starcrap....

I am a superstitious gal...

Embarrassing to admit (maybe) but it's true.

I have a silver angel trinket that I carried to work with me every single day I was a floor nurse...and each morning I would say a prayer, kiss the angel, and hide it in my pocket. That angel was with me for each chest compression of a patient struggling to stay in this world, each swipe of the time clock, and every drive home.

Somehow I have created another ritualized superstition...perhaps even more embarrassing...because this superstition involves a video game.

Star Craft. If you haven't heard of it then you obviously aren't a uber geek.

I'll wait while you make fun of me...

All done? Any questions? Good. Then let's get back to the story...there's an epiphany coming!

Back more than a year ago...when my heart's love had put some distance between us...I would try my best to give her the space she had asked for. This was impossible but I tried my very best. Thinking of her constantly, I would naturally wonder if she were thinking of me. I didn't even know where she was (traveling abroad? Staying with family?) and it nearly drove me crazy. To distract me I would create a Star Craft scenario that was difficult to beat...nearly impossible in fact, and say in my mind "If I can beat this level, that woman is out there thinking of me, missing me, and loving me".

And I would lose. And try again. And lose. And try again...until I won.

Sometimes I would say things like "If I win this time - I will call that woman and she will answer!!"

And I would lose. And try again. And lose. And try again...until I won.

Somehow that silly ritual eased my mind, helped the time pass and managed to distract my broken heart.

The games can last for hours...and I would save my progress from time to time...calling the games things like "shewillcall" or "dontgiveup"...my nomenclature might seem pathetic when viewed through the lens of a more rational person, but to me it was more like a mantra for the evening.

Of course I felt silly...but as I have mentioned before, I was raised by feral wolves and don't always behave like the so-called "mature adults".

These days my mind is weary with struggles at work. I am so accustomed to being well-liked and successful in my work environs that I don't even have a frame of reference for my new job. I seemed to have either stepped into a looney bin masquerading as an "office", or my inter-personal skills have deteriorated  by an exponential degree since the last time I was an 8 to 5'er.

In either case I find myself unglued when I think about going to sleep, waking up, and returning to my desk.

So I stay awake way way way past my bed time, playing my games.

The game begins by me saying things like "If I win this game I will have a good day at work tomorrow" or "If I win no one will yell at me tomorrow". And for the hour or so it takes me to play the game my mind is empty of stress. Gone are the feelings of gloom and panic. Electronic meditation?

And when I lose, I try again. Feeling silly for attaching the outcome of my game to a wish for better things...

But I then I realized something. Electronic epiphany ;)

It isn't that my strategic efforts in the game have any real impact on whether or not my girlfriend calls, or how successful my upcoming workday will be...it's the fact that I don't give up when I lose.

I don't really believe the game has anything to do with finding a solution to a problem, but my dogged determination to win definitely does.

I don't give up. At games...in love...or in anything. When I lose, I try again.

This evening I called my game "icandothis"...and I won on the first try :)

And somehow, silly as it sounds, I am ready for work tomorrow!

a world of work

I was listening to some interesting ideas this evening...

My sister dragged me kicking and screaming to the kind of thing I would have mocked ten years ago...or maybe even ten days ago

This group of people who get together to try to get better. They might find it offensive for me to put it so simply. Or they may think I am missing the point...but it's my blog :)

Get better at life, at love, at letting go. Get better at enjoying sunsets and jokes, get better at riding out the storms and listening to the ones you love.

So I sat with these people, fully expecting to make fun of them the entire time...

Because I am kind of an asshole like that.

The discussion was on letting go. Let go and let God. Finding the faith to trust that a higher power has your back. Turning away from negativity and obsessions. Trusting that all is well.

Riiiiiiiiiiight.

As a gal with a touch of OCD I can fully and whole-heartedly admit that I am absolutely in charge. I have learned not to just survive, but thrive, in a world that was stacked against me. Poor, uneducated parents with no apparent social skills raised me. I was kicked out of church for who I loved, forced to leave college because my parents wouldn't co-sign a loan...etc....etc....I was on my own completely by aged 20.

Everything I have I made for myself. Navigating the way with no role models. But I fear that my obsessive struggles to maintain even keel are keeping me from enjoying my life. I have fought so hard to get where I am that I may have forgotten how to enjoy my successes.

So tonight I will try to begin to let go....and try to believe that everything is just as it is supposed to be.

I am currently in a job that I dread to go to, hundreds of miles away from my missing piece, and days go by without a call from my circle of friends. So even writing "everything is just as it is supposed to be" makes me sad. It doesn't make any sense that my destiny on this earth was to parent alone, in a 2 bedroom rental, working along-side peers who openly contempt me.

But I suppose this is exactly why I need to re-evaluate my life. I want to love and feel loved every day. I want to believe with every piece of who I am that I am on the right path. There are real problems in the world.... I don't want to let self-pity and self doubt distract me from being the best version of myself I could be.

I ran across this tonight in some reading....and it makes me feel like maybe I can do this. Maybe I can get better :) And for my heathen friends, try to read past the heavy handed verbiage and just hear the message.....

Isn't this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed  free  and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry  and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter — when you see the naked, to clothe  them,  and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn,  and your healing   will quickly appear; then your righteousness  will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.  Then you will call,  and the Lord will answer;   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

If you do away with the yoke of oppression,  with the pointing finger  and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry  and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light   will rise in the darkness,  and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide   you always; he will satisfy your needs   in a sun-scorched land  and will strengthen your frame.

so hard and so easy...

Beginning sixth grade was a big deal for my little big man.

He has had to adjust just about everything he knew about school. He has studied harder, pushed himself beyond what he though he was capable of learning. And he is succeeding :)

The social game, however, is tougher to navigate. Girls want to get his attention, and he is clueless absolutely lost trying to find his way. That perceived indifference makes him a target to the girls...the girls, being smarter about the social game, find him easy prey. No one has ever teased my son...no one has torn away at his self esteem in his 12 years on this earth.

I can't honestly tell him that it gets simpler as an adult. I find in my daily wanderings that my fellow grown ups can behave just as cruel as the middle schoolers. Very few people are striking out with the intention of being mean...but the result is the same. 

One would think, at such as advanced age as myself, I would be accustomed to this...but the days when my son comes home upset, fighting back tears, I can always relate. It's my job to be his parent though, so I resist the urge to commiserate. I don't make him soothe my wounds.

But there isn't much difference in his school world than there is in my office...which is pretty damn sad if you ask me. So as best as I can tell, my purpose in parenting is to give my son better tools to handle the barbs. Hoping that I am building a well-adjusted adult.

But as an adult who was raised by feral wolves....with very few working tools in my own toolbelt...I do wish for a rock of my own. Someone who was waiting at the end of my day to hear my stories of a psychotic office mate throwing her stapler in a rage, or another bursting into tears and wishing for the failure of my project because apparently that would "SHOW US ALLLLLLLL".

This is why people drink ;)

Because we really are still in middle school, aren't we? And there is no recess in sight!