Don’t Dream it, Be IT

Hehehe. Tim Curry …and no, I will NOT be posting any pictures of the creepy clown to support that lame joke so we can all breathe easy 🙂  So, lesson this week for me is that I could have been an actor. Seeing how well I turn into anyone but myself inside my head it should have been painfully obvious but then I’m also shy to the point of vulgarity, so there you go. Isolated, introverted version of an actor? Writer!

Any issue I’ve tried to avoid, I’ve got a character for that and a story to work it out. It may play over and over and change itself here and there until my brain is ready to let go of whatever it is or I may end up having to write it to get it out. After realizing all of this and looking at it, I started feeling a little bit like Sally Field in Sybil, which I used to watch constantly as a kid along with a number of other things that it now seems odd to have watched at that age. In the midst of all of this avoidance there is me; the real me. A tiny little shadow of what I was once. I used to be a little more playful and funny, and after I get to know someone well enough, that surfaces a lot more. It’s a dry wit, but it is there nonetheless…

The idea that’s being thrown my way, and has been for a while but I haven’t been ready to put it into action, is the old “fake it till you make it” theory, only a little more complete. Instead, I’ve been trying to fix this and then fix that. Now that I’m looking at all of my little pieces and the elaborate worlds I’ve made around them, I’m ready to integrate them all into a complete being. A new character is in order, namely, the me that I want to be. You’d think that would be an easy thing. I’m me after all and privy to all of the motivations and mannerisms, the bad habits, the hopes and the fears and I now know what the goal of the character is. It’s the ego and the fears of failure getting in the way. I have to let her go. I have to recreate her from scratch, figure out how the successful me in the future acts, what she wears, how she carries herself, and how she speaks, her NEW habits and her new inner dialogue. After I circle that for a while, I can do what I always do, act like it and embody it. All those little pieces will then align themselves to the new path and work themselves out. There’s no reason to make it all so much harder than it needs to be.

The greatest inspiring thing came to me the other day when I was halfway watching t.v.  during chores. It was, of all things, Rocky Horror and the message was fantastic. It’s a new song to sing while I do my action items. (You’d never know I hate musicals would you?) You really can be whoever you want to be and that doesn’t mean that you’re somehow untrue to who you were or the lessons you learned, who you loved or what you accomplished, it just means that you won’t be held back by them.

And…fail.

So, yes. I was saying last night that I was having trouble. One of two things can happen there. You can  stumble a bit, catch your footing and get back into your stride or you can lose it and fall on your face.

Basically, the last few days I’ve been faltering on the plan. The weekend was not at all structured, and I got only a little bit done. I think that I was running or rebelling or some dumb thing. I did manage to get some things out of my house but there are more things that I’ve seen and done nothing about. The new plan has been to get my house under control, but for the past week, I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but cleaning up after a very imaginative seven year old’s shenanigans. I woke up this morning and looked in despair at my house, which despite my forward action of late, was as much of a disaster as it ever was. So, what did I do? I went running into my head. That’s where I failed.

I have this uncanny ability to live inside my stories in my head. I turn into the characters and cry, talk to myself, all sorts of things to get in their head and figure out what they’re doing and why, what they’d say and how they’d say it, what emotions are in control. Basically, I retreat and go fully into another reality. I tend to do that while I’m doing chores so it’s a little less painful. At some point though, the characters took over and I stopped being present in what I was doing. seems like I was just going on about the boy doing that very thing the other day 😉

So I haven’t gotten as much accomplished as I would have liked but at least I’m coming up with a story, right? Maybe. Or maybe I’m running away. Things have been uncomfortable. My body has been fighting back against the changes and to put a topper on it all, last night, I gave up fully. I bought dinner. Why? I don’t know. It was an epic failure in my mind. I had a headache and I was snippy and I was thinking forward to an hour’s worth of cleaning something that I’d cleaned the day before and I just threw my hands up. I didn’t want to cook because it would mean that I would have zero time left to spend with the boy or doing anything I wanted. A pile of excuse? You betcha! But the universe would have it’s revenge and it would have it immediately.

Before I even finished committing the sin, what should appear behind me? A police car. Was it a crime? No. Did it remind me that I shouldn’t be doing it? Big time. I got home, felt bad and in no way enjoyed any of my time. I did the dishes, again, with my iPod on forgetting where I was and by the time I was done with my delusion, my son had once again prepared one of his “experiments” which would take me plenty of time to clean up. I still didn’t spend any time with him. We didn’t eat anything in any way decent, and we didn’t spend time making it together.

The point is, and it’s kind of fuzzy sometimes, that there’s no running from what you know you have to do. Once you’ve committed to something, you’ll be reminded and guided, like it or not. You want to run away? Go ahead but you’ll be followed by the vision of your greater good and you’ll  be so miserable that you have no choice but to turn back around because in reality, the path of your greater good may be hard but it’s a lot easier to take than the wrong path and the rewards will be infinitely greater.

Meds or Madness?

The past few days haven’t been particularly successful. I haven’t been great on my plan. I haven’t worked out very well, and I’ve been tempted upon tempted to go out and have a huge slab of something I have no business eating. I don’t feel particularly good about any of this, but there is one thing that’s been conspicuously absent. My extreme anxiety. My depression spiral. My normal berating of myself for not performing perfectly. It’s interesting to be sure for me. My reactions are changing, and that’s good. That’s what I’m after. The funny thing is, and I haven’t noticed this really until now after a while. I haven’t been taking my meds.

Anti-depressants have been pretty steady for me over the years. I’ve had a whole lot of social and general anxiety to the point where I break out in sweats and have panic attacks. In the absence of that anxiety to keep me hyped up, I’d usually spiral downwards. If any of you have any experience with serious depression, you’ll know that it literally sucks the life out of you. You feel like you don’t have the energy to move. It’s severe and it’s awful. So what the heck happened?

I remember distinctly putting those pills aside when my back was hurting because I was taking so much in the way of pain killers and relaxants and such. The thing is, I never started them up again. I’m not knocking the medicine. It’s helped me a lot, and I’ve been warned never to stop them suddenly. I actually feel better than when I was on them. How can that be? Shouldn’t I be having horrid withdrawals or symptoms out the wazoo? I don’t know, but there has been a big change in the quality of my food, my thinking, and my focus.

I should have listened to my first doctor the first time I went in. He was hesitant to put me on anything until I changed my diet and exercised more. He knew the secret and he wasn’t afraid to advise me away from pharmaceuticals. I didn’t want to listen then, but now I’m thinking that holistic is the way to go. I’m thinking that maybe by addressing the complete underlying problem instead of the symptoms, I might have set myself free.

A Naked American Man Stole My Balloons

                                                                                                                                                               I have to say first off today, that the woman with the David Kessler tattoo with the little boy’s balloons and the red coat is my new favorite person on earth! Photo credit to her (I am assuming here since this was the only link I found with it and I can’t find it again! http://www.etsy.com/shop/Quarley) and check out her stuff for lord’s sake. This awesomeness cannot pass without mention! Also, she’s wearing the damned monster dress I’ve wanted forever, Blast!

Now, on to the purpose. Yes, my metaphor today seemed to fit into one of my weirder obsessions and so I get to place that kid from American Werewolf in London holding balloons. It’s my favorite scene and very apt given my night last night. Not so much the kid, but the situation that poor David Kessler finds himself in. He wakes up, naked, in a zoo not remembering exactly what happened, just that something very big did. He’s confused, terrified and he’s different. He’s gone through a transformation and he’s no longer the person he was. Scary? You bet your finely feathered…well, you know.

No, I didn’t wake up in a zoo or see any cute English kids. I did however, change. I saw some ugly truths about myself that I didn’t much like. I went through some very nasty physical and emotional weirdness, and I did, for a bit think I was maybe losing it altogether. I cried, I yelled, I cried some more and I felt ill in the process. This morning my head still hurts and I could stand a nap.

So, I signed up for this. My decision was to change myself. Change the trajectory more towards what my dreams are instead of where I’d been headed along the old worn road of “have to”. Change is great. It’s exciting but, at some point, it gets painful. Look at any transformation represented out there. Of course I’ve chosen werewolves because, well, I’m me. So if you’re familiar with this film, the Wolfman, Being Human, or even Twilight….no maybe not Twilight… it ‘s all made pretty clear. Transformations are scary, sudden, and painful. Even the butterfly, as pretty and quiet as that all looks,  is going through some pretty nasty changes in there while things grow and are grown out of. It’s not pretty.

The main thing is, on your path to becoming the new you, you’ll inevitably have to deal with the old you, all of your old patterns, feelings, petty resentments, jealousies, fears and beliefs. Sloughing them off is necessary, like a snake with the old skin it’s grown out of,  and you come out on the other side much the better for it. In the meantime though, it gets loud painful and messy. My coach called it growing pains. I just really hope whatever I’m being chiseled into by the slings and arrows is worth it. After all that, and this is just one of the days of weirdness, it better be fantastic!

Stay here Smee, while I have a look around…

All of my thinking isn’t this random but it is funny where your insights can come from.

The other morning I was emailing my coach, talking about how, all of the sudden, my feet were flaring up and painful. A few weeks ago it was my back and I literally couldn’t move without pain. Now, I’ve really begun to learn that the brain is a funny thing and it tries all kinds of methods to protect us from whatever it is that we sense as a threat. My back seemed to give out just when I was making progress with exercise, so I had to stop. That was a big change that I was making and it was scary. When I finally started to speak up about and for myself, my throat became inflamed. Now, I can move and I’m taking all sorts of steps forward. My feet have a sudden flare of plantar fascitis and I’m grounded. It’s all obvious NOW, but for a while, I thought maybe I was falling apart.

Of course I didn’t see the correlation at first. I don’t tend to think in those types of terms (Who does unless you’re familiar with chakra healing and such?) and basically, I look so far past whatever’s obvious that I’m trying to prove things with some obscure form of theoretical physics while the answer is simple and staring me in the face. My feet are a sign that I’m terrified of moving forward. Who wouldn’t be? It’s the unknown right? I have no set plan, I’m just shaking things up and changing everything. There’s bound to be a panic, right?

The other thing that came up is what a stickler (stick-in-the-mud!) for rules I am. I just have a thing about following rules and always coloring in the lines. How boring, right? It’s funny that I’ve never thought in those terms. How did I get to this? We were talking about Captain Hook. Random? Not as much as you might think.

There’s a lot of stuff swirling about that character in my mind. I never read that book until my son, who has loved Peter Pan since he could watch the cartoon and has screamed “Smee!” in the bathtub since he could talk made me buy it for him. He didn’t have the patience to listen to it, m ind you, being about four at the time, but it transfixed me. My kid latched on to Captain Hook and he’s been his favorite ever since. I have to say the same for myself now. I related to the man in the book, who unlike the cartoons and films, was a very lonely and almost depressed man. He was described as being melancholy and having no one to share his thoughts with and that hit me over the head like a mallet. Since moving away from San Francisco up to the country, I’ve been pretty much alone. It’s been me and my son against the world, or it’s felt that way. So the loneliness, I get that.

Another aspect is the flouncy decor and velvet everywhere. That was a big part of my childhood. My granddad was very stylish in the way that he decorated, everything was embellished; a quality that my father did not inherit but I certainly did. If it’s gold and ornate or made of velvet or peacock feathers, it’s most likely welcome in my house and fits perfectly. So I really related to this character and grew to really love him. I even ended up with a tattoo on my arm of the fine Captain Hook and no, it’s not the Disney version. So why do I bring this up?

Because I so strongly identify with this character, it’s the perfect opportunity for the Universe (or my coach for that matter) to wake me up. I’m big on “good form”, proper manners and respect and whatnot. On the other hand, I rebel against it in small little ways. I have a lot of very dark interests and influences, I have tattoos, I’ve had my hair purple and a million other small things. The answer here for me was in one thing my coach said. “You can still be elegant and poised and be a Pirate. Captain James was.” It blew my mind. A pirate doesn’t follow rules. Here is a character who was well-educated, elegant, well-spoken and a PIRATE! It doesn’t get more rebellious than that.

So basically, after all that wind, my son’s favorite children’s story is teaching me that it’s okay to be me. I can rebel and be adventurous and free and still keep my good form. I have a new way to identify with and love this character without being melancholy and lonely. Maybe if more of this clears up, I’ll jump into the future and I won’t worry about how I’m going to walk there.

More Hot Pies!

It was a usual morning, rushing the kid out the door because he dilly dallied the morning away. Then he dilly dallied in the car. Then walking up to school, he stopped to dance and sing a song even though we were late…it was hard to get upset because it was Sweeney Todd, and from a seven year old, that was just priceless. We made it, just, like most mornings and while I stood there slightly annoyed at being rushed I realized that it was all my doing…

I didn’t make him dilly dally, but I tend to be the queen of it and I couldn’t expect him to change just because I’ve decided to take a flying leap off a cliff. I’m the one he inherited the habit from; the habit of living in an alternate universe of your own making most of the time. It’s not a horrible thing. It’s necessary for someone who makes up stories to write but I realized today as I was standing at the steps of his school that it’s not very helpful either. He has his head in the clouds and like Yoda said about Luke, he gives no thought to where he is or what he is doing. 

It’s kind of hard to hold it against him. I’m glad he’s creative and full of wonder and bravery. I’m thrilled with it. At the same time I also know that he’ll be tempted to ignore the real world for the imaginary and that’s a dangerous place to be. It means that you never really give the real world a go and end up on a trajectory not of your own making. You react to life’s events or run away from them into your head. It showed me how I got to this point and why I’m having such trouble with change. I have to face the real world and it’s not as pretty, well-mannered, or easy as my world. I can’t have all of my speeches practiced in advance for encounters that come along. I just have to deal,  in the moment like everybody else does without rewrites or do-overs.

So how can I teach my son about creating his world and living there? How can I make the real world worth it for him? I have to find those answers out for myself first which, I guess is part of this whole life coach, big change, throw out the old and create the new process. I hope I can make things more fun for the both of us so he doesn’t end up with a bitter mother who mutters under her breath at all of his friends and throws kids off her lawn. That’s my plan for retirement! And frankly, I think I really need to try to have a good time during the transition here any way I can. If it’s all hard, I’ll quit so I’ve committed to the changes but I’m still singing about Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies with the boy while I’m working 🙂

Baby Steps to the elevator…

 It seems like a ridiculous thing,telling people that you’ve decided to change your life. After all, it sounds huge. It sounds brave. It sounds cerebral and impressive, like hours and hours of deep consideration want into it’s planning. It sounds hopeful and sets up the anticipation of great things. In my case, it feels like less of a choice than a multitude of areas of life just not working out, usually all at once until I just scream “enough!”. It feels messy and more than anything, it just feels uncomfortable.  Of course, I’ve been on this journey for about four days and I have a coach helping me along the way. A life coach. Weird in itself, I know but there’s a strange freedom in having someone telling you to go through with what you’ve already planned to do but never had the courage to. Also, I just need the help. I’m a mess, disorganized, eating my emotions, depressed half the time or just really really snarky about the human race at large. So, I’ve decided to change and see where that takes me. Hopefully someplace better!

So, it’s the beginning. The baby steps area of the course and so far it’s sucking pretty badly! The process is fine, spending time being thankful, saying your purpose aloud, thinking better thoughts about yourself instead of constantly criticizing. That part is great, but it’s damned hard to break the habit of how you live your life everyday. So far it’s only an hour that’s different, but it’s a hard hour.  I have to relearn how to live. It’s frustrating so far but it’s better than constantly screaming that you hate things or that you can’t take it anymore. 

There comes a moment when you do realize that everything that’s going on is in your control, or at least your reactions to it are. I can yell at my son to clean up stuff and stare at the sink full of dishes every night,  or I can hope for and expect something more. I can sit at work annoyed or tired or thinking of five O’clock and then go home and watch people on t.v. living the lives I’d like to live or at least to feel the excitement of – or I can go out and live and stop watching. It is a brave thing I guess, but like most everything, like I said,  it’s a series of tiny little steps and adjustments. Yay. No instant changed life…

I don’t really want too much. I’m not shooting at becoming a diplomat or to learn four languages in three months. I just want to adjust my thinking, my exercise, get into shape and to start writing. Really writing. I want more than anything to get into the habit of writing regularly so that I can rewrite the two books I have managed to complete and to write what I really love in the future. So, I figured what better way to practice than to catalog the weirdness and the progress (and my total breakdowns) into whatever this turns out to be?

I also hope, if anyone happens upon my randomness and sees what amazing change was managed by a total neurotic mess, maybe that’s a tiny shred of light. You never know the impacts you make and no matter how small, if they’re positive, they’re worth it! I’m also banking on this working dramatically (the changes, not the writing about it) and so I’m off on the magical adventure of changing my snarky anti-social self into a vibrant fulfilled successful writer. It’s a dream and a hope. I can dream can’t I?

Viva la Revolucion!