The Journey

I'm Always the Last to Know

written 2/24/07

This will either make perfect sense to you or you'll wonder what the heck I could possibly be thinking--I don't suspect there will be a lot of in between thinking about this whole thing.  OK, here goes.

I keep rediscovering that I'm smart.  Does that make any sense?  If it does, you'll understand the rest of this easily.  If it doesn't, well, it might not be quite as clear but I'd encourage you to give it a try because it might be helpful to know this to be supportive to other people in your life.

This starts back when I was in the 8th or 9th grade.  I had a guidance counselor who told me I wasn't bright enough to go to college so I should take practical classes that would help me earn a living after I graduated from high school.  Why would he say that if I was smart?  Well, like so many children, it was a combination of depression, boredom, and being distracted by big stuff like my parents' divorce and being sexually molested.  Anyway, paying attention in class really wasn't high on my list of priorities.  I've always envied people who could face adversity with strength and determination but it took me a while to get the hang of it--about 25 or so years (well, that's from the time the depression set in).  Now that I've figured it out, though, I'm much better at it.  Anyway, I was quite willing to accept what he said at face value and obediently took secretarial courses so I could support myself when I graduated from high school.  Add to that a family who assumed I wouldn't go to college and the myth began

That sets the stage for why I continued to think I wasn't very bright.  I surrounded myself with people who reinforced that belief.  I married a man who wanted me to believe it so he could control me.  When he allowed me to work (yes, I really did say that!) I worked for people who encouraged me to believe that.  My friends weren't the kind of people who went around trying to lift others up.  It went on and on. 

[I started this several weeks ago--then I got the flu and didn't do much for quite a while.  I saw this in here this morning and decided to finish it up and post it.  So it was begun 2/24 and finished 3/17.]

Then there was the physical part of depression.  I was so exhausted all the time I took to heart every time my father told me how lazy I was.  I'll freely admit I'm frequently self-indulgent but I've NEVER been lazy. 

Fast forward to a time in my life when I took a psychological evaluation.  No one told me a part of that would be intelligence testing but it was.  When the psychologist did the follow-up consultation to explain everything to me she said my IQ was 138.  I know, I know, Stanford Binet Intelligence Quotient tests have come under scrutiny for their inaccuracy but they are generally in the ball park.  What I knew from reading was that 135 was considered genius!  Good grief.  How could a test be so wrong?  See?  I still wasn't thinking "smart."  I was thinking that I wasn't smart so the test must be flawed.

That was 20 years ago and I've spent a lot of time on personal growth and development and I still have to remind myself that I'm smart.  It gets easier every day but there are still times when it sneaks up on me and surprises the living daylights out of me.

I suspect I had a point when I started writing but, as with most journals, I get to rambling and then it just because whatever it becomes.  This will hopefully become a just another reminder, possibly made stronger by virtue of writing it down rather than just thinking it.

Be happy today!

Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters

Written 3/9/07   

After my last post about walking for my health I realized that quite a few of my posts seem to have nothing to do with the Law of Attraction.  Then I thought about it a little longer and realized that as long as I feel like doggy doo (I admit, I had a slightly more colorful word in mind) I would always attract doggy doo into my life.  Duh! 

As I write this I realize this is something I know but have to re-discover frequently--not sure why.  It doesn't really matter why.  What matters is that I not only keep re-discovering it, I do it more frequently than I used to so I believe that one of these days I will just know it all the time.

Oh, that reminds me of the Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters.  I would love to give attribution to the original author of this but I have no idea who it is.  If you know, please let me know so I can share it with everyone.

Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters

Chapter One
I'm walking down the street.  There's a hole in the street.  I fall in the hole.  It's dark and dank down there and I don't like it.  It takes me a long time to figure out how to get out but I finally do and I'm much happier.

Chapter Two
I'm walking down the street.  There's a hole in the street.  I fall in the hole--again.  It's still dark and dank down there and I still don't like it but since I've been here before I know how to get out and it doesn't take nearly as long.

Chapter Three
I'm walking down the street.  There's a hole in the street.  I fall in the hole--again!  This time I scurry out of the hole in no time flat!

Chapter Four
I'm walking down the street.  There's a hole in the street.  I walk around the hole.

Chapter Five
I take a different street.

I think this might be the most profound thing I've ever read about how we manage to repeat damaging behavior over and over but how, with persisitence, we can stop it and walk down that different street.  I also just noticed it doesn't say the different street is one that is paved with gold.  Interesting thought.

Walking for my Health

Tuesday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in the Pacific Northwest. The temperature reached 69 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun was shining like crazy! I knew I had to get out in it. I was craving the sun on my face. It’s not that the sun never shines here—it does—but it doesn’t shine as much in the winter as in the summer and the combination of the sun and warmth was just irresistible that day. Add to that my need to go to the post office to pick up a package and I made an arbitrary decision to take an hour off from my work and take a walk.

To add a bit of context to this story, I have fibromyalgia (I think I’ve already talked about that) and this winter it has been particularly bothersome. I felt that my work required me to do less exercise so I didn’t hurt so much. As a result, I have gotten into pretty bad physical condition. I didn’t realize how bad it was until Tuesday. OK, I should have had a clue when I was going from gate to gate at airports on my trip to Tennessee but I was in serious denial then and now I’m not.

Whatever the reality is, here’s what happened. On my way to the post office I started feeling a lot of pain in my legs, especially the left leg that has been bothering me for several months, and my back and when I got to a place where I could sit down for a minute or two, I did. I got to the post office and stood in life—just for a couple of minutes—and was in some fairly severe discomfort from standing there. After I got my package I thought—I’m just down the street from my bank—I should go there and make a deposit. I walked there and stood in another tiny line for another couple of minutes and conducted my business. I sat in one of their waiting area chairs for a few minutes before heading back home.  

My route home took me past the library and I stopped in to say hello to the librarians (it didn’t matter who was working that day—I know them all) so I stood at the counter for a few minutes. I walked another block and stopped for lunch at a diner, not because I wanted to stop for lunch nearly so much as I really wanted to sit down for a while. After lunch I walked the rest of the way home and I was totally exhausted. Here’s the part that scared me: the entire walk was under a mile. It wasn’t much under a mile but a hair under a mile. I used to walk a mile each direction to and from work. After I moved I walked almost a half mile each direction. Now I can’t walk that far without several rest stops. Oh, and when I got home and sat down to work for an hour or two and then tried to get up for something, I almost couldn’t stand up because of the pain and I had to stand there, balancing myself against the desk, for 20-30 seconds before I could get my legs to work properly. I was in agony. The next day, Wednesday, was the same. I hurt so badly when I got up I could barely move.

That put me into a bit of a depression for a while, then I had my coaching session with Lynne and we did some “Coaching 101” where we went back to basics and talked about what was it I wanted to accomplish and how I wanted to accomplish it. Then we talked about the steps I could take (quite literally) to make it happen in a way that wouldn’t build in failure for me. That was quite a concept because in the past I have set out to make everything better immediately and that doesn’t work well for most of us—it certainly doesn’t work for me. Walking a mile a day, five days a week, isn’t going to work right now. I’d do it one day and be totally unable to walk more than a few steps the next day and that would be the end of that program. 

We talked about when I would walk outside and what I would do when it was too cold and/or wet to walk outside. If I was feeling like I could only walk to the end of the block and back, that was fine. If I felt like I could walk all the way around that block, that was fine, too. No, not “fine,” it was all Great!

By then I had taken over the counter pain relievers and had done some very cool EFT stuff with Lynne and I was feeling quite a bit better so, in the spirit of my commitment to feel better I walked to the end of the block and back—not a huge distance but pretty amazing considering I could barely walk from the bedroom to the bathroom that morning. 

Yesterday it rained and I was busy with work and only did a little walking in the house but I did some and I felt pretty pleased with myself that I had done any at all.

Today it was raining when I got up so I walked 5 little laps around my apartment. I can go from the living room to the kitchen, through the tiny hallway that leads to the bathroom, down the main hallway, and back to the living room. It’s not much of a walk but at least it’s not pacing back and forth. I don’t do well with pacing back and forth.  

What I did that really helped was to sit here thinking about how that didn’t seem like I had walked very far and wondering how far it actually was. I remember hearing about how you can count your steps when you walk extra and keep track of them and see how far you walked beyond your normal routine.
 
I walked around the circle one more time and determined it was 50 feet. That still seemed pretty little so I did the math and it turns out that just 26 times around the circuit is ¼ mile. Not bad—not bad at all. Since then I’ve walked an additional 8 laps and it’s just lunch time. If I can do that a few more times today I can be up to at least a quarter mile and this is just the third day of my plan to get more in shape.

Oh, and as soon as I get my stretching/yoga DVDs from the library, I’ll let you know what I think of those. I can’t help but believe this is going to make a huge difference in how I feel. I’m already feeling more optimistic than I have in a long time.

Sunshine and Shadows

When I was a child I used to imagine what the world would be like if it were perfect. There would be sunshine every day and it would rain at night so the flowers could get watered and we would never have to use sprinklers (I think someone must have been eavesdropping on my imagination because there was a song with something like that in it some years later—well, the part about raining only at night). People would smile at each other and be nice and not be cranky or angry. It would never be too hot or too cold. School would only last three hours a day because we would only do things we learned from, not all that boring stuff. I wouldn’t have to take care of my sisters and they would like me again.

You get the idea—it was a utopian world. Recently there was a series of commercials on television about a utopian world and that’s what first brought back that imaginary world. I also remember thinking that we couldn’t have that because I wanted sunshine every day and there would be people who would want rain during the day. I didn’t want it to be cold and snow in the winter but there would be people who liked that and would want that. Of course as a child it didn’t occur to me that I could move somewhere those conditions were much closer to accurate but the point here isn’t the moving, it’s the thought that my desires can’t happen if they have to do with big issues because other people will undoubtedly want them different, so we can’t all have what we want, can we. Besides, the weather patterns aren’t going to change just because I want them to, I don’t care how much people talk about manifesting our desires.

I had a blinding flash of the obvious this morning as I was looking out at the rain and thinking how absolutely beautiful it was yesterday and just a little sad that it wasn’t that way today. I suddenly “realized” something I have been reading about for years but apparently wasn’t quite ready to hear until today (so maybe it’s “remembered” rather than “realized”): My happiness with the weather has nothing to do with the weather; it’s only about my happiness.

Here’s how my thoughts have always run:

• the sunshine is bright and cheerful
•  the rain is dreary and depressing
• · the sunshine allows me to go out for a walk or do errands in comfort
• · the sunshine makes winter feel warmer
• · the cold is awful!
• · I have to get dressed up in restrictive clothes and I still get cold
• · the snow is cold and wet and slippery and makes walking difficult
• · the ice is even worse; it’s cold, wet, slippery AND sharp
• · it’s dangerous to drive on snow and ice

There’s more but you get the idea.

None of those things are about the actual events—they are all about how I feel about them. What if I thought the rain was a blessing for the lovely, lush plants we have here in the northwestern United States? What if it soothed me to see the gentle drops of water falling? What if walking in the rain became something I enjoyed doing? What if the wind and rain combined made me feel exhilarated? What if snow looked like a winter wonderland? What if I had the right cold weather gear so I didn’t get quite so cold or slip and slide? What if I had the right kind of tires on my car? What if I assumed no one was going to run into me? What if.....

See what I mean? For everyone who likes something it seems there is someone who doesn’t like it. What’s the difference between those people? It’s funny, while I was writing this I remembered a fairly recent post by Lynne Morrell (I’ve talked about her before) that spoke to this issue as well. It’s probably part of the reason this “revelation” came to me but there is also all that reading I’ve done that talked about being able to change my mind in a completely different way than most of us learned. There is also the time I spent practicing Nicherin Shoshu Buddhism where part of the practice was an attitude of peace with things as they were rather than discord. There is the movie The Secret and the television shows discussing it that talk about this very thing. 

Lynne may have said it in a way that was easier to digest but it’s always been there. Why didn’t I see it sooner? This is one of the things I think I’m moving toward in my journey. I am changing my mind. I am letting go of the old beliefs that if I don’t like something and it is all around me then I must either get away from it or be miserable. There is another option! I can review how I think about it and be grateful for it. I can change my mind. Oh, and back to the question of why I didn’t see it sooner—I didn’t see it sooner because my mind wasn’t ready to change. I had to take a series of steps to get me to this place. I realize that every thought I have is leading me to the place I want to be. More than that, every thought I have is the perfect thought for this moment. Without this thought, there can’t be the next thought. Each thought I have is the absolute most perfect thought to take me to the next location on my journey. As with a map, turning a different direction just one time will take you to a different location. I’m pretty darned happy with the location I’m in so I’m pretty darned happy with the thoughts I have had in my past. I just want to keep moving forward.

One final little story that exemplifies the previous paragraph: I married a man 16 years my senior. He was controlling and manipulative. He loved me but in a less-than-healthy way. (There’s obviously more to that story, right?) Anyway, a friend once asked, “Do you ever wonder what your life might have been like if you hadn’t married Ed?” My immediate response was, “No, but I suspect it would have been a whole lot worse than it was.” She, of course, was shocked. She had expected me to think I might have gone to college, married a doctor or a lawyer, lived in the suburbs, something other than the life I had. I told her that my self esteem was so far down that Ed was the highest up I could imagine at the time. Had I not married him I might have married someone who drank up his paycheck in the neighborhood bars, was physically abusive, and never left the neighborhood I lived in. It’s all perspective. She has a hard time imagining that I can be happy with the life I’ve chosen and I know I am not happy in the life she has chosen (I lived that life for a while and it isn’t a place I want to return). We’re both happy that the other is happy, though, and that’s the important part.

My Trip to Seattle

This past Monday I was scheduled to go to Seattle to a Microsoft event (spend a day listening to them and get a free copy of Office 2007 Professional and Office Groove--I can do that!).  Anyway, I totally forgot I had written something about the experience while I was actually at the event.  I was so not interested in one of the speakers that this is what I wrote instead:

I was taking the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle this morning and the closer I got to Seattle the more comfortable I felt.  When I arrived I felt as if I had arrived home rather than the other way around.  As I rode through the city on my way to a Microsoft launch event (2007 here we come) I felt like I was home.  It's a very strange feeling but no a bad one.  I find myself dreading having to go back to Bremerton.  I'm having trouble referring to Bremerton as "home."  It's kind of a good feeling...

At that point either the speaker stopped talking or said something that actually caught my attention because that's all the further I got.  Here, as Paul Harvey used to say (does he still say it?), is the rest of the story.

Going home was exactly the same.  I had hoped to spend some time at Pike Place Market before heading back to Bremerton but I didn't have the physical stamina to do that so I just went directly to the ferry terminal and waited around for the next ferry to come in.  I would have been happier staying in Seattle.  Not that I am miserable where I am--I'm not!  I like my cute little apartment.  I love my neighbors and the other friends I've made here.  I hope they will all come visit me in my apartment in Seattle.  I might even come back for the Blackberry Festival or something (or not).  Anyway, I'm content where I am and amazingly grateful for the good fortune I have in my life!  I'm just looking forward to the move--oh, that's a big lie!  I'm looking forward to being moved, not the move.

Oh, and the Microsoft thing was OK.  I learned a few cool things and got killer software.  Mostly it was good to be in Seattle for a day.  I have to do that more often.

No Recent Posts

Shoot!  I haven't written anything since the 24th.  I know there have been things showing up, but I didn't write anything since the 24th-----and I had some truly awesome thoughts I wanted to share.  Well, I'll see if I can come up with any of those awesome thoughts and share them with you later today or over the weekend but I didn't want you to think I had forgotten about you completely.