see what sticks, not really perfecting or excelling at anything in particular - is this the result? I can smooth-talk my way out of that and show results and experience on a resume that might sound impressive to you, but this is really the core of the issue isn't it? What have I really built mastery around in all my years in industry?

So these last months have been a roller coaster of beating myself up and dusting myself off over and over again. I have been impatient with myself.  And if ABUNDANCE is my word for this year, what does that look like when I can bring abundant thinking into my heart for myself? I think it looks a lot less pathetic. My better half said to me the other day, as I fell apart (again), "Enough of this pity party."

Here we go
I am going to master the following things -- with patient and diligent practice. And patience for the process, not expecting to be a pro at these but expecting that I will get better and better as I apply myself. I want to be great at these things. I am not washed up or out of time. I have today, right now, and, God willing, many days after.

1) Yoga -- I am taking teacher training this summer to help me achieve this, and keeping it as a consistent practice. I love that I have been doing this now for almost 4 years. By the time I'm 50 I will feel pretty darn masterful.

2) Painting -- I am going to continue giving myself assignments to paint, trying different techniques and subjects, with the goal of creating flow in my work. Within the next 2 years I will apply to McGuffey so that I can be around professional artists and heighten my inspiration. I will give myself time to create studies that allow me to approach the final canvas with insight. By the time I'm 50 I will be selling my work.

3) Consulting -- I am reworking my website to speak to the things I most love doing; I will become an expert at these things for my clients. I will have my work and time for my family life, which is the ultimate win. I will be asked to speak at events, and will write articles for industry journals, speaking as a unique voice for technical creativity. By the time I'm 50 I will be turning down work because I will be busy enough and earning enough to maintain the life balance I love.

Boom !!  Now that's a better way of thinking.

Self Loathing

How pathetic! Yet, here I am.

I've been thinking a lot about how much I rely on external sources for affirmation. I have always been a huge empathic person, and exquisitely (painfully) aware of the moods and movements of those around me and how I might be affecting them (causing something). And I really (really!!!) want to develop enough self-esteem that I can sit comfortably with myself and within myself to just BE myself. And be chill with that. That is my goal. My mission.

And YET.

How can we not rely on external value confirmation when it comes to our careers? I mean, if you have a job with a company that values you, it means you have some stability and opportunity. Right? But if you're me, and you're not supposed to feel down that you are still (STILL) "between jobs" how do you measure your value? Your contribution? I have not been offered a job. I have applied. I have even interviewed. And I have NOT. BEEN. OFFERED. ANY. JOB. None!!  Not ONE!  Rejected! I am not valued by these potential employers!  Why ?????

I start picking apart all the conversations and relationships that I've had. I start seeing myself through "their eyes" and seeing how uninteresting I am. How little I brought to the table. How poorly I contributed.

And now I find myself wandering aimlessly. Not really interested in anything. Not enough to hunt it down and make it mine. Hard to get my brain engaged in anything at all. Like I've lost steam. Been gutted somehow. Empty. Tired.

Pathetic.

I love a rainy day

Rainy, gloomy, cold, windy. It's winter and this weather matches my frame of mind. I've noticed lately that when the weather shifts and we get an unseasonable day that brings sun and a warm breeze that I feel a little panicky. What a crazy response. But when I dissect it and try to understand the response, I think it's all about this purgatory I'm in, between being successfully engaged and a disappointing deadbeat.  A rainy day doesn't put pressure on me to be happy, to have my long list of "shoulds" done. It temps me to lay on the couch all day and watch a decorating show (which I never do frankly because, guilt).

There's also a positive side to rainy or snowy stay-inside days. Like the stillness that comes with them. The comfort of holing up inside a warm, safe house. It's like being incubated. No need to venture into the twisty, sharp-edged, vivid world. Just stay inside. Stay in your soft clothes. Comfy cozy.

Yep. And lame.

Fine if I've had an amazingly productive week. A respite inside a cozy day is great then. But I'm in a weird transitional place where I don't quite know which direction to launch in. And a stay-inside day only helps me hide from the feeling that I lack progress.

My better half says I'm being too hard on myself. Because he's loving and kind and he wants to see me be successful. I am not great at being patient, with myself or anything else, so while his words are a tempting siren song...they don't do the job of completely letting myself off the hook. There's always a bit of expectation in the encouragement, and that's what I wire into.  "ZAP!" Get over it. "ZAP!" You're fine. "ZAP!" You are going to do amazing things. "ZAP!" OMG I am failing because I'm not moving forward fast enough!!!!!

Today is cold. Snowy rainy stuff falling from the gray sky. And here I sit in a Panera (free wifi) working on my client project, feeling like a gloomy failure-to-fully-launch, and trying trying trying to scratch and claw my way out of purgatory.

If I wanna be a writer, how come I'm not writing?

My knuckle is healing. Finally. I can now type with both hands and all 10 of my digits fairly well.

Being in a cast put a huge damper on my interest in writing. And writing with a pen on paper, which used to be my favorite thing and I could easily do because I'm left handed, is just too slow and sloppy and far too easy to cheat on.

Now I'm out of excuses to write (type) and I'm finding that I have to force myself to do it.

When I drive around in my vehicle (which is my preferred place to think - I guess because it's both passive and active, so I can focus and yet not be stagnant) and I think about what I want to do with this next phase of my life, I keep coming back to writing. Being an author. A real one. So I'm edging closer and closer to this idea of creating something written. Something real. A book.

Why is this so difficult? If I want it so bad, why am I putting it off with every available excuse?

Writing offers me all the things I want: flexibility and freedom, a creative outlet, and use of my talent. It might actually offer me a source of income too, if in fact I can count on writing being a talent.

1,000 words is a ton of words. I checked it out. Writing assignments are really what I need. Like, on a set schedule. And getting up early to write might be the best option for me...less distractions and a nice healthy dose of pressure to get the words down before the littles rouse for breakfast. Plus I'm pretty clear headed in the morning.

So instead of writing about writing, I will write. Present tense. I am writing a book. Piece by 1,000 word piece.