Sunday, October 1, 2017

10/2/17—Winning

Lately I feel like I'm winning.

I've had two perfect, one-on-one, mommy-and-me dates with my dogs recently. I've been having good parkma. Work is doing ok. I've been doing some writing on my book. I lit the pictured fire with one match tonight.* The weather has finally realized it's fall. And I don't feel like killing myself lately. Perhaps my bar is set a little low, but I'll take it.

Anyway, some of this is due to circumstance, but I've also been using my One Better Decision method of getting out of ruts. Basically, it's this. We have all these bad or unproductive habits and we make unconscious decisions about them every day. So if we consciously replace one of those decisions with one different or better decision each day, it will shake us out of our rut. We just need to zig where we tend to habitually zag.

As an example, I wanted to work more on my book. For months, the only thing I've done about my book is feel guilty about not doing anything. So each day, I did something small, rather than do nothing at all. One day I attended a writing teleseminar. Another day I jotted down some notes when I had a thought, instead of telling myself I'd remember. I've written a few nights, instead of not writing. One day I came across two articles I could use to help shape some thoughts and bookmarked them. Tonight as I was watching the fire, I watched it through the eyes of me after I've met my goal...I visualized my dream. See, it doesn't have to be a big thing or a time-consuming thing. Just do something you're not doing now. Making progress at a snail's pace is better than making no progress at all. And progress begets more and better progress. It never fails me. I feel better after doing it for a week or two every time. The only flaw with it is that I tend to stop doing it once I'm feeling good and productive again.

But there are also cycles we go through. I am emerging from a long dormant cycle. And lately I've also been noticing progress that happened while I was in my pupa. So I'm bolstered by that. And I've had some positive vibes about the future. I've also had some very nice, satisfying days lately. Even if I'm just being lazy, I'm savoring more. I wish I'd been born someone who feels happy and hopeful and confident all the time. If that person even exists. But I don't get that often enough in my life...or haven't even really felt that way for years. At least not for any notable length of time.

But even with that, I'm feeling hopeful. Because my depression and other issues make me a virtual font of things to write about that help others who may be having my issue du jour. I have spent a lot of time feeling "broken" or put upon by my emotional happenings, both chemical/hormonal and self-made. And I've never really noticed or acknowledged that part of me as my special gift...my divine gift. 

For Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath and many others, it was the fuel behind their legendary expressions of art. Edvard Munch, the artist of The Scream, said, "My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder ... my sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art."

Could it be possible that the very thing I've let debilitate and limit me throughout my life, is also my divine gift? Could its equivalent in you also be yours? For me, it's beginning to look that way. Little did I realize that I may have been winning all along.


*Just for funsies, open up the picture and see if you can see a woman's face in the smoke, just at the top edge of the bowl, immediately to the left of the flame. It is very faint, but very detailed in the faintness. I have captured a girl in the smoke in the same place twice before and tonight I asked if the girl was there when I took this pic. This looks more like a woman, but whatever. Also, over to the right, a little above the edge, there's very clear dog's head or horse head in an oddly manifested flame. It's in the flame and not the smoke.

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