I have been really busy with my business lately. Almost all of my time has been spent doing web design. I have paying clients and a ton of new design work on my plate. Almost half involves me learning how to do new stuff, which is exciting. But at the same time, I found myself stressed beyond all reason with the enormity of it all. I also had this nagging feeling that I was falling hopelessly behind in everything else.
And if that was not enough, I also kept beating myself up for being stressed out. Geez, maybe I would not be so stressed, if I wasn’t also stressing about how stressed out I felt.
My next few blog entries will explore my process for getting through this difficult period.
This first one follows weeks of waking up to a mental list of everything on my plate. Sometimes I woke up with a new algorithm or a new code fragment, but after a while the message was often just “… gotta go, gotta go, now, now, now ….” And throughout this entire period, I felt this deep regret at not living up to some past level of true efficiency.
... from my journal ...
Woke up thinking about coding again or at least that is what intruded immediately to my waking mind. But I somehow knew that I had not been dreaming of code, so I settled back to sleep after my bathroom run intentional walk. And slowly an image began to emerge.
I saw myself being pulled along by a dog on a leash. A dog hunh? I am being pulled along by a dog? Instantly, I heard my father’s voice, “Never let a dog drag you!” So I pulled hard on the leash. Instantly I was awake again … then I slowly began drifting off.
This time the image was of a car, an old car, an old ivory colored car but it looked brand new. It was long, spotless and gleaming. It even had fins and fancy grillwork. But something was not right about this car. The proportions seemed off. It did not seem to have room for the wheels or they were completely hidden.
The image is distorted. How would you change a flat tire for instance? It is like nostalgia, what parts that are remembered are off in many ways. Hmmm …
The nostalgic car is impractical and impossible to maintain. So whatever I am imagining of my old ways of handling things is not only distorted it is non-sustainable.
After my chiro visit, I sat with my journal in my favorite haunt and pondered the meaning of my morning images.
I remembered hearing myself arguing with myself the day before…
“Ivo has a business along with all his teaching and counseling.”
“But I am not Ivo. He is healthy and still he works really hard at keeping up with it all. Plus his store has staff and a kick ass manager. And he lives with all these incredibly talented and dedicated people who are also pulling long hours”
And.
“I like having real deadlines to work toward.”
“But not if it means nothing moves forward for me personally. And the reasons these deadlines are real are because it involves someone other than you. What does that say about your commitment to achieving your own personal goals, aspirations and dreams?”
Later that same day, my healer elder said that I needed to listen to my water self during this fiery period. Which is interesting because in my system of elemental classification, my water self is also my child. So in effect she was once again calling attention to my child self.
I decided to listen to what all the parts were saying:
Parent/Fire
“You gotta work hard and keep commitments to get ahead in this world. All this lollygagging is getting you nowhere. Get busy, time is money.”
Child/Water
“I am tired of all this work. I need more down time, more rest. Even my playtime is filled with, ‘Do this! Do that!’ I can never have time just for me.”
Adult/Air
“ I am out of balance. Yes, there is a lot on my plate but the way we handle this is by getting enough down time, rest, good food, and by focusing on home and hearth. And of course taking care of my physical self. This is not the time to walk away from Radical Self Care.”
Beloved/Shadow/Earth
“Naptime!”
So I decided to take an afternoon nap. I also spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching some of my favorite TV shows. I think I also made myself a chocolate sundae.
Next time, the morning after…
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Sun, 07/20/2008 - 12:41pm.
Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".