Posts (page 2)

"Well he has a few quirks, but I'm going to just charge that up to youth. Once he grows up a little bit, that won't be a problem anymore."

In this society, where we have so many self help tools available to us across many communication channels, I am amazed that people are still falling for the assumption that one person can modify the behavior of another.

I'm not talking about parents with children. That's a parental responsibility (one that people drop the ball on, too). I'm talking adult, "loving" relationships.

Reasonably intelligent people, in their quest to be something other than single, go off in search of companionship with a rough list of likes and dislikes. As they meet others, interact and share time, they begin to reorganize the priority of those wishes and wants as their impatience to get something going gets the better of them. Suddenly, that "chewing with the mouth open" at six months in searching becomes far more tolerable than it was three months ago.

Relationships are about compromise, but they are also about understanding your deal breakers. The things you know deeply affect your ability to be happy and healthy in a relationship with another human being. We have obvious ones like, "I do not ever wish to be hit in the head with a skillet." But when the infractions are a bit less obvious, what happens to our ability to determine what we really can and cannot handle in intimate relationships?

That temper tantrum bit she does when you don't agree to her terms? Remember when it was "kinda cute in an annoying way?" Now it's a major source of discord as you avoid her and the topics most passionate to her in order to keep the peace. And your lesson planning in how NOT to act like a spoiled brat by demonstrating patience, compassion and a willingness to compromise has proven largely...ineffective.

His inability to be emotionally available when you are upset or confused or something other than happy? Remember when it was because he had "a bad breakup" and you were going to show him what it was like to be loved so he could open up? Well you've turned yourself inside out to tend to his emotional and physical needs in an effort to bring him out of his shell and he seems to not only remain unavailable but now he's telling you that you smother him. Ouch.

People grow and evolve in many ways. We don't get to pick and choose how or when or even if they grow at all. It is simply, not up to us. The only thing we can control is selecting the relationships, personal attributes and characteristics that best meet our core emotional, intellectual and physical needs. All of them. Not just physical. I repeat....NOT.JUST.PHYSICAL.

There will always be conflict in relationships. The science of personality is far too complex to override that simple truth. It's not about how you are alike. It's not about how you are different. It's about what you are willing to give and accept NOW, not a year from now when you've grown tired of your science experiment in changing your partner into the person you wished they could be. Quirks become quandaries faster than you can say: Dr. Phil.

How over it you ask?

I'm so over it I'm watching a B-movie called Vegas Vampire - and I'm not even snarking or linking to it. Don't ask. Don't search for it either, you will most assuredly think less of me.

There is SO much going on in my world right now. More than I've told you...more than I've told the people I interact with intermittently throughout a never-ending string of busy days. I've been trying to make the most of it, find the good, embrace the uphill battles and all that good stuff - but I finally reached that point where I climb the stairway to heaven, grip your supreme being of choice and scream, "Enough already with the motherfonging life lessons/curve balls/murphys law nonsense, pick another pet project!!"

Random thoughts.

Is it just me or has 2009 been a total clusterfuck? Famous folks (the good, the bad and the undecided) are dropping like flies. I keep hearing the recession is lifting but someone failed to alert my checking account. The political climate and by extension the social climate of this country is frightening and I live in one of the most backward regions of the world - for reasons that I spend nearly every moment of my life kicking myself over. It's just one piece of bad news after another. I complain about tough years but this one has been especially appalling.

Do people ever realize how superficial they sound when they keep repeating "you're gonna be fine?" I know I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, but I do understand the law of averages. I know things will level out and I'm going to be okay - even better than that. But that is not NOW. In this moment, when I'm doing something I don't typically do - ask for help. If that's the best you have to offer when I'm grieving or ranting or bitching - better you just not inquire. Your reply indicates just how engaged you are in the discussion. Let me be clear. Not inquiring doesn't hurt my feelings. Demonstrating your total disinterest or detachment once you've directly inquired, does. If you're not up for an exchange, pick another sandbox because this one is littered with sharp objects. Token Annie phrases of the sun coming out tomorrow ain't working for me at the moment. How's that for keeping it real?

Never in my life have I ever felt so...whiny. I'm the first born to a military Dad. There was a zero-tolerance for whining in our household. Problems came, you solved them or went about piecing together makeshift plans until solutions could be designed. I didn't permit it in myself and rather than allow you to stay too mired in yours, I'd try to come up with a nugget or two to help you gain some momentum. I have nothing right now. The solution shop is closed. My inner nurturer has apparently recharging batteries. Perhaps that is one of the things I'm meant to learn in this process...wait a minute...

*considers climbing said stairway to heaven and consulting great orb in the sky*

That may just be one of the things this series of unfortunate events is trying very loudly to teach me. Balance. Have balance. In your relationships, give based on what is given and ensure that people make an attempt to provide what you are willing to. If not, get.out.

I did have an interesting conversation today with someone who advised me that you must be mindful of balance. If you know someone is ill equipped to support you, don't ask them to hold your damned crutches. If people are sometimes insensitive when you most require sensitivity? Choose wisely. If people are sometimes strictly logical when you most require ethereal tenderness? Choose wisely. Managing your stress can sometimes be as simple as selecting the resources most apt to bring you peace. Choose wisely.

hmmm...

Eureka?

By the way...I dedicate this post and buckets of love to JP. I thank you so very much. You know why. I don't have many words for the world right now...but these that I have mustered - they are for you.  

Sometimes I think about writing a long letter and leaving it for folks, with no forwarding address. In it would contain sincere promises that I will check in from time to time to ensure all is mostly well. A promise I would keep. There would be last vestiges of support along with invisible tissues to wipe tears and tiny little envelopes to collect secrets no one wants to share with anyone but me. I would summon up any energy stored and infuse it into each of the pages until the letter was bloated with love. Then I would seal it with the request that no effort be made to find me.

Why? That is the only way I will ever know what it is like to actually, live a life that has anything to do with me as opposed to what others need me to be.

It's a bit like those oxygen masks on an airplane. The instructions clearly indicate that you should put your mask on, before assisting the person beside you. It makes sense on the plane...why is it I always forget this rule in life?

It is hard not to be bitter. The people who depend on me most to be there for them don't understand that my hovering state of irritation is not me being unreasonable or nitpicky or even depressed. It is simply the reaction to being stifled. Just a little. Everyday. Slowly smothered to death with responsibilities or circumstances that are not mine to suffer. And never should have been.

Nothing is as I hoped it might be when I summoned up the courage to look tear filled eyes in their collective faces five years ago and finally turn in my badge as zookeeper in an effort to find a life of my own. I pleaded with people to understand that I had to do this. For reasons I couldn't explain not because it's complicated, but mostly because the hardest thing in the world to do is to tell people who love you that they're also bringing out the very worst in you. I packed up, moved away and thought I would find my freedom.

For awhile, I did. And then I found heartache. Oddly enough, I found that I was the one now clinging to someone for life. Someone who had enough angry water to fight all on his own. I found that nothing really is as it seems, even perfect happy endings you want desperately to come true. And then I found that within all of us is a little bit extra to go on when you think you can't. I found some passion stored away in me. And with passion there is promise.

I left a window cracked when I left that space and town years ago. And slowly, over time...all the dramas, traumas and woes found their way back to me. Slowly. Deceptively positioning themselves as something different and promising to understand what and who I was. And slowly, I let that window be opened. And now I sit, having all the things I desperately needed to be away from to breathe...right back in my face. In and around my energy. Pulling. Demanding. Suggesting. Altering. Tailoring in their attempt to make this new space I fought so hard for, into the same comfortable slow death trap I narrowly avoided.

I know it's the same because that heaviness is back. A sense of something better, is gone. A belief that this is all there is, remains. And now I begin to think...perhaps that's all there was. Perhaps all I was put here to do was take care of them, comfort them and keep them company through their trials until...well, until it's all done.

And then I think again of that dream. Delivering that letter and then slipping off into the night hoping that they'll forgive me and understand. In a way, we want the very same things. They want me, for their very survival. Problem is...I needed me first.

The only person I was ever required to save in this life, was and has been, me.

Just because.

The funny thing about turning corners is how you don't always realize you've turned them until you're on the next block.

Progress isn't always going to come equipped with flashing lights, flares and a warning beep. In fact, many times it is so inconspicuous that you're inclined to miss it entirely. I think that's because it happens in careful little increments. Can you imagine how overwhelmed we would be if it didn't? Little pieces shift in your life. Sometimes big pieces shift. Many times the only choice we have, is choosing how we opt to handle or embrace the adversity. That's where you can mark your progress, once you've stopped to actually notice it.

My life looks so completely different from how I thought it would look when I daydreamed about it 15 or so years ago. I am not "happily married" and working on child number whatever. But then...I'm not sure that dream ever really felt tangible to me. I'm also not a sports journalist interviewing professional basketball players in the midst of the playoffs and living in a loft on the Upper East Side. I'm not a perfect size 8 after totally transforming myself from a chubby teen to a super model.

My point is...all the things I thought would matter so much to me...simply don't. Sure, I'd like to have a mate. I would love to have a child. But I realize I don't want those things at the cost of my own preparedness. The need to be "happily married" became the need to truly have a life partner that sees me, embraces me, loves me and challenges me. The need to have children became the need to understand what nurturing is and isn't.The need to become a sports journalist became the need the find effective, creative and meaningful ways to communicate - artistically, spiritually, literally. The need to be a perfect size 8...became the need to see myself and love myself in all shapes and sizes.The need to be what other people would deem as successful became my personal quest to identify my personal happiness.

I couldn't have handled the twists and turns of today, ten years ago. At the ripe old age of 26, I was convinced I had a handle on who I was. Crisis would have hit and I would have folded under the weight of my own panic. That's not to say I wouldn't have recovered eventually...but I am acknowledging for a brief moment, the things I finally seem to truly understand:

• Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. It is also one of the hardest things to do.
• There is nothing to be gained in suppressing your truest self. Ever. Progress comes from total freedom.
• Let the current carry you. Fighting only makes bigger waves carrying the things you seek further from you.
• The first thing isn't always the best thing.

Better to eat the elephant in small, measured bites.

Now it seems, we're really getting somewhere.

It's all about choice. Today I am embracing the idea that going into transition with a grin will make for a smoother trip.

Yesterday, my dear friend Derrick asked a question that I've been battling with in stages for the past six years.

In a discussion on religion and faith, I told Derrick that I considered myself more spiritual than religious. It's been the safer answer for me coming from a family that has been Christian and remains so. Not because I question if there is a God. I've actually got a pretty firm understanding of my beliefs in that regard. I am not an atheist. I don't judge those who are, but for me, living without the belief that there is a divine meaning and order to my existence would suck the wind out of my writing, my art and all the places my mind travels while I am still.

I do believe in God. More specifically, I believe in a divine influence and a malevolent one. As a child growing up with Episcopalian & Baptist parents while attending a Catholic school, I got more Jesus than you could shake a stick at. And elements of each were unspeakably beautiful to me. Wandering the mysterious, solemn halls of the sisters convent at Cecilian Academy back in Philadelphia, I learned restraint. I understood charity. I learned fear. I was immersed in tradition and the overwhelming sensation of being in the presence of something bigger than all of us.

In the quiet of my mother's childhood Episcopalian church as a very little girl, I fell in love with a Pastor I called, "Church." And years later I still adore that Pastor with all my heart and feel a twinge of anxiety when I face the fact that I am no longer willing to accept everything that falls from his lips as infallibly correct.

In my Grandmother's home, in her serene grace and quiet reverence, I learned forgiveness, tolerance and endurance.

So how do I find myself today looking back on the dogma of all those subsets of the Christian faith and embracing a term that is a little more nebulous than the more stringent "religious?"

Religion = Church. And let's be clear. I don't have any issues with God. I do, however, have issues with organized religion. Lots of them. Too many of them for me to include in a solitary post. But even as a child, the one thing that stood out to me in bible study, in mass, in christian summer camp and in the pew...was this book, our Bible, no matter the version, was God's word interpreted by the very fallible, the very flawed and the very power starved human. How many times have we all "misperceived" something in the favor of our preferences? Our needs? Our desires? Our biases?

When I was 16, my Uncle committed suicide. He had just entered the full blown stage of AIDS. And he was a gay male with a homophobic father. While my mother received the news, I was sitting on the couch in the livingroom, listening to her wails of heartache echoing down from the bedroom above my head. My grandfather entered the house about twenty minutes later, sat beside me and took my hand. I've always been an extremely private mourner and even with that, I have an odd acceptance of death - even when it is horrific and unexpected. Still, I was shaken and trying to process what came next all while wanting desperately to go to my mother and console her. My grandfather looked me over, reserved and solemn as he asked me if I was okay. I nodded.

My grandfather then patted my hand and remarked, "I know it's upsetting to you, but you know your Uncle has gone to hell, right?"

I still hear it in my ears today. And it still sounds as wrong as it did then. I didn't answer him in that moment and though I adored my grandfather for all that he was, I still was well aware of all he was not. To my grandfather, my Uncle was going to hell for three reasons. He was a gay man, he was a practicing Buddhist and he had ended his life. All sins, according to what my grandfather learned. All sins, according to his religion. That moment reminded me of all the other moments when the topic of God felt religious...but not at all spiritual.

Spirituality = Aspiring to Enlightenment. In a variety of beliefs, I see the themes of divinity that speak to me. The notion of Gaia. Of an earthen mother who loves us, nurtures us and requires in return only our care for this gifts she has bestowed. I adore the notion of Earth as a single, living organism. The concept of karma as deeds that all warrant a subsequent action based on the intention of the originating act. I love conceptional representations of faith that do not use emotional manipulation, fear or shame to drive positive behavior. I don't want to be "good" because I'm going to go to hell if I don't. I don't want to give, to avoid being frowned upon by those I respect.  I don't seek forgiveness with hopes I will collect golden crowns in heaven. I want only to live my life with a purpose that speaks to love, light and goodness because it feels better than nursing anger or living in darkness.

There is no big bad wolf with spirituality - no threat beyond the repurcussions of your own actions and the understanding that in all things there is balance.  There is only the raw ugliness of the human spirit that we see everyday in the face of war, greed and even apathy. Religion uses fear to control, largely because it fails to have faith in its own kind. It suspects what it asks of us is simply too much (or too ridiculous) for us to possibly embrace, so we are instead ruled by fear, fire and brimstone. Religion is the scarecrow to our murder.

I celebrate the neopaganistic appreciation for the changing of the seasons and the transitions they bring all of us. I love the idea of life and spirit being alive in the trees, in every blooming flower. I love frankincense and sage and smudging myself and my home to cleanse my spiritual palate and prepare me for meditation.  I love the deep, hynotising patience of the Hindus, the reverence to gods feels similar to the notion of saints. I love the tenets of the Buddhist faith and it's commitment to spiritual evolution.

I love spirituality. And I consider myself to be deeply spiritual. But religious?

I'm afraid not.  

 
 

This weekend, I was flying on air. I had an extremely productive day in the studio, throwing mugs (on the wheel not at people's heads) and ramping up to share the exciting new website with friends and family). The director of the gallery suggested it was time to start featuring some of my work in the gallery. This would be the equivalent of Ghandi coming down from the heavens and telling you that you are officially enlightened.

I came home and basked in the glow with my friends and loved ones and ended what was a good weekend on a very bright note.

I woke up on Monday and decided to work from a cafe downtown. With my sister in tow, we headed downtown on a sunny Austin Monday morning and set up shop. Somewhere around 12pm, I started getting a real sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hate that feeling because it brings on malaise and I know something is coming but I'm not sure from which direction. I told her I needed to get out of there and we packed up and headed back to my place.

When I logged in again to my work server, there was the delivery of that foreboding. An email from my boss saying that despite all of his efforts to juggle the budget, he had no choice but to....

...and you know how the rest of that goes, in these economic times.

I've never been in the position to have to seek employment. I do not say this with any ego attached. I'm just sharing the realization. Jobs have always come to me, luring and inviting me to step up to a greater challenge. Just at the right time when I might be open to a new horizon. This was the first time I was pretty comfortable with the challenges and rewards of this position when the 'change' came.

So now, all the career coaching and advisement I've offered to others turns to me. Now it is my time to face some fears, challenge myself and find the gift. Oddly enough, I know there is one. In fact, I'm fairly sure there are several.

In the meantime, I've got a few projects I can sink my teeth into. And, I'm open to new projects as well. So if you know someone looking for a marketing/communications consultant with a ridiculously cute pitbull and a penchant for playing in the dirt...you know where to send them.

Oh and the website? Stay tuned for more details on that. I dare not attach it to this post. However, if you are interested in learning more about sibbotery (my pottery adventure)...feel free to add me on twitter.

I just completed about 6 more of these mugs and will be making quite a few more. To view this and other new items, check out the etsy page. Cheers!