try something different

Goddamn it. It took me for effing ever to get into this ridiculous website editor because I NEVER REMEMBER HOW TO POST A BLOG. This makes me feel inept and just plain stupid. And old. Even worse, I wrote down instructions for how to do it and even wrote those instructions down wrong because they make no sense and didn't work. So I am immediately angry and frustrated. I am pointy. I get the urge to write and then when I actually take one freaking moment to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) it takes me 23 minutes to get into the fucking blog pages editor thingy.

So now I'm already plummeting down the Sham Spiral. Oh haha. I meant to write Shame Spiral. Can you have a Freudian slip in writing? Because although this slip isn't sexual in nature (unless you get off on hating yourself), it totally is revealing some underlying truth: Hating yourself IS a total sham. What a waste of time. But I, like so many of us, can find ourselves on that steep descending Inner Critic spiral in an instant. The behaviour - and underlying subconscious self-flagellating thoughts - are SO automatic. I suppose you could say that I have excellently developed self-hatred neural pathways. I win! But actually I lose a lot. It creates such a narrow focus - me! me! me! - that I am energetically constricted (and maybe even physically - so stooped and heart-protector-y) and do not engage in the incredible world around me as much as I would like. I've already conceded that I will be on my death bed saying, "Well I wasted a bunch of time being pointy didn't I?"

BUT.

Lately, my mantra has been, "Try Something Different." Usually this means something like Stop Wallowing and Re-hashing. Let that shit go. Begin again. In this case, it means that I will stop feeling frustrated about All of the Things. Wait. First I have to acknowledge that I feel frustrated - red faced emoji, sensing tight shoulders and clenched jaw. Allow the emotion to be here. And I can respond to it in a responsible way. I see you, I feel you and now I am going to let you go and move towards gratitude for what is happening in this moment. Then recognize what wisdom there is in the emotion. While this may seem trite or even obvious to you dear reader, for me it is a continual dance of forgetting and remembering. All of the time. Forever and ever, world without end, amen.

So maybe now on my death bed I can say something like, "Way to go. I did my best. What a ride. See you on the next go-around." Or perhaps I'll move from this realm to the next like Timothy Leary whose last words were apparently, "Why? Why? Why?........Why not?"

Why not, indeed.