Tag Archives: life

TO INSPIRE AND BE INSPIRED

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I think it is better for me to use my time to inspire or to be inspired. These last while I have lost my mind and energy in stress over the pettiness of nothingness of someone else – not a friend or a relation. So in effect it was a nobody. How foolish is that? It is the foolishness of being a human, susceptible to trickery and evil. I’m over that, at least for the time being.

Who inspires me?

  • Anne Lamott and her Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I admire her honesty and frankness. I am inspired by her advice on witing in a one-inch picture frame and as far as you can see in the length of a headlight’s beam. When you get there, you start again. That is how you can travel the distance, inch by inch, beam by beam.
  • Laurie Wagner of 27 Wild Days. Her 27 video poetry prompts, one each day inspired me to write from my heart. She reads a poem twice. Then it was up to me to write without censorship for how many minutes – 15-30? It doesn’t matter.
  • It works much like Julie Cameron’s Morning Pages.
  • Then there are all those creative souls in my Instagram Community. There’s too many to name. I’ve learned and been inspired so much by them – the textile and other medium artists. They share their ideas and methods   freely. They are generous in their praises and encouragement.
  • My mother is most inspiring of all. I don’t even know how to begin. Perhaps that could another post.

This is enough for today. I’m learning to write in a one-inch picture frame. Tomorrow is another day and another inch. I’m learning to let go of what does not serve me. I’m going towards people who inspire instead of destroy.

 

LIFE IS FOR PASSIONS

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Here it is, the 8th day of July and the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I am finding life a bit of a challenge. I am sure we all are with the Covid-19. I’ve lost my fur baby of 14 years in May. I’m still grieving for Sheba. There’s not a day that I don’t think of her. On top of that, the neighbour is still on her harassment path. Summer is here. There’s the garden and yard to tend to. I cannot do anything near our cedars beside her driveway without drawing her attention, followed by her drama. The purpose of this month and challenge is to help me disengaged from her negative energy. I want to live in peace alongside her property.

Most days I feel I’m going nowhere. It has been 12 years now, off and on that she has been harassing me. I am tired and fed up with her in my thoughts constantly. I am sick of working on the problem. I took some time this morning just standing and watching the plants sway in the wind. I felt as if I was swaying with them, letting their rhythm soothe, empty and calm my mind. I’ve given away too much of my time and energy to the woman next door. It’s doing me in. Time to stop.

It’s not as if I’m lacking for things to do. There never seem enough time to do all the things I want to. I could lose myself for hours puttering in the yard and garden. There’s harvesting each day – lettuce, spinach, Chinese mustard greens, strawberries. Today I got a handful of blueberries and haskaps. Then you have to do something with the harvest. Otherwise they would spoil and go to waste. At each day’s end I am tired and wishing for more time.

I really must get myself back from overthinking and stressing about the neighbour next door. I have much better things to think about. I’m over a week behind in the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge. I made time today to catch up a little today. It was a much better time spent, making art on a 4 x 6 index card. Sheba came alive again – on paper. Life is too short for someone to rob me of my passions.

 

 

 

GERBIL ON A WHEEL

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Some days I feel like a gerbil on a wheel, going around and around, not getting anywhere. The more I try to change, the more I stay the same. Or so it seems. Now, I’m looking at the drama that my neighbour creates as opportunity to change. Sure, it brings distress,  but the disruption gives me a pause to examine myself and my life. I ask myself:

  1. What is it that is here before me?
  2. How and what led up to it?
  3. What can I do about it? What has helped? What hasn’t?
  4. Who owns this property?
  5. Who owns me?
  6. What is important to me? What isn’t? What are my core values?
  7. What are my goals for this month of writing for the Ultimate Blog Challenge?

I find it necessary to revisit and review my goals and purposes, if not daily then weekly. My biggy is to fall madly in love with life again. To do that I have to work out and disengage my feelings from my narcissistic/psychopathic neighbour. She has wormed under my skin and seeped into my soul. I have become as obsessive of her as she is with me. I’m a bit of a drama queen, but only with words. They are a fair discription. I am more articulate with the written word. Verbally, I sound defensive and blaming. That’s not who I am. But I am guilty of being a self blamer.

Assessing how I’ve done this past week, I think I am doing ok. My storm within has chilled. I can look at my video of our drama together without the cloud of emotion. I can see that she had set me up again. I’m still that gerbil on a wheel. She was prepared for the camera, set for the game -apologizing, apologizing. What she didn’t say on camera was that she had been chucking my landscaping rocks at me the previous time. And she never apologized.

Some of people not knowing our history would see that I was the provoker. She was, after all, apologizing over and over and in her yard. What the video doesn’t show was she was ‘weeding’ around stuff I had just planted a few days ago. When I came out (I think she baited me), she high tailed into her flowerbed. She started calling me names and such. That’s when I turned the camera on. What matters though is I have captured her trespassing. The police does know the history.

She is right that the fence line is 6 inches from her driveway. My surveyor’s certificate has my fence sitting 2 inches inside my property. She already has the extra 2 inches in the back where the fence stopped at the front of my house. So why would she not give permission for me to access her property so the fence guys can extend the fence to the street? Then there would be no dispute and she can have her 6 inches. And she is the one who tells me she has the right to have a 2 foot access into my yard.  Of course she doesn’t talk this way with the police liason officer last fall. She also didn’t tell him that she knows alot of people at city hall and the police department. That’s what she tells me.

I am getting a little disturbed and distress recounting this. I will stop now but it was necessary for me to see with more clarity. She is very clever and good at this. I am not and I don’t want to be. I continue to find little gems of wisdom from this man. Hopefully I can get off the wheel at the end of this Ultimate Blog Challenge. Wish me luck.

MY TRUE SELF

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July 6th, the 6th day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’m a day behind. I should stop talking about catching up. I’ll just keep going from where I am. I don’t know why I am so busy. I live such a boring mundane life. I hardly go anywhere. I go shopping only when I have to. It’s an ordeal when I do. I’m exhausted when I get home, more so in these Covid-19 times.

I’m feeling that way now, exhausted. I’m sweating and sipping dandelion tea. Beer would be more cooling. I’m pecking away at my keyboard, hoping for a steady flow of words and thoughts. So far, so good. Some days I struggle and stutter. I really do not want to struggle so much. I do not want to allow the woman next door make me feel as if I’ve just come through a great illness. That’s how her energy affects me. I’ve found Dr. Les Carter’s little short videos helpful in steering me in the right direction.

I’m working on disengaging from her energy. She loves to tantalize and get me worked up. She is quite clever at this. I have to give her that. She must spend time studying my habits and routines and my responses. Of course she’s had 12 years to do it. I, on the other hand haven’t been smart or observant. I fall into her traps frequently. The only thing I know for sure is she won’t/can’t change. But I can.

I know I am not a mean person. I don’t go out of my away to cause a neighbour harm or annoyance. But after years of harassment sometimes I do feel maybe it is my fault. But when I come down to it, I wonder what and why is it my fault. I don’t do anything to her. I don’t trespass on her property. I don’t engage with her except when provoked. She, on the other hand, has trespassed on my property many times, sprayed pesticide in my garden, had her friend cart off stuff she thinks is junk on our property, pushed and scraped away all the mulch around our cedar trees, pulled out our fencing to hold the mulch around our cedars, throw my landscape rocks at me. I could write a book about her.

Maybe I will one day when I’m feeling better. Now, I am working on not letting just the sight of her get me riled up. This morning I watched in silence as she skipped across the street and back with coffee from her man buddy, Al’s. I’m working on less conversation about her. More will be poison. Obviously I have to talk about her here. I know I cannot eliminate it altogether. I am, alas, too human. I am like Sheba with a bone. I will do the best I can. I know I am a good person. I do not work at causing somebody misery for no reason. I know my true self.

 

ROY ROGERS AND TRIGGER

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A beautiful Sunday morning. My mind is in a bit of a tizzy with a messy floating list of things to do. I did not take time for my meditation. I thought I would save time. I slept in a little later than my usual 6 am. I was rewatching Schindler’s List on Netflix last night. Each time I watch a movie about the Holocaust, I’m more horrified by the evil and cruelty we human beings are capable of. In Schindler’s List, both the evil and the good are shown. Oskar Schindler was a flawed man, but the war brought out the hero in him. I needed to see that it is possible.

I’m trying my best not to be triggered by the woman next door. It is damn hard. I’ve just looked up from my tapping and what do I see? Her man friend from across the street up her tree, the one who helps her with her nastiness. He wasn’t that way before he hooked up with her. He used to smile and wave at Sheba and me on our walks. So I take a deep breath, releasing my own bad energy. I need to focus on my own power, confidence and boundaries. I close my blinds.

Of course when you try to avoid something, it becomes all that much harder. I’ve been to the store and back, to my mother’s and back. I’m watering and weeding my raised beds in the front. I see that she has watered those little spruce trees she planted right next to my raised bed – 9 inches from her driveway. Who does that? I’m triggered again. I’m pissed. I gave them a few squirts of water myself. I hope that they will grow huge, over her precious driveway, scratching her car. I know that’s not the right way to feel or to think. But I am a flawed woman. I try to get the triggers out of my mind. Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger came to mind. I will try to hold that in my mind’s eye when I encounter that woman. It is a much better picture. I can learn to be heroic like Oskar Schindler. Maybe just a little.

So ends day 4 for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Still a day behind. Heavy big sigh.

 

THE LADY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

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Morning has broken. Another beautiful Saturday morning. No, I cannot go for my regular Saturday swim at the YWCA yet. Convid-19 still dictates on what we can and cannot do. But in a few minutes, I can do a yoga session on Zoom. I will let you know how it goes. And I do not have my Sheba at my feet any more. She is all around me. I am more at ease with her physical bodily absence. I still tear up at the thought. She is still my baby. It’s 7 weeks since she’s left. Yes, I’m still counting.

I am enjoying my sip of tea between key taps. I still show up because it is what I do. It is my mental health practice. Sometimes I am too tired, like yesterday. It has been exhausting experiencing the narcissistic, psychopathic woman next door. And it is very next. My kitchen window looks right onto backdoor and her driveway. I am often triggered just seeing her, especially when she is tripping back and forth across the street to the man who helps her interfering in our yard. I am dedicating this month of the Ultimate Blog Challenge to work my way out of losing my energy and power to her. I do not expect her to change, but I can. I found one helpful source this morning.

The power lies in me. I already know that. I want to stop explaining, explaining and trying to proof the truth of my words. In the end I can do more damage to myself. There’s much truth in the phrase, “The lady doth protes too much, methinks.”

The Zoom yoga class was a bust. It was my first one. I’m not familiar with the instructor and I’m as stiff as can be! I’m not in love with it. I’m better off with my qigong or Yoga with Adriene on YouTube. Nothing ventured nothing gain. Now I better move my butt and go for my bike ride. Get some sun and serotonin. Change my brain, change my life. Maybe I can come back later and catch up. I’m a day behind this Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’m a over a week behind Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day. I have no time to be maudlin.

 

MY WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

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Day 2 of this writing challenge. It is a challenge, too. Maybe I should have started in the morning when I was fresh and had no time to be depressed yet. Now in mid afternoon, I am tired and stuck on my treadmill of thinking and thinking. I’m reminded of Portia Nelson’s poem, There’s a Hole in the Street. There’s a hole in the street and I’m in it.

It’s not that I’m just sitting and thinking. I’m tapping on my keyboard and sipping peppermint and ginger tea. I think I will take a tylenol to rid this overthinking headache. I’m not crying, Oh poor me! Really I’m not but poor me anyways. This is not where I want to be in life right now. But it is where I am. I better just suck it up.

I love Pema Chodron. I love her book When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times. I love her quotes.

“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”

“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not squeamish about taking a good look.”

“Our whole world falls apart, and we’ve been give this great opportunity.  However, we don’t trust our basic wisdom mind enough to let it stay like that.  Our habitual reaction is to want to get ourselves back—even our anger, resentment, fear, or bewilderment.  So we re-create our solid, immovable personality as if we were Michelangelo chiseling ourselves out of marble.”

“We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.”

I do feel as if I’ve fallen in that hole. I’ve been going down that same damn street forever. Now I don’t even have Sheba to keep me company. Yes, I do feel that my world has fallen apart. Nothing stays the same forever. I shall use this window of opportunity to find a new street to walk.

 

 

 

GOAL FOR THE ULTIMATE BLOG CHALLENGE

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I can’t believe it’s July. I’ve entered the Ultimate Blog Challenge again. I’ve been doing it for a few years now. It didn’t seem to pose much of a problem or challenge before. I was writing almost every day regardless. This writing space has been my saviour, my therapist’s chair, more so in recent times. Now my words are more difficult and slower in coming. They seemed to have lost their luster. Reading back to my first posts in 2012, I seemed to have regressed. I obsesse and repeat myself over and over.

I have lost my way, losing bits and pieces of myself along this journey of life. All of it is hard. It always has been. I’ve been losing heart, too. It’s been damn difficult. It’s enough to make one cry and I have. I don’t like to admit it but I have. I think it is the first time for me. Other times I just bear down, grit my teeth and hold it all in. But with the loss of Sheba, I just sob. The dam has burst open. I’m all the better for it – I think. And I’ve been losing my energy and power to my badass neighbour over and over. She’s stealing my soul. I have to stop it, stop feeding her. I have to feed and nourish myself instead.

So I dedicate this month of the Ultimate Blog Challenge to tap myself back to health of mind and body, to the recovery of magic and beauty of the word, to regain optimism and belief in the good of this world. I want to fall head over heels in love with life.

 

STILL SINGING MY OLD SONGS

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It’s another Saturday morning. In my previous life, I think of my weekly morning swim. In this life, I think it is the day that Sheba’s left. Today it is 6 weeks. It’s short and long at the same time. I’ve had her for almost 14 years. Those years seemed to have gone in split second. I feel as if I’m left with nothing. I know it is probably part of the grieving process. Knowing things will get better does not make it easier. It is what it is.

Life truly can be difficult even in ordinary times. Now that there is no more ordinary or normal, bad neighbours add a heavy load to the challenge. I am coping as best as I can. I’m here breathing in and out, tapping out the stress on my keyboard. I had such hope of getting back my focus each day but I keep getting these curve balls. They’re fast and wicked, catching me off guard and unprepared. I should have known better. I didn’t. Now I’m working on recovering.

I’m still missing Sheba. I’m still irritated with the neighbour but I am not mad. I am obsessed with occupying my own space with confidence and not allowing her to bully me. She is not taking it kindly. I don’t know how successful I am. I am working on remaining calm and not reacting. I try to be smarter and keep silent but sometimes you can only take so much. So here is what happened yesterday morning. I was checking to see that she had not scraped away the ground covers I had planted. She ducked behind her plants and started talking at me. For once I’ve caught her on video and uploaded it on YouTube.

I hesitated and hesitated on putting it out there today but I did. I could not get on with my day otherwise. It must be why an abused woman who stays with her abuser. I was afraid that it would make me look bad, that no one would believe me, and that I’m really the one whose causing all the trouble. It was a light bulb moment. If you allow someone to bully you long enough, you start to believe that it IS all your fault. Bullies, narcissist, pyschopaths have amazing skills in lying and turning everything around on their victims.

I am a little afraid of her but I will stand my ground. I am fed up. I will not take it any more. I am not happy I’m losing sleep, giving her my time and energy. It is what it is. Now that I’ve tapped out these words, I feel lighter and tired. Now maybe I can go back to bed and sleep.

PROCESSING, LEARNING

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There are times now I can smile instead of cry when I think of Sheba. When I woke this morning I heard the guy in the kitchen. It was like other mornings when Sheba was here on earth. The two of them would make coffee. Then I would hear the kibbles drop into Sheba’s bowl. I could hear her crunching- more thoughtful now that she’s older. I knew that this was in the past, but the sounds and feelings were the same. I was hearing the wonderful sounds of an ordinary morning. And I smiled.

Over yesterday and today, I’ve washed Sheba’s bowls and toys. I cried then, clinging to the doggy memories attached to these things. I will store them away. Maybe we will be graced with another tender canine heart in awhile. For now I will just be with how life is, not trying to fight or change anything. Some days are better than others but I am always making an effort. However small it is, it is my best effort at the time.

I hope I don’t sound too obsessed and depressing. I am a little melancholy by nature. I’m a little more so in my writing. It is my tool for venting and working through my thoughts, feelings and problems. I am by no means a slouch or a couch potato during this period of mourning. I still get up, dress up and show up every day. I might be operating on a slower speed.

It is another day. I’m still working on this post. I must be slow as molasses in winter. It is summer and we’ve just starting to have some warm days. I did find it difficult to get out of bed this morning. Not all mornings are equal. I was thinking there was no Sheba to get me up. So I must do it by myself. And I did. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?