Day 8: Reset, Reflect, Comment

The Day 7 challenge was fun, creating a colorful lifemap that helps to add a visual representation of all the areas of my life that are important to me, and how I want to affect positive change in each one. I realized that I do, indeed, want to incorporate more gardening and food-based workshops and activities in my life. Didn't quite get the spring/summer garden going like I wanted to, but there's still time to plan for fall!

I also identified the need to see my sister and my niece soon. I don't like that they are so far away and I don't get to hold Little A and have her stare at me with her unnervingly calm demeanor! She's singing and talking and I need to inject my auditory influence on her! It's a no-brainer that I need a new job, but what I really want is an apprenticeship (paid of course), something that I can foster a new skillset while developing confidence in a field or area of focused creative development. I am sick of these do-as-you're-told jobs that drain my spirit and my resolve to do better with myself.

Day 8: Reset Reflect, Connect...

The most important thing I learned about myself this week was that I do have resolve and will fight for my life!

My favorite exercise was the lifemap, as mentioned above. It added a visual element with the colors and pattern, which inspired more ideas in every category.

The exercise I struggled witht the most was the Personal Mission Statement. I still don't know if I did that one correctly... It was hard hard for me to put down such a serious-minded written commitment without feeling bound to it in all its deterministic contractual presentation. It's as if I don't have the right to write one if I don't have a clear enough picture of my mission, so it ends up being this ramble instead of a clear consice statement. I see that is something I will have to keep working on. Happy Black Woman Day 8

Re-Stocking the Mental Shelves

Okay at 5:45 a.m. this morning I awoke clear as day from my foggy dreams and pain syndrome of the past five days. I had a tonsillectomy Monday morning, and as I predicted, found myself in reset/recovery relapse. I kind of allowed myself some time to catch up, not go to work, sleep whenever the drugs kicked in, ignore every two phonecalls or notifications buzzing on my phone, since I made the semiconscious decision to let life pass me by for a bit. I mean, whose life was it anyway? Who got up at 5:30 on Saturday and schlepped her shit out into the backyard and labored to arrange and notify the neighborhood and all her friends about the momentous sale of the summer? Yes, I had the physical and moral support of MA and my Mom, to some degree, but I alone held the desperation of needing this event to take off, for people to show up to MY show, for a change. It took a lot out of me to come to terms with releasing all the things I have accumulated over the years, so when it took almost twelve hours for four people to show up (and I am so grateful for them), I was kind of let down.....

Who says what pace I'm supposed to run at, or who I'm supposed to catch up to? it occurred to me yesterday afternoon though, when my mother casually mentioned that she emailed me two CUNY job postings that expire today that even her gentle unobtrusive nursing must give way to me getting off my ass and living my life. For myself. For her, for everyone that believes in me more than I tend to believe in myself.

The trick is to steel oneself, to not be overwhelmed. Sometimes I foget that my middle name starts with a D and not an O. I did realize that I get discouraged easier than I like. It stinks of weakness and lack of resolve and everything I want to suck out of Snow White, Maid Marian, Katniss Everdeen, all the warrior women I find myself watching and salivating over onscreen. And there are so many others that pop up without their names at present. I want to earn my next tattoo. I know I am getting it, as clear as I knew when I was unemployed that it was the right time to finally get my driver's license. I decided at the beginning of the year that I would be 30 with my woman warrior on my shoulder, protecting my back and pointing the way forward with the tip of her keen arrow, but I'm still fumbling through dark forests, through bright barren deserts in my understanding of where the fight is, which direction should I run...

But here I am nonetheless. And something got my ass up a full hour before my alarm went off.....