Balance

(I’m going to Xpost this, but I thought it was appropriate for this level of the Happiness Project)

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

- excerpted from The Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(found via White Hot Truth )

I’ve been focusing on taking better care of my apt lately. I woke up about an hour before work and instead of spending all my time on the computer, I actually took the time to prepare / assemble a couple of mini meals for work. Also took the time to do my dishes, which it seems the trick to keep on top of, is to keep on top of them. The more I do them, the less I have to do in one sitting, which is a very nice feeling.

I don’t have time to post a full entry about this one, but it was worth posting.

http://www.illuminatedmind.net/2009/04/14/why-you-should-stop-caring-about-personal-growth/

There have been a lot of articles in the blogosphere that have made me think today. Add that to what I’ve been looking at in therapy and it’s the cause of today’s article.

On Get Rich Slowly, there was an article asking Where’s the fun in Personal Finance? with a push of saving towards goals, which JD talks about a lot. And the comments are a little bit split, there’s the “I’m a geek and I like playing with numbers” / “I like the feeling of paying off debt” angle vs the “I’m saving for tangible goals” whole approach.

My own response to that is that right now, I’m saving money for an Emergency Fund.

Side Note: Only I don’t call it that, mine is called a Security Fund. It’s a bit of an LoA thing, I don’t like to imply that an Emergency is right around the corner. I’m also a HUGE believer in language being an important, very powerful thing. Just the way you say something, stirs up emotions, thoughts, connentations and feelings. And according to LoA, that’s what causes creation, so I like to think that it’s important for me to say things the way I want them to be.

And why, do you ask, is having a Security Fund so important to me. It’s so that it can make me safe. Rather, that it can make me FEEL safe. Money in the bank, the “bits and bytes in banking institutions’ extensive computer server farms” translate into security, safety, into NEVER EVER going back to being broke, hungry and desperate again. It used to be why I would stockpile food, food that I never ate, just in case. Cans and cans of tuna, beans, peanut butter that got carried around with me on numerous moves. Why? Fear.

So Dave Ramsey has a phrase: Gazelle Intense. It used to be the name of one of my goals here. Until I decided to tweak the name to include balance. To remind myself that I can enjoy the happiness of my Timmies coffee as long as it is a reasonable amount. The Fulfillment Curve was the article that caused me to go from spending 60$ / month to 20$ / month on Timmies coffee. Because as it was pointed out in a recent Happiness Project article, it’s not always an “either / or” choice An interesting lesson, especially for the black or white BPD type thinking.

/post

It was this kind of article that I wanted to write for my new blog. I still have some work to think about. I’d like to write a proper introduction to BPD, a long multiple post biography type thing about myself, a help section (IE: for people in crisis, a suicide type prevention thing, I really like the one that 43T points to)

I’m posting it here now, but I may end up reusing it later.

What do you guys think?

This could fit in many places:

Ask more often: Does this align with my values, goals and dreams? (#6 of my Happiness Project)

Stay gazelle intense (yet balanced at the same time) about my financial goals

But I wanted to put it here, under balance, because of the angle that I was looking at it. I was listening to some of Steve Pavlina’s podcasts more specifically the one on Faster Goal Achievement where he asks about the consequences of reaching your goals. To take the time to ask yourself just how your life will be different when you reach that goal.

And I was thinking about a goal that I’d been putting aside for a while my goal to “Lose enough weight to be happy with what I see in the mirror, while remembering that life is supposed to be fun” and the steps that I wasn’t taking towards it. And I realized that I ate out for both breakfast and lunch today because I had no food to bring to work. And that’s not in alignment with my goal. So if I were to be eating more healthily, I’d have more food in my fridge, I’d have more fruits and veggies in my house.

And while I was sitting down with my grocery list, going over my meal plans, my phone buzzed and my friend wanted to know if I wanted to go out with her for supper. Now we just went out for a LOVELY meal at the Biftheque (read: SPENDY!) earlier this week. So right there, not in alignment with losing weight, or being careful about my spending. And then, I don’t have leftovers for lunch the next day, so I eat out and the cycle continues. So I politely declined and went out to spend money at the farmer’s market instead. I’d rather call buying broccoli, leeks and raspberries a treat than a 65$ dinner.

So, to be more healthy about my eating, I need to make sure that I have veggies in the fridge. I need to make sure that I have quick food for when I’m hungry NOWWWWW! I need to find breakfast alternatives to McD’s that I actually LIKE to eat, aren’t a starch base and I can grab as I’m running out the door to eat at work.

So earlier this week I chose the lovely night out and I had a great time. But like I said to her as we were leaving, we can’t do that every week. And so, I took a step towards balance. And I’m proud of myself.

Success doesn’t mean you don’t have problems. It means you’re strong enough to ask for help.

Here are a couple of quote that particularly stuck me from the article:

[...] you will always have patterns.

Just different ones — ones that work better for you.
[bolding mine]

Same thing with challenges.

You work through one, you get to work on the next one. If you made it through your last one, you should have picked up some helpful tools for working with the next one.

But those challenges? They’re going to show up.

You’ll get better at facing them. You’ll be less impressed with the fact that they exist. You’ll have more creative ideas for how to interact with them.

But the fact that they exist is not going anywhere.

I know, it’s kind of a pain. But here’s the good news:

Since challenges and problems and Stuff Going Horribly Wrong no longer imply that you are a total failure , you can take the time you were spending dreading them and start getting help working through them.

Since they’re going to be around anyway, you might as well learn as much as you can about maintaining your peace of mind and asking for what you need.

[...]

Success — whatever that means for you — will solve a bunch of your current challenges. And create a bunch of new ones. So you might as well get really good at figuring out what your support systems are.

Instead of thinking that the challenges are the enemy. Which is my favourite thing to do, yes, but not all that helpful.

[...]

Real safety comes from somewhere else.

From asking yourself what you need. From creating structures and boundaries. From letting people know how they can interact with you and what’s not appropriate or acceptable.

http://www.fluentself.com/blog/biggification/success-doesnt-mean-not-having-problems-apparently/

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-live-a-balanced-life/

Quotes that struck me:

“[...] And this, too, shall pass away. – Abraham Lincoln”

“[...] Balance is the taking of appropriate action when circumstances dictate so as to maintain equilibrium”

“There is no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.” – Frank Herbert

“The only constant is change”

Most of these made it into my agenda for this week’s quotes.

I was going to start a new goal of “Taking care of myself” but I realized that all of my Happiness Project goals are really about that, in more specific terms that appeal to my sense of logic. I remember reading somewhere in the 43T-o-sphere about how specific goals appeal to people vs the big huge goals that 99999999999 people have for example: Finish paying off my credit card by the end of June vs Get out of debt

Right now, I have more wine in my fridge than I do food. Or I go through phases where I don’t FEEL like eating anything I have in my fridge. I ALWAYS have eggs in my fridge and I’ll go through a phase where that’s all I eat, then I won’t touch them forever.

So I haven’t been grocery shopping in way too long. So I end up eating at cheap restaurants. Then getting fed up of that and spending all that money on food. I just don’t feel inspired to cook, or eat for that matter, so I don’t eat much, then get all headachey and spend the day trying to sleep to avoid eating.

Not taking care of my I.
Not keeping things in check and in balance.
Must stop.

I have to stay awake before my orientation for the new group therapy at 2pm, so I think that going out to the grocery store would be a good plan. I started hammering out a meal plan the other day.

I think it’s that I get frustrated that I spend so much time with the meal plan, then I don’t end up making half the meals that I planned and bought food for. Maybe I need more default meals. But on the other hand, then I get bored with them. I like creative cooking, I just don’t always make time for it. I think that this is everybody’s biggest hurdle, the eternal cry “What’s for dinner?” Balance.

I think I have to remember that a big part of balance, is imbalance as well. Because, I do go through periods where all I do is cook at home. I just forget about these periods. How could I appreciate doing things the right way, if I didn’t have the counter point of doing them the “wrong” way? LoA always says: Contrast produce desire.

I go to extremes about the amount of fun that I let myself have. I went through a phase where I was going clubbing 3-5x times a week, to periods where I whine that I never have any fun, blaming money and my wacky work schedule mostly. This weekend I kicked my work schedule excuse out of the water, while working from 0-9 for the entire weekend, I managed to go out both on Friday night and Saturday night.

Friday night was the office Xmas party. We always do it at this small, incredible French restaurants, where we eat excellent food, drink ourselves stupid and get incredible gifts from the boss. We make a list of three things and this year I got my first choice: The Archos 605 MP3 video picture viewer and two bottles of red wine . Since I don’t drink red anymore, I can check off buying red for the party.

Now since I got about two / three hours of sleep and you add drinking into that mix, I have this mode that I go into where I’m:

-incredibly honest
-very insightful
-overtly friendly / helpful
-got laser like focus / need to keep busy
-slightly manic

Now it doesn’t always happen when I get tired, sometimes I go straight to groutchy / bitchy. But I wish that I could just capture that mode in a bottle and use it in my personality all the time. In a way I think that I have . But I was inspired to finally get off my ass and admit that maybe I should start looking for a new job or maybe I just got tired of having my hours cut which was supposed to get better by now, but isn’t. Either way, I finally got of my ass.

I don’t know if people like articles where I link all over my previous entries (do you?), but to me it lets me know that my goals, values, actions and blog posts are in alignment, that I’m actually taking action towards reaching them.

Tonight, I went out to an Xmas party with a friend of mine. And this is where I get off topic, but I met with one of her friends and I have a hard time explaining what meeting him was like but I’ll try

Like meeting a kindred soul / spirit
Interacting with a carbon copy of myself that goes beyond my own experience
Talking with someone intelligent, open, interesting and forthright

I didn’t notice it at first, but situations kept lining up and when I finally did, I was just in awe Things like this:

We were talking about apts and how you can become a slave to your stuff (which incidently is the goal I’ve written the most entries about, save for my snowflakes goal ) and he mentioned a Carlin routine about stuff that I can loosely quote from. I know it because an ex of mine was a BIG Carlin fan and it was mentioned on Unclutterer here I mentioned that I found out about Carlin’s death from 43Things (funny but true) and he was like “oh I’ve heard of that.” Then I gushed about 43T, like I always do, which lead to us talking about “Getting Things Done” he said, “GTD,” I said, which I am not a fan of, couldn’t get the book finished, but I’ve heard of and is BIG in the circles I hang out in Now you all know about the wonders about 43T, so it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I’ve learned that the Internet is a HUGE place and everyone has a different hang out area. Some people are big into the Ebay, some are big into the WoWing. It just shocked me to find someone into personal development, as I often feel alone in this domain when it comes to the real world.

Then there was the discussion where we were talking about what I call the “car wreck” blog, which is hard to summarize why I think her money management system is so horrible, but goes something like this: “Oh I got back 150$ from overdrafted accounts and I didn’t have any money to spend on Xmas gifts so I bought a bunch of Xmas gifts, oh and gifts for me because I NEEDED them, oh and lunch because I deserved it but I don’t understand why I’m always so broke oh and let me tell you about how I’m going to live for the next two weeks with 15.17$ in grocery money (which I can’t find the link for sadly), but it’s okay because my Daddy will bail me out and I’m going to be SO responsible with the money, but wait I need to go dolphin boating and take cabs everywhere I call it the “car wreck” blog because it’s so awful, yet I love reading it, her financial life is a car wreck but I just can’t look away. I spoke with him about writing her a letter of advice, but worrying that it wouldn’t help. He said, it’s her persona, you can’t take it away from her, she wouldn’t have anything left (or something brilliant to that effect)

I did do a little silly thing, that he told me right away made him uncomfortable, which I’m trying not to feel bad about. It’s really something so simple, I did something, he told me, I stopped, end of story, now to convince myself that it’s really not a big deal. I worry too much.

I must admit, that I’m not sure where I’d like something / anything with this fellow to go but I do know that I must stay in contact with him. When we spoke of connecting on FB and MSN and him coming to my party, it was like we’d known each other for years and years. It was so naturally the logical step to take next, but it’s strangely eery looking back on, because there was NO doubt in my mind that this is someone to stay in touch with. I don’t know if he gets that reaction often, but there are certain traits that I pick up on in people and I very often have incredible judgement, that I’m learning to listen to more often, even when it goes against more traditional beliefs. I don’t know if I should be worried about the moving too quickly too fast, because I have gotten burned about trusting people too quickly and then being wrong, but I figure that I should listen to myself or is that this? Or do I need to dig out the abandonned Happiness Project mantra that says: In Jess we Trust

Thanks to an extra long “weekend” Sat-Sun day shift Mon off Tues-Wed, I managed to have a fairly balanced time.

-Sat: stayed home and did some home stuff

-Sat night: Went out partying with a friend, EPIC FAIL.

-Sun: Slept in super late, made supper and ate at home with a coworker.

-Mon: Went over to spend the night at my friends place

-Tues: Went to go and pick up my QC check While I was in the area, went to go and buy a new pair of winter boots, a new chain for my necklace and a pair of tights for the office party on Friday, necessary evils.

So I balanced friends with errands and taking care of the apt.