Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Struggle

"Dig in to yourself, to the place that feels empty and tired and frustrated and angry. What do you ache for?"

Aerolin always knows what questions to ask that strip me naked. I ache for balance. This is the thing that is lacking in my life now, has been lacking for a very long time. My biggest, most enjoyable hobby does not nurture the creativity in me. Likewise, my creative expressions do not pull at me like my 'hobby' does. I like them, and they are a comforting, warm bubble in which I can float when I need to disconnect and unplug but they don't sustain me. I have to plug back in, have to level my fishing, have to farm herbs, have to fuck with my spec, have to stab things in the eye. I have to check my blog, and your blogs, and forums, and read Questionable Content. Questionable Content makes me laugh and laugh.

The thing that I spend most of my time focused on? Work. I like my job. I complain a lot, but I like it. It challenges me daily, keeps me motivated, and frustrates the hell out of me. I cannot seem to unplug from there either.

Without some stress in my life, I'm not motivated to continue doing what I'm doing. If I'm not challenged by my circumstances, I get bored. I'm not happy unless there is an obstacle to over-come or a goal to work towards. I don't know if this is because I have had so many challenges in my life ... do I need these challenges because my life has been fraught with stress or is my life fraught with stress because I need these challenges? Do I need to have some obstacle in my way because I've always had obstacles in my way? Does it even matter?

I'm trying to balance all that I have and I feel like I am failing at a lot of things. I am trying to learn that it's okay not to be in top form. It is okay that I'm not perfect. It is okay that I don't have all the answers. Is it okay that I had a corn dog for breakfast?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautifully done! Balance is a wonderful thing to ache for.

As to your questions concerning the origins of stress and challenges and which comes before which...I was reading a very powerful book called "Miss America By Day" - written by a former Miss America winner who came out a handful of years ago as an incest survivor. I haven't finished it yet because, as you might imagine, it's not a warm and fuzzy read, but one of the things that struck me in what I have read is that her life for the first 18 yrs was filled with terror. In choosing what she wanted to do with her life early on, she went into motivational speaking (this was long before her repressed memories surfaced). She was constantly terrified by public speaking, but terror was what she knew, what was familiar, what felt "normal"; she knew how to handle terror. I'm not saying this is explicitly identical to your situation, but I feel there are parallels, so take it with a grain of salt. :)

I invite you to sit with this as you shoot these questions back and forth to yourself about why you ache for balance the way you do, why you do not have it right now. And I honor this struggle you feel, this time of sitting and BEING when you would much rather DO.

Love, love, and more love to you, Sweet Jade...

Anonymous said...

Remember - the woman pictured here can be viewed as either unraveling her Self or creating her Self. And the beautiful thing is that you can change your mind any time - in both directions :)