Friday Inspiration – Do All the Things!

I’m not big on asking for things. Or for help.

Short of the times that I had car troubles in the middle of nowhere and found myself putting on my poor, hopeless girl voice to score a free tire or tow, I was always very determined to get it done myself.

Even after I got married, I had a habit of taking things on without asking for help. Simple things, like carrying the groceries up to our third floor apartment (in one trip, of course), or the more difficult, like coordinating 4 of the 5 moves we made since relocating to Florida.

Post child, I still am not inclined to ask for help. But I am slowly becoming more willing to accept it.

Why?

Before the little person came along, I could exhaust myself and collapse in a heap at the end of the day and it didn’t matter. But now, I need to be a fully functioning human being 24/7. What if the kid is up sick all night? Or if he needs extra attention during the day, pushing chores (or writing) off until later? Or someone scary breaks into the house in the middle of the night and I have to kick them in the face, grab the kid, and jump out a window? (Yes, those are the thoughts that go through my head every time I hear something at night.)

Knowing that someone else is relying on me allows me to begin to accept help from others. I won’t go so far as to say that it allows me to rely on others (I’m not good at that) but it is a step in the right direction.

Accepting help, even in small things, is not a weakness. It takes strength to believe that you are worth their time and effort. And it takes strength to relinquish control.

If you are anything like me, remember, there are probably people in your life that are more than happy to lighten your load from time to time. It doesn’t hurt to let them.

It may even free up some time to things you enjoy.

Friday Inspiration – It’s Okay to Stink

I have a great many interests. Writing, obviously, is one of them.

But there are others. I love music. I love art; drawing, painting, sculpting. I like to do crafty things with beautiful skeins of yarn and thread and fabric. When I have time, I read voraciously, across many genres.

Something I’ve realized about myself over the years is that I hold back from doing things I enjoy. It’s not as if I deprive myself of these things for some greater cause. The reason, if I’m being honest, is more tied to my ego than anything else.

I hold back from doing things in which I may not excel. I am afraid not of failure, but of stinking.

Maybe it’s a product of a society that teaches us to be the best at everything we do. A society that holds out being rich and famous as the ultimate goal.

Or maybe it’s just my own faulty ego, beating me into submission whenever I get the urge to do something that doesn’t flow from my fingertips with ease.

Whatever the reason behind it, I’ve decided to stop letting feelings of inadequacy prevent me from exploring creatively. I’m going to finish writing projects and do something with them, instead of stalling out whenever I read something so amazing I feel like I can’t possibly compare.

I’m going to draw in my sketchbook with Napolean Dynamite-like confidence, even though my skills haven’t really progressed past my last art class in the fifth grade.

I am going to knit more scarves, and someday venture out into blanket territory. I am going to sew the most crooked misshapen quilt you’ve ever laid eyes upon.

I am going to teach myself four basic chords on the guitar, and play popular hits with wild abandon. And yes, I will sing along, no matter how out of tune I may be. (I’ll just be sure not to butt-dial anyone when doing it.)

There is probably something that you would enjoy doing, if you allowed yourself to be medicore, or even bad at it. I say, stink it up, my friends!

Don’t let you get in the way of you.

 

 

Friday Inspiration – Working Away the Worry

I don’t say too much about it, but my life has been under a considerable amount of stress over the last two years.

It began when the company employing my husband shut down it’s office here, leaving him jobless. This job loss happened just as we introduced our little guy into the world.

Stressful? Yes. But I still had a job, one I could was doing from a remote office (i.e. home) which meant no need for pumping, daycare, or any of those things that would no doubt stress me out in the early months of the little guy’s life.

Then, a few months later during the last week of December, I got a call informing me that I wouldn’t have a job to come back to.

More stress.

Fortunately, both my husband and I had lived fairly simply when compared to our collective incomes, so we did have some savings. That along with our unemployment helped us survive for a while.

After a year and a half of searching, my husband found a contract position. It paid less than we needed to pay all of our bills, but it was something. At a certain point, we began the process of seeking help from our mortgage holder – which would be an entire series of posts in itself.

Much more stress.

For the past year or so, we’ve been living in a limbo-like state, unsure if we would continue to have a roof over our head. The unemployment dwindled and as I continued to stare at ways of bringing in income that didn’t involve spending all of it on daycare, I started to let the stress eat at me.

I started to worry.

A lot. A few weeks ago, I kinda freaked out a little. The kind of freaking out where someone (in this case, my poor husband) says something and for no reason, you just start crying.

Nothing in our situation had really changed. I just hit a point where I allowed it all to build to a point of frustration that I let myself worry.

We talked. And prayed. And then I woke up and decided I needed to stop worrying.

And I cleaned.

Like, dusted places no one has ever or will ever see in my house.

Maybe it was the calm of a clean home. Maybe it was the ability to control some form of chaos in my life. Maybe it was because for the first time in months, I felt like I had tons of energy. Whatever it was, I felt better.

I was enjoying cleaning my house and wasn’t giving a thought to everything else going on.

And then we got some potentially good news. (I’ll share later)

I share all of this because I know that a lot of people have gone through an extra amount of stress these last few years. We can’t always help but have some sort of stress in our lives. But we can work at the worrying. I won’t sit here and say I’ll never worry again, but as much as I can help it, I’ll do my best not to focus on things I can’t control.

And maybe spend that energy on things that I can.

May your weekends be filled with less worry and more dusting.

Gimme a Break

Yesterday I returned from a 4 day vacation with my family on the beach.  It was a great opportunity to relax and spend time with my parents, a few of my siblings, their spouses, and of course, my husband and kid.

The first day out, I was sitting in a shallow spot of the Gulf, enjoying the calm waters, running my hands under the sand.  Nature’s spa treatment.

While sitting in the water relaxing, I ran my fingers through the sand beneath me and felt something.  I pulled it out of the water and there it was.  My first ever sand dollar!   In all my years of going to the beach, I’ve always wanted to find a sand dollar, but I’ve never found so much as a piece of one.

I was feeling pretty excited, declaring this the “Best beach trip EVER!” repeatedly.  Shortly after, walking out into slightly deeper water, I felt something beneath my feet.  Lots and lots of somethings.  We had stumbled on to a bed (a huge bed) of LIVE sand dollars.  They were everywhere.  My dad, husband, and I stood there, picking them up with our feet* and checking them out.

Over the next few days, while simply sitting in the water I found tons of sand dollars (dead and alive), conch shells, and even disturbed a sleeping horseshoe crab**.

I forgot my camera, so iPhone photos are all I have.

Treat Yo'self.

It is really exciting to find something when you aren’t looking for it; it makes it that much more surprising.  Not only did I find pretty things to bring back from our little trip, but I came up with some new ideas for my NaNoWriMo novel while I was relaxing.  I wasn’t trying to plot or think about a scene or anything like that.  It just popped up in my mind while I was relaxing.

When prepping for something like NaNo, I hear a lot of people upping word counts and working furiously to prepare.  So, to all of you pushing yourself to the limit, don’t forget to give your mind (and body) a little breather.  Your brain may reward you with something unexpected.

*If you have never handled live sand dollars for a period of time, let it be known, they will die your skin orange.

**Upon unintentionally unearthing the horseshoe crab, I discovered my father moves just as swiftly as his younger years when something crawls across his foot.

Friday Inspiration – Be the Bird

I’ve been awake since before five.

I can’t explain why my two year old feels the need on occasion to wake up and discuss the alphabet and the many benefits of eating grapes before the sunrise.

So, here I sit, contemplating the effort it would take to make some coffee and toast.

At which point I remember I am out of bread.

While these are the sort of things that contribute to a bad start to the day, I’m determined to look at it as an opportunity to get things done.  In other words, instead of spending the day cranky, I’m making the choice to be happy.

There are some horrible things in life that are worth being upset over.  Things that truly are fully consuming and require a lot of effort and support to recover from.  A good percentage of the time, most of us aren’t dealing with the truly horrible.  We might feel like we are, but in reality, it can come down to our attitude towards what we are dealing with.

So, make the choice to be happy.  If things aren’t going your way, find the positive. Sometimes it is as simple as the choice to smile rather than scowl.  Be the bird.

Yesterday, I was given a blog award by two different bloggers, Girl Parker and Jennifer of Hunting Sea Glass With Wolves.  Rather than rattle off ten more things about me, I thought I would share some things that made me smile this morning, in an effort to get everyone’s weekend off to a happy start.

Thanks for the awards ladies!

Hee.

Geek humor.

True story.

This made me laugh harder than I care to admit.

Imagine walking up to that.

Ahem.

Friday Inspiration

In the fourth grade, our teacher would spend a portion of every afternoon reading from one of her favorite books.  Some kids fell asleep.  Some kids doodled.  But some of us sat there and imagined ourselves in the story.

Or at least I did.

This same teacher introduced me to one of my favorite authors, Roald Dahl.  She read us Matilda, and I was hooked.

Many years later, when I was teaching, I passed my love of all things Dahl down to the kids at my school.  If you’ve never read any of his books, go to the library (or bookstore) now and read some.  If you are already familiar, read his accounts of childhood, which will explain a lot about the inspiration for his stories.

In honor of my love for Dahl, I bring you today’s thought:

There is a great deal of wisdom in Dahl’s books, perhaps one of the reasons I love them so. In a society that puts such a strong emphasis on outward appearance, I find this one especially beautiful.

Too many of us forget that it isn’t all about the external.  That even if we say nice things, it’s equally important to be thinking nice things, too.

Sometimes it’s hard to do.  We are bombarded by horrible images and stories throughout our day via the news or even unfortunate interactions with people around us.  Then, we get home and plop in front of the television, where the choices there may be no better.

So, this weekend, take a little time to fill your head with something good. And then dwell on those thoughts.  I guarantee you’ll feel better.

No one will even notice that impossibly long hair growing out of your chin.

And if that doesn’t motivate you enough…

It's true. I can hear them scream.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

 

Currently Listening to:  Oswald on the TV in the background