12 June 2011

I'ma be alright by Robin Thicke

Click The title to hear the song.

Lines from that song that I love:

I got my dreams woken, man I almost got some...

I still got my mind, I still got my music baby, I'ma be alright...

all of my bills are piling cuz I spent what I owed
I wasn't invited to any parties so I'm throwing my own
can't get a job, cuz I ain't been looking for one I'ma be alright

I'ma be alright, I'ma keep on dancing
I will keep the champagne all to myself
I'ma be alright, I'ma keep on moving
I will give my love all over the world and on and on...

When the Crap Sticks

Sunday 12June11

I want to feel good. Well, if you've been reading me you know that is what is guiding my life and it's been working darn well. But this weekend I've been faced with a situation that REALLY doesn't make me feel good. What the hell do I do with this?

So far, I've given myself the chance to grieve and mourn and cry. I've slept as much as possible because that is how I deal with the height of crap. Sleep until tomorrow, tomorrow is another day - that's my mentality. And I keep telling myself that I've got a time limit. I've given myself this weekend to feel the pain and disappointment and the overall beat down of the situation and as I enter Sunday, today, the final day of the weekend I start to plot my plan back into 'feeling good.'

I used to marvel at people who had the incomprehensible things happen in their lives and how they managed to pull themselves above self-pity and do something inspiring with their lives. For example, the able bodied person who has a horrifying accident and ends up paralyzed. That person creates beautiful art or becomes a speaker or does something wonderful with their life. I was always impressed with that. I wondered how they came to the perspective.

Then I was sick in the late 1980's early 1990's. I broke out with three different rashes all over my body. I had the rashes on the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet, every where except for inside my mouth. With each passing week the rashes got considerably worse and ultimately one morning, I woke up with my face so disfigured and swollen that if I hadn't known that I'd walked to the mirror, I wouldn't have known that it was me. Terrifyingly freaky. Needless to say, I packed an overnight bag, grabbed some writing materials and books to read, got in a cab and went to emergency. You know it's bad when you arrive at emergency and the guy behind the desk checking people in, stops what he's doing and says, "Ma'am come with me." I bypassed the checking in and went straight to the curtained off area next in line to see a doctor. And the doctor came right away.

I ended up being hospitalized for close to 3 weeks in the dermatology ward of which when my doctor (the head of dermatology) did her rounds, she had about 25 other doctors with her who wanted to learn about this freak case called Shelley. My first morning in the hospital, I was in a semi private room with Margaret, I woke up and my face was so much worse that I couldn't open my eyes. In a calm voice I called Margaret's name and asked her if she could call a nurse.

"Why? What's wrong?"
"I can't open my eyes."
She scrambled out of the room and screamed at the top of her lungs, "NURSE! NURSE! HURRY!"
I shook my head and actually said out loud, "Well I didn't want that to happen."

Later she kept commenting at how calm I was and I said, "Well I am in the hospital. They are going to find me before the day is out." ha-ha!

So there I was in the hospital with the 3 rashes and the swollen, disfigured, elephant man face and one of my three doctors says to me, "We're going to have you apply this super strong steroid cream called Lydex on your face. We have never prescribed it for someone's face but at this point we don't think it will hurt." Great!

As I sat alone with my thoughts in my hospital room, I didn't know if I was going to live or die or what was to become of me, the thought process was as follows, "If I'm going to have to live the rest of my life like this, disfigured, I'm probably never going to have a man and get married and have kids. I can be angry, I suppose, about how this bad luck has befallen me and spend the rest of my days wishing for the time before these mystery rashes. Or if I'm going to live the rest of my life like this, what am I going to do with my life? What meaning am I going to make out of my life?" In that moment, that's when I got that the person who loses use of his or her limbs comes to the same moment and makes their decision. We are all faced with that question and different points and traumas in our lives.

Feeling good is a choice, it's a decision we make, it's a decision I've made. There are always really good things within the crapstorms. Like my three girlfriends texting me back right away as I was facing down the news and I needed moral support to keep my head up and save face. That was a major for me because I don't tend to reach out for help and when I have been people have been reaching out their hands to pull me back up. People have been hugging me in the best way they know how and man, it helps. Does it ever help.

I've still got a little more crying to do because as Robin Thicke sings in his song I'ma be alright... I had my dreams woken, man I almost got some...
And while I feel the feelings I also plot out my plan in keeping with the question, "If I'm going to have to live the rest of my life like this, with this condition, what am I going to make of my life?"

What will I choose to focus on? What will I build? How will I continue to feel good?

An as an aside to the rash story. I was the only person in the dermatology ward who was a virgin, it was my first visit. Everyone had been there at least 3 times and they all told me that I'd be back just like them. I was so motivated never to have to return to the dermatology ward that it pushed me into holistic medicine and reflexology and Shiatsu and juicing. All of the wonderful things that I still follow now and more stuff like Qi gong and Kundalini yoga that I've picked up as my interests matured. There ended up being a lot of good in that terrifying time.

So I have to look for all the good that will come out of this hurtful, disheartening situation. If it doesn't kill you... right?

EY

08 June 2011

Mindbloom

Wednesday 8June11

I had a problem solved recently. I've been trying for 2 years, if not longer to do a television fast. You know, stop watching television for say an entire week or month and get shit done. I couldn't manage to find a way to do it. The moment I walked in the house I was clicking on the TV and had it on Bravo for Law and Order. How many times do you need to see the same episodes? Then it was some other show and another. That 3 hours a night I could have been getting stuff done, like say, writing a novel.

I was mad at myself everyday for being so weak and just not keeping my promise to myself.

And then a friend sent me an invitation to Mindbloom. I was bitter at first. Why are people always sending invitations to some kind of social something? Jeez, I'm facebook, I'm on plurk. I've got 5 email addresses and I spend so much time keeping up with those things it's any wonder I leave the house. Any how I checked it out.

It's a wonderful tree of your goals each branch is a specific area of your life and you start with 3 branches and create actions for those areas and you get seeds for keeping those actions. It's beautiful, it's visual and it's fun to keep track of your goals. The best part is because it costs you seeds to add an action, you really have to think about the most important actions you want to take. And as you go along, you make reasonable goals.

Well since I've been keeping track of my goals and actions on mindbloom, I've been so busy working on what I love that I have had no need to turn on the television. And my tree is looking mighty fine. And it all feeds into my chant, I want to feel good. I think if you click the title to this blog entry it will bring you to tree.mindbloom.com

Oh and as an aside on the man front. The gorgeous guy I'd about given up on has reached out, so he's not totally written off. Phew! I do really like him and I'm mindful that we both need to be choosing each other. I need to make him feel good and he needs to make me feel good if we're ever going anywhere with this very fascinating and exhilarating beginning.

EY

A Life off Track

Wednesday 8June11

Things are getting to the boiling point at work lately. I swear on of my co-workers, Monte (fake-name) had decided that his New Year's Resolution was to stir the pot until it exploded or something. From January he came back with an attitude of injustice and he hasn't let it go since. We are June now, it is half way through the year. Shaking my head.

His biggest war has been about overtime hours and how the overtime hours have been allotted. Now I've been working there for 10 years. When I first started there Monte barely did any work. He did the absolute minimal that wouldn't get him fired. He never even considered working overtime. Allan, an optimistic guy, always worked overtime. Sometimes, I thought, to the detriment of his family life. But he has a really cool wife who is super understanding and gets that the more money they can put on their house, the quicker it will be paid off.

Monte has always made fun of Allan. He's called him a brown noser and the like. His enjoyment has always been in trying to crush Allan's happy spirit and optimistic attitude. Then slowly my boss started to light fires under the lazy guys asses and Monte started to change his attitude a bit and did more work. That said, he is the type of guy that over-explains everything and it's clearly his way of wasting time rather than doing actual work. But not everyone is going to be conscientious so you bear with it.

In the last year and a half, out of nowhere Monte has decided that he too wants to work overtime. We all shook our heads in amazement. You want to work overtime at a job that you hate? Interesting way to make money. So he's been working overtime but that hasn't actually been enough for him. Everyday he comes in and checks Allan's timecard to see if Allan has worked overtime and if he has, Monte is in a foul mood for the entire day. Talk about setting yourself up for a miserable life.

And then January rolls around and he comes back to work after nearly 3 weeks vacation and a whole new vendetta. And we've been dealing with this ever since. He has grieved the issue with the union to no avail. The union basically said that as long as management gives everyone a fair shake at it, within the system that they've been using for 30 years(!) there was nothing he could do about it.

I guess what's interesting to me about all this is how far off track we can get in our lives. How we can waste our energies on stupidness that means nothing when we could be channelling it into something better. Realizing goals, making love relationships work, planting a freaking garden. ha-ha! If you are focusing on what you love you don't have the time to start a campaign to make another person's life miserable. Plain and simple. You don't worry about what other people are doing when you have goals to keep you focused.

I'm not an overtime person, I never have been. I get a second job. It's a change of environment and a whole other paycheque that isn't taxed to death making you feel like you worked for an extra $5.

We recently had a Respectful workplace training seminar for the entire company. Of course we all went on different days because the whole company can't stop to take the seminar. In it the Seminar leader talked about negativity in the workplace creating a hostile work environment. She said that we are a culture of complainers. We complain about the drive into work, we complain about the line to get coffee, we complain about the job, we complain about the weather, we complain and complain. She then asked, what about the happy people who don't complain. What about the people who say, that was a great drive in. And oh my kid got all C's on his report card, I'm so proud of him. And that cold air is refreshing it really helps you to wake up and face the day. What do we do to those people?

I spoke up and said, "As a culture, we try to crush them. We want to make them as miserable as we feel so we go out of our way to make fun of them and their optimism and whatever else we can."
Everybody in the room started laughing. I said, "No I'm serious and it isn't funny." And I gave a brush stroke description of Allan (who was in the seminar sitting beside me)and how he comes to work in a good mood and he loves his job and he loves to work overtime and he'll do the dirtiest jobs and how a couple of the guys outwardly try to make his life miserable.

The seminar leader smiled and said, "Shelley's absolutely right and those people are making it a hostile work environment for Allan."

Everybody in the room gasped.

Yes folks, we want to live happy lives and begrudge the people who are actually living happy lives instead of finding out from them what their secret is. It's just a state of mind, how you choose to look at things. The shittiest job can make you happy if you haven't worked in a year and you really, really need the money. When you only have $20 until payday you can all of a sudden get creative and buy some fantastic groceries and really savour the meal you've made and the leftovers that will get you through until payday. There are so many things that we can do when we have no choice in the matter and be really happy about it.

And then we get off track. We have $400 so we buy all this extravagant stuff for groceries and we don't appreciate it like we did those $20 groceries. We've been working at a job for 30 years and forget what's it's like to have to worry about where our next paycheque will come from so out of boredom and malice we make the happy guy's life miserable.

I tell Allan everyday, "don't give into the pressure. Don't lose your inner light. He's not your problem, he's his problem."

And it's true. We're all our own worst enemy and we get off track.

EY

05 June 2011

Clearing Old Energy

5June11 Sunday
"Oh Man, the universe had to send me the most attractive, intoxicating guy for me to say no to in order for me to clear the old energy. It's not a learned lesson without a certain level of difficulty." My journal entry from 1June11.

Yep, I'm feeling the tests of the universe, that is for sure. It's always that way, when you say you want to stand for something, like wanting to feel good, the Universe will send you these curves to see how fully committed you are to your new stance. My latest test has been the most adorably gentle, intoxicating man I have ever met. I swear when I'm near him the aliens abduct my brain that is how intoxicated I get from him.

But something isn't quite right. I've been going to his work for 3 years. I never even realized he noticed me other than being a customer. And it's within the last couple months that there has been a decided difference. I won't get into the nitty gritty but he has come across as being very happy with me doing all the showing up. He has been wonderful when ever I see him. He makes me feel like he's happy to see me. He intoxicates me. But any kind of "outside of work" contact has been nil. Non-responsive to the couple emails I've sent him, no moves for my phone number. etc, etc. Everything feels so public all the time with no real moves for one on one. Warning signs?

In keeping with my new boundaries of how I want to be guided in my life, it doesn't make me feel good. I am filled with anxieties about him with all those questions that come up like, "When is he going to ask me out? When is he going to ask me for my phone number? Is he ever going to make a substantial move?"
Always when I leave I walk as I call it the "depression walk". Because I know it will be yet another week that I will have to wait. Now don't get me wrong, I do love a man who takes his time and doesn't rush things but getting to know each other on a one on one basis doesn't fall into rushing things it falls into moving things forward.

It's interesting though because his presence has helped me to adjust some of my daily affirmations.

I've been through this too many times to count. I've been the woman who shows up and shows up and wonders all the questions above and eventually watches as the guy ends up with someone else. Ironically, the movie that was playing last night was, "He's just not that into you." Message? I think so. It's so easy to make excuses for people who don't quite choose me. Oh he's an, "Out of sight, out of mind" kind of person so I just have to make myself MORE available. Or he's shy so I'll have to take the reigns. Well, what I've been told by many men over the years is that even the shy ones find a way to ask a woman they like out.

It's funny how male/female interests can bring up so many family issues. I don't keep in touch with any of my family like I used to, after my mom died, because I realized one day that if I didn't call, they wouldn't call. It was hard to see that the only reason why a relationship was maintained was because I maintained it. Right, right... that was what ultimately fed into my bout of depression so many years ago. Interesting!

So I analyze this situation and I feel like I'm doing an awful lot of chasing for great feelings at the time but then when I walk away I feel like shit.

In my return email to my ex that I mentioned in the previous blog entry, I told him that one of my latest affirmations is I no longer need to attract this into my life (whatever 'this' is). And the sweetface intoxicator is helping me to add more of what I no longer need to attract into my life.

I no longer need to attract the feeling of being lonely in a love relationship again.
I no longer need to attract a man who makes me wait needlessly.

I want a man, I want people who choose me. Plain and simple. They don't have to be up my ass, but I know which people choose me and I certainly know when a man chooses me. And if there are bad childhood feelings that come up, clearly there are things I have to work on and I can only work on them the best way I can. But chasing after people who are not available for me for whatever reason breeds desperation and the question, "What's wrong with me?"

What's wrong with me that he doesn't call? What's wrong with me that I have to do all the work? And all the myriad of questions that can come up. There's nothing wrong with me. I am more than enough.

He is just not that into me. He doesn't choose me and in order to feel good, I can't choose him.

EY

28 May 2011

I Want To Feel Good

Saturday 28May11

I first heard the phrase, "I want to feel good," from Wayne Dyer and The Power of Intention. That book and Inspiration are my favorite books of his. Anyway, I watched him on PBS before I bought the book and ultimately the DVD and the workshop. I think they called it the Whole Enchilada on PBS. ha ha.

Wayne was talking about how his voice message on his home phone says something to the effect of, "Hi I'm Wayne Dyer and I want to feel good. If this message is for the purpose of anything other than making me feel good, call Dr. Phil!" Cute joke. But I really liked the idea of, I want to feel good and I decided that was the phrase I wanted to have guide my life.

I didn't really think it through. I'd say the phrase, I want to feel good, but I wasn't following it with anything so sometimes I'd feel good but then someone would do something to aggravate me and I'd get all caught up in rehashing in my thoughts what aggravated me and I wasn't feel good anymore.

The Easter long weekend I had a complete sobfest and after I came of out it I wrote about it in my morning pages and ended up back at the phrase, I want to feel good and I got it. I need to have the intention and then I need to make my actions correspond to the intention.

I've noticed a considerable difference especially at work. I work with all men, STILL! And boy oh boy they can be some moody bastards. They can push anybody to stop feeling good sometimes by simply walking through the door. Since I want to feel good, when Happy Gilmore is sucking his teeth at something or saying something nasty, I tell myself, I want to feel good and I focus on what makes me feel good. Luckily, I can play my music in the office so I usually just sing the song that is playing. Or I leave the office and make more tea. Or I crack a joke with my co-worker/ work husband and I don't involve myself in Happy's tirade.

I do it with my boss, with the contractors who can be smart asses. I do it with everything at work that could possibly take me down the aggravated path. And it has been amazing. I've been so much happier at work.

It's funny, as with all new decisions there is always something that will come up where the universe asks you, "Are you really sure this is your commitment?"

Well I got that test. I've been hit with all this stuff coming back at me like a clearing of old energy. An ex-boyfriend and I would haphazardly keep in contact with each other and inevitably one of us would get on the other ones nerves and there would be a span of years where there would be no contact.

The last time this happened, I had decided to myself, "you know, this guy has never really been my friend. Why do I keep accepting him back when he repeatedly shows he's unreliable?" Just because you know someone for a long time doesn't mean they need to be in your life. We can have weird obligations that don't really make sense. So needless to say, I had decided back then, about 5 years ago to write him off.

Well never to be totally written off, he emailed me about two weeks ago to ask me why I seemed to have been offended by something he said and since we had known each other for all this time, he felt I should tell him what he had done to offend me. There had been other emails and attempts at contacting me prior to this but there was always that insulting edge I just never bothered. This time, I felt like I had to answer.

As I replied to his email I kept saying to myself, if I'm going to commit to being a certain type of person I will have to send an email that states everything but in the kindest way possible. I explained the the things that had finally brought me to the decision to cut the friendship off and explained that my life is now guided by, "I want to feel good." I didn't come right out and say, you don't make me feel good but the implication was there.

I wrote, "I just want to feel good and that is what guides my decisions about everything... I just want to feel good and if I don't feel good anymore, I go away."

Obviously there was much more to the email. I thanked him for taking the time to send me his email and how very sweet it was but I don't know if knowing someone for many years is really enough to continue. We focus on what we need to focus on and we are in the people's lives we need to be in... I no longer need to attract this into my life anymore.

He hasn't written me back so I think it's finally done. And it was done in such a way that I was kind but very clear that there is no room for him in my life anymore.

I want to feel good. It took me a minute to get it. But boy have I been feeling great!

EY