The dishes are done. The rhubarb crisp is in the oven and the pork roast is marinading. I’ve come to this space to tap out my angst and settle into good place. It might not be what Nick Ortner would call The Tapping Solution but it works well for me. I am finding the pressure points with my fingertips.
I’m having a little trouble settling in. The dog is barking. Someone is walking a dog by the window. A litany of barking and me yelling ensues. Okay. Everyone is quiet now. I sip my tea, frown, and tap. Not every tap is successful. That’s how it is but I’m sitting HERE. I’m setting priorities, dealing with issues, charting my progress.
I would like to think that I have made progress. Last night I came across THE WRITE MOOD – a journal for all your feelings, frenzies, rants and celebrations. It had different coloured pages – orange for rage, purple for passion, blue for blues, green for joyous jottings. I think I just wrote on page 1 and carried on. Glancing through, I sounded blue, and badly blue most of the time. As far back as 2007 but probably eons before that, I was writing about my messy, clutterbug self. I’m still at it though I don’t whine about the blues. Mostly they went away on their own feet. Feelings are not real, though they sure feel like it. They are not who I am.
The rhubarb crisp is done. I get up and the dog follows. Pitter patter. It’s like having a magnet attached to me.The crisp smells delicious. Looks good,too. Have to wait for the taste test. It doesn’t seem the worse leaving it half put together in the fridge and baking the next day. A consideration and note made of dividing labour into stages for other things in the future.
It’s a good day. I think I have my priorities. I got up, dressed up and went to my exercise class. I’m doing the things I set out to do. Well – my list is a mental one in my head. My reward system for showing up is putting a sticky strip (=$1) into my glass cannister each time I show up here. It was full of old alchol swabs that came home in my uniform pockets from work. I’ve finally dumped them. They were all dried out. I move at a snail’s pace but I AM moving. Hallelujah!
The day after my year of doing different I am feeling quite crossed and unpleasant. I feel ugly meanness and not niceness oozing out of me. I decide that I would try to go into quietness and sit with it for awhile. Maybe I can befriend the feeling and see where it goes. I will try the newness of not fixing. It will be difficult, for I’m the fix-myself queen.
It’s been 2 months since I’ve last sat here. I’m fighting the urge to rise and make myself another cup of tea/coffee. It’s uncomfortable being in this space again, trying to tap, tap out the letters, words, thoughts. The space is bigger, wider. I’m a little lost, sloshing around, trying to find and touch the boundaries. I’m like the little seedlings starting out. They/I like the snugness of a small space. Our roots/limbs to feel the sides and edges. I like to think I’m more pliable though. I can s-t-r-e-t-c-h, reaching for the stars. I can grow. I have grown, haven’t I? There! Now I’ve earned that time out for that cuppa before continuing.
I have my cuppa decaf. Somehow I feel better having something to sip on. It’s better/healthier than a lit cigarette on an ashtray. That’s my old self – a cigarette before/while doing. That’s one way I have grown – physically healthier. I’m leaner and less mean, thanks to my three times a week aerobics class and a swim once a week. The mean part is mostly in my mind. I don’t think I’m a mean person but I always fault myself for not being kinder, for being such a grump and ranting so much. I still have those feelings sometimes. I no longer mind my inability to be ‘kinder’. I’m kinder to myself. I rant because I’m not one for status quo and don’t rock the boat. How can things improve that way? I’ll be like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, waking up to the same day, same tune on the radio every day.
Practice makes for better. It’s a good place to stop. I like challenges. Everything is a challenge to me. And I grumble about the hardness of all that. But the grumbling is me trying to find that comfort zone, that snugness, the space to breathe in and out and to start again. What I know for sure is that we have to start – again and again, discarding what doesn’t work, keeping the good stuff.
