Soul Seeking Self Succor

Today I went for a drive in the countryside. I don’t do that half often enough.

We live by a forest. It is a blessing. If nature really does contribute to good mental health, then I have it made.

Lately I have come to that point where me and myself need to have a good long talk.

We have been metaphorically burning the midnight oil for weeks – maybe months – now. It is catching up with me.

The signs are subtle. I am losing patience with things that normally don’t bother me. I feel wired like my “on” button is always “on.” I can’t seem to shut it off.

It amuses me that what I wrote about yesterday was the singular focus and tenacity of hammers. Hammers get into a groove where hitting nails is all they know. They keep hitting nails because they are woefully underserved in the intellect department.

I am beginning to feel the same way about myself. Having taken on a project where its outcome is all up to me, I find myself back in familiar emotional and psychological territory.

I think at some point all of my self-esteem must have been tied up in being a finisher. That was such an overriding drive that if there was something offered to me that I didn’t think I could finish or do well, I wouldn’t engage.

That probably saved me from a world of heartache. But I also clipped my wings a little looking back. Fear is a ruthless master.

So I am at that point of burnout where the task is feeling beyond me. At least in the timeframe and to the standard I initially imagined.

Somewhere I read that the world’s shortest prayer is also the simplest: “Fuck it!” Let go of whatever you cannot comfortably handle. Relax. Tall order for a Type A, PTSD-recovering, alcoholic, trauma survivor like me whose entire worth on the planet rests on “accomplishments.”

I think it is time to read a page in my own book and start disengaging from that which has become an anchor more than a mooring. A mooring is a lovely spot to hole up in for a time. An anchor has nowhere to go but down.

So I am heading into a brief period of rest and renewal. I will continue my commitment to this yearlong, daily blog but I am going to find me some workarounds and shortcuts.

I am trying to retire the hair shirt and unceasing mantle of responsibility I have always worn. And, in truth, picked up and put on.

Even “saying” out loud that I am human, life is difficult and I need a break feels like a commendable first step.

Therapy by blog post. Thank you very much.

Patience and Acceptance

Patience is not my strong suit. I am better than I used to be but I’m still not great. I hate the feeling of helplessness that patience requires. I hate things outside myself that don’t move or react as quickly as I do. This made me a less-than-stellar mother when my kids were little. I honestly couldn’t wrap my head around how much my kids didn’t know. And the messes they made! That there is some pretty dysfunctional parenting.

I hate when some illusion I harbor of being in total control is tested. I was never in total control, of course. Far from it. But what a handy deception that was. It usually alienated or amused others who fully got that it ain’t happening until it is supposed to happen. They traded stress for relaxation and enjoyed the unexpected downtime. This used to horrify me.

“WHAT do you mean “siesta”?” “Why can’t these people keep their stores open all day?” “Back at WHAT time?” “Am I supposed to hang around here waiting for you to get back from lunch until I can purchase my – pick one – train/ferry/plane/bus ticket?” This was particularly galling in the then so-called “third world” countries. Customer service standards were variable at the best of times. Those populations had a lot of patience to put up with it. Or they had given up caring.

The qualities of being demanding and impatient generally made me a fairly typical entitled Yuppie and an unpleasant person to be around. Why can’t this task be accomplished in this amount of time I expect it to be to a suitable performance standard without so much whinging and whining about inadequate time and resources and blah, blah, blah? Not only did I not get the results I wanted with this attitude, but I also frittered away MY downtime. That was dumb.

I come from a family of worriers so in part I know it is genetic. Or environmental. My Nanny would frequently fret about just about everything. Maybe that was her coping strategy. She’d fret about the weather and if it would rain or not. And if the bread in the big mixing bowl would rise sufficiently if the air got too humid. We lived in mortal terror of opening and mistakenly slamming the oven door. The cake would definitely fall. I once saw a cake this happened to. It was a slippy-slidey, lopsided-looking creation on the plate. But with a generous dollop of icing on top, it still tasted delicious.

So today my fate is entirely in the hands of some faceless bureaucrat. Months of planning and negotiating a visitation schedule are likely to go up in smoke if the unnamed bureaucrat doesn’t come through. Blame and punishment are equally useless in a situation like this.

Eons ago, life won the arm-twisting contest and I started my transition from demanding Arschloch (That’s German. Look it up.) to a more patient and reasonable person. It was around the same time I learned the world’s shortest prayer that I regularly employ when I conclude there is not a damned thing I can do to make the current circumstances any better: Fuck it.

“Fuck it” has a dazzling breadth and range of applications to an equally dazzling breadth and variety of situations. This particularly patience-trying situation I am now in included. I believe it is wise for me to employ that short prayer right about now. So, fuck it. Que sera, sera. (That’s French.)