Packing...

Packing is a lot like taking an inventory. As you work thru each closet, drawer, and back cabinet – you come across something that makes you pause. A memory, a goal, a project, a relationship suddenly confronts you as you hold that thing you’ve rediscovered. Then the “whys” start, or the “what now’s”. What was I thinking? Is it really something I want to keep, or a realistic part of my life?

I collected along the way, especially during the years I worked full time, each item with the idea of “when I retire”. Then during the school years, I was forced to just keep relocating things and collecting materials for my new reality of my studies. Then the physical limits I had fought against for so many years began to drain my energy and my optimism. So avoidance set in. And in this most recent phase I’m finishing, I tried to do it all. The home projects, sewing, canning, chickens, gardening, and growing a business I thought I already knew. The lessons of the business I will leave for later. The one I’ll share now is that what I thought I did and was has continuously had to be redefined.

But the other part of all this is an evaluation of how much of what I kept and planned was a function of the life I lived then. I have been single for many years, and I somehow saw that as unfettered. But all these things around me are the pieces and parts of living in the middle of a family and community that are scattered. They are things I did for those connections, not for the love of the thing. The cake decorating stuff was for them, not just the love of decorating. The crochet was for the love of doing it, and I could easily be buried alive under scarves, hats, afghans & baby blankets.

Anything to do with color fascinates me, but I’m not up to painting walls any more. Canning is practical, and I am good at it, but it is tedious if not done with a group. Canning for one or two people needs a re-assessment of how to approach it.

What I love most about sewing is the personality it expresses in the clothes I wear. But in a community where jeans are the standard, and overweight with no requirement for dress drains all inspiration. So I discover a basic lack of self-esteem in my appearance. Another thing I now understand I need to include in my life.

That carousel horse project was a lark, and it is better moved into the stream that will take it to a new owner. Most furniture comes and goes, a few special pieces and the practical basics are all that I need. But spare bedrooms ready in a house no one visits seems to represent the side road I wandered into more clearly than any other. I don’t do well with the state of waiting. And I’ve spent a number of years now just waiting.

I remember thinking that if I stabilized my income at a level where I could afford to visit often; it would all balance out. But that simply is not who I am. The visits always left me feeling more unanchored.

Cancers love home and family. I have no home, and my family is elsewhere. The home arts I love need to be shared.

I’m not ready to retire – I still have years to add to my professional accomplishments – albeit at a much less frenzied pace.

I have physical limitations – but I’m not sure that hiring someone to do what I love is the correct approach for me. It would be better to share wisdom with others than to feel the exclusion while watching someone else do what I love for me. The love is in the doing, not the having.

Family gatherings where we all cook are more the reality for me today than kicking everyone out and dazzling them with the final product – produced alone, outside the family activities.

I may be single, but I am not a hermit. My days of shunning myself are over.

Finding a new friend

There is a quote by Bill Wilson to the effect that if we look before we leap from a position of fear, its better to have not looked at all.

So much of what happens to us each day gets "rewritten" in the telling inside our heads; re-interpreted by our internal story-teller. That story-teller protects itself from being challenged by twisting everything that it "sees" into simply more proof of its perspective. To live differently is simply to change the story, or belief, or filter we see life with. The even stranger part about it all is that we then cling to that old belief out of fear of what else might replace it. We even tell it to others around us until they believe it too.

Finally, the most tragic part about the traumas we experience in our lives is that we lock ourselves into reliving them. We continue to damage ourselves, carrying that experience deep within us, re-interpreting everything by that "fear filter". The very person we need most to love us - ourselves - continues to re-inflict that original damage.

So my goal for this day is to find a new friend in myself that will cheer me on and give me comfort. From that place I can express the goodness I am rather than the pain I've felt.

Befriend yourself with the best you have, and let go of the fear. It's only a story.

"Muchness"

Often my friends & family tease me about my time on the computer. For a person who’s favorite thing in the world is asking why, Google has become addictive. They say the secret to aging well is an active mind, so chances are good I’ll be here for a good long while. Any question that comes up leads me to new ideas and new information.

After watching the newest Alice in Wonderland movie, a friend shared an article with me about “muchness” – in short, finding a way to connect to the energy and person we were as a child. Whenever that discussion comes up, I immediately find myself looking down from my favorite branches over the valley I lived in, wondering through the jungle of my grandmother’s yard, or playing on the stretch of dirt in front of her house building dams and rivers to manage the rainwater as it came down the street. It reminds of three things: I was always alone, I was always outdoors, and I was always cataloguing and testing nature to see how it reacted.

Makes sense out of the reason I chose a field project for my PhD, why the greenhouse was my solace in school, and why my favorite companions these days are my dogs and my chickens. I like people, but to invest the energy of discovery in a person that I do in “dam building” is losing endeavor. Have you ever heard the hum of the tall grasses? All living things emit a constant sound.

There is a trick to interpreting Myers-Briggs results for the E/I (extrovert/introvert) preferences portion. Most people assume that the E refers to a love of people and crowds. But it does not. It is a measure of how you are stimulated – externally, by things happening around you; or internally, by mental or emotional self-processing. So, a person who loves to be outdoors, for instance, would rate higher on the E scale, although most of that might be quite solitary. The wind, smells, sounds, temperature, touch are all external stimuli. But their greatest effect would be lost if there were lots of other people around. Groups are very seldom, by their very nature, quiet or non-stimulating. However, the “ I” person may never even know whether they are outdoors or in, because the rich journey into their imagination may very easily exclude everything around them.

Hens in the laundry room..

It was really cold out last night, the water for the chickens was freezing a foot below the heat lamp. They had to be moved. The only place to keep them was the laundry room, and I kept the lights off to keep them calm. They were roosting quietly the last time I checked. Then I heard a great ruckus, and a thump. When I got there, one of them had laid an egg while on the freezer, fallen - egg and all- and all five of them were chasing the broken egg around the floor as it skidded to and fro.

Hope it warms up very soon....