Walking Away From My Previous, Precise GPS Location (Dread and Fear)

"I always get to where I am going by walking away from where I have been."

Winnie the Pooh

The quote above stood out to me and prompted ideas I have been mulling over periodically-for years. When life got complicated in my teen years, my parents often reminded me, "Where are your bootstraps? We love you and you are tough. You can handle it." The truth is-I can handle anything. Mostly, I am stubborn and determined. God bless those double edged sword qualities, they get me through.

I am a firm believer in the phrase, "You fake it until you make it." Also, the less detail I know about awful things, the better. Reality is often not a friend of mine. I prefer my comfy place and would rather pretend like nothing bad is happening. Reality must be faced and data analyzed before I can execute my play book. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I am not delusional, and I am blessed (or cursed) not to have psychosis. I dated an incredibly creative man in my mid 20s who was uniquely talented at the escape artist routine-casting terrible situations in a silly or positive light. He taught me a few things and I am grateful. Although I have an excellent sense of humor, family support, local friends, coffee and lunch dates with my girls, life seems to present interesting long-term, multi-step solution hurdles. Reality reflects things that happened from one, or two identifiable root causes.

Challenges happen often, and I remind myself that I have beaten every single one. Mostly, I learned to "swipe left", say no, walk away, and change direction. When I deviated from any clearly plotted course, my progress was slowed. I learned from the deviation and am pretty good about not repeating prior mistakes. I've slowed my passion, fierceness and fury to quite a large extent.

Right now, I get the learn the grace of patience. A few of my goals are temporarily stalled, although all of my needs are met. I remain hopeful that I will be able to complete them at a later date. I am ahead of many things, such as deadlines and am always good about writing and executing my play book. Good things, or things that I want to lead an unencumbered life do not happen on my timeline. This grace and patience thing kills me some days as I often do not understand the "why". I am, more "B" type than "A". My "A" game kicks in for survival, quality of life (my Maslow's hierarchy), and getting to the goal.

In a former life, a wise woman in a neighboring office to mine once advised me to take naps on the weekend. The caveat to those naps is that I would not sleep for too long. In the darkness, there is plenty of sunshine the next day if you look for it. Texas, outside of handing me a pound of my own flesh (or 80-90 twice)-has taught me a lot about humility, which is a component of grace.

I am still learning, try, but do not fail as often. I walk away from the unnecessary parts of where I have been-dread and fear.



This message was crafted from my iPhone. Please excuse any typos.