A Journal

Journaling, journaling, journaling. I'm supposed to be writing, journaling, letting the flow happen. It hasn't been happening much the past few days, so I'm doing it anyway. I think that's part of the whole process, much like how they say when you don't feel like working out, work out. When you don't feel like a meeting, go to a meeting (I'm talking recovery here folks, not a work meeting where you sit in a room with a circle of managers and talk about how not enough time is being spent cracking down on work - those are the worst).

So, what have I been up to? Let's see. Well, all of the usual things, and a few not as usual things I suppose.

The Usual Things

I work. A lot. Luckily, I find myself in a position where I enjoy what I do and I'm truly appreciated for it, both by my customers and my company. Customers have my cell phone number and sometimes contact me at ungodly hours of the morning (East coast & the other side of the world vs. West coast), yet I don't mind it. Whenever I can help these people, I can. That said, when I'm technically on vacation I truly do my best to enter do not disturb mode. I wish I had a sexier reason to be using a do not disturb message, but alas, that's unfortunately not the case (ha).

At home, I work. A lot. Again, I work at jobs I love: being mom, head of the household, and all that those things encompass. I own my home so I get to break it and fix it up as much as I want to. That's nice. I do more fixing & upgrading than breaking so far, thank goodness. Owning a home makes you become very in tune with the seasons. As a grounded person, I was in tune - this is different. Leaf maintenance is a serious gig in fall and winter. In the summer we have "remove everything that burns" duties. And of course, we have the excellent feeling of our utility bills tripling when it's cold outside. Today I spent some time on the roof and around the property with a leafblower to keep my roofing healthier, while also kicking pieces of it around to unfreeze it so that I could blow it away. During this time of course, as a single mom, I generally have to put my daughter up with a movie or something or just convince her to watch mommy suffer through the window. Honestly though, I like that kind of work. It feels good.

Speaking of the child, I keep the dog and child entertained and alive - nobody has died yet! Miraculous. In addition to alive, I try to keep them both as happy as is humanly (and dogly) possible. I think I do a pretty good job. My kiddo is excelling in school, and I even taught the dog to press buttons so that I can hear my own voice saying things like "poop", "potty", "food", and "play" when he needs things. So NOW, I get to annoy myself when he is needy! Score!! Seriously though, I'm proud of the little goblins. Both of them. Again though, hard work. They are so worth it.

Life is really always seriously hard work.

The Unusual Things

What the heck am I trying to write here... honestly. That was more of a statement than a question, hence the lacking question mark. My point, if there really was one, is that it's just a bit of a blur. Life is a blur in a way, most definitely - but it's also largely not. Life has events, changes, ups & downs, that are discernable. They happen, they pass, you remember them clearly. When we say life is a blur, I think we are really just talking about the passage of time. My mind, that's the blur that's been irking me lately.

I've had high points, low points, and lately I've been struggling to stay on the high side of my mental state. I am NO stranger to lows, and no stranger to bouncing back. I mean I've considered not wanting my life to continue, before - not a totally foreign concept to most who are in recovery - and I came out of it. That was what showed that I did want my life to continue. Anyway, I'm not diving deep into that here. What I'm attempting to illustrate for myself, and any readers who have made it this far, is that I've been stuck in this blur state where I'm not getting really high on the scale, and I'm not getting really low, and it's been bothering me a bit. I'm honestly starting to wonder if I'm bottling things up too much, and if I am, I am wondering what I need to do to unbottle it.

When I step back and look at my life, and practice my gratitude, I see wonderful things. I'm also proud of myself for less mundane things - I'm writing, I'm creating art, I'm feeling connected at times. I have days where I drive down the road at 80mph singing my heart out. Or 25 mph singing my heart out. In these moments, I'm HAPPY. I have some really insanely great friends. I don't see most of them much - who am I kidding - any of them much, but they exist and that makes me happy.

I also have so many hard moments. There are the ones that should be expected, like struggling to pay the bills, hard times in parenting, human relationship hardships, and so on. I've had one hard "moment" surrounding an important human relationship that's seemed to drag on, for me, for a long time now. Still dragging. And I've noticed it bringing up crap that I thought I was past already - I'm realizing I'm not totally past the crap, I was just not confronted with it for a long time. Crap like the "why me's" and the "what is wrong with me's" - these things that bubble up when I feel hurt, abandoned, and unvalued. Those feelings have taken me to some really dark places in my past. I have done enough work on myself though to recognize these things, and be able to observe and try to guide myself instead of getting trapped and wallowing. So, I'm happy to have the opportunity to come to that realization. They say you're supposed to ask yourself what lessen you're learning, when you're in the dumps. Well, I'm learning it.

Fog

Still - this fog. I get it, I haven't explained it yet.

So this hardship thing I just talked about for example, it was big. Floored me. Physically changed my ability to sleep for a few days, floored. I think about it every day. I miss this person deeply, like there's just a hole in my life that will stay there until whenever (if ever) this friend wants to come back and visit it. An open door that just lets in scathing cold air for now. And the great things that have been happening in my life, are truly seriously great. Jump for joy, tears of joy, great. I should be jumping for joy.

But I'm not. I'm not crying on the floor, I'm not jumping for joy, I'm just middle-ground here. I feel deep pain, I feel great joy. I really do deeply feel these feelings of mine. So why am I not reacting much to them? Don't get me wrong, I did react *quite* a bit at first to the recent hurtful thing, opened my mouth when I should have thought more first, etc. And I react when things are great too, laughing and moved to tears at my daughter's singing performance, for example. But when I sit and ponder, and try to relax, it's like I'm not relaxed. The hurt and the happy haven't meshed, haven't settled, haven't mixed together to form a unified state of goodness or badness. They're oil and water (separated vertically, for some reason, is how my mind sees it), and I am here hanging around on the line between. Big hurt, big happy, and me.

It's occurred to me that perhaps the reason this bothers me is that I am not used to it. And my observant self tells me that this means that I'm experiencing growth... right? Not in a comfort zone. Big feelings, and neither of them are scooping me up and tossing me around too much. I'm the center, and I'm in contact with both. There is a part of me that wants to kick and scream and do stupid things in reaction to being hurt. And there's a part of me that wants to dive into the happy side and pretend that the world never hurts. But, here I am, a bit foggy, hanging out in the middle.

Perhaps this is my true lesson, my opportunity for growth - the ability to feel deeply and not react wildly. To remain centered and content.

And would you look at that, in the process of writing this I think I have found my place in my fog.