Escaped another Trap!!!!

Why is it so hard for me to enjoy the moment?  To just BE in it?

Why is my mind always on the potential pain that's coming my way?  How do I flip my mind to look at the potential glory and joy that is coming my way?  How do I still move forward when there has been so much pain and heart aches left as results of my risks in the past?

Getting older is hard stuff.

With age comes wisdom, but wisdom only comes through experience.   As I experience life I make more mistakes and feel more pain.  It becomes exceedingly more challenging to take risks knowing that it really is a fifty fifty chance of the situation working in your favor.

I guess with practice I can learn to stay away from the experiences that I know are gonna only end up in heart ache, but those seem to be the same experiences that through the process and before the heart ache the joy is over the top wonderful.  I guess the question is, is the joy worth the pain then?

Sacrifice.  Is there sacrifice in everything?  Can anything be achieved without the work?  And does the work need to be hard?

I am on about creating our own realities lots in these pages.  I just had a great conversation with my hypnotherapy guru,  about how one creates their own experiences void of suffering.  And even as much as I respect him and our relationship is one of teacher/student there are some things I just cant understand yet.

I feel pain is a wonderful earthly experience.  I have been enlightened and feel super connected to the energy of all when I gather the courage to reach deep into myself and touch the pain that has been brushed under the carpet of my heart.  I feel liberated when I allow myself to fully BE with the pain, to share it with someone else and then have the courage to walk through a similar experience and create a joyous outcome.

 That to me is what life is really about.   Experiencing it fully and completely.

But... I can get stuck in the Being with the pain and the sharing it. Constantly looping there.

I have changed my reality tremendously a couple times in my years.  From income levels of poverty to middle/upper class.  From obese and miserable to fit and happy.  My social circles have changed entirely several times and I have moved out of being married to freedom for me.  I understand the power behind manifesting my reality.  I also understand the sacrifices I needed to make for each of those changes to occur.

So my counter to my glorious Guru was this.....

What I don't understand is why not everything I want manifests and if its because of vibration levels and universal timing then how can suffering and pain not be involved?  I am human and my feelings sometimes act in their own accord.  I can manage my thoughts and I am learning to manage my feelings.... but I have learned I cannot suppress either of them.  I can shift the energy and change them, but not push them down and hide them.

Maybe this is where my teacher is trying to direct me to.  that its a choice if I suffer or if I have the power to discipline myself to flip that pain into love.  I can get on board with that, but I need to remember to first allow myself permission to have the negative thought and feeling first.   To experience it and fully embrace it before I flip it.  Because I think its in enjoying the entire moment for what it is, is where I am missing out entirely.

I get caught up in the fear of losing the happy feeling so I squash it in my time and my control. It's the only way I know how to let go.   Or I get lost in the drama of the pain that I allow myself to stay there because its easier to just stay in sadness then to find happiness and lose it again.  Because I can't let it go.

I think to answer my own question about why some things manifest and some things don't.  Is those things may not be on the path I am going.  They are distractions that my higher self can see.  So even though my ego is salivating over the potential experience, my higher self knows its not gonna be good for the intentions I have already set for myself.  This is where the idea of God residing within me always confused me.

Hmmm... So I am marrying my progressive beliefs of I am in full control of my manifestations, with the worlds outer belief that what is happening in their lives is happening to them and gratitude for universal mercy reigns supreme.  I think my struggle is with my Ego and the art of letting go.

It always comes back to my inability to let go.  When I want something whether its good for me or not, I chomp down and wont let up until the morsel of meat is entirely devoured.  Which sometimes leads to terrible bouts of food poisoning.

Being in the moment I guess then means knowing when to let go and when to continue on.  Because truly if I am not in the moment and struggling really hard to be, its always a loop I am caught in.  That is when fear of past pain pulls me down.  Not that I wont feel that fear ever, but when it loops and causes me to lose focus for extended periods of time... that's the suffering for which maybe my guru was speaking of?  Thats me not in my higher self, but my Ego.

Food for my thoughts I guess.  Have a great day!  Sending you love and light and many growing experiences today!!

Just about Lost it.

I am an addict.  I will always be an addict.  I need to surrender to the fact I am an addict.

It is so easy for me to forget that I am an addict as soon as my life begins to take on some normalcy again.  After four months of staying home to focus all my time and energy on recovery.

Meaning....... attending meetings,  Talking daily to my Sponsor and only people in recovery,  Working the steps and reading the Narcotics anonymous literature.  Its easy to stay clean and surrendered to the fact I am an addict when I surround myself in a cocoon of recovery.

But what about when I head back into the real world?  What happens when I get that promotion I had been seeking?  What happens when the incredibly sexy guy starts to flirt with me?  What happens when my non addict friends and supports tell me I wont be an addict forever and that its okay to pull away from them using people?

I can tell you what happens for me.  Bad behaviors surface as a warning sign and then I am off and running straight for that white fluffy cloud of invincibility.

And that my friends is where I am at today.  My beautiful supports have picked me up from my relapse in the summer.  They dusted me off and helped me get stable on my feet.  They encouraged my first few steps and watched me start to walk again.  The minute there attention moved on to someone else that needed picking up, I was off and running at a wobbly sprint.

I am running like a drunk person away from my supports!!  Wtf is wrong with this picture?  Who do I think I am running from, and where the fuck am I running too??  Seriously  this poor lopsided, crazy woman is running down the street in her hospital gown thinking she is escaping.... what?  Her demons?  Her captors?

Probably my fucking self!!

There is way more pun in that sentence then most people would catch.  I am running from myself.

This is too hard.  Recovery is too hard.  Life is too much work.  Its too much work to be an addict trying to function in a world where everyone is a fucking unrealized addict.  Its so hard for me not to get caught up in other peoples blissful illusions.  I want my blissful illusion back.  I want to be able to fuck that super buff beautiful 25 year old that has me so bloody weak knee'd I can barely stand it.  i wanna go with my boss and finish off the bottle of Crown he is tempting me with.  I want to let my arrogance attract more power into my life.  I want I want I want..... all these things that end up killing me in the end.

Why does this have to be so hard?  Why can I not be normal, with a normal life with simple challenges and soft life lessons?  Why did I choose such a hard existence?  How did I become an addict and how to I unbecome it?  How do I live in a world full of corruption, lies and deceit and keep open and not get hurt?  I don't know how to Live.  I am on step three and I am finally beginning to understand.... I truly do not know how to play the game.

So this is me getting honest.  I had to tell the incredibly fucking sexy big boy that I cant play his game.  It will hurt too much when I lose.  In an emotional meltdown I texted another person about my utter failure at life and my compete surrender to my brokenness.  I talked to my supports.  I answered a couple questions in my step working guide and i fucking cried.... and cried.

And I am clean today.  And I didn't sex anyone.  I didn't blow my entire bank account.... only partial.  I didn't eat the entire fridge clean, only a late night snack.  I am not happy today.... but I have found peace and some serenity.  Thats enough for today.

Movin' On Up!!

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.  Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

My oldest daughter introduced me to a techno song that used the word Rave instead of work.  As I grow up, I have lost the fun word of Rave and replaced it with work.  No wonder I have huge outbreaks of drug frenzies in my world.   Eat, sleep, work, repeat.... is a bundle of fun!!

I am integrating back into work after being off for four months due to an energy burn out resulting in a drug relapse.  The transition back into work has been a challenging one.  Challenging in ways I never anticipated.

I knew my body was going to revolt.  No physical exercise for four months.  I am a landscaper!  Ya, my body has loved me, but has used up the majority of the energy I am creating.  That I was prepared for.  My plan of action in preparation for this situation was to sleep, sleep and more sleep.

My counselor stomped on this plan recently.  I see why only after a bit of a hate on for her and my own stomping of the feet in protest.  Such an infantile I am when my plans are thwarted.

Eat, sleep, work ,repeat, regardless of the situation is detrimental to ones health.  Apparently, we do not charge ourselves through sleep.  I struggle with this notion and so as per my normal way to learn and understand I write stuff out.

See to me sleep is when our body recharges and our spirits connect back into the universal grid.  To sleep is to go home for me.  I believed that all my charging was coming from that place of sleep.  Yet looking back over my epic burnout of '014, I see that was what I was doing then.  Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

I had no time for friends, no time for fellowship, no time to build on my passions, my hobbies.  No time for romance, for family, or for myself.  Twelve hour physical days and twelve hours deep sleep.

 It wasn't until the end.  I realized I had completely drained my energy tank.  I jumped into a pallet bed project and opened myself up wide to a lover hoping to begin a desperate process of energy recovery.  But I was too late.

Today moving back into the work force I am being triggered terribly by those final days of burnout.  I am working the same route of residential maintenance as I was then.  I am as tired as I was then.  Yet, Its a different tired and I am doing a different job on the route so its not entirely the same.... and I am coming back instead of going down.

Similar to how people react to spring and fall.  I am excited for growth, I have already went through the dying off phase.

Leaning heavily on where I once was, I need to dig into the things that charge me up and move me forward.  Sleep is a huge deal as I move back into a physical job, but eight hours a night is enough.  Instead of adding more sleep if I need it, I am actually trying something new.... and cutting back on what I am doing at work that is exhausting me.  What a novel concept.  Less exhausting work, taking care of my health equals more time in the day for me.  Huh, who woulda thought?

So....

I have asked for a promotion.

 Instead of doing the full manual labor list my boss has for the maintenance department of his landscaping company I have asked to run it.  After a huge proposal and a two hour presentation to my boss and the HR manager.   I have been given the title of Residential and Commercial maintenance manager.  Yay!!  I wont be using my body and exhausting myself as much, I will be using my mind, which I have learned is something that charges me up.

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.   Now I am loving my work again.  Its like raving for me, it charges me up and makes me happy.  When I am charged up and happy I have a tonne of energy for other things in my life.  Like family and friends.  Lovers and fellowship.  Hobbies and passions.  All of these things charge me up even more.

There was a time within the last two years that I only needed six hours sleep and had so much love and energy flowing from me that I couldn't contain it.  I was sharing it with everyone.  A hard lesson learned on that one..... energy vampires will find you and drain you if your not careful.  But that is a blog for another day, actually I think I have a few of them written already.  Still leaning heavily on recent past experience I have a better warning system and an understanding of what it means to be vulnerable and what it is to be open.  But let me not digress.

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.   My boss has invited me to hold a chair in his business chapter.  Its a huge networking group of professionals and business owners in the city I live in.  I was thrilled to be asked, as this introduces me to a whole new set of contacts and people.  One thing I have learned in my years on this planet called Earth is that growth comes through the people you are connected with.

 To continually grow is to be always moving into new circles of people.  This is a new chapter of my life opening up and I cannot even begin to describe how excited and freaked out I am to move into the arena.  New energy, new interests, new people, new responsibility, new income level.... yup it is time to recreate myself a new!

Eat, sleep, work it cause your worth it, repeat!!

The Epic Burn out of Summer '014

What is exhaustion?

Got my coffee on my desk, a day off and a mind full of words.

In many ways I am coming back into myself and in many others I have this new personality developing within me.  My HR manager would argue that our personality is something we are born with and does not change.  I am not sure I am on that same train of thought yet.

I do know that I am almost at the end of a tremendous growth cycle.  My writings wont be as much about where I am at.   They will move back into things I am studying as oppose to things I am experiencing.  For me life is about cycles of experience and go get em' kinda of growth.  Then there are times of going within to rest and study up on what I just experienced or look into new areas to study.

That is where I am at now... going within.  Which seems odd as physically I am back at work now but mentally I am going within,  These past four months, physically I have slowed down and seemly experienced less but my mind was still processing my gigantic burnout crash.

The explosive dramatic burnout of summer '014.

I just read a time magazine article about exhaustion.  The writers take was factual.  Sometimes the facts hurt more then an opinion.  As a nation we frown deeply upon exhaustion.  Doctors don't buy into it and therefor people are not supported at all in their concerns of being over tired.  Employers continue to work their employees to hard and marketers continue to hypnotize people into believing they would feel better if they had this or that product.  Thus creating a viscous cycle of debt and the need to work more..... disgusting.

Did you know we are really the only nation that works this way?

We are easily lead pawns.  Makes me so sad.

So my crazy crash into a brick wall was apparently quite a norm in this society we have created for ourselves.  That does not make it any easier to deal with.  Strangely enough what does make it easier.... is the fact I am also a drug addict.

Does that not sound entirely strange to you?  Yay for being a drug addict.

With a drug affliction I was taken seriously by not only a medical doctor but a psychiatrist and a psychologist.  However if I was to just have burnt out.... nothing.  I would have had very little support.  How does one measure being over tired?  Tough I guess, doctors cant work with that maybe?  But have me fill out an assessment of what drugs I have used in the past twelve months and I am admitted into a world class womens treatment center for six weeks to rest up.

Our society is ass backwards. What we reward is ludicrous.

But holy Hanna this is not at all where I was intending to go with this post.  I merely wanted to share my experience with integrating back into work force after four months off and the struggles to re prioritize my recovery plans.  I guess I do love a good rant about society though.  So let me move on to what I really wanted to identify...

 How do you know when your exhausted, or over worked and how do you deal with that?

I have only been working like 20 hours each of the past two weeks but it feels more like 60 hours each of the weeks.  I am a landscaper and in my little northern city that means shoveling a shit tonne of snow.  So the work has been physically demanding.  No wonder I am tired after each snow fall, from four months of sleeping and hiding under my covers, to back breaking work... duh!  

What I was not aware of is what exhaustion feels like.  I can pound out my list of 24 driveways in a mere six to eight hours alone with no problems.  Physically I am still fit albeit grossly overweight.  Its when I get home that this extremely heavy feeling blankets me and my eyes wanna close but my mind is still awake and calm.    It makes sense that my body would be tired after working it like that, but what do you do when your mind isn't so much tired?

Drug it?  Yes, doc I will take some sleeping pills please.  Or wait I can just get some weed, much easier, thanks anyways.

The use of drugs or alcohol in this time magazine article stated that addiction was considered the leading cause of exhaustion.  Addiction to what?  The article suggested Street drugs and booze.  What about all the doctor prescribed drugs that change a persons moods and forces a person into states that are desired?

Please let me not digress here.  I have a strong opinion about medications and I don't want this to move into a me bashing them rant.  So let me just state the point that using prescription drugs is not the only answer to dealing with your problems.  Its the easy way and in some cases its is the best way for A person... but those some cases are less then twenty percent. Prescriptions are a drug that eventually lead to more exhaustion thus keeping us pawns in the life game of chess.

Physical and mental exhaustion go hand and hand I am noticing.  When I get tired physically from lack of sleep due to stress, I tend to eat more starchy foods which quickly escalates that over tired feeling.  This moves into exercising less because I am just to tired and then the really viscous cycle of weight gain and all levels of energy drop dramatically.  Leaving me no energy to deal with the original problem of grieving or an emotional upset.  Truly those are the basics to energy and low vibrations within the body and mind.

 From there depression sets in and all negative mind bashing thoughts which lead to the over use of prescriptions or street drugs.  An easy fix and when your tired, the seemingly only fix.

From my experience with proper eating after a lifetime of over portions and extreme starches, I cannot even begin to stress how important diet is to a persons mental state.  My four months off from a crash from being over tired threw all things healthy and good for me out the window.  I have been eating huge portions again and eating starches with little regard to healthy amounts.  I have gained twenty five pounds in four months and feel like the biggest bag of shit around.  I am reminded of how I felt before I began eating to the Canada food guide.

Going back to work is forcing me to eat better again just to get through my day which is good. Getting enough sleep has been the toughest thing, eight hours my ass... this girl needs at least ten on days I push my body.  Instead of sleeping pills to slow my mind I have used meditations and sleep hypnosis.  Already my mood is shifting from one of defeat and inertia from being off all those months.... yet now I am finding that the fear of crashing again is almost overwhelming

This is the true nature of the post I wanted to write about.  I am very aware now of when I get tired.  Physically and mentally.  I never want to burn out again like I did this past summer.  Over work, lack of nutrition, and addictions drained me entirely of my energy.  Not practicing any source of energy drawing activity just about killed me.
 
I have learned from my HR manager as of late that I am an introverted person.  I recharge alone.  Being around people drain my energy not increase it.  This has presented a huge problem as far as fellowship meetings for my drug addiction is concerned.  I have had a terrible time reworking my recovery plan to be kinder on myself.  Now I spend more time on the phone with my sponsor reading the daily meditation together.  That fuels me up.  I go online to meetings now, I get what I need information-ally but keep my energy from seeping out.

I love cooking for my girls I have learned during my time off.  I find I am gaining much energy from doing that.  I am back to yoga and meditations which are always wonderful for me.  Plus studying has these huge energy spikes that I had no idea of before.  I study what I am passionate about and this fuels my dreams and helps me visualize an amazing future which has a strange way of becoming my present.  Art and crafting things for my home bring me joy as well.

I think by keeping mindful of what makes me happy, will help me stay in balance with the work I must do in order to pay my bills.  I love working outdoors and truly enjoy my job.  In the past I have kept my passions out of line with my income because as soon as I attached dollars to what I loved doing, what I loved doing became a job.  Today I enjoy that I have passions and I work to support those passions.  If those passions make me a few bucks on the side, great.

Truly illuminating exhaustion for me is to accept that I work to live.  I cannot live to work.   There is way more to this life, way more depth then just working.  Love what I do as I spend 40 hours a week doing it, but know that there is a whole wide world beyond work.  Work has become my humbling experience, my hours to keep myself in check.

This is the end of my workaholism.

Wow took a long freaking time to get to that conclusion.  I said at the beginning I was full of words!!  Man I need to write more often, that might keep the topic a bit more simple and to the point.  If you made it this far.... thank you and I am sorry for the double rants.  Blessings!

Who Am I, Without You?

Dependence or Inter-dependence.  Attachments or Freedom.

I used to think I had a good understanding of those two concepts.  I think I was wrong.

Man, It has been a long month since I was last here writing.  Work and my psychiatrist have been running these personality tests on me lately.  The doctor for medical mental reasons.... which it turns out I am not crazy after all.  Work because we have a new HR manager who is wildly into matching team members up with their best suited position and colleagues.

I think my HR manager is brilliant.  I have learned that writing is one of my main sources of creative outlet.  The way I think about the world is apparently rare, making up only one percent of the population.  I share the same personality as Mother Thersa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. And I took the test three times, twice out of the three were this personality.   I think that's cool.

So now with that knowledge, of writing being such a force of healing for me I know why I always sit here aghast when I write for the first time in weeks, even months.

 Its been a tough month.... a real tough month.  The fourth month of my sobriety and the last month off before going back to work after again four months off and Christmas in the month.  Yes a super tough month it was.  And yet instead of coming here to write out my trials,   I go into hiding until I have tribulations to note instead.  Again another personality trait I discovered from a few different personality tests as of late, I withdraw when I am overwhelmed.

Isolation or healthy withdrawal.  Maybe that should be a secondary topic.  In recovery they warn deeply against isolation.  I get that.  When I spend to much time alone I get really down on myself and end up relapsing because today I am still my own worst enemy.  Yet healthy withdrawal as an introvert is definitely needed to recharge my batteries.  I run away from recovery when I spend too much time in the rooms with highly chaotic people, as we all are if we have landed our asses in narcotics anonymous.  But too much chaos sends me over the deep end and the main reason I use...to bring myself back into balance.  Which of course never works.

(Ugh my key board just revolted. Creating e's instead of question marks and then my shift button stuck on.     Probably because of  the lack of use in the past month.  I have just spent ten minutes trying to fix it and now have lost my mojo groove....  So apologies if this is now broken and disjointed.  where was I?)

Oh ya, tough month.

After three months of being off work I was ready to go back.  I think three months was the magical number my mind allowed me to be unattached from my addiction of working.  I really began to back slide in this fourth month where my self worth was concerned.  I began questioning who I was without work.  I found myself trying out other hats coming to understand just how much of a workaholic I had become in my first full year of sobriety.  If maybe I caught that at the beginning of my relapse last January I would have saved myself some much heart ache and a drained bank account....

Hindsight is twenty twenty and the part of life that I truly do love, trial and error. Experience.

But let me not digress.  Knowing I was slipping into the dark again without drugs and now work to fill that void within me, I jumped into cooking and caring for my two daughters still living with me.  I was baking every day(from a box, but don't judge that still huge for this TV dinner kinda girl).  I was making my girls lunches, a first in pretty much their whole lives.  I was doing their laundry, keeping the house clean and listening to their life issues and providing guidance.  That last part I loved.  Actually all of it I enjoyed doing, just my waist line was the one with the problem, too much taste testing.


So half of the month was inspiring.  I was trying new things and placing my focus where it mattered.  It felt good.  But then the girls went to their fathers for Christmas and I was left alone for a week.

I never knew just how long a week could feel.  Like an entire life time rolled into those seven days.

I was a mess.  Truly.  I felt like one of those old kid toy tops flicked out of its spin. This poor weeble wanted to fall down.   I was launched deep into a pit of,  who the fuck am I..... and ....the only answer i could come up with was, No One.

So Sad.

Dependence.  Take away the dependence on substances to get you through and then what?  Work became my substance to keep me afloat.  Take away work and then what?  My daughters became and truly always have been what kept me afloat, but take them away and then what?  My friends became my floating devices, but it was Christmas and they had things to do to.

When I was alone with just me.... omg.  I was a nightmare.

I am on Step Two.   Which is... We came to believe in a power greater then ourselves to restore us to sanity.

Not once did I reach out to my higher power in this time.  I am still mad at her for letting me fall into relapse this past time.  I am still pissed off at her for not giving me what I believe I had worked so hard for and deserved.  I am having a hard time coming to believe.  Because I am having a hard time letting go of my attachments.

What I learned most about myself in this past month is that as long as I am filling the void with outer things like drugs, work, parenting I can not fully receive my true self.   Which comes through as my higher power.   But, and this is a big but.... I also know that sitting in a dark room removed from these things(well okay not the drugs they are just wrong no matter how you cut it) is not beneficial either.

I guess then what it comes down to is balance??

 I hate that word, its like perfection. Its Illusive.  I need people to live a thriving life but how do I become inter-dependent and not dependent.  I need work, I love work.  I have worked the past two days and feel so amazing I cant even describe it, but how do I not let myself become a workaholic again?  My girls are back and even my son was here this past week and I loved being mommy again, but how do I do that from a loving detached place?

Having my eyes opened wide to the fact I am so attached to certain things in my life was terribly scary.  Truly I was a mess this month.  I go into hiding when I become a mess like that.

 I did better then before though as my close supports knew what was going on.  I even cried in front of other people.... alot.  Which was weird, not a norm for me I can tell you that.  I am definitely letting more people in during my rough moods as well as my good moods  which is new for me.

Life is growth, learning hard truths about ones self is part of that growth.  I think its part of breaking the seed shell or pushing through the earth.   This past month was a definite breaking the shell kinda months.  Learning that I like to leech unto the things that will give me balance instead of seeking that balance in my own right was huge.  Gross and nasty, uncomfortable and heartbreaking but needed in order to continue to grow and move forward.

Learning who I am without those attachments is now the journey I will embark on.   Kinda scary, kinda exciting.  I am always on about how great experience is, I always tend to forget the tough stuff one needs to process through before the lesson is learned.  I hated this lesson.  I am eager to move on.

Question.

If you removed yourself from all your labels and took off all the hats you wear, would you be able to answer,  Who am I?

Not that I wanna send you on a painful journey of self discovery, but knowing one is not alone is huge in moving through healing with a little bit more grace.  Together we can do what we could not do alone.......