I M Perfect lady

Tag: work

  • Enter In

    Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, “I like to think of the mind as a room.  In that room, we keep all our usual ideas about life, God, what’s possible and what’s not.  The room has a door.  That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light.  Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.”

     

    “In our ordinary, prerecovery life, when we would hear something weird or threatening, we’d just grab the doorknob and pull the door shut.  Fast.”

     

    “Inner work triggering outer change?  Ridiculous! (Slam the door.) God bother to help my own creative recovery? (Slam.)  Synchronicity supporting my artist with serendipitous coincidences? (Slam, slam, slam.)

     

    “Now that we are in creative recovery, there is another approach we need to try. To do this, we gently set aside our skepticism – for later us, if we need it – and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open.”

     

    “Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations.  In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs.  It is necessary that we examine them.”

     

    “More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness.  Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind.”      Julia

     

     

    Yesterday I was panicked due to my one-day weekend, and I was not open to letting the chores go and just using it as my play day as I had threatened to do.  I slammed the door on playing, staying with old habits of getting my jobs done first.

     

    I was crabby but doing the work.  Resenting that I couldn’t play.

     

    It is like being locked in a room to which you have the key, yet unable to actually use it to turn yourself free.

     

    There is an exchange I can’t see to agree with, messy house in exchange for playing!

     

    I want both.  And if I stay that course, I will continue exchanging playtime for work time, for as we all know there is always another job to be done.

     

    She is suggesting that we ‘use’ this excuse in order to keep our Artist from going to explore the wide-open world, that we have become comfortable in the cramped workspace.

     

    My grumpiness spread like a virus, or tried to, but most left me alone in my unhappiness. 

     

    My daughter took her playtime first, and later on in the fading daylight mowed the grass.  My resentment at her is that she has mastered the art of play over work time…and is doing what I can’t allow me to do. 

     

    I blame her for me being unable to exchange playing for a clean house. 

     

    As I sit with this thought, I used to get appreciation and attention for keeping my mother’s house in order…and the opposite may be true, wrath if I didn’t help.

     

    I recall many siblings not caring where I cared too much.

     

    When I thought I cared about a clean house, in fact I cared what my mother thought of me.

     

    Perhaps, this is the issue that needs to be examined. 
    ”I am better if I have a clean house, even if I am grumpy.”

     

    Who do I like better or who feels better inside?

     

    It seems my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do and how external things look. 

     

    How brave to let it all go and play…That is the challenge this week…being a child doing what she feels like, letting go of responsibilites that can wait.  The 'mother' in my head may want me to slam the door to fun, but I have to be strong enough to nudge it open and enter in.

     

  • Keep the Scales Balanced.

    I have watched the future steal my today, the tomorrows weighing heavy upon this now moment, grabbing this energy for its use, sucking out of my life my life.

    I was going along adjusting and accepting the role of a working girl, doing my five days with a sprinkle of unhappiness, but for the most part well adjusted working girl, getting up and going in, doing my deal, and then they changed the rules.

    The job now will require me to give up one more day every other week, and I keep focusing on what I am giving up…and will have to switch and find the gifts this brings, find the place of good change, not just bad.

    It is forcing me to see the weight of the household needs balanced against the time I have, with a counter balance of playtime.

    If I didn’t want or need or enjoy playtime, I am thinking this schedule of work and then house work would be fine. In fact this is a perfect life for those who love to lose themselves in their work. The old me would have been thrilled by this new routine…the perfect martyr life.

    But a new me lives within me now and she is not thrilled by this latest development and is challenged to now be more vocal and demanding.

    What the old me used to do, was to take in new changes and absorb them alone, not letting them impact those around me, like a shock absorber, allowing their rides to continue on a smooth trip while mine was very bumpy.
    It will be up to me to not absorb more work and less play.

    Instead of taking this on alone, my household will feel jostled as I work more.

    I fight the selfish connotations inside of me as wrestle for playtime while turning my back on ‘responsibilities’ within the house, the usual sparing partners vying for my attention.

    Finding this new balance will take some time. And if I allow others to share this new burden, the burden itself will feel lighter.

    It is best for me to give up being a shock absorber and instead be a passenger in a car of six, all going over the same road.

    We will all have to make some concessions and adjustments with this new change. I guess if you don’t go with the flow you get left working against what is.

    This is our new reality…change requires change in behavior.

    It is up to us to hold on tight to our priorities…play in equal balance to work is where my intentions lie…by setting my intentions, I can focus on fitting in enough play…so if one more work day was added, I can see more play has to be as well.

    Instead of gaining 26 days of work a year, I now will have to add 26 days worth of playtime. The harder I work the harder I will have to play to keep the scales balanced.

  • Postal Pressure Cooker

    My five days of work is done this week, my weekend begins on Sunday. Yesterday the man who will begin doing Saturdays for me rode along on the mail route.

    It is interesting to see how a man looks at the route, compared to a woman. He sees the route, but not what his is going to be delivering.

    He is a bus driver during the week, so he was concentrating on the route, thinking that knowing the route and learning to drive on the right is the hardest part of the job.

    He failed to understand you don’t get to do the driving until you get all the mail sorted, and in order to sort quickly, you practice and practice and memorize and memorize.

    He kept going back to his strengths… his knowing bus routes and driving a bus.

    And I would focus on what he doesn’t know yet…sorting mail.

    The sorting sets the tone, sets the pace and will slurp up many hours of daylight, if you don’t know where the letter in your hand goes, and you have three trays of mail, each holding 300 plus pieces.

    Overlooking this part puzzled me, and I quickly learned that the only way he will learn is by doing, so I left him at the end of the day with a tub of catalogs, each needing to find their home in the 469 slots.

    Nothing teaches like experience.

    Nothing shows you how much you don’t know than by standing with one small catalog searching for its home, and watching the time slip away, while you hunt and hunt and hunt again, the name not meaning anything, the road seeming lost among the many small dirt roads, and you trying to remember which part of the route it was on, the beginning middle or end, and looking upon the pile yet to go…the 469 slots all seem alike, the names printed below unfamiliar, the five digit fire numbers mocking with a mysterious sequence, the roads failing to click in route formation, now you know what you don’t know!

    The stance of ineptness is so clear it feels overwhelming. And the knowing that you have 469 houses waiting for their mail.

    We are one of the small offices who get their mail that is mixed up and needs to be sorted, most mail comes to the carrier presorted to the route, and you just take it out and deliver.

    In our office you can only deliver what you know.
    Isn’t that a great metaphor for life that we have to be willing to not know until we know, and that we can’t give out what we don’t know?

    It takes a certain person to be able to do this job, and we don’t know until they are placed in the postal pressure cooker.

  • The Short End of the Stick!

    Each day when I am at work, I silently thank my co-worker for wanting the larger route, the one with fewer dirt roads, but much more mail, for every day my route appears to be easy.

    No matter what day of the week, when we both arrive, I have less, which doesn’t allow me to utter one complaint, for each day He has it harder than I.

    It is amazing that this simple fact that his lot in life is harder than mine leaves me no room to complain, which also sets the tone for the day.

    How lucky am I to have this little route.

    What an awesome way to transition back into the working world, feeling like you are the lucky one each day.

    This lightness carries me through the day, no matter what I have to deliver, he has more, no matter how long it took me it will take him longer.

    He willingly gave up this route for a variety of reasons, yet now he is looking back at with different eyes.

    You truly don’t know what you got til its gone… but I am fully aware of what I have and each and every day and even a few times a day I give thanks to the Gods that be, that something within him wanted him to leave this route to me.

    I am thrilled to be left holding the short end of the stick!