Day Eleven

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fearful trees

Happy National Beer/World Health Day! Awesome. The best part is that National Beer Day has been unofficially celebrated since 1933 – World Health Day came around in 1948. Just sayin. We will be cheers-ing National Beer/World Health Day with a couple of tall boys while we watch The World’s End and burn some calories laughing. It’s gonna be good.

Day Eleven and I am worried that my firsts are pretty weak. Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy that I am consciously making an effort to read up on new-to-me topics, plan and get excited for events, and most especially to push to see myself and others differently. It’s just – shouldn’t I be skydiving or taking public speaking classes or something? I don’t know.

Today I made my first serious attempt at taking on the fears that cripple me sometimes. I made a long, long list of the fears I have. Some I’m sure I forgot, others I have simply not even recognized yet. I want to add to the list when I think to – but mostly I want to recognize that I have these fears and work through them. Fears of being a disappointment in work, marriage, family. Fears of my body image, how others see and hear me, how I feel like I have no qualifications whatsoever. Some are so utterly ridiculous it’s crazy – yet knowing this does not stop the fear.

There are so many affirmations, quotes and mantras out there about fear and conquering it; but honestly – the wiki article is much more intriguing then any of these. Fear is an emotion induced by a threat perceived by living entities, which causes a change in brain and organ function and ultimately a change in behavior, such as running away, hiding or freezing from traumatic events. Because fear is more complex then just forgetting or deleting memories,  an active and successful approach {to overcoming fear} involves people repeatedly confronting their fears. By confronting their fears – in a safe manner – a person can suppress the fear-triggering memory or stimulus. 

Every day some of my fears will resurface, they will persist, they will drain my excitement and confidence as I endeavor to recreate myself. I just need to keep telling them to eff off. I will shine a light in the dark.

Day Ten

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davinci

At one point I looked in the mirror today and thought wow I look pretty good – and I said it out loud to my husband. I believed it – for the first time in my recent memory. I didn’t waiver and say “well except for…” or “especially since…” – I said it and it stuck and that was it. I moved on.

For the first time that I can remember I thought I looked good and said it and didn’t qualify it or take it back.

That really felt good – and it felt good to appreciate myself and move on. I didn’t even feel guilty after.

We are all such beautiful beings, beautiful creatures with amazing bodies that can think and move and feel. We breathe and convert that into life. Our bodies heal themselves when we break them. We don’t have to think about every breath, every blink, digesting every meal, converting what we put into our bodies into energy. Our bodies do that all on their own.

Our minds are free to analyze, to learn, to feel, to understand and misunderstand as we are fit. Our minds get in our way more often then our bodies do. It’s an exciting prospect to imagine what we can do if we fully control our minds and expand them. Stop all of the hating, over analyzing, worrying, holding back, dwelling, prejudices and ignorances that occupy our minds.

What would happen if we accepted ourselves and others for everything we are and are not? Now that is an exciting prospect indeed.

Day Nine

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oregon coast

Have I mentioned that my love and I are planning on moving across the country by year’s end? By summer’s end ideally. Well, today I took the first step toward moving out of my past, and into the pacific northwest.

Today I went through my closet. I got rid of a lot. I kept some things that I might not need or use. I am so excited to finally start to release myself from the hold that my stuff has on me. There’s a reason the saying “don’t let your stuff own you” is a cliché. Because it’s true.

Why have I let so many things, possessions, material items dictate how I see myself? Why keep clothes I want to fit into or want to start wearing? Just effing wear them or lose the few extra pounds. Why is the idea of a smaller home so terrifying to people? Why was it scary to me for so long? I love my home – but it is because of who I am with – not how much crap I own. I love the free feeling that slimming down my closet has inspired. I cannot wait to move onto furniture and the basement and the kitchen and….

Day Eight

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time

Happy Friday. Day Eight. Awesome.

Six weeks left and this past week went well. Can I say that I am a better person then I was, that I know more about the world and myself? I think so. The progress is slow and that’s just something I’m going to have to accept. At least I’m progressing, that’s all any of us can do. Move on, up, forward. I will devote the rest of my life to learning, growing, accepting, appreciating. How long will I be doing this? I don’t know. I do know that I am getting closer to not worrying about it, to not wanting it to end.

For the first time in my life – I read about time. I mean wiki style – like the definition, scientific and philosophical theories, etc. The learning started when my love sent me an article about the new atomic clock developed by the NIST. It’s amazing. This clock will tell the correct time, within a second, for the next 300 million years if it is allowed to continue running. I take back my earlier sentiment – it is not amazing – but astounding.

The idea of this clock, all it does, and how, raises so many questions. Why do we cling so closely to the notion of time that we need this type of accuracy for so far into the future? Will we even continue to cling to time for as long as this clock is built to run? If not, what will we have moved on to as a species, a planet, an ecosystem?
Time, according to Wikipedia.org, is a dimension in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them. Time is difficult to define. A wonderful and simple definition is that time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. Ha. Now that is a great definition. Time is so fleeting, we hardly notice it slipping by, but we never seem to have enough of it. We are all given a certain amount of time to exist on this earth, at least for the lifetime which finds me writing and you reading this post; yet so few are able to understand and appreciate and embrace every moment we have. So much time is spent wasted analyzing what happened in the past, fretting about the future. Do we ever really live in the present? Do we find our minds and bodies here, ready to live, experience and impact others positively right now? Do we understand how lucky we are to have pasts, to have a now, to have a future?
Now I am prone to pontification – a paternal trait I inherited much to many’s chagrin – so I digress. I am not a scifi nut, I am not “religious”, I am not a fatalist, a presentist, an eternalist. I am simply excited to seriously be thinking about time – for the first time in a long time. What my time has meant so far, how I can dig myself out of the hole I have let the past push me into, how I can make my time more productive, more relaxing, more impactful, and finally, how I can look forward to a larger length of time ahead.
A trip that we wanted to take fell through – but now we can go to Nashville as a result. We plan on moving across the country by fall, and we will still be able to see Manchester United play at the Big House before that happens. Time is funny. I am lucky I have time to think about it. I am lucky to have a now. For the first time I am feeling how good it is to be present.

Day Seven

Posted on Posted in music, places, seven weeksLeave a comment

tmr

Today was a great day. I did some baking, had an awesome time with friends, played some pogs circa 1995, watched Tremors – all in all the makings of an awesome day.

Now for my first for the last day of my first week (what the what).

My love and I scored tickets to see Jack White perform in the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville on Record Store Day. There are not words to explain how much I am looking forward to this. For a while now I’ve been bumming that we don’t have any vacation plans this year, no plans for my big birthday coming up, no plans for our lucky seventh anniversary this summer. And voila – this morning TMR announces this crazy small show, with an extremely limited number of tickets, to see Jack White perform his new single live in the Blue Room on Record Store Day, April 19th 2014, and wait as the live recording is pressed locally and handed out to the audience within hours. It is set to be the world’s fastest record and we will be there for it all.

By the way, can we talk for a minute about Jack White? Do you realize how much of an influence he has had on the music scene these past 13 years? From Jay-Z to Loretta Lynn, musicians want to work with him. He is arguably one of the top ten greatest guitarists of all time, he is imaginative, he becomes his characters and albums. He is all power, and talent, and volume, and charisma. Yet he is cinsistantly just under the radar of mainstream music. He is a musician’s musician.

In just over two weeks we will be in Nashville to see Jack White. S*&t just got real.

It is my first time planning a trip to Nashville, my first time holding tickets to see Jack White solo (I’ve seen him with The White Stripes and The Raconteurs), my love’s first time seeing Jack White perform at all. Today’s first is awesome. I am so lucky to be going, to be with the love of my life, and to have this life.

Today was a great day.

Day Six

Posted on Posted in confessions, seven weeksLeave a comment

vers

Today’s first is bs and it kind of pisses me off. I don’t really have one. So it’s my first day without a specific first – it kind of counts but I don’t want to allow it after official review. I’m pissed because I had the time to find one. To learn about something on wiki and get hooked like I did on Day One. Time to try something new – and I didn’t make sure to do it. So now I’m scrambling to try and get something, anything, posted.

It pisses me off that once again I’m not giving myself the time I need to complete a task that is important to me. Everyone does this, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but I am going to be. If I’m not then who will be?

I was thinking about the priorities in my life and how messed up they can get. How I have always set myself to impossible standards, to other people’s standards, to standards I imagined friends and family held me to. How many times have I made sure to find time to count calories to lose weight to live up to some stupid f^&*ing standard of beauty? Gotten up ridiculously early to get an extra workout in? Stayed up for days on end with hardly any sleep to ace exams so my family wouldn’t be disappointed in me? How many years wasted at the high paying, mind-numbing corporate job because security and money is important and that should make me happy? Right?

Am I creating all of this in my head? Was it all imagined? Did they ever really care about any of my bs? Have they only ever been happy that I am happy? Does it matter? I don’t know.

And here I sit – mind swirling with questions that seem so important; yet all I want to do is not know and to be ok in that ignorance. To move on. To not even care to ask those questions anymore. To move forward with my life and be comforted knowing that I am going to be seeking happiness and that is going to be enough for anyone in my life worth keeping there. Too harsh? Maybe. But  why am I just now starting to really worry about what makes me happy? I feel like I don’t even know what makes me happy because I’ve been trying so hard, for so long, to appear normal and steady.

I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Day Five

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Pink Champagne Ombre Cake 006

Today was the first time I thought about my approaching birthday with a modicum of excitement. Fear, anxiety,  dread. All words I normally associate with my birthday – for the most part. And especially so with my 30th. Yet, this evening I was happy to think of spending my big day with my love. Just relaxing, maybe having a few drinks, some sweets and kicking off the next era of my life. Kicking off the new me. The me I am meant to be and have always wanted to be.

There is a beauty in learning to love life and yourself. I’m trying – I really am. I don’t want to think about death, and taking my life. It’s exhausting. It’s wasteful. There are a lot more days lately that I want to live, I want to be here and contributing to a world outside of my head.

I am excited to help people in the future. Help them pay off student loans, medical bills, car loans, mortgages. Help by talking with them, listening to their every word and offering compassion – no matter what they are going through – so they understand how loved and important they are. There are so many people left behind by friends, family, society. We need to look out each other. We need to help each other. We need to love each other.

Day Four

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1111

It’s Opening day and for the first time in years I saw the Tiger’s first pitch. Amazing how good just seeing the green grass and some baseball can feel. Today I took my first walk outside this year. Not a technical first in some respects, but considering how long this damned winter has been – it is a huge step forward for me mentally. I was so sore from working hard in training yesterday that I could hardly move. Once I did warm up I was flying. It felt amazing.

As I walked I thought about all of the stressors I take into myself. Money worries, guilt – so much it’s insane, self conscious bs. They work into me and define me and dominate me. They have to be broken; I have to break out from under their control because they are not under my control either. Things that no matter how much I ruminate on – will not, can not, be changed by me. So why worry about them.

All we can do is the best with what we are given. And help those who have been given less.

There are countless inspirational stories of people who have mastered the controllable environment around them and have created a better world in return. Creating a better world is the best we can hope to do with our lives, isn’t it? I want to leave this world better off for having had me in it. Maybe one of my firsts will eventually be casting off some of the stressors and anxieties that tie me down. Because if I don’t then who will. How can I change anything if I cannot change myself.

Day Three

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Full-Moon-Hd-Desktop-Wallpaper

Today I did a headstand in my yoga teacher training and I did not say one negative thing about myself. I might have thought a few things but I didn’t say it. Which is crazy. But that fits. Even still – I am counting two new things for day three.

Some days it is so easy to see the future unfolding before me. Others I can hardly see the point in looking up. Today was a clear day, which is great, and I am happy for that. But the ridiculous pessimist in me is terrified of failure, rejection, loss. All things that are largely out of my own control. Once I start to think on these fears, they swallow me whole. I lose myself in my own head, I start to drown, every word and thought is twisted into its own worst interpretation. The empty back hole that is depression, like a magnet, pulls you toward your darkest thoughts and fears. On clear days I can look down into the black hole and try to repair it, try to celebrate understanding myself better. That’s all we can do. Celebrate.

 

Come celebrate

Life is hard

Come celebrate

Life is hard

Our life is all we are

-Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Day Two

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rj2

Day Two and here I am already freaking out about what the hell I am going to possibly write about each and every day for seven weeks. Are you kidding me? What was I thinking.

I did finally break own and admit some of my greatest fears to my one and only. That was a scary first – certainly not as fun as dancing to edm on a Friday afternoon.  And I ugly cried. Like really Claire Danes in William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet breaking down ugly cried. Which doesn’t help the feeling of all-encompassing failure that accompanied my admissions. Nothing like waiting for the crazy to hit the fan. Part of the problem is not having any faith in my own ability to attract anyone’s love and compassion enough to entice them to stick with me through the deepest and darkest. It’s not, therefore, a matter of not trusting a person enough with the secret, so much as not trusting your own ability to be loved despite said secret.

I’ve begun to surface again these past few weeks. I can sometimes breath easier and feel lighter then I have in months. It’s amazing how physical depression is. It’s exhausting to be in my own head. Not being able to picture yourself growing old. Feeling destined for an early grave. Seeing it n your family, in your past, it’s easy to see it in your own future. Laid out before you.

I am dreading tomorrow. The return of yoga training and learning once again how physically inferior I am to so many people. Tomorrow my first might have to be accepting some limits once and for all.