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what up next
I have just 20 minutes before I hit the road to meet my favorite daughter for lunch in Scranton. I danced like a teenager last night and made a delicious breakfast and journaled this morning. And now I want to write this blog post, this moment of decision making, as I consider what kind of activity—or activities—I want to try out to give a bit of focus to my time outside of work.
Ready? Here’s the list.
- Watercolors and other fun painting. I keep watching this one TikTok painter who makes painting look super fun and therapeutic and easy, and it super duper appeals to me. She seems more into the process than the product, though a lot of the end results are pretty awesome. I’m not necessarily artistic, but I enjoy doing artsy stuff as long as I’m not judgy, and I think it’s really healthy for me to spend time on things that don’t come easily and to accept imperfections.
This one would feel good, I’d have something to show for it, and I already own almost all of the stuff I would need to do it, so it’s free and easy to do whenever I want. - Pickle ball. I’ve been hearing a lot about this activity, and I like that it would be social and get me outside and keep me active. I suck at sports in general, so it’s kinda like the painting in that it would challenge me to get into something and accept that it’s good to do, whether I’m good at it or not.
It’s a higher bar to get started. I would need to figure out where, with whom, how. I would need to buy equipment, learn how to play. I’m interested. But maybe I’ll give it a minute before I fully go for it. - Horseback riding. There are stables near me that offer lessons. This one is fully outside my comfort zone, and that’s what appeals to me—I think I will feel really good about stretching myself and learning something completely new.
I think this is kinda like the pickle ball situation. I think there’s a very good chance that I’ll get into it, but I might give it a minute to work up the energy. It also requires a monetary investment. - A book club. I already have a book club in NEPA, and I went to a couple library nights but I wasn’t a huge fan of the dynamic. But the problem here is that I don’t know many people outside of my work place. I could put a call for interested participants in a Facebook or Nextdoor community group, but there’s a huge chance I’d end up in a book club with people I’m not super excited to interact with.
Sorry if I sound picky about people here. I love almost everyone if I’m having a lighthearted conversation during happy hour, and I 100% love those times and get a kick out of people. But my current book club has such a wonderful dynamic of mutual support that I have high standards.
Maybe I’ll figure something out here. But it will probably take a minute to figure it out. - A project that would give my outings a focus. I’ve been thinking that I could do a series of posts on fun places to visit, local hidden treasures, walking trails, breweries and wineries, etc. I’m not sure. If I’m going to do something like that, I need to be all in for it to work. I’ll let it simmer on the back burner and see if it’s ever ready for moving forward.
- Boxing. There’s a boxing gym not too far away that has classes. It really appeals to me—anything that builds up strength and makes me feel like a badass tends to appeal to me. And I really prefer classes to just working out on my own. The gym is a bit pricey. And it’s kinda inconvenient—I’d have to be really good at motivating myself to get there.
A real possibility. I think either boxing or pickle ball or horse back riding will end up being next, after (or overlapping with) painting.
Or maybe just lots of hiking and kayaking if I can figure out how to transport my kayak this summer now that I have a smaller car.
My time is up. Time to head to NEPA. And I feel excited about the choices I have and the life I’m living. ❤
disturbed
I live in metaphors
BEEP BEEP BEEP
at maybe 5am
waking me
the three smoke detectors upstairs screaming to one another
while I lay burrowed in blankets after too little sleep
from one thing or another having gone wrong the night before
The screaming ceases almost as soon as it begins
I close my eyes
think maybe that was a fluke
realize in two shakes of a lamb’s tale that
it’s more than a fluke because
they speak again
but then
blessed silence and
I snuggle back in ahhhh
and minutes until the next screaming bursts
two three do I need to get up then
silence
and hope and warmth nestled in and
again THE SCREAMING
THE SCREAMING SO LOUD
do I need to get up will it
stop will it just
stop do I have to
move and
silence
there’s no fire,
no one affected by the noise but me.
but I eventually give in to the situation,
venture from warm bed into cold house
pull a chair from one bedroom
into another bedroom
climb up pull the battery
out put it in again because
it’s a new battery so that’s
not the problem and grab
another chair for the hallway
detector do the same and
eventually crawl back
into bed where I
think about my tendency to
operate on hope for
a good long while when
I’m comfortable and would really
prefer not to give up that place of
comfort when no one else is
affected by the intermittent
SCREAMING that is not
comfortable at all.
How long does it take for me to believe
a problem will not go away on its own
to get up
to deal with it
to make the screaming stop
And how long will it take
for me to feel good again
when this morning feels terrible
Even though I slept well from 11:30 to 5:00
and overall
have an amazingly wonderful life
How long
***
I wrote that yesterday morning. I was SO cranky yesterday morning! But I felt better by the time lunch came around. So that’s how long it took to feel good again! lol
When I wrote the poem I was thinking about how I have a great capacity for ignoring the things that are problematic in dating relationships because it’s so inconvenient. It’s much easier to let them blow over and enjoy the good parts of the relationship, and I tend to operate too much on hope, as in, “I hope things will eventually get better” or “I hope the other person follows through on what we’ve talked about.” I’m trying to retrain my brain to pay attention to what’s actually happening instead of ignoring issues and relying on hope.
And then as I wrote it, or maybe when I was done, I was also thinking that the metaphor can be for all kinds of things that any of us can ignore because they’re inconvenient to think about. Maybe signs that we need to visit the doctor or make better choices for our physical health, or signs of climate change, or repeated instances of injustice. How long until we rouse ourselves to action? and, when we act, how long will we be in a state of discomfort before feeling good again?
Last note. I first wrote the poem on my phone yesterday morning, and then I removed all the line breaks before copying and pasting here last night (because copying and pasting into the WordPress format with line breaks is a Bad Idea–everything gets wonky). I added in the line breaks last night and fell asleep. This morning I adjusted a little but don’t feel wholly satisfied with the writing. It’s feeling pretty drafty. But I’m sharing anyway. Blog posts are for fairly informal writing, yes? Yes.
Oh! I lied. One more note. In a recent office conversation, my team was talking about the roles each of us plays. One person noted that when I see problems, I head into them instead of avoiding them. Sometimes my problem-solving ways are inappropriate, so I’m working on listening to people vent without trying to problem solve, and I’m also not trying to solve problems that are not mine to solve. But in general, my tendency to address problems is a good thing. And I tend to be good at stuff in the workplace before I’m good at it in my personal life. I won’t put up with screaming smoke detectors going off at work because that’s a terrible work environment for everyone.
I gotta value myself in similar ways, yes? Yes.
small ministrations and time
When I removed the silver polish using a cotton ball and a magic potion from CVS
I discovered the toenail on the big toe of my left foot was cracked.
I moved a fingernail along the edge to probe, to assess,
to decide my next steps.
Pull it loose?
Bandage it up?
Cover it with another coat of polish?
My decision:
Let it be.
But pay attention.
If it snags, find a band-aid.
Do not apply polish.
An image:
sudden pain, the old nail torn from the skin, the nail bed left pink and raw
throbbing.
Pay attention. Do not let it get worse.
In the next days and weeks, I occasionally
filed the old nail growth where it split away from the new nail growth
clipped the top of the old nail growth ’til it was flush with the skin of my big toe
applied Burt’s Bees foot lotion and cuticle cream received from my daughter on my birthday.
Now I check in on my big toe each day as I undress.
I worry a bit about it, still imagine snagging and pain
but mostly I let it be as I go about my day
trusting that my small ministrations
and time
will be enough.
One day
I will polish my healthy toenails silver or turquoise or purple
I will wear sandals
I will love how my toenails look even when I am the only one to see them.
In the meantime
the nail on the big toe of my left foot is cracked
but it is healing
and I am okay.
***
I started writing the prose blog post that follows first, before writing the above poem. But I was tired and fell asleep, and when I woke up, the above poem was in my head. I like when something ordinary like a toenail can be a metaphor for the bigger, more abstract things in life.
***
I’m not a fan of feet, but I love painted toenails. Especially bright painted toe nails. They say, “summer!” they say, “fun!” they say, “Hey, I know I’m a foot and I’m not the prettiest thing in town but I don’t really care because I am enjoying life and I’m not afraid to show it mmmmhmm!”
That is my first time trying to distill why I like brightly painted toe nails, and I’m getting quite a kick out of the fun sassy attitude.
So my toenails have been pretty consistently painted for most of my adult life. But now they’re not. The last time I removed my nail polish, one of the toe nails—a nail on a big toe, no less—was cracked. I don’t want to use nail polish again until it’s all healed.
***
Early in my college teaching career, I taught a short story called “Ripe Figs” by Kate Chopin. A girl is told she can visit her cousins when the figs have ripened. She checks out the figs every day, and finally they are ripe enough and she can pay her visit. The girl has matured along with the figs.
***
Divorce, empty nest, my mom dying, a three-year relationship coming to a close. That’s a lot of endings, a lot of loss, a lot healing that’s needed. I’m not like the character in Chopin’s stories who wants time to pass more quickly so she can be old enough to gain independence.
But I am like the girl in the story because I’m hopeful that, in time, I will heal as surely as the cracked toe nail on my big toe will heal, with new growth allowing the old nail to eventually fall away. She’s marking the maturation of figs, I’m marking new toenail growth.
I hope you’re laughing. I find myself super funny!
***
My therapist has said to me more than once that if I don’t allow myself time to heal, I will bring any current wounds with me into any new relationships I develop.
I had been trying to avoid even acknowledging that I needed time to grieve. That’s why I was frustrated with myself a couple weeks ago when I blogged about knowing the actions and routines I wanted to do but finding myself self-sabotaging, having little will or motivation to act on my plans. Then I blogged out some of my grief in a poem about pain.
I was super worried that I was going to be alone tomorrow, on Easter Sunday and my mom’s bday, but I’m able to spend time with my son. If I was alone, I was going to do my best to figure out how to have a good day. But I was mostly just really sad about it.
So here I am, living my incredibly good and blessed life (really—I have such an amazing life that anyone looking at me from the outside would wonder how it ever takes me more than a minute to get over any sadness), and I’m mostly okay, but I’m also trying to do the work of checking on myself and tending to myself.
I’m returning to the book Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends by Bruce Fisher and Robert Alberti which is amazing in that, even though I believed my story was 100% unique, it turns out they’ve written the book exactly for me and my situation (which suggests my story is a human story, and just my particular manifestation of it is unique). The book and its workshop-style guidance is applicable for any relationship ending, whether divorce or a break-up or someone dying. So if you’re reading this and you have some healing to do from a relationship ending, this book can help the healing process. The accompanying workbook is in the pic below.
***
I hope writing about a cracked toenail doesn’t make it seem like I think relationships are equivalent to big toes (which makes me think of that scene in Stripes when Bill Murray’s character calls their platoon sergeant the “big toe” of their unit). It was more that I wanted to point out that the pain of endings can be part of our everyday lives without others being aware of it, and we have to decide what to do with that pain. Do we pretend and cover it over, hiding it even from ourselves? make it the focus of everything and obsess over it? or self-assess, tend to our healing, and pay attention so we can adjust as needed?
Also, I have to admit that I thought to myself last night as I tended to my big toe, “Laurie, by the time this toe is completely healed, you will be in better shape, especially if you take baby steps to help yourself heal.” And that self-talk somehow made me feel better.
in the bathroom trash
when I threw your toothbrush in the waste bin
and looked at it lying there in the morning
as I went about my routines
I thought
I should write that
because it was an ending
in a completely understated painful way
your toothbrush
the smashed-down bristles because you brush too hard
the giving up
the moving on
the palpable presence of your absence
***
but here I am
two months later
and a new barbed wire poem appears
catching my skin as I move
in and out of the bathroom
after throwing away the replacement toothbrush
I set out for you
the one with smashed-down bristles already appearing
even though you were barely back
even though hope barely had a chance to land
***
I waited a day to throw it away
and no one but me knows it’s there
under the face cleansing wipes smeared with my make up
under the flossing picks
under the tissues where I blew my nose
under the q-tips with my ear wax
under the lint collected from the dryer trap
your comeback toothbrush–
no longer visible–
with the bristles already smashed down
a jazz life
I know almost nothing about jazz. I know it relies on patterns and has particular kinds of instruments and sounds (those are the somewhat consistent things) while it asks for improvisation, figuring things out on the fly, musicians responding to one another in a bit of a dance or a conversation via their instruments, with musicians producing sounds that overlap and separate and wait and listen and respond to build and continue the conversation forward. Those are the things always changing, surprising, sometimes delighting, stepping into the new
dwelling in Possibility at least as much as an Emily Dickinson poem
***
As I spend time with myself–yet again–on this quiet Sunday. As I pause–yet again–in the midst of my sometimes-too-busy-and-distracted life. As I try to figure out my priorities–yet again–and attend to how I spend my time, my energy, my money….
I feel like I’m living a kind of jazz life, with the same basic tune playing over and over, but each time I return to myself I respond anew, build anew, figure things out anew
***
I’m trying not to be frustrated with myself. But sometimes I am.
I know what the good and healthy choices are. But that doesn’t mean those are the choices I’m making. I keep reminding myself: You get one life. You don’t get a do-over. What you choose every day is what determines who you are and where you end up.
I ask Mary Oliver’s question: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
***
Sometimes I make good choices. On a fairly regular basis, I
- drink a lot of water
- stay active with exercise and working out
- spend time outdoors
- connect with people I care about
- use my gifts
- spend time being creative
- sleep well
- limit screen time
- read
- write
- eat healthy foods I enjoy
- laugh
- cry
- treat others well
- goof around and play
But today as I think about how to get my act together (why am I so hard on myself? it’s ridiculous; my act is fairly well together. fuck it. I’m dropping this sentence and starting it over
But today as I think about how to get my act more together than it already is, I’m thinking that my house is once again out of sorts and I haven’t kept to my exercise routine this past week and I also slacked on my creative writing practice and my personal life is pretty unsettled and I don’t have a gratefulness practice and wouldn’t it be nice if I did the loving-kindness meditation on a regular basis and also you know I would like to start doing just plain regular old 20-minute meditations at least twice a day because those are the things that transform a life.
Oh and I just found out that I’ve been paying for 2 different Hulu accounts and maybe 2 different Amazon Prime accounts for more than a year so apparently my finances could use a lot more attention than I’m giving them.
***
And now I’m laughing at myself. Here we are. I will make my lists and commitments and I will do some of them.
I will lather rinse repeat.
I will live this jazz life, playing the same tunes but improvising, updating, moving my conversation forward, hitting some wrong notes and making that part of the performance instead of a series of mistakes, figuring out how to live well and do good, failing, trying some more, experiencing lots of joyful moments, having moments away from the distractions to pull myself together and set out again.
***
I write all this so I can be more patient and kind with myself instead of irritated and frustrated. And I also want to, well, enjoy the process of living intentionally, even when I keep falling off the horse. The writing kinda works. It’s a way of reframing my experience, seeing it with fresh eyes. I really did laugh at myself in the process. And I also gave myself credit for things I’m regularly getting right. So yay for me writing today! Woot!
I’m gonna go get some other stuff done now. And maybe I’ll figure out how to transform my whole life, or maybe I’ll try to be just a little bit better for now and build up to more over time. Either way I think is okay. ❤
crocus
gray rainy day
meetings pull me from my screen from my clamoring inbox
move me from one indoor office space
outdoors
across concrete walkways and down chained sidewalks
head bent beneath my hood
beneath my exclamatory blue umbrella smattered with brilliant owls
to a conference room space
inside the administration building
horrid it all sounds horrid except that umbrella
horrid gray rainy meetings screen clamoring inbox indoor office concrete chained bent conference administration building horrid meetings meetings screen inbox meetings administration ugh ugh horrid ugh meetings screen horrid ugh
EXCEPT IT’S NOT
the balmy air
the connections the help the hard things with a gentle note the rallying the laughter the dark times the dark times together the stretching reaching the connecting the connecting
the bouncing between doorways in the sweet suite
the navigating
the firm path the guidelines the care of one another the crosswalks the clusters
THE CROCUSES
building as verb
meeting as verb
people around a table
a gray rainy day
pathways
bursts of yellow
something blooms
we take note
we return to the growing business at hand
bucket list of things I’ve already checked off #2
For context, check out my earlier blog post, “bucket list of things I’ve already checked off.”
- Learn the loving kindness meditation.
- Meet a famous author, or several.
- Meet an author you admire who isn’t famous.
- Memorize Where the Wild Things Are because you’ve read it so many times with a three-year old.
- Ugly cry in public.
- Wake up to a cat walking across your back.
- Sing holiday songs on tv with your sixth-grade class.
- Drop paper copters in a stairwell with your colleagues near the end of the work day; have an eight-year with you to run down and pick up the copters.
- Eat a marigold.
- Speak your broken high school French to a Montreal native who knows almost no English.
- Pay the bill for the car behind you at the drive through.
- Stick up for someone being picked on.
- Be a clown at a kid’s birthday party.
- Make a cake that is way beyond your skill level. Like maybe an awesome castle with towers and a drawbridge.
- Make mud pies. Maybe try a nibble.
- Kiss the Blarney Stone.
- Explore the Nicholson Bridge, the Archbald Pothole, Concrete City, Summit Pointe, the Steel Stacks, and every other random place you can find.
- Swim in Walden Pond.
- Get a deep tissue massage.
- Tighten the screws on the chairs while staying with your dad while he recovers from back surgery. Remember when your mom chose the dining room set. Remember how much she loved it, what a big deal it was for her to choose furniture she loved.
- Sing karaoke. Even if you’re kinda embarrassed for anyone to hear you sing.
- Do a stratosphere ride in Vegas.
- Sit with your two kids one evening after school and visit a website with fart sounds and laugh and laugh and laugh until you cry.
- Play with a VR headset.
- Do workouts that make your body sore and strong.
- Decide you’ll train for a stein-holding contest.
- Notice the gifts of the people who surround you. Tell them what you notice. Feel lucky to be surrounded by so many awesome people.
- Have a pity party. Make fun of yourself for having a pity party. Close that pity party down, clean it up, move on.
- Play Family Feud with strangers-turned-friends at Rising River Brewery. Get a kick out of affirming, “Good answer! Good answer!” while applauding your team.
- Laugh at the funny parts of the dark days.
- Cry at the sad or frustrating or lonely parts of the dark days.
- Feel good about buying a new-ish car even if you’re fairly certain you were somehow supposed to dicker to drive the price down more than you did.
- Cry with your friends in a coffee shop.
- Give someone more chances if they’re trying. Cut them loose or otherwise hold them accountable if they’re not.
- Stop talking when the other person has stopped listening.
- Fly a kite.
- Get obsessed with diamond painting.
- Get a kick out of your adult children playing Star Wars Monopoly and talking about the game as if they are economic titans of the world.
- Miss your exit because you got really into the music playing.
- Miss your turn because you got really into a phone conversation during your drive.
- Get super excited about delicious food every single time you experience it.
I started writing another blog post tonight, the eve of my 55th birthday. But something drew me back to this piece that I started ages ago. I added on to the list, and I think it’s really cool to see all the things I’ve done with my life already.
My reality is that I’m super angsty, regularly crying, feeling lonely. AND my reality is that I’m truly happy, living an incredibly good life, surrounded by people I care about who also care about me.
My bucket lists of things I’ve already checked off help me emphasize the good stuff, the things I’m grateful for. There’s more than enough! It’s okay that I’m not happy 100% of the time. I’m just a human being, going along, trying to figure things out, and somehow filling bucket-list-goals without even realizing that’s what I’m doing.
If you’ve never written a bucket list of things you’ve already checked off, I highly recommend it. Generating these lists makes me a bit more alive as I see my days with a fresh, hopeful, and grateful perspective.
the Dean Moriarty of bartenders
I love love love the one-sentence frantic passage from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in which he describes Dean Moriarty parking cars:
The most fantastic parking-lot attendant in the world, he can back a car at forty miles an hour into a tight squeeze and stop at the wall, jump out, race among fenders, leap into another car, circle it fifty miles an hour in a narrow space, back swiftly into a sight spot, hump, snap the car with the emergency so that you see it bounce as he flies out; then clear to the ticket shack, sprinting like a track star, hand a ticket, leap into a newly arrived car before the owner’s half out, leap literally under him as he steps out, start the car with the door flapping, and roar off to the next available spot, arc, pop in, brake, out, run; working like that without pause eight hours a night, evening rush hours and after-theater rush hours, in greasy white pants with a frayed fur-lined jacket and beat shoes that flap.
-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
And I can’t help but think of that passage as I sit and have a random Saturday evening dinner at the bar at Judy’s on Cherry in Reading, Pennsylvania.
It’s the economy of movement, the expert motions, the choreography that is improvised but that looks rehearsed in its flawlessness, the artistry of the drinks she places in the servers’ window and before the patrons sitting nearby me at the bar.
When I receive my bill and have the opportunity to leave a tip, I am not tipping just for the excellent service.
And let me be clear for a moment and comment on the excellent service. Let me mention that the bartender was slammed from the moment I arrived, and she followed through on not just taking care of me but on taking care of me with friendliness. Not slow southern friendliness but brisk economic friendliness so she was never slowing down in her extensive and multi-layered to-do list of tasks.
And then there was the moment when I tried to be helpful in handing her my empty salad plate and tipped my drink over. Except it didn’t topple because she caught it. I’m not lying! She literally caught my drink mid-topple. So when I tell you the service was right on, I’m actually understating it. And then she refilled my drink to make up for the little bit of the fancy beverage that had splashed out (and all over her hands)—a refill that was completely unnecessary but that was completely high-class and gracious.
But back to my point.
Tipping this bartender was not simply a thank you for excellent service. It was a thank you for her expertise, her pageantry, the show she performed and the consumable artwork she produced with each deft pivot of the body, twist of the wrist, stretch of the arm, slice of the knife, and refill of the glass.
There’s something about people who perform their work well. We all know it when we see it. It’s an act of beauty. I’m no Jack Kerouac. But that bartender I saw? She’s a Dean Moriarty, and then some.
in praise of whiteboards
I first used a whiteboard regularly when I worked from home for five months at the start of the pandemic. When I returned to office life, I used whiteboards even more, externalizing my to-do lists so I could make progress on items without losing track of them. That way, to-do list items aren’t hanging out in my brain causing disruptions, or straining my shoulders and neck via the imaginary backpack of productivity anxiety I sometimes tote around, or creating an unmanageable inbox in my email (that somehow weighs down that backpack), or disappearing in a project management or task management app that I could end up ignoring.
Don’t get me wrong. I still fall behind, lose track of things, make mistakes, need a person to do a friendly “circle back” to spur me to action. But I think my colleagues would agree when I say that, for the incredibly large volume of work on my desk, those moments are minimal. For the most part, I get my stuff done, I do it well, I do it on time.
And, mostly, I have sanity as I do my work. That’s not easy. Let’s be honest. I heard some podcast awhile back saying that people laugh less starting the time they enter a full time work week. Work just doesn’t inspire laughter.
Except my workplace does. Every team I’m part of spends time laughing. I’m super grateful I get to work in these kinds of environments. Holy cow, I’m grateful.
Funny (!), but that thing about laughter was a kind of side note I didn’t see coming. My point was that my work can be overwhelming, but my whiteboard helps keep my work in order and manageable. The laughter is an additional (and more vital) thing that helps with sanity.
***
I bought a whiteboard for my home in August 2021. A week prior, I had blogged about being “out of sorts.” I had to reread the blog to remember what was going on. It turns out I hadn’t yet put away the suitcase from my trip to New England for my mom’s funeral and my son’s high school graduation party. And I noted these points about huge moments of life transitions in an almost side note, not the main text.
Holy cow, Past Laurie. Of course you were out of sorts. And I (or “we”…both Past Laurie and Current Laurie, hahaha) had been living in my (our) home for only two months at the time. Holy transitions, Batman.
I remember that I cleaned up my bedroom soon after writing that blog post, and a week later, I ordered my whiteboard. I was getting myself sorted.
***
GUESS. WHAT. I’m getting myself sorted again!
This time, it’s because I just put a heck of a lot of energy into completing a book manuscript that I’m super proud of (on my good days; I have bad moments of intense self-criticism and doubt, too, but I don’t think those voices in my head are helpful except in motivating me to be careful to do a good job when I’m going through proofs and stuff).
I’m really energized to get myself sorted because I had been putting off a lot of things intentionally, knowing I have a limited amount of resources, and deciding my life would be a little off-balance while completing a goal that was important to me.
I submitted the book manuscript on Thursday afternoon. It is now Sunday morning. In that time, I have:
- bought a car (!)
- booked and gone to an eye doctor appointment (with a new eye doctor, no less)
- made a dentist appointment with a new dentist
- completed paperwork with my prior dentist to allow my dental records to be shared with my new dentist (I hate this kind of paperwork for some reason, so I’m super proud of myself for not procrastinating on it)
- done a tiny bit of catching up on my email inbox from my Wednesday-Friday days off
- done some journaling about my personal life and priorities, my wants and needs
- bought groceries, changed sheets, did two loads of laundry (well, neither load is folded yet, so I guess I can say I started two loads of laundry…)
- finished an excellent audio book (Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes)
- visited my community library for a library card and information about a couple book groups I’m interested in checking out (first one on Tuesday evening!)
- taken myself out for dinner and a fun adult beverage at the local pub
- gone out for dinner and catching up with one of my new Bumble BFF friends
- made plans for Music Bingo at a local brewery and Country Line Dancing Class at a local country club
- created (and started) a plan for 15-minute morning workouts with freeweights (inspired by conversations with my health-conscious son)
- eaten lots of healthy food
- relaxed
- talked on the phone, texted, scanned social media
***
AND I used my whiteboard to think about how I want my life to be. My whiteboard had been filled with book manuscript-related goals, dates, checklists, and to-do items. I erased it all. I had a tabula rasa as I headed into my weekend, a blank slate, a life I get to make decisions about.
Yes, I know I’m super incredibly lucky that I have that kind of life, one in which I can choose what to do with swaths of my time. Some things I don’t choose, and all I can say is that sometimes I try to choose how I do the things I need to do. And sometimes I just go through life blindly, but that’s not really the preferred way.
It’s a whiteboard. Nothing is written in permanent ink. I might change my goals, they might develop into new goals, I might end up getting myself sorted in a different way.
But, in the meantime, I’ve written some stuff down, externalized what’s in my head and my heart, been intentional about my priorities, and set my goals in a place where I will see them both morning and evening, as I begin and end each day.
cold hearted loving
Love sometimes looks like soothing a person in pain
Love sometimes looks like forcing myself forcing myself FORCING myself to walk away
***
I think each of us—or most of us—have good intentions. But if we haven’t figured out how to regulate our emotions, how to have healthy conflict, how to communicate expectations and hold ourselves and one another accountable—the good intentions aren’t enough.
I do a lot of warm hearted loving. I imagine (sometimes correctly, sometimes not) what another person needs to feel safe and loved, and I try to provide it. My theory is that a person will feel open to being vulnerable and showing me love if they have that kind of steady and stable environment.
But I’ve been learning, in fits and starts, that I would do well to negotiate expectations a bit so that I have more awareness of what the other person’s actual needs are, and I should also make sure they are aware of my needs. I’m not talking about assuming a partner will meet all your needs. But, still, some kind of open and realistic negotiation.
Today I’m calling the accountability piece cold hearted loving. It’s saying “I’m done” in a relationship, not because I’ve stopped caring but because I am not serving myself or the other person by continuing to pretend that it’s all okay. When it’s obvious the other person doesn’t have the capacity for a healthy intimacy, that there will be a push-pull yo-yo dynamic until they deal with their stuff, and yet they continue to refuse to deal with their stuff, and that push-pull dynamic is the exact opposite of what I want in a relationship. so their stuff becomes my stuff, too, and they don’t intend it, but they still aren’t doing the work of dealing with their own history, their own pain…..
Well, sometimes loving means forcing myself to walk away.
It’s loving the other person by calling them out, and it is loving myself. I don’t have it figured out. But I’m working on it.
Laurie Mac Reads 