Drama

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The holidays are a perfect time to think about how drama works in my life.  Anytime is actually perfect, but especially the holidays.

I hear people say “The Holidays are stressful.” “My family drives me nuts.” “I feel obligated to do so many things.”

We have work parties, friend parties, family parties and other obligations to give and give of ourselves. It can be exhausting.

It doesn’t have to be though.

We choose to participate. If we don’t like seeing our family over the holidays or being overbooked, why do we do it? Why do we say yes? Obligation?

Why are we so focused on gifts and buying and doing around the holidays? Can’t we spread it out a little over the year? If the holidays are about the spirit of being thankful and for giving and maybe forgiving, can’t we be thankful and give to ourselves and forgive ourselves a little for being human and not being able to go the extra mile every single time?

There is not enough time in the world to participate in all the drama we could. There is enough time to say no. To take care of yourself first. During a plane crash, no one says run around and put everyone else’s oxygen mask on first, they say – stay calm, put yours on and then help others.

We choose to have time for drama and stating the negative about what’s happening in our lives. We give little or no time on getting clear on what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.

What if we could do what we want to do, without obligation?

Drama is a choice.

If your Mother drives you crazy but deep down you really do enjoy spending time with her. Stop complaining, accept her for who she is, learn to set boundaries and keep them. And maybe, just maybe it will feel less stressful. If your Father, brother, sister, friends, coworkers are making you feel pressured, we can choose something different.

But she’s MY MOTHER!/Sister/Colleague/Best Friend – you might say. She’s also a grown woman. Sometimes we forget that.

One of the reasons we choose to stay in the drama is – it’s easier. It’s easier to grumble along being a little unhappy, or really unhappy, because it’s hard to have the conversation that you’re not happy and that you’d like things to change. We don’t give ourselves credit for wanting it enough to change it. We’re scared of what might change, who might get angry and most of all how we might have to change.

I used think and this is embarrassing to admit – that if someone I cared about asked me to do something, I had to do it.  I really believed that.  I had to learn how to say no and not feel guilty. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me.

Eleven months ago – I decided making a New Year’s Resolution was not enough and that I needed to create a New Year’s Revolution. It’s been a good, but scary ride.  Change and choices are not always easy. I’m not always where I want to be. I don’t always know what to do, but I’ll keep trying to figure it out.  Sometimes the hard part is knowing what to do when you’re on the other side of whatever was causing you drama, the exciting part is knowing you can do it.

What drama are you letting go this holiday season?

Fear forever or never

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I cannot live in fear forever. It never wins. no fear, know fear, NO FEAR.

Someone once told me that I shouldn’t check-in anywhere on Facebook because people would know I’m not home and then go break into my house. Yeah – they could drive by and see I’m not home and break in – should I never leave my house? All of us have our own fears for our own reasons.

I’m going to challenge myself to ask the questions about fear.

Am I in imminent danger?

Is it a real rational fear? Or am I making it up? (Spiders are going to kill me? – Really? We don’t have poisonous spiders where I live.)

Is it a what if? Where I think of all the bad things that could happen, what if this, what if that? If it is – what’s the worst thing that could happen? Would I die?

If I’m afraid, I can be afraid without being terrorized. Okay, I’m scared, what do I do now?

I started writing this prior to hurricane Sandy hitting New York but realized the timing of this  question in fear was right on. I experienced the power of hurricane Hugo in South Carolina in 1989 and I can say that, that was REAL fear. It brings you to a place where you have nothing left except for fear and the reality of that kind of fear is surrender. There is nothing you can do.

I look back on that time in my life and it taught me a valuable lesson, when fears are real you don’t stress about them, you don’t think about them, you are with them in the moment and you have no choice but to not be overwhelmed. You have to keep living. 

We create a lot of our own fears, which doesn’t mean they don’t feel real, but when we’ve made something up in our heads, we dwell, we stress, we develop anxiety. Those fears aren’t truly real, but made up and in that moment.

I have compassion for what scares me, but I’m not going to let it drive me. I’m scared, now what? Live! GO!

Re_frame

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I’m halfway to my goal.

I’m eight months in and only halfway.

I have 4 more months to post another 51 writing sessions.

Nothing like a deadline to get me going.

I’ve been aggravated lately, something seems to be off in my life and I can’t figure out the exact WHY or WHAT of it, but it’s there. A general down-ness, maybe it’s the end of summer and the beginning of fall and winter. The time to turn in, hibernate, not be so out and about. Maybe that’s what it is. Or maybe it’s something else, maybe I’m not where I want to be in life and then I say – AM I EVER?

In any case, I want to find a way to re_frame it.  Not that I want to avoid what’s going on, but to put a perspective on it that doesn’t suck. That’s the part of working through it for me. Recognizing that I’m in a funk and not fighting to get out of it but being more understanding of it.

That’s what it takes for me to figure things out. ACTION and non-ACTION. Both.

ACTION – think about why I am in the space I am. ACTION – believe I can change it. non-ACTION – don’t do anything until I’m clear, don’t be reactive, or rash. ACTION – settle into and think about how I’d like it to be. non-ACTION – let it unfold. It’s a challenge to stay with it. It’s a challenge to not ACT and yet be ACTING.

So today – I’m re-framing it. Rethinking what everything is about and eventually, I’m going to make a change. I’m not sure what it is, but it will come when it’s ready. Sometimes the change will come when someone else makes a decision and it impacts me, sometimes I have to decide.

I’ll keep deciding what feels right and what doesn’t, what should stay and what should go. Not making decisions right away, but to watch and think on it.

When it’s time – I will cut – as Marion Woodman says – with a sword of discretion. A sword unlike a knife produces an immediate cutting away. Cutting away that which doesn’t bring more to my life.

It takes courage to realize that something isn’t right and to work to change it. It may take all the strength I have to make that cut, but once I’ve cut, I can move on. I can be more alive.

It’s easier to have someone else decide sometimes, but when I choose, the cut is swift and then the door is closed.

What’s getting in the way of what I want? What’s getting in the way of writing? What’s getting in the way?  That’s what needs to be cut.

There is always light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel never really ends, I just go toward the next light.

What’s getting in the way of what you want?

Design – DeSigN

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We love beautiful things.

Even if we have never seen a beautifully designed product, the first time we do, we know it. We know we’ve seen something different.

The problem with the mainstreaming of good design, we’ve allowed some things to become mediocre without question – but with sincere and apologetic acceptance.

Yesterday, I received an email from someone I admire and who has amazing design sense. At the bottom of the email after the signature was: Sent from my IPhone. Please excuse typos.

This is what we’ve become. We’ve coveted a device that allows us to make typing and typos “acceptable”, because we’ve typed them on a supercool beautifully designed piece of hardware.

I was in a heated debate about an approach on a project via email, which was likely a bad idea in the first place, but in any case, there I was.

I responded quickly to an email and was so confident in myself that I hit send without re-reading. Fail.

My email which was supposed to say something to the effect of: I get what you are saying, the strategy we are proposing is one that will move us forward for the next few months, even years, instead of the next few weeks.

INSTEAD: my email read:

I get what you are saying, KoBe Beef we are proposing is one that will movement to forward….blah blah blah, other typos and missed words.

iPhone didn’t create typos for me, it helped me not take the time to read my own email, it allowed me to sound – ridiculous, not engaged, not paying attention to details.  No one thought I meant to put Kobe beef in the middle of the sentence, however they couldn’t even decipher what I meant. It was a failure.

If I had taken the extra moment to read the email again, I would have never hit send.

iPhone has made us lazy, lazy about communication, hiTECH, with low brain activity. iPhone and email in general have taken us away from true communications with other people. It allows us to not be clear, not explain ourselves and assume the other person will figure it out.

Good design shouldn’t create new problems that we accept and add notes “sent from my iPhone, please excuse typos.” Good design should inspire us to create something new for ourselves. To think.

Pause – think – relate – pause – reread. SEND. design.

“Posted from my iPhone and I took the time to read it twice before hitting send. Because I care.”

Self Sabotage

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I’m re-posting this as a note to myself to remember self sabotage – it’s at work again with me right this very minute.

We all do it.

It’s the cookie, that extra drink, the extra twenty dollars we threw away on something meaningless, the weight we didn’t lose, the cigarettes we didn’t stop smoking, the unwritten lines, the unpainted canvas, the thing we wanted to do that we didn’t do because something got in the way.

Self Sabotage.

Sometimes things do get in the way and that’s legitimate and reasonable, but I often look back on things and think – oh man – I did that to myself, things didn’t just get in the way.

Self sabotage is our way of letting ourselves off the hook for something we want but at the same time fear might come true. We don’t usually recognize the fear part of it, we think we want it, but there is a part of us that is saying no way, you can’t have that, you aren’t good enough, smart enough – insert any “you aren’t xxx” here.

Self sabotage is our quickest way out – it’s our way off the ledge.

It’s the easiest way to get out of doing what you want to do. Sometimes we hold ourselves back or blame other people for getting in the way of our dreams, but if everything in life is a choice, then we can say yes or no. There is not one thing we must say yes to. Self sabotage is our way of getting out of things we’ve said yes to that we don’t want to be doing or the things that scare us, the things we want to say yes to, but for some reason cannot. It’s as if we can’t really stand up and make the choice, so instead we get ourselves there in another way. We sabotage ourselves into it.

For me it’s finishing some writing work. Excuses. Excuses. EXCUSES. I write and write, but I labor over the finishing. Self sabotage. STOP.

No more laboring, just keep going. Decide if it’s what you really want and then GO! Don’t give up, don’t sabotage yourself into giving up, no excuses. Go to the end and then decide.

You’ll be happy you did.

coffee shop writing

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I have writer friends who say they write better in a coffee shop, or maybe not better, but they actually write instead of sitting and staring at the page.

Today, I decided to go to a coffee shop to write.  I suppose it is something you have to get used to.  There were a lot of people at the coffee shop, old people, young people, more old people, babies.  Some reading, some eating, some meeting.

I ordered a coffee and one egg and toast, the usual for me. I sat and began. Two people next to me talked about allergies, an older man in a well-worn pair of Chuck Taylor’s read a newspaper, another old man in golf gear and with red, red face read a book and blew his nose in a foghorn sound into a napkin, over and over. A police officer and a large lady with brilliant red hair and flower tattoos as sleeves sit discussing something that seems important.

Maybe coffee shops that don’t serve food are a little less crazy? Or maybe my writer friends who write in coffee shops are crazy? Normally I write in silence or with baroque music playing – it’s supposed to spur creativity – or with a metronome in the background – the rhythm quiets my mind.

I stayed with it though and thought, you won’t know until you try.

I often write down ideas for my next writing session and write a few lines and leave it for a few days or weeks and then come back and bang it right out. I thought I might try that and worked on a few pieces and then I opened a piece I wrote back in January that at the time I believed was the first chapter of my book and all of a sudden I had it. The words they flew onto the page as if from somewhere else and then Guns n Roses – Sweet Child of Mine – came on the overhead in the coffee shop and I knew I must be on the right track. My life IS a story! Sweet Child of Mine – reminds me of my best friend from college, which were sweet and not so innocent times, and the fact that I was once a sweet innocent child despite my upbringing.

Where do we go now? Where do we go now?

I realize about an hour into writing that there is a problem with this writing in a coffee shop idea – at least for me – sometimes the things I write, especially those from my childhood bring me to tears.  Here I sit in a coffee shop writing, tears dripping, once in a while. Feeling weird, but going with it anyway.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe ~ Truman Capote

Listen for the clues, they are all around. Stay with it, stay and then – GO!

The seeker.

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I’ve dropped off for a bit on writing – well – I’ve been writing, mostly about politics and other things that I’m not going to post here.

Summer is fading and I’ve been stretching time trying to squeeze every minute of sun and fun out of it that I can, but today I happily sat down to write. It’s raining.

I was reading something by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes the other day –

I think we struggle sometimes because we often take on weightier issues to solve, and it makes sense that we struggle, not because we are weak – or back where we started – but because the magnitude of what we are challenged by or what we challenge ourselves with – is greater than before – often in ways that are good and useful and productive, not just challenging.

This is how I live and how I stay alive.

Some people say stop struggling, stop doing, stop trying to change things that don’t really need changing.

For me, it’s not that simple.

I want to be a better human, I want to see what I can see differently, I want to see what’s good for me and what’s not – and act accordingly. I love change and evolution and living and breathing. I love becoming more authentic and more truly ME.

So I do.

I used to operate in a different way, I wasn’t completely aware of my instincts to seek, to problem solve and think through and want to be challenged – so – unconsciously I created that in my life. Drama, chaos, choices in relationships that brought me into situations where I constantly had to struggle. I often wondered what was “happening” to me. When I finally realized it wasn’t happening to me, but I was choosing it, creating it, seeking it because I wanted to discover myself, the truth, the light – whatever you might call it – I paused and thought – if I could be a seeker in a new way maybe I didn’t have to live it out – I could choose to seek and wonder by choosing to seek and wonder actively instead of passively.

I didn’t get there on my own, I’ve had people pass in and out of my life that were mentors, teachers, who helped me find the skills to evolve. I’m grateful for those people in my life who were more aware than I was and have helped me find my way.

I’ve also noticed that I’m not just a seeker, but when I figure things out I want to share them, broadcast them in hopes that someone else might find them useful as well.  I’ve always been this way, as far back as I can remember, I wanted to share what I learned with other people. I want to remind people and myself that we’re all doing our own thing in an effort to become more of who we truly are. I again go back to the lines from Mary Oliver – you do not have to be good, you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

I don’t have to be good, or what other people deem “good” – but I can be authentic, I can be me.

I hope that something I’ve learned might help someone else.

So now I read, write, search for more information instead of searching for more chaos to stumble through. Chaos may be there, but I can spot it a mile away now and make better choices and move past it more quickly.

What it’s in your life that might be causing drama, chaos, other craziness that you feel has “happened” to you? Do you have any choice in the matter?

Go. Seek.

Happiness

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No one ever told me “When you grow up you are going to be happy.” No one ever said “When you grow up you are going to have a good life.”

Maybe they should have told me that, but they didn’t.

Even if they had told me that, why do I always think that that’s what I’m supposed to be? Happy and having a good life?

Happiness for me might be misery to someone else. Happiness is and it isn’t.

You do not have to be happy.

It reminds me of the first lines of this poem:

Wild Geese ~ Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

In other words, we do not have to struggle, fuss, fight. We don’t need to punish ourselves for not being what we thought we should be.

Sometimes things come up and I think – I’m not happy with this. Then I think – So what? I’ll be happy again sometime. I can work to change it or not.  Be unhappy. Be happy.  Sometimes the pause of unhappiness brings happiness.  It’s the pause that counts.  It’s the pause that gives me the courage to decide what’s next.

Wherever you are, you are. Why fight it?

Happy.

Go!

 

Mountains

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sometimes you climb the mountain, look out into the distance and realize –

shit, i’ve climbed the wrong mountain.

so, you climb down and climb the “right” one.

that’s it. that’s life. you keep going.

Marketing

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I work in marketing.

The job of someone in marketing is to build a story around a brand that is believe-able. A story that resonates and someone can stand behind. For me – those stories need to hold true to my values and they need to hold up over time and the product needs to remain consistent. Otherwise the story is not believable to me and I won’t buy that product.

Take for instance a recent discovery I made, Dogswell, is a pet brand that I enjoy buying for my dogs. It seems to be more natural than buying dog biscuits, their real chicken strips look like chicken, not processed pressed chicken, but real chicken breast dried like jerky. My dogs love those treats.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a competitor brand to Dogswell and looked it over, it was less expensive, the packaging was not as nice – the bag was nearly the same color as the chicken inside the bag. The competitor had not paid as much attention to brand as Dogswell or maybe has bad design sense. Gross.  Anyway, I thought if the ingredients are the same then maybe I can accept bad design. I looked at the back of the package and saw the chicken jerky was MADE IN CHINA.

I turned back to the Dogswell brand and looked at the back. MADE IN CHINA.  Their story unraveled for me. Why am I buying chicken for my dogs, that is produced in China and then shipped here?  I’m not anymore. That’s the answer.

What have we done to our world where this makes any sense?

I normally research a brand, check out what they are about, think through what I want, I’m not much of an impulse buyer, but in this case, I fell prey to marketing. I’m not claiming that Dogswell said one thing and then did another.  In this particular case, I didn’t investigate. I saw a simply designed bag, Dogswell, Vitality, Cage Free Chicken, Flaxseed, Vitamin A and Vitamin E and I thought, that seems more normal than buying biscuits and I went for it. I don’t like the idea of Cage Free Chickens (which means they allow a mass of chickens into one giant cage in area – still no access to outside), but there isn’t much of an option for free roaming chicken treats in the dog food world. Why? Because we haven’t created a demand for it.

In many places we don’t even demand it for humans, in fact in most of the United States we don’t. We turn a blind eye to food production. We eat genetically modified foods filled with high fructose corn syrup. Why? Because marketing tells us it’s okay and a whole host of other reasons I’ll take up some other time.

Here’s what Dogswell has to say about their product.

Why are the jerky treats made in China?
China is a country where dark meat is more popular due to its inherent fat and flavor. DOGSWELL believes it is less wasteful to obtain our white meat in China where it is abundant, rather than sourcing it domestically, where white meat is less available and held at a premium. Not only do we care about your pet’s health by sourcing only the healthiest meat available, we also practice sustainability by reducing as much waste as possible.

I am not buying it. This story is not believable to me.

To change culture we have to create change, if we want something to be different, we have to do something different. Making conscious choices is one way that I create change, starting with ME.

Choose your cause. Be different. Go.