Happy New Year!
I continuously use this blog, though sparsely, to announce my ideas to change myself and my life for the better. I announce a grand plan, share some productive alteration I've made in myself, document little progress here and there. I also use this blog to whine, complain, lament, and anguish over that which I cannot control in life.
Enough is enough! I picked up a copy of O Magazine (because I am in major Oprah Show withdrawal) and an article gave me an idea. Yes, another idea for writing that I don't seem to carry through. I'd like this year to be different. After all, tonight is New Year's Eve. Tomorrow is the first day of school for me as a teacher. It represents a fresh start, a new group of children, new dynamics with colleagues, and new challenges. This is my fourth year teaching and my fourth year in a city that I've come to call home. Despite my address, there really is not other city in which I feel at home. So there that is. And it's ok with me.
Back to the plan. The article in O is entitled "How to Spark A Breakthrough." There are 9 steps. I've read them all and I think that I can use this article for my own purposes. I always talk about writing. I talk about it in therapy, with Matt, with those close to me and with myself all the time. I write scripts in my head..what I should have said to her, how I could have taken control of that situation, how I could be heard more clearly. I did most of my writing in my teens and early twenties and I never found myself thinking "I wish I said" because I went home and wrote it down. It was spoken, if only to the pages.
This summer I spent the first 2 days sulking in my air-conditioned house in Worcester. I groaned about the lack of a nearby beachfront, I complained over the distance between me and my friends. I felt sad. Then I decided to actively not be sad about my circumstance. I sat out on my deck, read books, and poured cool water over myself with a watering can. Who needs ocean waves, anyway?
I was sad because I always feel like my mom chooses my sister over me. I was sad because she never comes to visit me, never calls me really, and doesn't get that involved with what's important in my life. Then I stopped. I went to Plymouth or New Hampshire where she was spending time with my sister and the kids. We drank Michelob Ultras and she made delicious dinners for us. We laughed at nothing, the three of us, and talked a lot about being a mother. It was nice.
At the end of the summer, I got another job in a cute little town with only 2 schools in the district. It didn't work out. The whole situation felt wrong. The administrators were openly unsupportive of early childhood special education and I found myself feeling nostalgic for blue and white bricks as I walked through the beautiful, up-to-date school. I told the sped director I no longer wanted the position. Then I marched to the superintendent's office and told him exactly why I wouldn't work there.
The point is, I spent the summer feeling great and making a decisive effort to think and act in a way that fed my soul. I turned anger and resentment into opportunity for love and compassion. I learned that I can enjoy consecutive days alone, just reading and sunning. When faced with negative feelings, I gave myself a pep talk and turned them into something positive. This is my new goal for myself. I want to feel "zen," I want to feel bliss more than I feel rage. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and think of all the goals I'd like to accomplish before Matt and I have a child. There are a lot. One of them is being less anxious, less depressed so that my child gets nurturing energy from me. I secretly hope that I can alter genetic predispositions to these "conditions" and that I'll have a child who is more mentally stable from the get-go than I am. I just don't want my child to worry.
Here are the 9 "rules" from the article to help spark a breakthrough. Here is also how I plan to follow them:
1. Go Public: I will use my blog to document how I'm managing to live from this positive, authentic, compassionate stance I'm always reading about living from.
2. Join the Club: I will spend more time visiting websites such as CrazySexyLife, the Kind Life, and reading books with like-minded messages.
3. Confront the Risks: In my attempts to explore how to not be so reactive to situations with other people, in my discussion of communication with others close to me, I will undoubtedly offend or piss off someone. They will see themselves in the words and be pretty ticked off or view me differently. Maybe some will feel exploited. I apologize in advance for these offenses and ask for your forgiveness and understanding as I explore the opportunity to write honestly of my experience. I honor that my experience is not your own and may in fact, be off base or not entirely representative of the entire interaction.
4. When in Doubt, DIY: I will stop asking or waiting for others to view things as I view them. I will stop wishing for others to react as I wish they would. I will stop waiting to make the changes I desire and instead...I will be responsible for my own life.
5. Rely on the Kindness of Strangers: I hope to motivated by comments to this blog, maybe an increase in followers, and hopefully I can help someone else on their path as well.
6. Know Your Strengths: I think I'm a good writer. I wince as I write those words out, I imagine a "better" writer reading my blog and scoffing at it's simplicity or lack of difficult vocabulary. So, in the spirit of this quest I will write it again. I am a good writer. Writing has always helped me and healed me.
7. Spread the Word: Work on my reactions in the moment. Speak kindly, act kindly, and maybe even speak less. This will be the biggest challenge. I'm not sure how to balance being compassionate with also acknowledging if something was actually unkind of another.
8. Cultivate Wonder: My job breaks my back and my heart. This year instead of living that pain so much, I'd like to concentrate on what went right that day, what made me smile, how I helped.
9. Embrace Your Critics: This is something I need to work on in myself. I am constantly seeking the approval and recognition of others. I want to be thanked for my hard work, respected for my contributions in my professional life, and I want to be accepted. I want to be the best at everything I do and I feel competitive with those around me. I even find myself speaking out loud of how I'm doing something better than "they" are in an attempt for someone to affirm it for me. Yikes. Writing that was scary. I can feel the horror from anyone reading this, but it's the truth. I have to say it. How can I use the energy I put into working toward being "noticed" (classic middle child syndrome) into something more productive?
So there it is. All of it. I hope I stick to it. I hope someone reads along and that motivates me to be accountable in following through. I'm excited to see what this may evolve into for me. Now, I must go fold laundry.
