Colville

Hello there. Taking fifteen minutes on a mac that definitly needs some maintenance, as I'm trying to recuperate 4 years of photos from Michal's old phone.

I had a verly lovely, beautiful summer week-end including a day trip on a train to ottawa to visit the Alex Colville exhibit - loved it, a bike ride, a family dinner and a still clean house. Weather and everything was great. On the inside I'm still not great or beautiful but I think this is not the goal, I think you don't always be great or beautiful inside, and when I have those so numerous moments in the past it's because I am blessed.

Learning to be gentle and kind to myself inside, I think is the biggest hurdle. Acceptance. I have faith, and imagination, and beautiful feelings and visions along the way. I feel deep calm sometimes when I meditate. Couldn't connect with my belly as much - it's like somewhere else, so I'll keep inquiring.

Amourx.

Balancing Act

My computer is making very distracting noises and pages take a while to load, bear with me.

It's saturday, funeral and work has past, and I'm up early for a trip to Ottawa by train with my mother and sister, to visit the Alex Coleville exhibition. That is a very nicely planned day.

My anxiety was in force again all week. I worked very late on Monday and Thursday night - nothing difficult. I don't remember Tuesday and Wednesday was the funeral (I slept all afternoon that day, it was good for me).

I don't remember much but I can talk about yesterday. A great fear in my body and around my heart, on my skin and in my breath, for a danger that doesn't exist. I walk around and do my tasks and talk with my pears carrying this. When I sit at my desk it's like that too. Making it hard to do one simple thing at a time.  

It could be called great stress too. I've seen it in others at times, and mine shows i'm sure. But I notice that the people whom I'm the most nervous about (mostly everybody at this point) are not excluding me. They are kind. They even respect my timid presence. They answer every question with attention. They do everything that needs to get done beyond what I must tell them to do (that's my job). They... are very nice people. And I'm terribly afraid to speak my mind, but I still do.

I took a calming pill for the first time in my life yesterday. Not sure what you call them - they are "as needed" but you don't want to get used to them. It helped, the afternoon went a bit easier and then I rested. The other meds that I started taking won't kick in for another 3-5 weeks, we'll see.

I regret that I didn't exercise or do yoga, or have long bike rides, since I went to Charlevoix. In combination with my body enlarging and bulging (holly thighs! holly boobs!),  that makes dressing up and shopping a hard exercise, I worry. I eat whatever too, I do that when I'm stressed.

This body change may have to do, on top of natural aging, with my fertility treatment - i'm doing IVF. One could say that this is a stressful, life altering program that maybe is contributing to my mood condition. I don't know - feels natural and positive to me. But I miscarried in March. And I'm about to start over, have 2 patches of estrogen on my body at all times currently, hormones are definitely changing me. 

I'm good at meditating though, and I will keep at it. It helps. When I am not meditating, I hope that I can outplay the drowsy comfort of being still. Maybe next week - one step at a time, I also have to be kind, patient and accepting with myself.

Amourx.

Humility

Today. I have lost a lot of peace, my anxiety has shot through the roof it seems, but I am still functioning. It feels like pain inside, how the printer won’t work, how emails are assaulting me, how I can’t get it together. I bump into contundent corners, I speak faux pas. I have an unbearable timidity that is governed by fear of something.

It was showing its head for a long time now, at every good or bad change I went through at work. With the climate, with everyone leaving, with the industry or that place being ran over by newness that it can’t keep up with. 

Now I feel not anchored nor supported; but I lost the capacity for decisions, for actions. Something terrible happened in my surrounding. A baby not one year old, killed, by his father. Just this phrase is unbearable, I fear to traumatize people like it does me. There has been a wake and a funeral is to come. 

Of course this is worsening my state of anxiety and in this grieving and recovering from a shock that I couldn’t fathom--but the family is strong and loving and will come through, and that relieves me--I find some kindness within to let me be imperfect, awkward and limited at work. I have stopped social activities but they can wait.

My thinking head, so disconnected from my heart and body, has ideas and knows resources. I went to the doctor’s and asked for the medication that has proven to work. Now I am writing and reading self help things about meditation, then I do it my way for a few minutes. I do have exercise and nature in my horizon but they are playing a minor role today.

More boldly, my thinking head and my body have determined that I should change careers again. Every part of me is at peace with this. I chose teaching in college as something natural, doable, and good for me. For the regularity of it, the breaks, the fulfilment probably. So I can be appeased from the constant changes. So that what I do has meaning and depth. I lost the meaning and the depth I need in my current job.

Maybe as a teacher, I will have time to do other things I like such as writing. Maybe I can just rest my quiet head and tap into my self and be at peace. Maybe that’s enough.

But you know, meanwhile I am getting pregnant again very soon. It takes 9 months, I’m sure that I can heal along the way. I already feel better, just took in a deep breath.

In this state of anxiety, I live with a fear of everything, a dooming fear of the worst shame or worst sins or hurting someone or being hurt.  But then it’s just email or the printer, so I do what I have to do. It’s must harder when I need to think, expose my rational and engage others, but I still try to do it. And worst when I interact with the end clients or end consumers - I just don’t want to, but I still go through the motion.

Imagine that I had to host japanese colleagues and clients for the last few days, working all hours on a shoot with a team. Thankfully I could be kind of “accessory”  because my team is so strong and good. But I’m a director, and a perfectonist, and it’s hard for me to be that way. 

Humiliation is probably the thing I fear the most, I live my life to avoid it. No one in my entourage is mean enough to abuse the situation that way, it’s very much an exaggerated fear. I find I can replace it and think about humility, and kindness to myself just like my peers are kind to me.

So this idea of changes of career, I don’t know how or when. I filled out a digital application though! And my step-mom will help, I have an army of teachers in my family. I know that I’m gifted when it comes to learning and probably teaching, and going through the hoops to get in. But, my work, the funeral, is enough to handle for this week.

Amourx.

Apprivoiser la bête

Mercredi et des soubresauts dans mon corps. Une fébrilité hypersensible, qui me fait vivre des émotions forte tout le temps. Je crois que c’est mon état normal. Je le joue en me plongeant dans diverses activités, en prenant du recul, en tranchant mon temps et j’en garde pour le repos. 

Le soleil a plombé hier lors du lunch où j’ai parlé du Costa Rica, mon voyage au pays des merveilles, à ma collègue.

Disons que j’ai les sens à vif, c’est ce que je remarque dans mes billets du passé, les petites paroles et gestes me pénètrent et sont senti comme des affronts ou des dangers. Cette lecture est probablement très subjective, mais les effets ne le sont pas.

Par contre j’apprivoise bien ça en ce moment, je suis heureuse et encouragée par le regain d’énergie que j’ai. Je me sens très bonne guerrière, et je n’arrête pas d’y porter attention.

Par exemple je cherche des occasions de vivre d’avantage, de m’exprimer - pas envers les autres, mais sur cette planète, en ce monde, je surveille les occasions de devenir la personne que je suis, si ça fait du sens. Par exemple ça peut passer par l’écriture.

Pour ce qui est de m’exprimer envers les autres, je le fait beaucoup plus spontanément cette année. Il s’est passé quelque chose. Je me suis cachée dans le passé, de honte, de peur ou pour me protéger. Je sors de ça.

Voyez, je suis heureuse! En amour, en famille, en amitiés et je m’en sors pour ce qui est de gagner ma vie. Je souhaite de tout coeur que cette spirale continue dans son sens. Le cercle virtueux ça existe. Pour moi c’est une quête de sens (meaning). Est-ce que ce qui est en moi s’exprime dans le monde et laisse une empreinte, de bonté, d’entraide, de truth sayer.

Ça a l’air d’être des voeux pieux, mais ça doit s’appliquer à l’intérieur de moi d’abord. Je veux m’appliquer à être bonne envers moi-même, une bonne amie qui construit du courage pas du sabotage, et j’ai une pulsion de dire ou de décrier ce qui es tu.

Comme l’inéquité bordel.

Amourx.

Emergencies

It’s Monday evening and I feel energized, felt like this all day. Also for once I’m not in too deep at work, and I almost get the jitters - i’m not used to this and it’s clear that I don’t have the meds anymore, so I react with a kind of intense speed at doing things and some wonder of what this feels like (new) and some worries about how I’m doing.

I came home and scarfed down some cheese and tortillas. My body’s been a bit whacked lately, its tired but it can’t stop being awake and wants to jump into what’s next like there’s an emergency. It’s my emergency to live, and I let it do that.

I also have to give me credits for this energy, because I have been constantly keeping active with gym and bike rides, or walks into nature, and I found a new Yoga place to round it up. These walks and rides in the sun mean everything to me, make me feel so alive.

Am I high? Do you think?

This evening I pulled away from work at a decent time and now I’m to do something that relaxes and feeds into my desires. Sounds easy, but it’s easier to pass this by I think. My beau has arrived, so I will bid farewell.

Amourx.

Kind

A lot is up it seems, and I have to write - not out of an impulsion, but because of the good it does to my mind, to sort things out. And also because looking back there are a lot of kernels of wisdom that I recorded in the blogs, my own kind of school.

I recently understood that my truth in life, my dharma, is about kindness, empathy and helping each other find out if we are all happy to be together. My father once wrote this to me on a piece of paper, something about cells in my body reaching out to the others, to find out if we are all still there, and still want to be together. I’m also the truth sayer, finding and revealing the tension of what is unsaid. This is my purpose I believe.

I can and must apply it to myself internally too. My life has been a roller coaster, but this path is my level. It came to me lately in the last year after reading about dharma, but also, you know, all this introspection that i do constantly.

I read backwards that I am scared to hurt others, I thread lightly in adversity with others, I am unbalanced in conflict, making it hard to support. In my natural, medication-less state, I read a lot of imminent conflict or aggression into other peoples pretty normal behaviours. If I strip out the whole journey that took me to today, I may call this a sort of social phobia. I don’t know if it helps to call it that.

I have stopped medications 2 months ago. I’ve had a life & death situation happen in winter, and coming out of this, i found an incredible compulsion to live to the fullest. I have it now, a rolling fire, that completely changes my attitude. I’m in a state of emergency to live, but also in appreciation of what I have, and understanding that I have to be kind to myself.

It’s not something I chose, not something that is reflected in my life today, but its just coming from the essence of me.

So I happen to be more active, more energized, more engaged in the very fast paced life that I have. I worry about balance, this is in my line of sight too. Not that I am doing to much, but that what I’m doing needs to align with my essence. I have a lot of truth-saying and checking if we are all alright to do. when I start doing that in the work that I choose to do, I will be rewarded.

I’m far from there in my current job, but it’s constantly shifting too accommodate me, so I wouldn’t say there is a conflict there right now. However, its time for me to do some sideline things in a freelancing sort of way. I need that freedom.

But before I start changing the world around me, I need to look inside and make sure I’m kind to myself, that I’m balanced inside, that I have my own internal freedom.

I still have family plans with my beau. We travel and eat and laugh a lot. Have good friends and a great family. A nice house and a good life. And summer has started!.

Amourx.

It's monday

It’s Monday morning and I don’t have the blues. I am even happy inside. Could be because I tried stand up paddled and cycled all day yesterday with my love, I feel it in my body today. The house state is ok, somehow held at the point of balance where it could go up or down in terms of cleanliness. We tend to go down but are working on that with baby steps.

What’s it like to be 40 in the summer? Only happens once right and why don’t we celebrate it like being 10? I feel over wrapped with a bit of extra weight hanging on. It could be the first time that I feel the garb in my arms and thighs as I move around. Dressing up has changed. Pictures put me in a size I don’t recognize. My energy has been low but I had surgery this month. Still it’s that stress and workload management, nothing new regarding this one. In fact I manage stress better than 10 years ago. But I used to be a bit more active generally and diet has been by no means exemplar. Living with a Polish man that works in a liquor store, I’ve been drinking more regularly and more casually cause it’s there. That can be accountable for my skin breakouts (that’s also new to me), low energy and extra handles, so I’m reducing and swapping wine and beer for iced tea. I started to drink diet coke at work, that’s weird too.

I’m starting my week with lots of health to-do’s. It’s true that there is much more health appointments to manage than ever, I have some that are queued up for years. I think I’m in pretty good health overall, that’s what my doctor told me at my last check-up.

At 40, I also have better working conditions than ever. My office is an architectural beauty with a pool and beer tap, and a community of workers I need to know better. If there is something I can work on during my forties is too relax and socialize more. That’s a pretty good plan for me. I have about 5 weeks of paid vacations, a good salary, nobody controlling my schedule. Can travel etc. I guess that’s a good career and I am reminded of that as a counter to heavy stress periods. It’s also litteraly a 10 minute walk a day from my home to my desk.

I will continue this thread later,

Amourx.