discipline

No longer doing the nightly checkins here - easier via email to Nadly - too boring here!

My meditation instructor recently reminded me (and it's now a post-it on my mirror) that discipline isn't, by definition, something cruel that hurts you. It's something that helps you, that you want... something you even enjoy.

This applies most centrally to meditation, which I'm still not doing. *sigh*

But it also applies to staying late at school to get all my work done before the next school day, which I also haven't been doing - I've just been going home and falling into bed. A little discipline wouldn't hurt. I stayed late today - just a couple of hours - but it feels good to know that I'm going into the next day better prepared and less harried.

It doesn't help that I've been so tired lately. Well, I've been sick and it keeps me up coughing. But I'm always tired... for a while now, whenever I sit down I fall asleep. I have a sleep study on Monday night (the kind where you sleep in a hospital with electrodes all over your head) to try to determine the reasons and see if I need a sleep apnea machine. I'll keep you posted.

i made a commitment to write every night to assess the care and kindness that i had given to myself that day, as a reminder of my goal of giving myself what i need. i set this goal so that i won't seek what i need in another, so i don't get those frushes and crushes, the idea that someone else can make me happy - so i don't get hooked on other kinds of things either, thinking any thing will make me happy either. so i can remember that i have what i need and i can give it to me.

i've been sick most of the week and lost my voice completely. it's frustrating and boring. i've lain around the house but not really taken care of myself. i don't feel coddled, i feel like i dumped me by the side of the road. i took two days off work but felt guilty about it, punished myself by not really making myself comfortable i guess.

this whole exercise - writing this putatively daily update - feels ridiculously self-indulgent. but i remember i read somewhere, when you are actually caring for yourself is when the voice in your head says you're self-indulgent... when you are harmfully self-indulgent, the voice is silent.

so when i feel guilty, it's a good sign? i guess. i've felt guilty for two days. back to work tomorrow, a half day then the weekend. hope i get my voice back soon...

healing thinking... six things that have helped me

I felt that the previous post was depressing me so I thought I'd revisit something I learned in the intensive outpatient program over the summer... six ways to think positively, to undermine self-sabotage. It has really been a life-saver for me - stuck on a post-it on my bathroom mirror - how many mornings has one of them caught my eye and helped me start the day on the right track, or go to bed in peace?

1) What is going well right now?
School is overall going well. I got asked to be curriculum specialist. My marriage is great. Things are going well for me - they really are.

2) Stay in the present - what do I do NOW?
Now, I'll finish writing this and go to bed.

3) Remember my accomplishments
I went to Harvard and graduated summa. I lived in Japan and learned Japanese. I traveled all around the world by myself. I learned some of the language everywhere I went. I've traveled to all kinds of places since then and learned bits of more languages. I learned web design and became a (however faulty) managing director at a company. I went back to school even though it was very difficult. I stuck it out through the first two hellish years of teaching. I've gotten through a whole semester (minus two weeks) of teaching here without falling down. I can do the next thing too.

4) Replace "I can't do it" with "I can do a little of it."
Self-care doesn't have to be perfect tomorrow any more than anything else has to be perfect tomorrow. Just do a little bit every day, then try to do a little more; it's all ok.

5) I am ok on my own.
Remember that I fear abandonment and that I can relax with that fear. I am actually ok on my own and I can care for myself. The neediness that I feel is just a feeling. I am ok. Allowing that neediness to be expressed puts unbearable pressure on other people and destroys relationships. Breathe. I'm ok.

6) Remember I have a purpose in my life.
I want to help and heal.

I recommend these six to anyone who needs a more positive outlook... as I said they've helped me many times and now they are helping me end this day on a positive note.

Love you all.

spent the whole day in a state of extreme "poverty mind," feeling like i needed - really needed - something outside myself. scrambling for it, casting about in hopes of finding it. even though i saw what i was doing, i didn't stop. didn't take a shower, didn't eat.

feel drained and flat.

plans tomorrow to work all day. had planned to have long dog walk and meditation in the morning, but those have been sacrificed to starting work earlier and cleaning out the dining room so we can have a friend of R's to dinner that night. i was supposed to do the latter today but i was ... yeah.

so, not such a great day in self-care land.

i know going for a long walk will make me happier than getting on the computer. but i did the latter anyway.

At least writing these checkins is making me mindful of my poor self-care and able to see those stirrings of frama before they get going. That shit is so addictive though...

home alone tonight... chance to reflect in more spaciousness... tired tho... ... ...

sometimes i miss people i haven't seen or spoken to in a long time, as though i just saw them days ago. i don't know why i still miss them so much. nadine would probably say because i am looking to them, still, somehow, as someone who would have made, or could make me, happy. she might say that that is imaginary - even if the friendship isn't - that no one can make me happy - that i have to find that inside myself.

that's the whole point of this daily (supposedly daily) check-in. to find that inside myself.

the steps to that seem simple. meditate. exercise. walk. write. do my work. take care of myself in my job.

simple isn't easy, of course. i don't do most of those things...

this week has been a bad one for job happiness. i started a new unit and wasn't sure what to do so i kind of panicked. now that i've chosen a direction and set my feet on a path i feel more confident. or at least, i feel like the array of options has narrowed enough that i am panicking less. but it will have to be next week that i put some better plans into action, because this week was kind of a cobbled-together, done-at-the-last-minute mess. i also stayed up late monday and tuesday and... i'm not so young anymore... it made a difference. i also stayed up late specifically NOT doing work - it reminded me of last year, all the failures, so that made me panic too.

this weekend/next week i'm getting back on track, though. the habits i had established at the beginning of the year that made me happy - grading every day after school, having my lessons ready the night before and/or getting in in the morning early enough to finish them - these habits are not so long gone that i couldn't pick them up.

some good news - they asked me to take on an additional position, with a stipend, to be some kind of curriculum specialist at school. i think i will be reviewing my colleagues' lesson plans and making suggestions about how to improve their curricula. i'm not sure. anyway i think it really plays to my strengths and i'm really happy they asked me to do it, and really excited about getting started with it.

there are so many things to say... but it's time for bed... as always thank you for reading... much love to each of you.

wow, has it really been since the 5th that i haven't posted? nadly emailed me a nudge and i appreciate it...

i think Harry Reid *should* step down over his racist remarks. just sayin'.

i haven't posted because i haven't wanted to look too closely at the self-care thing. maybe because i had a bit of frush-frama again, looking to someone outside myself with whom i hoped to become friends, as someone who was going to fill up voids and vacuums in my life... but that person has vanished into the sunset, so, back to reality. and somewhat shame-facedly too.

that was the whole point of starting this checkin, to remember that nothing outside myself was going to help me feel better, feel whole, feel good, whatever - that only self-care can do that. but sometimes one can't help kinda hoping or wishing.

um. so. self care. i started another book, which - I don't know, why does it feel so much more satisfying than being on the puter?

not getting enough of my work done, which doesn't feel as good as getting my work done. but i don't berate myself anymore. what needs to get done, gets done. sooner or later.

i came home early today feeling motivated and with a stack of work. now i just want to go to bed but it's too early. there's no one around to IM with. whatever shall i do?

i'm not coming up with any specifically self-caring things i did today, am i.

Today feels more like a deficit in the self-care accounting. Self-care red ink. I hung out with aforementioned Larry, he of the frush-frama (the one who seems like he wants more from me, emotionally, than I'm able to give. Can't we just hang out and go to meditation? No, I don't want you to help me put up my shelves, write my lesson plans, or worry about me crossing the street or working with gang members. I can handle my life just fine. I don't want you insinuating yourself into every crevice. Gah! I tried to talk to him about it but it didn't go very well, because I had trouble being clear about what I wanted. So I did us both a disservice.

I wish it were easier to find and make new friends. Without frush-frama.

Remember that book I mentioned, "A Golden Age"? Well, it had a surprisingly horrifying ending that made me burst into hard tears and feel miserable. I know I shouldn't be surprised to find horror in a war book but this came at me sideways and was just awful. (Since you prolly won't ever read it, I'll spoil it - a woman hands over her true love to be tortured to death, to protect her son.... Aaagh!)

anyway. Glum now. "glum" is a great word, isn't it. Glum.

back from madison, back to school

miri's writing workshop was great as always. i reminded myself about the teaching that instead of "spending every minute as though in the dentist's chair" we can "welcome each moment as though we'd invited it." it helped me reconcile with coming back to school... i love my students and my work, but i was also loving my vacation. i also wrote about the recent improvement in my marriage - just in the last few weeks we have inexplicably gotten closer and more loving again, after what seems many many months on the rocks.

i compared the rejuvenated marriage to a hippopotamus. that's what writing class is for: bad writing. ;)

i had a great time in madison with old friends. really really great time. i miss them. i don't miss madison but i miss being surrounded by a circle of dear friends. or interlocking circles really. i've whined about that before so... anyway, i love my madison friends and was very happy to spend some time with them.

self care... well, it felt like the whole time in madison was a big ol' bath of self-care. i even got some work done by getting up early. yesterday i had two breakfasts with Miri and then came home - this time the bus was too crowded for work, so I read a book - reading actual books for pure pleasure is another thing i've tried to start doing. i'm reading "A Golden Age," about the war that divided Bangladesh from Pakistan.

today i had an ok day at work and then in the evening i finished up the rest of the work i'd wanted to do on the break. most of it anyway. felt good. then i had a bath; now i'm going to bed. :) i wish i could have eaten some vegetables; then my self-care would feel complete. but we don't have any. shopping tomorrow. :)

thank you for reading what has become a rather mundane little series of daily musings on a prosaic topic....

Yesterday i dedicated a whole day to just having fun with Loopy (and ignoring my work). We went to ikea, which was fun n useful, and then to see "Avatar" in 3D, which was spectacular. I reasoned that i had 8 hours on the bus to Madison n back (I'm going to Miri's one-day writing retreat tomorrow). But I slept and IM'd my way up to Madison... Now I'm freaking out that I have so little time left, and so much to do..... Sigh.