June is crazy busy around here.

• talking about self-care on behalf of a big huge wonderful company to big huge media
• a retreat with my beloved Brain Trust
• a family reunion with my beloved’s family in Oregon
• being a single mom for next three months
• getting my daughter ready to go to Mexico for a language immersion and service project  (this for a kid who has never done a sleep-over camp)
• preping a workshop for the Romance Writer’s of America conference – self-care for the published author
• writing the novel that seems to be coming
• gratefully hanging with the Comfort Cafe where we’ll be talking about (thank God) taking simple action on one desire and Lisa Sonora Beam will join us for her take on how to do that.
  

Oh the Squirrel is in heaven!

Things to do!

Lists to make!

Bags to pack, planes to catch, people to woo.

Reasons to feel self-important.

Meanwhile, the one who is afraid of being imperfect

wants to eat gluten-free cookies and read People of the Whale and hide under the covers, way under the covers.

I spend a lot of my time swinging between being creatively adventuresome, putting myself way out there, and hiding.

Hiding? Really?

Yes!

How do I hide?

Oh lots of ways. One of my favs? Hanging out in the territory of I’m-About-to-Figure-it-All-Out.

Otherwise known as when I do figure it all out, things are going to be so easy. I’ll never feel stressed again. I’ll never doubt my work or its effectiveness again. I’ll never try to cram too much into one day again. Not after I figure it all out. What would it be? Ah, that is the golden question!

Sometimes, for variety, I visit the country right next door instead, the land of If I Could Just.

As in… if I could just do something easier and just focus on that – just be a fiction writer, just be a painter, just travel the world with my beloved, just nurture the Comfort Cafe, just garden, just do yoga.

The tempting country of If-I-Could-Just shares a border with the fiefdom “I’ll chuck it all and go ____.” That’s where, when the anxiety of creating their lives gets to be too much, people go around saying, “I’ll chuck it all and go live in an ashram” or “I’ll chuck it all and open a B&B on the coast”or “I’ll chuck it all and go write novels.”

I can spend hours and days hiding in these places.

Traveling here helps me manage my anxiety, the anxiety that comes from living my life at the edge of my abilities.

We all have our favorite comfy ways of managing our anxiety.

The question is, are you managing yours in ways that help you or hinder you?

This Week

I’m going to lovingly notice when I take a trip to the land of “If I could just” and I’m going to bring myself back to my body. My breath.

I’m going to look at this picture of me in 1970 and delight in her wide open presence.

I’m going to check in with God and hear I am utterly okay no matter what.

I’m going to dedicate my efforts to a child in our community who is very ill and all parents fighting much more real fears than my fear of being imperfect.

And I’m going to plan my days the night before and keep resisting the lure of adding in one more thing because just you never know today I might be super human.

(Another country I visit often – the super human I can work non-stop for fifty hours producing original creative work land.)

What about you? What pattern or story will you lovingly notice this week?

Related posts:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays #3
2. Choose Your Life Mondays #18
3. Choose Your Life Mondays #2

But not this year. This year I seem to want to do nothing, see nobody, hardly even talk on the phone when friends call to say Happy Another Year.

I know part of my mood is because I caught a bug Thanksgiving evening and feel crappy. But even before that, when Bob or my Mom asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, I felt this odd, wonderful sense of wanting to be alone.

And so I have been. Bob even took the dogs. Lilly is with her Dad. Even my neighborhood is unusually quiet with lots of families away for the holiday. I wish I weren’t sick but it’s a dreamy sickness, not a horrible one, and it feels like a cloak I’ve drawn around me, an imposed but welcome retreat.

I’ve been reading and dreaming and thinking- about fear mostly - which sounds awful but actually has been most liberating. Making millions of notes about what I want to create this week to help us lean into and learn from and not be ruled by fear.

You know, fear is a big deal. It’s really a formative force in the world. How did I miss that little fact?

I’ve also been reviewing the last year, which I like to do on my birthday, as it comes near the end of the calendar year, and thus doubly feels like the beginning of my new year.  Here are some of what I learned / did / love about my 45th (really 46th) year:

• I fell in love with a wonderful man. Unabasedly. I played, I giggled, I shaved my legs a lot. I let myself love full out, grabbing the grace of love.
• I grieved mindfully, holding the tension of immense love and soft grief, often in the same breath.
• I grappled with a big deep sinkhole of neediness and spent some a lot of time at the edge of the sink hole just being there.
• I got acquainted with my victim side and how, with the help of fear, I had lost a lot some of my resiliency and momentum.
• Oh, yes, let me not forget fear. I realized I am, have been, and always will be, afraid. Of not creating truly and deeply enough. Of not relaxing and enjoying life and being present enough. Of not being smart enough. Of more loss. Of being a failure. Of not thinking clearly. Of all the misspellings in this blog. Of not loving strongly and honesty enough.
• And then I realized that is not bad, does not mean I’m permanently screwed or that anything is the matter.  That fear is not mine, it just visits and it can teach me but never rule me,
• I kept up a pretty darn regular breathing and prayer and yoga practice until I hurt my back this summer and then I kept up a pretty darn regular breathing and prayer practice and then a pretty darn regular Dance of Shiva practice.
• I got a heck of a lot better at trusting my instincts and acting on them faster. Instead of working with or employing the wrong people for months, this year it only took weeks to say, “Sorry, this isn’t working.”
• I began creating again, blogging, a little art journaling, and now recording audio experiences and making notes for this fear hope thing I’m calling Comfort During Uncertain Times.
• I began to see the wisdom of making a what-can-I-actually-produce-this-year plan and a how-will-I-reliably-and-effectively-get-the-word-out-plan instead of the willy nilly do a little of this and not enough of that plan non-plan like I have done for the last few years.
• I owned the fact I want to create something about transitions and change and decided to create a) a Comfort Learning Cafe Playground for those who want to join me monthly b) then a book and ) a performance / workshop. And I’m very afraid I can’t do any of this. And that’s okay.
• I got to see how speediness has helped me override fear most of my life and that slowing down to grieve made it so speediness could not work so well anymore and that explains a lot. (At least, I think it does.)
• I learned (with that great guy I fell in love with) about birding and how amazing a way it is to see.
• I lead groovy retreats and coached awesome clients (including the best writing groups!) and delivered inspiring keynotes. I planned my first international retreat for the coming year

AND MOST OF ALL

I experienced that when I gently allow myself to stop where I am and lovingly notice what I am feeling and experiencing and thinking without letting it define me or own me nor without fighting or denying or getting all dramatic about whatever is going on, I experience that I am safe, I am capable and gosh darn-it, I like me.

So Happy Birthday to me. I can sure be one super-earnest do-gooder learn all the time girl and so my invitation to myself for 2009 is lighten up while getting some friggin work done!  Here’s to light resiliency. (Not to be confused with light armour).

Thanks for reading.

Related posts:

1. Lying in Bed
2. Measurements