Dora-kitty

I know, it’s been a while since I posted. I tend to forget, ’cause I don’t really want to be writing a boring Christmas letter in blog form!

So we’ll see how the next year pans out here at Toad Hall…

I’m taking Kelly Kilmer’s “Life Made by Hand” art journaling class this year, and have promised to use this blog to post the results. SO you’re getting stuck with a new art blog. We’ll see what happens. The art journaling class is designed to dig into self as well as developing design and art techniques, so I’m hoping to get a double-whammy from it.

My last post was about my day job getting stressful. It culminated in a layoff at the beginning of December. The day after Dora-cat was in the Emergency Vet being diagnosed and treated for kidney failure. I’ve spent the last few weeks nursing her, thinking a lot about where I want to be in the next year, and recovering from a cold I’ve been suffering with as well. Dora is doing much better, thank you, and I should be soon.

I’m not planning on going back to work for Corporate America any time soon, though this doesn’t mean I won’t at some point. Right now, I’m working on getting the needlework business up and running, and I may take contract writing on here and there.

Dad got a prescription from his doctor to keep a cat in his small apartment, and he picked up “Martini” today.  Cheri has agreed to take the cat if something happens to Dad, so she and Kiddo went off with him the other day to pick out his chosen kitty. He should be home soon, and he was very excited when he went off to the adoption agency to pick up his new friend. I think this should help him immensely.

Which all leads to: I’m excited about the New Year. I hope you are, too.

Happy New Year everyone!

If I own my own sovereignty, then I also own my own actions, choices, and the results thereof. And while acknowledging that other people’s choices affect me, I am still responsible for those I make in response.

I’ve been working at the same corporate job for almost nine years now. This is a long time, and something I didn’t think I’d ever do. As corporate jobs go, it’s a good one — well-paid, office with a door instead of a cubicle, good team of people that I genuinely like to work with.

But after 9 and some years on the same project, there are struggles — maintaining interest, management changes – every one has a different vision for where we are going — keeping from feeling like an indentured servant with no control over 9 hours of my day – yes, I included lunch hours in that, because it is becoming more an more common for corporation teams to expect you to spend it with the team. That’s hard for a Myers-Briggs introvert like me — I NEED that hour in the middle of the day to myself and my own thoughts.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not singling out my employer for any of these issues, really. I’ve had them all crop up at other work places. In fact, I think it’s a testament to how good it is here that it has taken so long for me to start to feel thesee issues.

Wrapping my head around my own personal sovereignty helps – and yet… there are several ways that corporations in the US try to squash the sovereignity of their employess, whether conciously or just as a byproduct of the system as it tries to increase productivity exponentially:

• Reminding you that you can’t quit without another job because you may have a pre-existing health condition that precludes getting health care (affordable or not) on your own.
• Reminding you that in one way or another, they own you. I had one employer attempt to tell me that anything I created, even on my OWN time belonged to them… Artwork, needlework designs, anything that could be construed as intellectual property, whether or not it related to their business.
• Policies requiring that if you DO manage to take a leave of absence you are not allowed to work on anything work-related, especially moonlighting projects that have nothing to do with the corporation you are on leave from.

I’m sure I could come up with more, but these are the main issues I’ve seen my friends and I hit over the last 20 years in the work force. All three of them undercut attempts to maintain personal sovereignity by repeatedly telling you that the company owns you and your so-called “free-time”. At one place where I interviewed, the HR rep specifically told me that if, after hours I had a dinner party planned and the team wanted to go out or work late, I would be expected to cancel my plans and go with the team – my family was expected to come second to the company and my existing friends replaced by my company team. They were surprised when I didn’t take the job. And later I met three others in my field who had also turned them down, surprise, surprise! (But at least they were up front about their expectations – which I was supposed to accept for under $35,000 a year in a high cost of living city!) They expressed surprise when I turned them down, and apparently were just as surprised when my colleagues also turned them down.

Maybe my mindset is changing, but I’m becoming less and less willing as I get older to sell my entire life and soul for the company salary. So what am I doing about it?

• I remind myself that I am me, and the company is not me, or my feudal lord, for that matter.
• I use the Healthy Boundaries spray that Havi recommended at her retreat to ritually separate work from home.
• I have forced myself to take control of my projects and not only make suggestions & proposals, but also decisions before management does, consciously making the decision not to care if making these decisions gets me in trouble or costs me my job. Which some of them might.
• I do my own thing “off the clock” and usually enforce those boundaries (going out for lunch or drinks with the team once in a while, but don’t let it jeopardize your other social relationships).
• I make sure I maintain social relationships OUTSIDE of work – if something does happen to the job: layoffs, company closing, both these in fast succession, deciding to quit, what have you – those outside ties become even more important.

Well. That has been a long ramble about life theory! Interesting what comes out of my brain when I let it…

Just trying to work my way through my life.

A Toad of Toad Hall

Wow, it’s been a busy month here at Toad Hall. Between everyone (including Dora the kitten if you count the end of August) being sick, releases at the day job, an upcoming newsletter/class launch at Stitching with a Shimmy, and designing away, I haven’t had time to breathe – not that I could have done anyway, given the bronchitis! Still, the EO, Dad and I managed to sneak in one day of fishing and a picnic at the local lake before all the illness really hit hard, and it was enough to remind me that I really do need to take a full day completely off once and again! After all, that’s why I’m doing all of this, isn’t it? So I can enjoy life now, before I’m too decrepit?

Anyway, the busy-ness hasn’t slowed down a LOT, so you may not see me around posting here too often.

They’re a combination steroid and Cipro. Now I don’ t know about you, but that sounds to me like bringing out the big guns.

I stayed home from work today because I’m horribly dizzy from the pressure. I hate being dizzy. I hate not being able to accomplish anything. Despite issues with work, I hate taking time off. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it says something.

The pain has lowered. I can tell the swelling has gone down a little. I’ll probably try to go in tomorrow. There is stuff that needs to be done.

So yeah. I’m still working on that “take care of yourself” stuff.

Oh. and did I mention that I seem to have given the bronchitis to the EO as a sinus infection? <sigh>

All is not well at Toad Hall right now. Not at all.

Right now my pattern is to be upset and frustrated and concerned about work. And to try frantically to get my business up and off the ground at home. I’m tired, I’m trying to get designs done and posts written – both for here and my other site, and I’m trying to help my Dad with some other stuff on the side – again with writing.

Tired. That’s a good description of it. The EOs take on this is that we both need to get more sleep. I have to agree. That is definitely a part of it. But if it were that easy, he wouldn’t have told me the other night that he’d be to bed “as soon as my mind slows down.” Part of the problem is that I get enough sleep for a while, and then my mind speeds up and I’m wide awake at bedtime for about 3 days in a row, and then I’m sleep deprived again.

When I teach dance in the evenings, the issue is compounded. I don’ t have time to get any chores or goals done before class, and then the excercise wakes me up and then I’m wired until at least 10 and wanting to DO all that stuff I didn’t do before class.

I’m going to try to rearrange my schedule one more time and get to bed “on time” whatever that is. Probably not before 10, although really I should be going to bed at 9 to get my full needed 9 hours, but with 2 hours out of the day gone for commute already, all I can promise is to start getting READY for bed at 9, and be in bed by 10.

So, in the spirit of being sane to myself, here’s what I intend to do:

My goal/intention: to get more consistent sleep.

My commitment: I will get dinner put together in the morning before I leave for work, and I will set my goals (sanely) for what I need to accomplish when I get home. Then I will accomplish them, without beating myself up if I miss a goal or two.  And I will begin to get ready to go to bed no later than 9pm.

Havi Brooks and her business partner, Selma (yes, she IS a rubber duck — wanna make something of it?!), coined this term, and I think it’s wonderful. Of course, even more wonderful is the image with the Dr. Seussian logo that goes with the name Destuckification Station.

You know how, when you are going along doing your thing and you hit a roadblock (or a mud puddle?) and your frustration rises almost immediately and the only thing you can do is say (or think), “I can’t do this. This is never going to work. I’ll never make it. It’s impossible,” and your blood pressure rises, and and and and? The destuckification station is a process to stop that in its tracks and get you calm and moving again.

I bought it a couple of months ago when I was having some REAL issues at work with panic attacks, and the combination of physical movement (little ones, really – even unnoticeable!) and meditations work immensely well for me. The physical steps that the guide includes remind me that I’ll get through it, and help me hang on until I can get to a quiet place to listen to one of the meditations.

You might like it if:

• You’re stressing out about something and can’t seem to calm down enough to take the steps you want to take.
• You know you react well to guided meditations OR are open to trying them out.
• Like a multi-thread approach to fixing things in your life.

The caveats: Because you know there are some. Even when you love something as much as I love this. It IS guided meditation-based:

• If you know you don’t like quieting down and listening to someone talk you through wherever it is you are, you won’t like this.
• If you find the idea of meditation in general too “woo-woo”, you won’t like this.
• If you think that guided meditations are a way to subliminally sell you more stuff, you’ll probably want to run screaming.

The disclaimer: I joined her partner program. So if you DO buy the Destuckification Station through the link up there (or here, for that matter) I’ll be reimbursed. But I’d be telling you about this even if I hadn’t.

This is the place I’m going to work through some of my current phases. I’m in what Barbara Sher calls an “adolescence” right now… working on changing my life in positive ways. And it’s working. It really is.

By the way, March was the 30th anniversary of Wishcraft.  It’s a wonderful book.  And it’s now got it’s own website, and is available for free as pdfs! It’s funny. I took one of her free seminars in Eugene what… 14-15 years ago? What I remember most of all was that my dream wasn’t all that big – I wanted to make my living writing and making art, not working for someone else. During the brainstorming session, while I could come up with ideas for the woman who wanted to raise white tigers, and every one else could too, NOT ONE PERSON had ANY ideas for what I could do to get to mine. Not one. Talk about depressing. But I’ve been using her planning techniques for almost everything I do/did since then. It works. And I realized that I’m 1/2 way to that dream of mine: it’s just the “for myself” part that’s still out there waiting for me. And I’m getting all the butterflies and the tied up knots she talks about every time I take another step towards it.

So. I’m going to try not to whine, but what I WILL do is show you some of the techniques and resources that I’m using to get to where I want to be, show you how they are working (or not) and we can go from there.

I’m going to try to post regularly, because this idea won’t work without that kind of structure.

Me. You. Shall we start this journey?

I was worried in 6th grade when the only answer I had was “a ballerina,” even knowing then that my body was going to fight me the entire way, and probalby win.

My real problem was something I finally articulated about 15 years ago in Eugene. I want to do everything – almost. I’ve never wanted to go ump out of a plane. Where my mother said “if God had wanted me to fly he would have given me wings,” I said, “if God had wanted me to skydive he wouldn’t have given me a perfectly good airplane.” But that’s a digression. (Prepare for those. I ramble!)

Last year I read Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose. I still don’t fit. Don’t get me wrong – this woman is still one of my idols – what else can you do but admire a welfare mother who pulled herself up and out and devotes her career to helping other people do the same? I’ve read WishCraft, heard her speak, tried to use it – couldn’t narrow my focus, couldn’t do it, read I Could do Anything if Only I Knew what it Was, and realized that I answered “yes” to almost everything in the questionnaires, and reallized that I do want the world — and the moon, and the stars, too. when it comes to life I want to taste most of it. I’m in awe of people who have a purpose other than some vague “I want to help people,” that drives them utterly.

I need to leave for work, though. More later.

I first envisioned this blog as a simple move from LiveJournal. I am seeing now in only a few posts, that it is going to be so much more — and so different.

In many ways, it’s because I feel more at home here – I am able to control my environment more. I’m able to feel more at home: more myself. And that is something I am working on these days – being at home with myself and comfortable in my own, much healthier than it was – skin.

I’m also trying to practice defining what I want, something I mentioned on Stitching with a Shimmy back in January in a post called “On Writing Things Down.” So let me try to define that better.

• I want to feel comfortable in my ability to make needed decisions, regardless of other people’s “Stuff”.
• I want my reaction to other people’s “Stuff” to be more “wow, that must be really hard right now” rather than having  their stuff set of my stuff and me ending up blubbering in a corner somewhere.
• I want to be comfortable enough in my own skin to let myself be wherever I happen to be in MY bodily and emotional health journey at any given moment.

I’m now envisioning this space as a place to learn more about myself as well as about other things. I’m sure that it won’t be static. Nothing ever is. I’ve got ideas. I’m moving right now in directions I never envisioned, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this blog does the same thing.

Come back soon!

As mentioned previously, I am owned by three cats. In the case of at least two of them, I am only a secondary toy.

Being secondary has its advantages. If the EO is home, the Old Lady and the Queen ignore me outright and fight over who gets to sit on his lap. I only (usually) have to dodge the attentions of one cat “helping” with whatever project I’m trying to deal with at the time.

But Cats get into everything. All the time. We will be sitting in the living room and hear a rattle and thud from the kitchen. of course, by the time we get there with the “bottle of NO!” there is nary a cat to be seen – nor the leftover chicken, for that matter.

And they have an innate ability to recognize exactly when you are going to stand up to get food, use the facilities, or so on. And to just in that moment, launch their bodies like furry little missiles into your lap, anchoring you there, all the while purring dramatically, because you wouldn’t get up and disturb them when they LOVE you so much now, would you? (And at that point it doesn’t matter if you’re secondary most of the time. They LOOOOVE you. Right Now. Pet them.)