Important

I have this way of making something important that isn't important at all.  Hyperfocus on a detail that doesn't deserve the attention.  Sometimes what is unimportant takes over my life.  Minutae.  Like an autistic child that can only see the freckle on your face and not the beauty of the face as a whole.

I want to live and focus on what is important.  I just can't always define what that is.  Not in my soul.  I can speak or write about what really matters and make people go "wow, she is so right."  But, I can't internalize those profound words into my own way of living.

Sometimes, I think I am broken.

Not in a way that makes me unuseable.  Just in a way that keeps me from enjoying the full measure of life.

Fruit Salad

I wish I could describe the people I work with.  I have tried for 20 minutes and the only thing I can come up with is that I work with some crazy ass people. 

Ready?

I'm almost ready to:

quit complaining

get over myself and my problems

focus on the positive

put others first

have some fun

quit overthinking

loosen up

be forgiving

do something unexpected

do something expected

show my best side

read the books that others have given me

let people in

say no

travel (not just in my mind)

paint

write

sing

dance

climb a tree

say yes

Wander

"All that wander are not lost."

I want to wander.

And get lost.

I want to veer off the path of my life and find something unexpected.

I want to lose some of my anxiety.  I want to loosen up.  I want to lose some of what doesn't work.  I want to lose some work.

I want to wonder while I wander.  I want to feel alive.  I want to smile from the inside out - deep and full.  I want to laugh until my gut hurts and tears fill my eyes.

I want to get lost in the moment.

I want to wander to the edge.

I want to lose some baggage.

I want to wander in style.  My style.

I want to tell my troubles to go away and stay gone.

I want to wander.

And get lost.

Rose Colored Glasses

I see poverty in my community almost everyday.  I work smack dab in the middle of it.  I know its face in a way that someone who is surrounded by it knows it.  I do not begin to pretend to know it as someone whose life is immersed in it.  But still, poverty is a part of my life.

So, I was a little surprised this week when I went to Austin and saw its poverty.  I was not surprised that Austin had poverty.  I was surprised that it did not look the same as my poverty.  I mean, it looked the same, it just didn't "look" the same.

There were broken down houses and yards strewn with debris of a difficult life.  Mangy looking dogs, some with limps (likely from being kicked or run over) scrounging around.  Beacons of light alongside the sadness - houses well kept.  Strung out men and women walking around looking for relief.  Others, just living life like everyone else.

I guess what was different is that I know the people that live in my poverty.  I see the heart and soul of that neighborhood, not just the broke down parts.  Or it could be that I have become immune to my poverty.  I've seen it so much that it just seems normal.

I Believe

I believe that God will not give me anything that is beyond my ability to handle.  I believe that sometimes I handle things in a way that makes it too hard to handle.

I believe that we can say yes and we can say no - that we always have a choice.  I believe that saying no is almost always the harder choice.  I believe that if I am overwhelmed and stressed beyond my limits and unhappy it is because I have said yes to the circumstances that brought all of that on.

I believe that some people are crazy and that won't change regardless of the actions I take.  I believe some people like chaos and drama and destruction and again, that won't change because of me.  I can't change the circumstances for people that choose these things.

I believe I will smile again.

I'm Not Stressed Out - Not Me

There is one thing I am really good at.  Denial.  Not the kind of denial where I act like something didn't happen that actually happened.  No, I'm an expert at the denial of how something affects me.  I can block emotions in a way that allows me to stay calm, when most people would blow.  It's a critical skill if you grew up with asthma.  Getting worked up makes asthma worse.  Staying calm makes it better.  I liked to breathe so I learned how to get calm quickly.

But staying calm in a crisis or difficult situation or in everyday stressful life does not mean that you make the emotion go away.  You just move it around so that it is not expressed in an outward way.  So chaos, anxiety, anger, elation and all other big emotions and events just run underneath the surface looking for a place to hide and ferment.  My emotions are experts too.  They know where to hide, where I can't find them.  They disappear into my soul and morph into something less recognizable.  They become cancer and eat away at me without my ever knowing until a huge lump forms somewhere and can no longer be ignored.

When I was 24 I got the shingles.  A disease mostly limited to older people or people with suppressed immune symptoms.  My doctor asked me if I was under a lot of stress.  I said no.  He then asked me to describe the past 6 months of my life.  I went through and as I mentioned all of the events that had occurred (finishing an intensive 1 year internship, finding a job, moving to Austin, getting my own apartment, being financially independent for the first time in my life, studying for and taking my RD exam, my mom getting breast cancer, me taking care of my mom on weekends and getting Christmas ready for our family) I began to see that it had been stressful.  There was a real reason I had shingles.

And now I'm 45 and though I'm aware that I've got a little more stress than usual, I still keep thinking I should be able to handle this.  I should have this all under control.  But, it is becoming clear quickly that I can't control this level of stress.  In the Fall I missed 2 wedding showers and I was a hostess for one of them.  Just forgot them.   You would think that would have been a CLEAR signal.  But I just kept trudging along, acting like I had it all together.  Now my hair is falling out in clumps.  I can't really ignore that.  But I don't know what to do.  I don't know how to fix this.