A success – of sorts…

It has been two weeks since my last post, part of the reason for this is taking a holiday in a remote area with limited internet access. I enjoyed my week away and must admit that I did not miss my laptop or having instant access to my emails, Facebook or Twitter accounts and was surprised on my return how little interest I actually had in what had been posted in my absence.

What I did miss though was finishing off the 21 Day Meditation Challenge, as I had only reached day 18 when we left but was very pleasantly surprised to discover that I could still access the last few days and so, will be able to finish it.

It was only during my week away and my the two days since I have been home that I realised how much I had come to rely on this quiet time to myself. It is only 15 minutes a day but I would come to it at times feeling stressed and overwhelmed and leave the room feeling refreshed, peaceful and more able to deal with the children’s squabbles, help with homework etc.

Many of you who follow this blog will know that I have been searching unsuccessfully for a job and will be pleased to hear that my efforts resulted in a interview on the Wednesday before Easter. Normally I get very nervous and tongue tied during an interview and fail to get the job because I seem to be inarticulate and at times downright incoherent. The morning of the interview I decided to take some time out to sit quietly and meditate. I left for the interview feeling calm and peaceful and remained so for most of the interview.

Unfortunately, I received a call later that day telling me I had been unsuccessful, they had appointed someone with more experience than I had but gave me excellent feedback on my interview. I believe the interview went well  not only because I was calm before going in but also because I had decided that if they wanted me badly enough they would agree to me working to a schedule that would fit around my yoga, I had let go of the outcome, it didn’t matter to me whether I got the job or not, yes I wanted it of course, was enthusiastic in my interview but I knew that if I didn’t get it, it would be because it wasn’t the job for me.

So while I did not get the job I still view the interview as successful, I learnt that I can give good interviews when I detach from the outcome, when I do this I can remain calm and in control yet still show my enthusiasm and passion for education.

I have only a few days of the Meditation Challenge to go but fully intend to keep up the practice once I have finished. Fifteen to thirty minutes is not a lot of time to find in the day but is enough to keep the daily struggles in perspective.

 

Digging my heels in…

The weeks seem to fly by and I realise that I have not posted in a while. Although compared to my friends, all of whom hold down jobs and look after the home and children, I seem to have little to do the days pass in a blur, sometimes I can’t even tell you what I have done between waving the children off to school and greeting them again in the afternoon.

The house is clean and reasonably tidy, dinner is cooked fresh every day, these things take up far more time than I actually think. I will allow, say, an hour for housework in the morning than find two hours later that I am still cleaning. Like life, I suppose once you have sorted one area you see others that need doing.

The problem is knowing when to stop. There is only so much cleaning and dusting you can do, before you are either exhausted or run out of dirt. Like wise with self-improvement, there are only so many books you can read, affirmations you can say, hours spent meditating. Unlike housework though there is no physical boundary that stops you from continuing the search. Who am I? What is my purpose? Why am I here? How can I improve my life, my relationships, my job prospects etc.? The endless questions that can get us bogged down in a never-ending search. A search that may prove fruitless.

For although it is good to seek improvement, to acknowledge the areas of your life that need changing, unless you actually change then all the reading, meditating and questioning will be of no use. I am guilty of hopping from one self-improvement website to the next in the vain hope that I will find enlightenment there, something that speaks to me directly and tells me exactly what I need to do or who I should be.

Part of that is conditioning, growing up I was very aware of where I was lacking, I sought approval all the time, tried very hard to be what others wanted me to be to gain that approval. I did it not only with my parents but in other relationships too, always hanging back waiting for others to make decisions and then following along whether or not my heart was in it. I never gave myself a chance to find out what I enjoyed doing, what made me tick, in essence who I am, I was too busy pretending to enjoy what everyone else enjoyed because I thought people would like me better.

The last two years out of work have given me a real sense of who I am, what I believe in and more importantly the things I enjoy doing. Some of those things, my yoga for instance, I am not prepared to give up for anyone or anything, not even for paid employment, any job I get will have to fit around my yoga schedule. My husband has real difficulty in understanding this, I have never dug my heels in before in such a way. I have always gone along with the things he wanted, holidays or activities, even when I have not wanted to, he has always overridden my views and choices and we did what he wanted to.

Now I have a choice, I am the one who is unemployed, the one looking for a job. He thinks I should just take the first job that I am offered, but I have been there before which is how I got into the mess I was in. This time the job has to be right, it has to fit in with my needs. Others may consider me selfish in this but for me it is just self-preservation, having found who I am and what I want and I am not prepared to lose it again in frantic busyness for the sake of a few extra pounds in the bank. I am worth more than that.

Are you? Is it time you took time out, slowed down, looked at what is not working in your life?

 

If this post were to get 1000 hits…

would it make me feel any better? More loved or cared for? Oh, sure there would be there that momentary thrill at being so popular. The ego stroking that comes from thinking I have something to say that others might want to hear. After all, that is why most of us are here in blogland, seeking attention, approval, little daily or weekly ego boosts.

Be truthful now, you know you do it. The minute that email pings into your inbox telling you someone has liked your post or commented on it, or sheer bliss a new follower, your fingers are already sliding the mouse over the tab with your blog on it. Within seconds you have the stats page up just to experience that little somebody likes me glow.

It doesn’t last long though and as time goes on it is harder to feel that little tingle. You need more likes, more reads, more followers to get that boost. But it’s not happening, there are so many people out there with so little time. we have to be choosy, can’t read everybody’s posts so some days yours get missed. What do you do for the love then?

Well, you learn to love yourself, not to stroke your own ego but to deeply appreciate the gifts and talents you have. To recognise and accept your weaknesses and love yourself anyway.

Not an easy thing to do, and something I have had great difficulty with but I am gradually getting there. My regular followers will notice that I have been posting less, and part of that is because I don’t feel the need anymore to grasp at straws, to seek fake adulation and love. Sure, some of you out there care about me, but a lot of you are just reading this and pressing like in the hopes that I and others who read my blog will find and read yours too, because you too are just like me.

The small child inside is crying out for the love and attention it he/she didn’t get enough of. It is making up for lost time. We don’t need strangers, however well-meaning, to do this for us. You can do it for yourself. Let your child out to play, Pay him/her some attention today, you will feel better for it.

I have had a tough couple of weeks so yesterday decided I needed some relaxation  I waited until the children were all at school and then ran a bath, filled to the brim, covered in bubbles, something I was never allowed as a child. I brought a book in but never got around to reading it.

On a shelf above the bath were an assortment of coloured bath ducks which the children have long grown out of but still won’t let me throw away. They looked so appealing, that  I flipped them, one by one, off the shelf into the bath. One was slightly larger than the others so I made her Mommy Duck and proceeded to line them up on the edge of the bath as I used to do for the children and sang “Five little ducks went over the hills and faraway” sending one duck at time down to the other end of the bath while Mommy Duck looked on.

A rather silly way to spend half an hour you may think, but it felt good, the child in me was given the attention she needed, the adult got a nice relaxing bath at the end of which I warm. stress free and ready to get on with my day.

Next time you find yourself checking your stats, ask yourself why? If you make money from your blog, well yeah, I can see you want to keep an eye on those figures but for the rest of us, seeking ego boosts is there another way you can find that little glow? What can you do for yourself right now that will make you feel good?

Leave the stats page and do it, however childish or silly it may seem, if it makes you feel good just do it.

 

Let the bun fight begin

In a previous post I wrote about power and how we (or I) hand it over to others, we let them take the driving seat in our lives and to allow them to control us. To some extent I had handed some of my power over to my children, and their behaviour was making me in incredibly stressed and unhappy, to the point where I almost dreaded their return from school each day.

They would come home and after the initial few minutes talking about their day, and asking what they could have to eat, the squabbling would break out and it would go on all evening, disrupting homework time, making meal times a nightmare and ensuring that no one got to watch their choice of TV program. By the time any argument had been resolved the program was either over or it was bedtime.

I realised that I was intervening all the time, trying to sort out the squabbles and come to an equitable solution. However most of the time I was only making things worse. I would be accused of taking sides, or only listening to one side of the story, or always blaming the eldest, just because she was the eldest. I reached a point where I could no longer take it, I felt ill when I was in the same room as them. Even when I was elsewhere in the house I could still hear them. Nothing I said or did seemed to help.

We had family meetings where each of the children got to air their grievances; I spoke my piece and told them how all the squabbling was making me feel. Yet, that was not enough, although they had each agreed on the small things they would let pass, on who got to watch which TV program and who got the chair nearest the radiator when doing the homework, the squabbling resumed after a couple of days and seemed to escalate to even higher levels.

Last week I decided that I had had enough I could no longer live with this. I felt however, that squabbling was obviously very important to them as they spent so much time doing it, that perhaps in the grand scheme of things it was there for a reason. It is how they learn to negotiate, when to back down, how to get their point across and be heard, how to let someone else know that you are unhappy with something they have said or done, all in the safety of their family home. The extent of the squabbling had in my view become counterproductive, it appeared a lot of the time to just be squabbling for the sake of it.

So I took an executive decision and decided to timetable the squabbling…

Sounds mad, yes, but the way I looked at it is all the other important things in their lives are scheduled, time to get up, breakfast time, school bus time, lesson times, lunch times, home time, time for extra-curricular activities, dinner time, bedtime etc. They know the timings for all these, the latest time they can crawl out of bed if they are not to miss the bus, how much time they have to do their homework in so they can make it to yoga, football or dance class, what time they need to go to bed at. So why not schedule in squabbling time?

Last week we started. There are rules of course. Squabbling time is scheduled to take place for twenty minutes after dinner each day. The plates and all food must be cleared away first, we really don’t want a bun fight! They must sit, no standing, no walking and definitely no hitting, verbal abuse only. Any bickering that takes place outside the allotted time results in something special being taken away, electronics, phones or TV time, and from all the perpetrators not just the one who supposedly started it.

The first couple of days, they sat in almost stunned silence, they couldn’t think of a single thing to squabble about. On the third evening a squabble broke out between my son and youngest daughter, They were going at it hammer and tongs. I hovered just to make sure the no physical interactions rules weren’t being broken and left them to it. By the time the twenty minutes were up both had run out of steam and peace reigned. The subsequent night there was some petty name calling but since then they have sat largely in silence or talked about school and friends.

The whole atmosphere is the house has changed, it is far more peaceful, homework is getting done quicker and better, the children are actually getting on with each other and discussions are just that, they do not resort to name calling or physical violence to make their point. I, for my part am keeping out of their business, not intervening and trying not to take sides, and feel much less stressed as a result.

Instead of feeling powerless when they squabbled I now feel in charge, they have a time limit, they are not allowed to do physical damage and they know that privileges will be taken away if they break the rules. When the squabbling was a constant feature I thought sorting it out was my job, but now realise that in doing so not only was I diluting my power I was handing it to them on a plate and they were ruthless in using it, pressing every button they knew would aggravate me in a power struggle amongst themselves. So in reclaiming my power I have given them a more even distribution of their combined power and achieved a more peaceful home.

I intend to continue with the scheduled squabbling for the foreseeable future and hope that peace continues to reign.

 

Funny how you can live your whole life believing a lie.

Then you wake one morning and discover a sunrise like no other. The world seems to glow, the birds chirruping never sounded more glorious. You are free. No longer chained to your dreams. What should have been a disaster now looks like a fresh new start.

All your life you believed you wanted it; your parents were so proud of you, told everyone who would listen what you were going to be when you grew up. Without questioning it, you did the courses, passed the exams, landed the dream job.

Yet each morning when you woke up, it didn’t seem like the dream. It was stultifying, inhibiting, there was no space for you. You went through the motions. Each promotion bringing a gratifying blush of pride to your parent’s cheeks.

You knew it was coming. All around you, others were losing their jobs; it was only a matter of time. You started to save, so you would have something to fall back on, but otherwise you tried not to think about it. You could not imagine your life without your job. After all, you were living the dream, you had it all.

Then the inevitable happened.

At first you were shocked, paralysed into inaction. You could not believe that this could happen to you. You sat and stared in despair at the job adverts, but to no avail. As time passed you began to find joy in the small things, to revel in nature, to learn to just be, no rushing hither and thither with a thousand jobs always left undone.

It was then you realised that the dream was not your dream but someone else’s. They had told you it was yours and until now you had believed them.

You can cast aside the lie, find your own dream and reach once again for the stars.

This post was inspired by FWF http://kellieelmore.com/2012/11/09/fwf-free-write-friday-writing-raw-with-author-rebecca-tsaros-dickson/

 

Where?

Sometimes, I wonder where we get the strength to carry on from. I rarely give up and never give in, but some days fighting the battle is harder than others. I can count on one finger the number of times I have actually decided that enough was enough and walked away, because my health depended on it, and my family depended on me. Financially, it was a stupid thing to do, but we are getting by on one income for the moment, and the  day will come when I too will be earning again, what I will do to earn money I do not yet know but I am not worrying about that now.

It was a difficult decision to make, giving up on my dream, realising that something I had wanted from childhood was just not for me. A lot of people have told me that maybe it wasn’t the dream but that particular job, maybe the place was not right and that I could still have the dream. I am not sure I want to take that step, it is better to leave the dream half-realised than for it fail altogether.

So, I move on to another dream, also one I have had since childhood, to become a published writer. I have not had much luck so far, but then I have not given it very long. I do not write consistently, I find real life gets in the way.

My eldest is not well at the moment and the daily struggles with her get me down. Just getting her to school every day, trying to keep her on an even keel is an emotional roller-coaster. She is young and does not know how to deal with her emotions or anxieties yet, though she is learning. I am trying to pass on to her what I feel is one of my core strengths, the ability to persevere, to get up and get on with the things that need to be done regardless of how she is feeling. To realise that she does have an inner strength, that she will get through this and come out the other side stronger and with a firm belief in her abilities. She would like to give up, to curl up n bed and sob her heart out all day, every day, but I won’t let her. It is heartbreaking to see her go through this, but I have taken this journey, though not at such a young age, and I know that with perseverance, the right amount of TLC and indulgence she will get there. I have every faith in her, but she needs to develop that faith and confidence n herself for herself. I can only do so much for her.

My determination that she gets on with her life at times seem cruel to her but I know from experience that we have to keep going, that to give in or give up in the long run only causes more anxiety and self-doubt. There is always the question following you, that if  you had tried harder, would you have made it? We cannot turn the clock back, nor does it make sense to look forward too much, I am trying to teach her to deal with the here and now, to not worry about what she has not done in the past or what will happen in the future.

I do not want her to gain the same level of perseverance (or perversity as my mother would have it) that I have as  that is sometimes a curse as I will not give up no matter how tough things get, and that is not good for me or anyone else. Instead I want her to develop resilience, to be able to take life’s knocks and still face each day.To know that no matter what life throws at her she has the strength, the courage and the knowledge to keep going.

I don’t know where she will find the strength but I hope that my determination and perseverance will prove a good guide to her as she learns to develop her own, and that when she is finally ready to step into the world she will look back on this time and see it as a time of learning.

 

Release and relief

Today, having met some friends for coffee, done some housework and general tidying I decided to give writing a miss. I switched on my laptop to check my emails but then decided to spend a few hours reading. I browsed a few poetry sites and discovered some new poems. I then reread some of my favourites from Chris Hamilton Emery’s The Departure. 

Lunchtime loomed, feeling lazy I indulged in toasted bagels liberally spread with butter and a cup of tea. While it was delicious and certainly sated my appetite, I was left with an early afternoon carbohydrate slump. I really felt like having a snooze but knew I would just wake up bad-tempered and not able to give my time and attention to the children when they came in from school.

Instead I decided to meditate and found a free twenty minute semi guided meditation online. The accompanying music was gentle and soothing and soon I was relaxed and at peace. This however did not last, I came back into the room with a shriek and a sharp pain in my thigh.

The family cat, who generally ignores me unless he wants food, either encouraged by my peaceful state or a dislike of the music emanating from my laptop speakers had jumped onto my lap and stuck several claws into a soft and tender part of my leg. At eighteen, and suffering from a  tumour that distorts his front leg, this was quite a feat for him. I am not sure who was more surprised or frightened by the resulting scream.

Having given up on the pursuit of peace I opened a blank Word document and proceeded to write two poems. Neither of them are finished or even edited yet, but the essence is there. Whether it was the decision to give up writing for a few days, the sheer terror of the cat molesting me when I least expected it or indeed the result of meditation I will never know. But it feels good to have released the writer’s block, for today at least.

 

Searching for the words

I don’t know what to write, my brain seems to have gone numb, the words blocked out, blank. I have nothing to write about.

I can feel it though like a writhing nest of snakes inside me, so much waiting to be written down but the ideas will not form. I grasp a word, a sentence here or there, but it is tenuous, fragile and will not be shaped. I try, I write but I delete more words than I put on the page. In the end, I give up. I go to Twitter and click on links to stories, poems and books. I read hoping to gain inspiration, to unlock the box. Still, nothing happens.

It has been weeks now since I wrote anything of substance. At first I blamed the summer holidays, having the children off school and under my feet all day, their friends round playing noisy games, the endless washing up and making sandwiches that goes with having a house full of teenagers. I spent more time picking crisp packets up off the floor than I did in front of the computer.

I even took, for a while, to carrying a notebook around with me, and a nice sharp pencil. (I love a good sharp pencil, but I divert) I never take the notebook out, it seems silly, intrusive somehow to be writing in public places. I am sure that no matter how riveting someone’s conversation on the bus may be they do not wish to see someone recording every word for posterity.

On long walks, I discard my iPod, and look around me hoping that something may catch my attention and trigger the flow of words. Although the sun continues to shine, it is cold and there are few people about. The leaves have not yet turned and there is little in the way of flowers, even the birds have gone quiet. It appears that nature too is colluding in this blankness.

Copious quantities of coffee instead of making my brain work and fuelling creativity just make me shake. Chocolate and cake do not work either. Sleep brings confused and busy dreams, I cannot make sense of them nor remember enough to make them worth writing about.

The postman comes and I hope for something, anything that may release the words. Today, he delivers only bills. I scan them eagerly, looking for errors, maybe I can release my frustration on some poor customer relations person. Alas it is not to be, they are all unfortunately correct.

I think I may give up for today, put the laptop away, maybe do some housework, some retail therapy. Perhaps if I try to forget that I am a writer, that the reason I have not sought out a job outside the home is because I wanted to have one last ditch attempt at getting a writing career off the ground, it may relieve the pressure I feel to write, to put words down to achieve something tangible.

My success, so far, is negligible, maybe it is just not to be but I can’t help wanting it to be, to give it a few more months, to keep trying. How can I be a writer if I cannot find the words to write?

 

Lists

Like many people I am an avid list maker. I have “to do” lists, shopping lists, and wish lists. My to do lists rarely seem to be just simple lists, under each item on the list I usually have several subheadings, all related to the main heading but each and individual task that requires completing. It looks like a complicated system but suits me, it is very visual, sometimes colour coded or uses asterisk or simple shapes to mark out the more important tasks.

Today, my daughter asked why my list looked so complicated and why I didn’t just write a straightforward list that set everything down on a separate line and tick off each item as I got to it. A sensible question!

Perhaps straightforward lists work for most people but I find that if I have twenty or thirty things on a list I begin to feel overwhelmed and think I will never complete it, and so lose the drive and impetus to do anything, as a result I end up with a backlog of things to be done and feel ever more anxious about not being able to complete even the simplest of tasks.

With my particular brand of lists, I number each main task, so number one may be “Pay Bills”, as sub divisions of that task I will then list each bill that needs paying. When I look at my list I will only have five or six main tasks numbered, which seems a lot easier to tackle then twenty or so. As the time approaches for each small task to be completed I will put an asterisk beside it or highlight it (my favourite highlighter at the moment is a purple one) to show that that is the one I need to tackle next, and put a line through it when it is done. This way I always seem to have more completed tasks on my list than ones that need to done. This evening I have managed to cross off every item on the first category of my list so tomorrow’s list looks far more doable.

On my bad days, I used keep lists of the things I had achieved each day rather than “to do” lists. This helped me to see that that even on the worst days I was actually achieving and doing something useful and not just giving in to the black dog.

My view is that lists should be positive things, to help us towards our goals and highlight our achievements, not a noose by which to hang ourselves or make us feel bad. I try to make my lists fun using coloured pens and highlighters, I doodle on them usually while making phone calls. I use exclamation marks and smiley faces to pinpoint tasks that were difficult but have been completed. My lists are as much a work of art as reminder of things I need to do. My wish list is for fun, many of the things on it I will never achieve, some of them are just fantasies, but some I am working my way towards slowly, breaking down each item into smaller tasks helps me see that I am on my way to achieving that wish.

Do you write lists? Have you got a novel way of list writing? Please share your thoughts!

 

How do you know?

When I started this blog I saw it as a way to express my thoughts and fears. It was a method of release, to try and rationalise the way I was feeling to make some sense of the black hole I had fallen into. I called it Searching for the Light because  that is what I was doing, searching through the mire and the mayhem for my purpose, for a sense of who I really am.

It is so easy to get lost in this world of ours. We spend hours and hours running frantically from one task to another, juggling family, friends and work and often feeling we are not giving anything the attention it deserves. That is how I got myself into a the black hole I was in, trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be, giving all of my time and efforts to others but keeping nothing in reserve for me.

I worked full-time, ran a house and cared for three children, but left no time no time for me. In those years,if  I read at all it was related to work, I did no exercise and while I spent hours chauffeuring the kids to their various activities; there were no activities scheduled for me. I made sure the children had healthy snacks, proper lunch boxes and hot dinners in the evening, during the day I ate on the hop, whatever was to hand usually biscuits or chocolate. I was exhausted most of the time and relied on caffeine to keep me going.

I arrived at school at 7.30am, having dropped my children of at a childminders first, to prepare for my class’s arrival at 8.30. I marked books or set out resources during my breaks. I rarely left school before 4.30pm. I then launched into a round of ferrying kids around, trying to cook and clean between dropping one child off and picking the next one up. Once they were all home and fed there was washing up to be done, homework and books and kits for the following day to be sorted out. At 9.00pm when the children had all gone to bed I would go to my study where I would spend the next three hours marking or planning lessons.

My husband rarely came home before 9pm and when he did he made no effort to help with household chores or children, he would either watch TV or go to bed. We rarely spoke, and when we did it was always about him and the problems he was having at work, his stresses. Now most of our communication concerns either the children or practical issues.

I have done a lot of soul searching over the past year. I am in limbo, neither fully recovered nor in the depths of depression, I still have no idea what it is I am really meant to be doing with my life. I know I am a good mother but I want to be more than that, I love my kids but soon they will be gone and I will have nothing left. I cannot spend the rest of  my days reading. I know the things I don’t want to do. I know I do not want a full time job, I need to be able to keep up my yoga classes,which are in the mornings, as they are a large part of what has kept me going over the last year. It seems sometimes that I am destined to fail at whatever I do. When I worked in business I never made it up through the ranks like my peers, I sat and watched while they climbed the career ladder and I moved eternally sideways. I failed spectacularly at teaching.  I have tried my hand at writing with little success.

I no longer have the courage or desire to try anything new but do not want to go back to the old but I know something has to change. I meditate and pray, I wish for success, for enlightenment but it is not forthcoming. I wonder how do you know what it is you are meant to be?