Day off…

For one of the first times in my life I CHOSE to have some time off from work – a 4 day weekend! I don’t do this often and I am still working hard at not feeling guilty about it but it needed to be done. The pressure I put on myself when I am in the office is starting to become a little overwhelming. We have performance appraisals coming up and I am having a mini panic attack. I work super hard and the quality of my work is spot-on but that has NEVER been where my needs for improvement have come up. My needs for improvement have always been directed at my interpersonal skills (accurately directed…I completely acknowledge that).

Don’t get me wrong…I can TAKE constructive criticism and honestly? without it I am not sure if I would have made the strides I have over this past year. But I am just so wanting to go into my supervisors office and just hear the positive. I have been pushing, struggling, working so hard at trying to use my skills, trying to harness them and apply them to the very best of my ability. In the words of J (that I constantly tell myself  when things seem hard) “try harder.” The appraisals are based on more than just my supervisors observations but the observations of my peers – and considering my past with MO I am not so sure that I am going to have a lot of positive come from whatever she wrote about me. I know that I still need to work on stress management and learning how to hide it on my face. I know I still need to work on keeping my personal life out of work but I am so desperately hoping that the hard work I have been putting in doesn’t go unnoticed by the people I work with.

I can’t lose my job but what if this is the best I can possible do? What if no matter how much I try, no matter how much I work at using my skills it is never enough? My friend D told me I needed to learn how to “play the game” but that just seems so fake to me. Maybe it is my lack of wanting to “play the game” that will keep me from ever being considered as a leader at my job. I love my job and I love the work that we do – I know I won’t walk into my appraisal without SOME constructive feedback on areas of improvement (bring it on..I WANT to hear the constructive feedback) but I also want there to be a lot more positive feedback then I have gotten in the past. I just worry and FEAR that as much progress as I have made over the past 2 years of being there (I will have been there for 2 years in 12 days) won’t be enough.

Even on a day off I can’t stop worrying about work…there must be something really wrong with me.

To get out of my own head I went to the bookstore to get lost in inspiration. Got a few magazines, relaxed, and spent hours away from my computer and away from my email. I wanted to just stop thinking about my job, the stresses of not being enough and wondering how my performance appraisal is going to go. It was a BEAUTIFUL autumn day yesterday. The colors, the smells…it is my FAVORITE season. There is a crisp in the air, the vibrant colors bring to life the surroundings. Sometimes I wish I had the talent to be able to paint it all.

I have the wedding of one of my oldest friends today. I am feeling VERY conflicted because I love and adore my friend H but the group of people who I think are going to be there have only ever liked me when I was drunk because that was when I would come “out of my shell”. When you spend your life as the “funny fat friend” breaking that chain of thought is excruciating – I so desperately just want to get through this.  The expectations of “Drunk K” are going to be high and being surrounded by a lot of the people who made my teen years a LIVING hell is going to be it extraordinarily difficult to maintain a healthy balance. I can’t allow myself to be 16 again…I can’t give in to the pressures my mind is going to be pushing. God, I hope I am strong enough for this.

 

Wish me luck & have an amazing weekend…

and so the weekend comes to an end

I have spent most of my weekend relaxing and watching Dexter – a friend recommended that I check the show out and of course they were totally right and I am now addicted. Only 7 seasons behind lol…luckily I have caught up a lot this weekend so I am onto season 6 🙂 This was the first weekend in awhile that I didn’t have a social life – I never imagined that I would have a social life at all lol but it was odd not to having SOMETHING planned this weekend. I have to admit I have mixed emotions about it. One the one hand I loved it because I got to be lazy, un-showered and got to do whatever I felt like but on the other hand I missed the interaction with another person. Such an odd sense of feeling for me, I’ll probably need more time to actually process that one ha.

I sit in my living room now after just picking up my laundry from the dryer at the laundromat (I thought moving home I would be able to avoid this part but sadly my apartment building doesn’t have washer/dryer) sipping on an iced vanilla chai with the cool breeze coming through my window and feeling a sense of peace. Odd isn’t it? to think of peace as simple as something as clean laundry and a cool breeze. Somehow it feels comfortable…today I feel 100% at home.

today’s meditation:

Discover inspiration points

Sometimes, we become so caught up in the daily grind that we forget how much beauty and inspiration our world offers. We forget about the power of inspiration.

My favorite inspiration point in Colorado is a small stand next to the Royal George Bridge, the highest suspension bridge in the world. The stand overlooks the gorge, offering a magnificent overview of canyons, mountains, peaks, and plains. In Bryce Canon, the place called inspiration point overlooks massive canyons. From that vantage point, you can see delicately shaped spirals, in the orange iron color so prominent in the canyon, surrounded by the lighter sandstone and sulfur peaks.

What inspires you? Discover inspiration points – those high places of the spirit from which you can see more, see more clearly, see more beautifully. Spend time taking in the grander view of life. See how calming and inspiring it is. See how you return to life with vigor, enthusiasm, and passion.

Visit places that invigorate your soul, help you see the larger picture. Find places in your home, your community, your state. Look for that place in yourself, that sacred inspiration point within you, where your soul and heart see the larger picture, where you and your ideas come to life, where you make the connection between your soul and the world around you. Seek the power of inspiration.

Inspiration points abound. Open up. Look around. When you seek inspiration, it will come to you.

Taken from ‘Journey to the Heart’

Lately I have begun to find inspiration differently than before. Well, maybe not differently but just more aware of the inspiration…like my eyes are more open to it all. All of my senses are taking it all in. The cool breeze, the colors of summer, the squirrels, the trees, the flowers, the smells…I see it all, I feel it now.

I think that is one of the major differences than before. That I can feel it, taste it, see it and hear it. I am fully experiencing the inspiration around me.

A year ago I was still closed off and in closing myself off from the world I also closed off the part of me that could see the beauty and inspiration that is all around. Somehow it just seems so much sadder to look back now in thinking that I was some way protecting myself when really…it was the opposite. I never knew how to be, how to grow, how to act, how to respond. I hide from those things or at least I used to.

Today is mother’s day. I called my mom and wished her a happy mother’s day but I can’t call on the one person whom I always considered a mother and so today isn’t without some sadness but I am taking in the comfort that maybe, just maybe, B is watching down from Heaven and smiling at me. I may not have been her blood but blood doesn’t make a family and I am learning to understand that and find peace in it.

 

awakening…at least maybe that is what this is.

Trust what you know

As you grow, as you evolve, as you continue on this journey, you’ll discover many special abilities, gifts, and powers. One is an increased sense of knowingness. We will begin to understand events and people on a level much deeper than we experienced before.

We will begin to know the feeling of a person, place, or thing. We will begin to feels its energy, not just its matter of physical form. We’ll talk to a person for a while and know if that person feels trapped, feels like a victim, or feels free. We’ll know if a place holds energy that is good for us. Or we’ll know that energy isn’t right for us, doesn’t currently complement our needs. We won’t judge. We’ll just know. And we’ll know what to do.

Powers appear when we open the heart. We find the powers of love, comfort, faith, joy. There are other powers, too, that come along the way. One of these is the quiet power of trusting what we know.

Open your heart. Let it show you what it knows. Learn to trust what you know. You’re wiser than you think.

Taken from ‘Journey to the Heart’

For some reason this one hit close to home for me today. It’s funny…I never knew what I could experience when I let down the walls and find the powers inside. I never believed in happiness or peace – I only saw darkness, only believed in the negative energy that the darkness but people in my life now have helped change that. J, M, MM, JS and E have all helped me bring down the walls and then how to handle all the energy that comes with it.

I found myself crippled with fear as the walls came down – my family helped me overcome those fears, how to harness the power and turn them into good. Reflecting back hurts a lot, to see where I was, to see how low I had fallen…I know deep down that I have made incredible progress and that I am NOT that same person anymore but sometimes when I reflect back I still wonder. I still wonder if B hadn’t died, I still wonder if I should have killed myself, I still wonder if I should have gotten help sooner…going back isn’t going to change anything…and being in the mind space I am in now looking back makes me sad for another reason. That reason is because if things were different then maybe I wouldn’t have the job I have now and wouldn’t have those people in my life, wouldn’t have find my true family.

I am where I am supposed to be right here and right now and honestly it doesn’t matter how I got here and THAT is what I have come to understand.

I am so thankful and grateful to those in my life who have stuck around and helped me get here – without them I would never have been able to clear my lens off enough to begin to see the person that they see every time they look at me. What an incredible gift.

this will open your eyes…

This is just incredible.

Amazing. Beautiful. Inspiring.