Love it when I see a woman expressing herself on her vehicle!
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One Woman's Quest for Peace, Upcycled Everything, and a Great Cup of Fair Trade Coffee
A friend of mine, Klara, reporting from Puerto Rico.
Posted by Klara Lynn Dannar on Sunday, October 8, 2017
An article from Common Dreams about the nurses work:
Filling Gaps Left By Trump, Nurses and Labor Unions Join Puerto Rico Relief Efforts
Seems like I do this every couple of years, or perhaps it is more often, but it seems like a long-scale cycle.
My mind is always awhirl, thinking, thinking about writing, thinking about ideas to share. Thinking about a way to make money from my writing about things I want to write about. I know that I could freelance. This isn’t about that. This is about identity, changing technology, and fear of success.
I put all my writings on this site, well most of the blog writings, a few years back. I was happy with this. Reason Creek is where the my personal logic flowed. Then while working a temp job to evade the demons that pecked at my brain constantly as my brother Roger was dying and for a while after his death, I listened to hundreds of audio books as I proofed digital versions of old theses for the local university library. During that time I found there was a spot in my brain where Interesting Things which could be filed under the heading of Women’s Legacy Project were found. I purchased the domain and began pulling things out of my brain with which to organize the site. Let’s see… this would have been in March 2015. A year later, this past March, the site was doing well enough to attract a diverse group of women to tell stories on WLP about women who had changed their own lives.
Then… somewhere along the path in the last six months… I’ve stumbled off my productive path and into a patch of rumination brambles. It is now September and I am looking at all these things/aspects over which I’ve stumbled:
So I came over here to Reason Creek to vent and create an image of what is going on in my scattered brain. (I created the Mind-map image with Scapple.) I now think I see the problem I am having, in addition to the shading non shading of certain items; the items in red at the bottom of the mind map exist in two different roles and at two different levels in my way of seeing the world. I either need to become comfortable with the status overlap in two areas of my life or rearrange something.
Nothing is solved. But I feel better. My world is both expanding as a business person, and this requires shifting my identity as a writer out of a very comfortable spot into a place that is risk-based, and this is happening as my daughter prepares to officially change her primary status from daughter to wife. Her status change does not change my mother role and how I will see her, but it will change how I behave towards a woman with her own household in her own right.
Word of advice: don’t change your business model when rearranging your personal life. Needless to say, I do not take my own advice.
Today, while I was updating a woefully out-of-date profile on WordPress/Gravatar I re-affirmed a most basic part of myself. I am in awe of life.
Old enough to know better. I wander in awe amid the complexity, order, and nuance of life. The ripples of small acts amplify my belief in goodness. I try to let those ripples carry me along as I observe, write, share, and curate.
A while back I made this shareable graphic. It is along the same lines. There is some consistency in my nature and actions.
I spent half the night, this past night, awake and ruminating in a way that I rarely do. Once I woke every night with concerns, what-ifs, and relived painful and confusing times. I rarely do that these days, or should I say nights?
I do wonder about what ifs, branching realities, and alternate universes. As a mature woman I do not spend a lot of time in wonderment over those things though. Concerns still plague me, financial for the most part. I so wish I could help my husband by bringing money into our lives.
My creative worth brings great enrichment to mine, but I know I am a needy weight financially to him. It would not have been all that different had I had myself declared disabled due to depression and PTSD. But I simply have not been able to do that. I do not believe I am mentally ill. I do have some challenges, however. I wanted to write an article for SheKnows.com in May about my struggle with mental illness but there is nothing wrong with my “mentals,” and they seemed to want people to come out about mental illness. I am not sure that is necessary.
Oversimplification does not help anyone. Fables, analogies, metaphors and allegorical tales are lost on the overly literal members of society.
I was abused as a child, or perhaps it was neglect. It was both. It is still difficult to define because I bought into my mother’s off kilter view of life. So there is still a part, a very small part, of myself that tells me, “You had a hand in it.” And she was at times a good mother. In this all or nothing society, a bit, both, or somewhere in between is not well received. We want things clean and simple.
Nothing is simple. Everything is a woven intricate mesh of interrelationships.
I need to finish something. I need some alone time, some time to focus. I need to find a way to have my husband understand that the more he hovers around the house, the more tense and unproductive I am. His office is quite close at a nearby University and unless he is meeting with an other professor or research group or has an appointment with a student, he is working at home more and more often writing reports, writing grants, and doing the administrative work that goes with being a successful research professor. I am not a person who can get anything done when anyone is nearby. Whether it is cleaning or writing, I need huge chunks of time and space to myself to accomplish anything.
To me it seems like my husband is always here at home. It isn’t true that he is always here, but his coming and going several times during the day distracts and disrupts me and makes me feel like he is here or due to come back any second. He doesn’t keep a regular schedule and that unpredictability promotes insecurity in me. I like to know what is happening when.
That is my summer challenge. If I don’t finish one of my projects soon I am just going to dissolve into a puddle of jello-ish (line) indecisive incompetence.
I’ll feel better tomorrow. I will figure out how to frame this as best I can, but re-framing alone will not give me more alone time or space. I am consistent and I know my needs.