I've been cleaning. A lot. Let me start over. I've been on a self-help kick lately, and cleaning has been a random side effect. Texas was a firecracker under my butt to make a new start, New Years kept the flame lit, and I've been turning to self-help to turn up the heat. Starting anew and staying motivated takes WORK people. My angle: affirmations. Yep. If you're like me, you associate affirmations with Annette Bening in American Beauty - being recited in the mirror every morning by a super-stressed suburban mom with short perky hair and a strained grin, just before she mainlines her morning cup of coffee. I don't even remember if she did that in the movie, it may just be something I thought that character WOULD do. In any case, that's me now. Except for all the negative parts. Because I have to tell you, they're working and I feel great.
I am currently finding inspiration in two great books: Simple Abundance: A Day Book of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Brethnach, and Wealthy Spirit: Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction by Chellie Campbell. Today my new BFF Ms. Campbell talked about how we overlook the bounty in our lives in our never ending quest for more. She says we do that because we want praise, and cute jeans and a classy haircut get us there. I'm paraphrasing. She's far more eloquent, but that's the jist. She's right, of course. We covet things that will make us shine. It got me thinking, that I do the same thing with ME, my self, WHO I am. Get it? I'm a praise seeker, and I seek it not only through things, but through WHO I AM. I want people to say "Wow, cute jeans" AND "OMG you are so SMART and WITTY!" I covet it like I covet a pair of new Frye boots, which is to say, like Gollum covets the ring.
Which leads me to my Mission Statement. Chellie reminded me that the search for praise causes us to overlook the outer abundance we already enjoy. I'd add that it also causes us to overlook the inner abundance as well. I find myself coveting characteristics that aren't necessarily mine, but they look really good on other people and I want them. I want that woman's way with words. I want that mom's parenting skills. I want that artist's creativity. Ummmmm. What about ME? I forgot I have some things going for me as well. In my crazed attempt to adopt every body else's attributes, I've let mine to collect dust. It's so bad that at this point, I'm not even certain what they are. I guess that's something to figure out. Add it in there with all the other resolutions I've undertaken this year. self-help is a bitch.
I didn't have this whole "inner abundance" revelation out of the blue today. It actually came about after I stumbled on a rambling note I'd written in my last days working for the state. I had resolved to quit, but wasn't quite out the door. This blog was on the "to do as soon as I'm out the door" list, and I was apparently sitting in my office mentally composing my first post. I didn't use it because I probably couldn't find it, but here it is, word for word. It has a lot to do with who the hell I am and who the hell I'm really not. Which says a lot about what this blog should be and what it shouldn't be. From here on out there will be moderately bad language, classless rants, and hopefully more often, sunshine and rainbows. I hope you enjoy it.
"I'm a lot of things. I'm a mother, a hippie, an intellectual, a hick, and iconoclast, and a little bit boy crazy. I love country music, top 40, punk, reggae, and the blues. If it moves me and makes my gut tingle, I love it. I forgive myself spelling and grammar errors that I'd have anybody else strung up for, so don't even call me out on them. Some who know me say I'm totally unmoored, ungrounded, and manic. Others who know me remark on my meditative, calm nature. Both groups know me equally well. I'm a mish mash of societal and familial influences all processed through my own unique and stubborn brain to be regurgitated back into the world as just ME.
I'm not alone in my contrasts. I have friends. We girls talk. We're random. So very, very random are we not ladies? We are studies in contradiction. Many of us fight it. Afraid that if people saw how far we sway from point to point on a daily, perhaps even hourly or minute-ly basis that we'd surely lose all credibility and the world would recoil in horror or perhaps worse, slap stereotyped labels on our foreheads, citing hormones, menstruation, and all things female for our unpredictability.
One particularly eloquent friend posed this conundrum: "Can I get drunk at a metal show one night then wake to swaddle my children in organic cloth diapers and compost my breakfast?" Can the freaky party girl and crunchy earth mama coexist without apologizing for each other? Can we actually BE ladies on the streets and whores between the sheets? We all wonder. The answer? Hell, I think so. I mean, why not?
As I get older, the confusion is gettin older and this blog is about me saying "Fuck all. I am who I am at whatever moment you care to ask." It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it doesn't need to. I fail - a lot. I kick ass - also a lot.
Most recently I quit a very decent job with decent pay and decent benefits and a decent retirement plan. I told Suzy Orman to get bent and withdrew my retirement funds so I can stay home with my kids while they are still small. Because newsflash, babies don't grow little. I love my kids enough to give them my retirement, which may have been secure, but it would have been bitter and angry at the rate I was going, because one thing I'm NOT? A good employee. A lover of offices and accruing vacation and spending scant hours with my kids, wishing they'd shut up because mommy's head hurts 'cause her job sucks. I thought I was a good employee for many years, at least I thought I should be, was supposed to be. Why else did I go to college...twice? But fuck it. It just isn't me.
I'm married to the most amazing human on earth, who said "Okay" when I announced for the third time this year that I'm quitting my job. This time he was serious, which was good, because so was I. Now I'm going to go forth and live in the world honestly, my boys at my side. I'll probably make a big ass mess and screw a lot of stuff up. But I'll porbably also a kick a lot of ass as well. And I'll talk about it all here.
