Day 7: Happy Grateful Day

One of the things I have learned over the last 7 days is when you attempt to be more aware and work on certain areas of your life, chances are you will be given the opportunities in plethora. Yesterday was one of those days. As I had written, my fears of things going wrong did. My house wasn't as clean as I wanted, the food I had cooked finished too early and had to sit until my friend arrive, the cable guy ran late and so my husband had to stay behind till her finished while I ran off to my college Alma Mater for the event, I was so nervous that I got sick to my stomach and had to excuse myself for awhile, I was invisible to the others being recognized who never did talk to me, and I made an error on the painting project that I was working on. But you know what? My friend still likes me for me without my mask, the food tasted great, I got over the stomach issue, my husband was able to join my for the social that evening, and I was able to paint over and fix the error. I faced my fears. And today is now day 7.

Last night something happened that brought me to tears. Happy tears. At the social, the Assistant Director of Athletics and Activities came up to me. She had found my old #42 basketball jersey. (They had been selling all the old jersey at the game earlier but hadn't had didn't have any from the years I played up there...). That jersey is more than material and a painted number to me. That jersey represented an instrumental point in my life. A life when I was called to start making some major change in my life. I had lost a close family friend to leukemia, I started questioning where my life was headed and began to look at the convent, and I started to deal with issues that had been haunting me since my childhood. When I wore that jersey everything was alright. I could take out all my fear, aggression, and emotion on the basketball court. When I wore that jersey I could fly. It was my superman cape as it always made me feel stronger at a time when I needed it the most.

As I look at it this morning I feel a sense of gratefulness. (Yeah...I don't know if that's a word but that is exactly the feeling inside me right this moment.) I am grateful for the assistance activities director finding that jersey and bringing and giving it to me. (I was the only one who she did this for). I am grateful for the opportunity I had 19 years ago to play basketball in college at a time when so much was happening in my life.

Today's task of gratefulness isn't only about being grateful for receiving something from the past though. It's about recognizing our life and the events that have brought us to where we are and being grateful for them. It's not taking people or things for granted. It's making sure the people who we are most grateful for in our lives know it. It's saying thank you and I am so happy you are in my life. Why do we so often wait until Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparent's Day or our loved ones' anniversary or birthday to let them know this. Yesterday, the assistant A.D. handed me that jersey, not wanting any compensation, because she had heard my story the week before...because she was grateful that I could share a piece of my experience on the first woman's basketball team with her.

For many of you, today is Sunday...a.k.a. Church Day. A day where we go to church and thank God for our many blessings and seek help for the rest of our endeavors. Why do that only on Sunday? Each morning before we head our separate ways to work, my husband and I hold hands and praise and thank God for the many blessings in our life. Now its time that I let the people in my life know more than one day a week know how grateful I am for them instead of waiting until something occurs to make us re-evaluate and recognize what they mean to us.

Thank you mom and dad for everything in my life. Thank you to my siblings for never making life dull. Thank you Jeff...my dear husband...for never giving up on me and my craziness at times. Thank you to all my friends and especially those who read this blog...it keeps me going and helps me recognize how important this journey is...you truly are my Simon of Cyrene's along the way. And finally, thank you Gary and Amy for the jersey. Thank you for the experience. Thank you for the memories.

Thank you...

Day 6: Nothing to Fear but Fear itself

Today is day 6 already and you wouldn't believe how hard of a day it is to write. Here I am sitting at ten minutes to seven in the morning trying to write my blog for the day and all I can think of is the work and things I need to get done in our house before 9 a.m. this morning. It's a jam packed day otherwise I wouldn't be up before God this morning. Today's task isn't going to be how I need to be better at planning my time, nor prioritizing...those will be tasks in the future I am sure. No...today's task is about addressing something that sometimes affects how I function each day. Today's task is Fear.

When I went to bed in the wee hours of this morning I didn't want to have to get up this morning. I hadn't had the task for today come to my mind. My mind was swirling with all sorts of task but not one really stood out for me. Why was this happening to me? Was this the end of my blog? Soon, panic and anxiety set in that I was going to fail this journey...that it was all going to end because of Day 6. Then I started to think about all the things I had going on today and more panic and anxiety set in. And then I realized what it was....I was afraid of failure.

Today I am going back to my college Alma Mater and will stand in front of a crowd of Women's Basketball fans and will be being acknowledged for my time being on the first Women's Basketball team at the University. This may sound like a self esteem issue, but my fear is that people will look at me and think negative thoughts of me because of my outside appearance. (I have gained a bit of weight since my athlete days...). I am afraid of not making it there on time for the game/event. My fear is that I will be a nobody. My fear is that I will fail somebody today. Today also I have a friend coming over for breakfast and I am making a new recipe. What if the recipe doesn't turn out? What if its not ready and my kitchen is a mess when she gets here? What if everything goes nuts as the cable guy comes to set up our system, my friend is here and the buzzer on the oven timer goes off at the same time? I'll also be helping a family member out today by painting a picture on a wall for their child? What if I make a mistake and I can't fix it? What if it looks ugly? What if they don't like it?

Then I realized that I am not so much afraid of just failing someone else. I am afraid of failing myself. Do I tend to set myself up for failure? Do I jam pack my days with things to only have so little time to focus on one thing well that I cause the panic and anxiety on myself? Why is being perfect or being the best something that is so important to me? I fear losing friends if I don't say or do the right thing. Because of this so often I put up a mask. I don't let people get to know the real me. And it's all because of fear.

Today I will attack my fears....I will start to lower the mask that I put up to try and get people to like me and I will start just being me. What's the worse that can happen today? So..I don't have the food ready or it falls apart and doesn't look like I want it to...my friend will still be here...not for the food but for me. So what if I don't have the house perfectly spotless when the cable guy gets here...its not his house but mine to live in. So what if I arrive to the game a little late or the people there think I am fat. At least I will be there and I am the one who has to live in my body..not them.

Today I will live more. I will not run back into my whole like the groundhog who sees its shadow. Instead, I will high five my shadow and keep going for the day. And tomorrow I will wake up, and Day 7 will be here and I will have made it through Day 6. Everyone has their day 6. Today is mine.

Day 5: Letting Go

This journey continues and I see the changes in my life happening. A comment from one of the people who read my blog and who saw me last evening was that I even looked more positive. What reward that was to hear. Just those few words are already helping me stay focused today and keep venturing on.

Today's task came so strongly to me last night that even before midnight the words were flowing through my head. I had the great opportunity to listen to a friend recount a recent trip. Flying is not something this friend does often like my husband and I tend to have the opportunity to do, but I could relate to her story. On the return trip, my friend and her husband experienced pretty bad turbulence. As she dug her fingernails into her husbands leg, he leaned over to her and said, "You have to let go and let God."

So today's topic is letting go. As I reflected on her story I thought of all the times that I would ride would someone in a car and how I'd find myself "stepping on the brakes" from the passenger seat as if there were a brake for the car there on my side. How often do we try to control situations in our lives that are not ours to control? When we try to control these things, what happens? One of three things; 1. We can't control the situation at all because we have no say in it; 2. We hurt someone in the long run; or 3. We get hurt ourselves when all is said and done. And when we attempt to control things in our lives it gets tiring. How often have we tried to control a situation to only have the domino effect of other things coming up that then we feel we have to control too? It's exhausting!

As I mentioned briefly yesterday, there are things going on of a rather personal nature with some family members. The issues aren't relevant today as much as how those issues impact me in my life. Throughout my life I have tried to be the peacekeeper in the family...a role my parents passed onto me at a young age. I always had to give in and say I'm sorry. It's a role that drove me to my edge just a few months ago. Yet, part of me still wants to make everything right for everyone. Happy for everyone. Peaceful for everyone. Today's task of letting go will be a very challenging one as I have to keep reminding myself, no matter how much I want to, that I can't control everything. I can't control the turbulence on this airplane. I have to remind myself that eventually things will level out and I have to let the pilot of my life (in this case God) continue to steer the plane. It's hard to see people you care about hurting, to see disarray where you know there should be love. But their issues are not my issues to fix...and I have to be reminded of that today.

Letting go doesn't only involve family issues though. It can be things going on at work or for some people school. It can be how we believe that weather should be. (This morning as I looked out my picture window at the cold snow and got a shiver, I had to remind myself that I don't control the weather...). It can be pain. Letting go also physically improves us. If we are less tense about the situations at hand, our muscles relax, the acid in our stomach lessens a bit, our headaches go away, and we can open our eyes to the good things in life. (And our husbands/wives legs or hands are saved from the ingraining of our fingernails!)

Yet letting go involves a realm of trust. If we aren't giving it to God to take into control, then we are trying to let people control our lives and that's when human error can step in. We are all human and trust can sometimes feel broken by other humans. Maybe trusting in other people will be a future task, but for today it will be letting go and letting God. (For those of you non-catholic or christian, then let go and let the higher power you believe in handle things...)

As I conclude, I am going to leave you with a mantra I use to repeat to myself from my days in attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings and are the first three steps in any AA, NA, Al-Anon, etc type of program: "I can't. God can. I'll let God."

Day 4: Negativity

The impact of this journey reaches farther into my life than imaginable. In the last day or so, family situations, work situations, etc. have challenged each one of the tasks that I set forward. And you know what? I am making it through. Out of respect for certain family members that it pertains to, I won't got into it in this blog. What I can tell you is that I can feel it making me a better person already. It was completely evident to me last night while visiting with some family members what today's task would be. As I explained to my semi-internet illiterate dad (which he'll gladly admit to...) what I was doing and what a blog was, toady's topic came to me. It's negativity.

Negativity is something that can bring a strong person to their knees. I am reminded of a Native American story that I learned back in my college/convent days. Its the story of these 2 trees. To one of the trees, everyday the villagers came and berated it and criticized it; they told it that it was ugly, that they didn't care about it, that it was stupid, and that it would never amount to anything. Then they would go to the other tree. To this second tree they would love it, care for it, and tell it how wonderful it was, how beautiful it was, and how it was the best tree in the whole land. As the years went on and the villagers continued to do this, the first tree withered and died and the second tree grew into a beautiful harvestfull tree.

By our words alone we can ruin relationships. We can break families and friendships apart. I realized that in my life I didn't want to be one of the villagers who berates and kills the tree (or others in my life for that matter). I can't help thinking about my Catholic upbringing and the "Golden Rule" that we were taught to remember: "Do unto others as you'd have done unto you." It may sound selfish but I would rather not be beaten down and made to feel unloved. Statistics show that the amount of people having to take an antidepressant is higher now than ever before. Has society become such a negative world where we must all knock each other down in order to feel superior ourselves? 20 years ago we didn't fear the possibility of our kids dieing at the hands of one of their classmates who went on a shooting spree in the school, because that didn't happen. Bullying has become so severe that even the youth suicide rate is higher than before. I don't want to think that I have been the cause of a "tree" dying.

So...today....negativity. Since I know that words can be as sharp as a sword and that the old childhood rhyme of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" no longer rings true, I plan on not saying negative things about other people...nor about myself today. I know that I tend to be negative towards myself. We all do that...we cut ourselves down. But I don't plan on being pompous either. Today I will be more aware of what I say to people..and I will compliment more.

To all of you out there who are reading this blog today, you are an important person today no matter what you do. You have gifts and talents you are put on this earth to do. And no matter what, there is someone out there that loves you no matter what.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.......

Day 3: Would you like some cheese with that whine?

It's day 3 already and so far so good. I am sticking with this journey. And just as an FYI, each task that I set forth each day doesn't end at the end of that day...these are tasks that I am trying to make myself more aware of from that day forward. I think of it as the first day of the rest of my life for each of those tasks. And I am not perfect...I'm less than perfect. Each day is a beginning. Each day is a baby step.

So last night for the second day, my husband and I sat down at the dining room table to eat supper. It was nice. I think I may just be impacting him. He didn't pull out the TV trays and after supper he didn't turn on the TV right away, even though he had been watching TV as I made supper.

Patience on the other hand was a great challenge. Whether it was an IT person who didn't know what they were doing, a slow driver on a fast street, or the darn noodles cooking on the stove, I found my patience challenged all day. But I learned to take a deep breath and remind myself of my task and I held it in. No screaming..no complaining...just loving the fact that I had a job, the ability to drive and that I had a car to drive in, and appreciation of the fact I was able to cook a meal and eat it when so many people have to go hungry. And..I found myself being a little more patient yet with my husband...and he noticed it. (We'll see where that leads in the future....)

Do I want some cheese with that whine? Today's task is something that I have wanted to work on for a long time and last night realized what better time than today to start on it. It's whining. Some of you might not think of me and think of me as a whiner. While I don't necessarily think I whine per say, I recognize the fact that I tend to comment and complain about my aches and pains alot. You see, some of you may or may not know but I have fibromyalgia. I was diagnosed in 1999 when that diagnosis was given to everyone who had pains that couldn't be explained. As the years have gone on, alot of study and research has been done on this diagnosis. In my case, the nerve receptors send a message to my brain that states that something is going on in my body and that I should be responding back with extreme pain going through my body. My nerves are hypersensitive to pain stimulus. I get dizzy easily, suffer migraines often, and experience spasms throughout my body all the time.

Last night I caught myself beginning to talk to my husband about all my pains while sitting down to eat supper. And then the memories of my days in the convent and at jobs where I remember talking about all my aches and complaints and I realized it really turned people away. Was I doing it for attention? Was I doing it without thought to what I was doing? I hated it when people did it to me so why was I doing this same thing to others?

Fibromyalgia shouldn't be my monster and what controls my day and my conversations or communication with people. Starting today I will be more aware and conscious of the content of my conversation with others. To all you out there that I come in contact with in my daily life: you catch me starting to do that, ask to see the back of my hand and slap it silly! Unless you really want to know each ache and pain I am experiencing that day I begin today in working on not letting you know unsolicited.

With that in mind...how do I finish my conversation today? Oh yeah...lovely weather we are having, isn't it?

Day 2: All I need is a little Patience

Day 1 ended with me having accomplished my greatest hurdle that day. While I still watched some television, I wasn't as compelled to sit all night and watch it. Being more alert and aware of what my journey task was for the day helped me to not grab that remote out of my husband's hands and switch from ESPN to a chick flick on Lifetime Movie Network. (And trust me...I would have done it!). As I prepared supper last night my husband diligently set up the TV trays in the living room. When I suggested we eat at the dining room table and talk and not turn the TV on to listen to the news while we ate, he was surprisingly content with the idea. It was great for once to sit with some sense of quiet in our house, to sit and enjoy a meal, and to have conversation.

I wasn't sure how I would come up with 365 tasks for my journey of becoming a new person so I just let the day bring what it may and by the end of the day I had a divine revelation. Well...maybe not a divine revelation but something as close to it as possible right now. It's Patience.

Guns-n-Roses had a song a few years back called Patience. While it is more of a love ballad about a guy trying to get down and dirty with his hoochy mama, as the words came to my head I realized that it is something I really need to work with. As I walked down the steps into our basement to grab paper towels I realized how frustrated I was getting that my husband hadn't replaced the paper towel on the paper towel roll in the kitchen for almost a week. And then I realized that I was trying to be patient with my husband, thinking that he would go get the paper towel if I got mad enough. Then the thought came to my head..."Why am I get upset that he didn't see the paper towel roll empty and go get it himself? How many times have I been downstairs here and could have grabbed it myself?" And I realized that it wasn't just patience with my husband that I was needing to have but rather patience in general. Where do I start? With me.

What in my life have I been doing that frustrates me about myself or others? Is the end all reason because I am trying to race around and do things to just get them done? In reflecting about it all this morning I realized that so often I step in and take over and try and take control of situations only to have them either collapse or my momentum fails. Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to try and "save" everyone? So...it seems as though patience is what I have to be more aware of today. How that will play out I don't know. But I got the first taste of it this morning when I awoke and found that one of our dogs had left us a not so pleasant "gift" on the floor that needed to be cleaned up. I reminded myself that I needed to be patient with her and love her instead. Maybe that's how I have to approach today. Be aware of each situation but love what brought you to it.

Day 1: What the heck am I doing?

Everytime I sit down to begin to write this blog I go blank. Just a few minutes ago while standing in the shower I was able to compose everything that I was going to write in my head. But to actually get it down here has been a real task.

What am I doing? Am I nuts?

Last night after looking at myself in the mirror I decided that I needed to change myself...a task that I have attempted to committ to many times before but would get two weeks into the project and give up. I figured that this time around I was going to need accountability. If people read this maybe that will keep me accountable. Maybe by committing to entering on the blog on a daily basis will keep me acountable. But who am I kidding? This could be just like one of those other projects that lasted 2 weeks and I gave up on. Something in my mind tells me this time will be different.

Why am I doing this? Obesity, depression, communication, lack of courage, infertility, and the meer fact that my entire life people have walked all over me are just a few of the reasons. I want to accomplish something in my life. I want to committ to something and see it through all the way. I want to leave something behind when I die....although I doubt that a blog is much of anything to leave behind.

What am I hoping to get out of this? A new me. I'm not talking the about the Jon and Kate plus eight way with 8 children and a divorce, nor am I talking the Heidi Montage addicted to plastic surgery way. I am talking about a new me. A new way for me to see life, to experience life, to live life.

So...here it is Day 1. What will I do today?

Well, most of my life I lived in front of a television. If I didn't like how life was I retreated to my room and turned on the television. I'd watch any variety of shows in order to just take me out of my life and put me in someone else's realm. In reality I was dodging dealing with things in my life; emotions, responsibility, accountability, and even change. Things were always changing. Who would have thought that here I'd be sitting actually wanting to do that to my own life. Maybe that's one of the reasons I am doing this. Is to be better with change. So...I guess that's my first task today. I need to change one thing in my life that enabled me to avoid my life. Television.

On a normal day I wake up in the morning and I put on the tv and watch for like an hour to an hour and a half in the morning to see the weather and news and sometimes watch the remainder of the night before's taped shows I taped. Then after work I'd come home and turn the tv on again and this time it'd be on until midnight or one o'clock in the morning. How ironic it is now that last night I complained to my husband, Jeff, how I couldn't wait until this coming weekend when we get a different cable company as we'd be able to record 4 shows at once instead of three. I could tell by the look in his face that he thought I was nuts. He's told me that I watch too much tv even. So...today I take the first step. Sure, I'll watch tv a little tonight. I can't cut it out completelycold turkey. But I have to take a step. Tonight when I cook dinner, I am actually going to set the table and turn the TV off. This will be a break of routine from the usual TV trays in front of the TV scenario that one would see in our house at 5:30 p.m. This morning I have yet to sit and watch any tv. Maybe it's a step.

There's no place but up to go. I am already at the bottom...