Posted on

Mindful Monday: A Month of Processing

As January 2011 comes to a close, I’m pausing to reflect on the first month of this new year. I’ve spent most of this month internally processing all of life’s changes since the close of 2010. The Reverb 10 series gave me a lot of fodder to ruminate over 2010’s events and manifestations for 2011. I aspire to become an English consultant, a tutor, a freelance writer, an independent editor — my own boss. My writing on this blog should reflect that goal clearly, in fact. I’ve been blogging professionally for over three years now, and in that time I’ve made friends, attempted to monetize, written sponsored posts, and devised a posting schedule. Mindful Mondays focus on my endeavors to be more mindful of my words, actions, psyche, and body. Wordless Wednesdays provide an outlet for my photography hobby. Thankful Thursdays became the new gratitude series, so that I could share my appreciation for all things big and small in life. Foodie Friday caters to my love of food. I’ve had to move due to a fire, as well as job loss. Over the past seven months, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on my desire to earn a living as my own employer. Money affords us the ability to provide for ourselves and our dependents — and I’m sure we all know by now that I really need an income to feel like my kids are going to live comfortably. I’ve been seriously considering finding a job — full time or part time — in order to feel like I’m doing my part, and yet I find that being home for them also has it’s perks. I mean, I wanted to spend more time with my family after all.

During this month, I’ve had the opportunity to discover what feeds my soul and what poisons it. I’ve had the time to seriously consider purging clutter that I really don’t want, need, or use anymore. The emotional attachments we form to seemingly silly objects is rather fascinating, and at the same time I understand how some people can horde a plethora of items. We project our memories onto inanimate objects in an attempt to remember our memories at a later date. Sure, the memory’s been made, but we don’t always remember to relish in those good memories — as a matter of fact, I doubt I’m alone in that I some times dwell on the not-so-nice memories more readily than the good. However, packing and unpacking has made me realize that I need to ask myself what I really want, need, and use in my life. Additionally, I’ve begun asking myself a lot of questions about the present and the future. I’ve brainstormed ideas for my blog, my business website, and a professional website (more details to come next month). I’m excited about the possibilities and cautious about the obstacles ahead. While 2010’s business hasn’t quite given up just yet, this year seems to have a glimmer of hope beginning to shine through.

Share
Posted on

Reverb 10: Beyond Avoidance

Prompt: Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

Is it any surprise that I avoided writing a response to this prompt yesterday? If you couldn’t guess, I really should have been focused on my writing — more importantly, I should have been focused on my career as a writer. I should have been writing on an almost daily basis, regaling my readers with clever, thoughtful discourse. I should have been planning my next moves and plotting my course. I should have been focused on making the transition from employed to self-employed. I should have been true to myself.

Oh, there were distractions around every corner this year. It seemed like every time I stopped to look up, I was surrounded by other, more urgent tasks. Instead of spending more time in “quadrant two,” I was constantly in quadrant one. Other times, I felt so ridiculously burnt out that I’d flounder into quadrant four just because I didn’t feel like doing anything other than sudoku, crosswords, or checking up on friends. And who could blame me? I was feeling jaded. I felt embittered by years of grooming — almost like those words in high school about college making you poverty-proof was little more than brainwashing. (Disclaimer: Kids, don’t take the wrong message out of this — get your butts to college, study what you love, and get that expensive piece of paper anyway! It’s too damn important to pass up.)

I was terrified of leaving a day job to pursue my dreams. I worried about bills and keeping my family in a stable, secure environment. I also questioned if there really was a need for people like me. I’d find myself swamped with projects, typically of the OPD variety. Honestly? I’m an ISFJ, which basically means I suffer from “doormat syndrome.” It took that unpleasant life change back in July for me to be free from my duties to others (except for my immediate family, who I’m more than happy to support as they are part of the dream for me).

Over the past six months, I’ve had plenty of time to mull over the possibilities, and I’ve come to realize it’s not just about putting a roof over our heads or making ends meet. It’s about feeling productive, feeling creative, and feeling fulfilled. Walking around day in and day out feeling like you’re on autopilot might earn paychecks, but it sucks your soul right out of your body. My last two months of employment had next to nothing to offer my career, and it completely blew. I sat there some mornings trying to work up motivation to complete my six months there in order to have the opportunity to once again job search within the university. I didn’t want to be the little assistant who maintains calendars and processes expense reports — I wanted to be the writer, the editor, the person relishing in all the creative little tasks. Next year, I’m not going to settle for anything. Unless it contributes to my dreams, it’s not worth my time. Next year, it’s about becoming the writer, editor, consultant, and tutor I aspire to be. Next year, I’m taking control of my life and leaving out the middlemen who are mere go-betweens for me and the IRS. Hey, the IRS publishes all their forms online — why shouldn’t I go into business for myself? And have you seen what texting has done to our youth? People need me to undo the damage caused by texting. Literacy needs me to mend our broken lines of communication. Now is not the time to feel insignificant. Now is the time to seize opportunity while it’s still slapping me in the face, shaking my collar, and screaming at me, “why don’t you just accept me for what I am?!”

Share
Posted on

Reverb 10: Writing

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

This is such a loaded question for me. I do so many things everyday that likely do not contribute a single thing to my writing, yet most of them are things necessary tasks. Dishes? Laundry? Meal preparation? Diaper changes? Retrieving a mobile baby from furniture every five minutes? All necessities. What could I eliminate from my daily routines? Actually, I could stand to detach from my inbox a bit more. Recently, I signed up for a Gmail system tray notification application — probably not the best idea if I want to quit compulsively checking my email. However, I signed up with the idea that seeing the subject titles would suffice. Theoretically, that should be sufficient for my basis needs, but it’s become more of an attraction to log in and read the actual emails.

On the other hand, I feel I should do more to promote my daily writing, to focus more on making the time to do so. Sure, it might be nice to eliminate distractions, but then I’m focusing more on the distractions themselves. I feel that I don’t do enough to flesh out a time and place to sit and write on a regular basis. I find more often than not that I’m regularly in a situation that requires my attention to be elsewhere, and those situations tend to present as both important and urgent. Nothing’s more pressing than a little boy who’s discovered the thrill of climbing onto the couch, watching the horrified expressions on his mother’s face. The impish grin, the devious twinkle in his eyes — my son knows what he’s doing, and I fear my future with this child holds many terrifying rides. “Mommy, that one’s an inverted roller coaster! Let’s go on that!” Um, no thanks — I like my feet firmly planted on the ground, not dangling in midair while thrusting forward at 60 miles per hour. On the other hand, I’ll bet that would make for some seriously interesting reading.

Share
Posted on

Life Changes

All things considered, I’ve finally realized my lack of writing can be forgiven. After all, there’s only so much time between the baby’s climbing escapades. There’s only so much time when all three kids are either napping or spending quiet time in their rooms. There’s only so much time left after I’ve devoted most of it to a seemingly fruitless job hunt. And on that subject, what does a woman have to do to get a job these days? Apparently it’s not as simple as it used to be — but of course, the job market is over-saturated with many of my other unemployed brethren. We’re all flailing about, hoping potential employers will see us for the shining stars that we are and choose one of us. Where there are jobs, there are also more qualified candidates. Where there are service jobs, there are high schoolers and college students ready and willing to work. Living in a college town, I find that job hunting needs to be timed just right, or else you’re out of luck for several months before the next round of hiring begins.

Lately the potential for a change of scenery has weighed heavily upon my mind. Each passing day brings more debt and less hope for salvation. Each day I realize more so that I may very well have to accept a serious change in living arrangements and lifestyle. We wouldn’t become homeless, no. However, we would be leaving the state. I realize in the past I have complained that I’m tired of living here, but I really wanted to leave Florida on my own terms. This is a little less on my terms. On the other hand, this could very well still be the opportunity I need in order to make the leap from someone’s employee to my own boss. I could potentially spin this into my chance to write for a living. I could put forth energy into my own business exploits because rent and utilities wouldn’t exactly be the issue they’ve been. Sure, I don’t intend to be a freeloader, but I don’t see any reason why I’d need to continue spending the same amount on my living expenses as I do now.

Time is running short, and the probability of an interstate move seems much higher these days. My writings may be spent more in private paper and pen format, rather than a public weblog format, but know I don’t mean to ignore my public writings. In fact, I’d love to devote more time to it, and I just might get that chance at the start of 2011. My goals for 2010 might be a wash, but that doesn’t mean a shiny new beginning couldn’t mean a chance for achieving goals and living dreams.

Share
Posted on

Offering An Apology

I have to admit, I’ve thought of good material to write about, and yet I can’t see to find the time to sit still for a long enough chunk of time in order to write it all out. Something’s always coming up and taking priority over my writing, and I know that I should and could make a little more effort to sit and write. However, these days my spare time seems to be going more towards job hunting and resting if I can. The baby’s returned to his former night owl ways, and it’s been very difficult to get him back on track. He’s certainly got a strong personality, that’s for sure!

Share
Posted on

Schedule Deviation

Obviously, Thankful Thursday never happened. It just didn’t. To be honest, my day started with a time wasting orientation that served merely to give me a hint that I might get a little bit of job placement help, but basically it seems to receive unemployment you need to report back to Big Brother every so often. Good thing I’ve been keeping track of my job hunt just for my own personal use! So, I suppose we’ll see if it works out to my advantage or not — here’s hoping! Due to some sleep loss (one kid woke up crying thinking it was time to get up at 1am, had to get up early to go to previously said orientation), I was a bit cranky yesterday. Sure, I’ve got plenty of things to be grateful for — but it’s nothing I haven’t already rehashed here. Sometimes, my brain isn’t cooperative in terms of recycling material in a newer sounding fashion.

And you may have noticed that Foodie Friday’s not happening. Sorry, nothing good to share today. While I have found myself in the kitchen more often than I’d like to be in there, I haven’t really felt like staging things to take pictures. I haven’t felt like something was post worthy until well after the fact — when it’s just too late to go back and get pictures of the process.

Life can become a bit complicated when everyone wants a piece of Mommy/ Meredith’s time. I have a list of projects and some to-do lists scattered about my hard drive, and yet I find I have less and less time to really devote to them. Working on my own business? Nope, no time or motivation when I’m worried about following all the laws to the letter. I mean really, we live in a day and age when a grouchy neighbor can call the cops on little kids running a lemonade stand and get the law and their side! Without a food and beverage license, those kids are breaking the law — absolutely messed up, but absolutely, unfortunately true. So here I sit, wondering who’s watching what I do, just itching to report me the second I decide to take business before getting everything legit. It’s disheartening. I’d love to earn some extra money, but it’s true that you need to spend money to make money. Are my services taxable? I haven’t a clue — nothing concrete seems to exist within the realm of what I’d like to do. Some sources say yes; others say no. And if they’re taxable? I have the joys of estimating taxes. Are you kidding me? This is why Mom & Pop’s don’t work anymore. It’s truly a shame that the Land of Opportunity is no longer the land of opportunity.

I could sit here taking on the victim persona, whine and cry about how awful everything is, and generally wallow in misery. However, I know that it only serves to feed into that vicious cycle, and the best way to deal with it is to spin it into a positive. But sometimes? Sometimes it’s really hard to put a positive spin on a situation, especially when you stop, step back, view the bigger picture, piece together all the variables, and realize there’s a lot to be done in a short period of time. It’s hard to really stay upbeat and positive all of the time when times look bleak. Prospects are slim, standing out from the masses seems hopeless, and even networking appears to be falling just short of getting a foot in a door. The funny thing is that I can pretty much go back in time three years ago and apply most of these job hunting frustrations to that time period. Things did work out, I finally stood out of the crowd for the right position. It just takes time, determination, and perseverance.

Although I’m obligated to complete another round of sifting through job postings tomorrow, I think I might take a step back from the Internet over the weekend. I deserve a weekend away from it all. Sure, there won’t be any lovely beach excursions in my near future, but I certainly could use a little less electronic glow and a little more inner glow. Sunshine is optional — I’m not entirely certain the weather would cooperate with any outdoor plans.

Share
Posted on

Mindful Monday: Super Late

I’m well aware of the fact that I missed my Foodie Friday post, even though I had essentially come up with a couple of ideas to use for that post on Wednesday. No, I wasn’t going to regale you with a recipe and oodles of pictures. Actually I had planned on discussing season six of the Next Food Network Star (because DirecTV would/ will be slapping me with hefty penalties if I cancel any time in the near future, so it’s best to think of this as a short-term unemployment). I was going to toss in a picture or two of the extra special buns I made for dinner — I added a pinch of garlic, some sesame seeds, and some poppy seeds to the dough. (I had the seeds on hand from better times.) But some times even thinking ahead doesn’t always result in meeting goals, especially when a severe sleep deficit takes over as baby teeth make their seemingly excruciating exit from the gum line. Especially when life’s circumstances overwhelm the mind and soul and shove you into a rut. Especially when sometimes the only free moments entail grabbing a cup of water, hitting the bathroom, and maybe compulsively checking email for any signs of a “bite.” I’m pretty sure the last straw for me has been the lack of response from my one “sure fire fall back.” It’s rather disheartening to say the least, and downright soul crushing to say the most. I have no hard feelings against them, though, it’s just changes plans a bit.

I’m well aware of the fact that it looks like I’m prattling on with excuses for not meeting my schedule guidelines. To be honest? The schedule, while the days seem fine, doesn’t seem to hold up in terms of the time of day I post. The number of twitter users who find their way to my blog generally stays at zero regardless of what time I schedule my posts. The time is irrelevant to when facebook picks up my feed — the regulars will go through their feed and click the link regardless of what time my post actually hit their feed. So while another blog claimed 10am to 2pm was “prime time” for posting, I don’t necessarily think that matters. For my own terms, as long as I get that post out before midnight, it’s on time. I know my regulars are going to find their way here every time I post no matter what.

I’ve recently become more mindful of a marked change in my perspective on things in life. I realized that some sudden, unexpected events in life have given my incite into how my perspective changed over time, how I had become hardened to a lot of things, and how I had seemingly lost that spark I once had several years back. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to realize that there were various factors contributing to that hardened mindset. While I can’t say that I’ve completely done a 180, I’d say having the epiphany was a big step in the right direction. Even my husband has made the observation that I’m recovering that more optimistic than not outlook I once had. That sense of hope and determination I once had. And while I doubt the shine has fully returned, I think he’d tell me I never lost that in the first place — but he’s a biased party whose opinion is painted by love.

For some people, it’s all about keeping your eyes on the prize, but I have to say I’ve learned that it’s not the necessarily the best way of living life. At the start of this year, I might have thought so, but not after realizing that keeping your eyes on the prize means you’re not stopping to look at the scenery along your path. You do need to think more about the journey and less about the destination at times. Really, I’ve found that planning too far in advance can result in disappointment — sometimes serious disappointment. It’s all well and good to have some guidelines, but you’ve got to be a little more flexible to go with the flow. Yes, planning is wonderful, but contingency planning is even better. Taking the time to become a better person to better handle whatever obstacles land in your path is prudent. It’s not about getting past obstacles, it’s about how you handle them. The way we handle different circumstances speaks leaps and bounds about our character. I for one never want to be that person blaming the waitress for the cook’s mistake or worse, my bad day. I don’t want to be that person who people perceive as an arrogant, condescending cad. In the same regard, I don’t want to be viewed as the doormat — I had enough of that in middle and high school.

I can’t say I’m changing, but I can say that I’m listening. I’m paying attention. I’m determining what move to make next, what changes to implement. I looking at the big picture, I’m absorbing my surroundings and the lessons, and hopefully I can learn to relinquish some desire for control and relax a little bit more. After all, in this moment life isn’t as bad as it might seem.

Share
Posted on

Mindful Monday: Where Does Time Go?

As you’ll recall, last week I embarked on a journey to determine where all my time is going. Using the spreadsheet linked by TheMindfulist.com, I logged how each half hour block of time was spent during the week. The results — while predictable based on what I already knew — were a very clear indication that I’m not using my time to the best of my abilities. In fact, I’m currently not utilizing my time as best as I could. Here’s just a short list of the things I took note of during the week:

  • I don’t get enough sleep. While this can be directly contributed to the fact that my nine-month-old is teething, I’m still not making the most of the baby’s down time by catching some down time myself.
  • I’m spending too much time on the couch with my laptop in the hopes that a great new job will surface, a response will come through my inbox, or that I’ll get something productive done. The results have been the same each day — prospects are slim, and I end up needing to refluff the couch cushions daily.
  • I’m not spending enough time taking care of myself — diet, exercise, quiet time, outside time. Of course, the outside time has been minimized due to the severe heat wave that we have been experiencing. If the weather forecast says to avoid prolonged exposure, you can bet I’m not going to subject myself or my family to 10+ UV radiation, 95+ degree heat, and 100+ degree heat indexes.

Today I will be setting aside some time to create a plan for the week. I’m not going to miss an opportunity if I take a break from the internet job search for one day — it will be there when I come back. It’s not going to get filled in the 24 hours that I’m oblivious to its existence. I need to sleep, I need to move around, I need to sit quietly without an electronic item in my lap, and I need to get down on the floor and play.

Share
Posted on

Mindful Monday (August 2nd)

As I was showering this evening, I lost the time between squeezing the shampoo into the palm of my hand and exfoliating my skin. Did I wash my hair? I thought to myself. I couldn’t remember the process of lathering my hair, massaging the shampoo into my scalp to clean away any impurities. I couldn’t remember rinsing the shampoo down the drain — I couldn’t. What had I been doing as I was washing my hair? I was realizing that it’s been an entire month since this impromptu vacation began. I was recalling the emotions, recalling how I felt the moment I was given the bad news. As I was grabbing my facial scrub, I shook myself out of that and reminded myself to just let it go. It’s over, it’s done with, there’s no point to giving that moment in my life further attention. And somehow, that crept back into my mind and stole a few moments from me yet again. It’s amazing how one’s habits are so deeply ingrained. It’s been about seven months since I began my quest to become more mindful, and — while I could do better in regards to being present in the moment — I’ve made serious strides to stay mindful and truly appreciate every moment.

That being said, I intend to begin tracking my time during the upcoming week. Really, where is it all going? Some days, I feel that I am squandering my talents and could be doing more to make this upheaval work in my favor. Other days, I feel I’m giving it my all and doing my absolute best. I guess it just depends on how the day goes. So this week I’ll be tracking everything I do for every hour. Check back next Monday to see how I did.

Share