The Year of Self-Inflicted Terror

I have never been super good at facing difficulty and ponying up to failures or possible failures. Man, I'd like to kick that one! This year I am planning to expose myself to lots of things that scare me, work hard on things that seem insurmountable, chip away at jobs that take a looooooong time and seem like they will never end and learn to hear and handle and use criticism.

Whew. Its a big year. 

 My focus word for the year is "Grit." It feels really good and I have lot of ideas for making it happen.

One thing I am doing, for instance is planning to take surfing lessons. I love the ocean and I really like to swim (although, I am not any kind of proficient) but surfing looks terrifying. The major deep water, the being out so far away from any help or land, the giant board that could clobber you silly, the Godzilla strength surf, not to mention the social intimidation of trying to hang with the tanned and the muscled. Long Island has a surfing school and I am plan to enroll. Lucy tells me she will come too and I plan to push through the shakes and the hesitation and learn to surf. This is the year. I  will do tough things.

I also plan to organize, purge completely and beautify our hoarders stash of a basement. I am telling you guys this so that I will have public accountability and will feel like I have called myself out. I'm gonna sort through all the boxes of junk and random papers and old photos stuck together. I'm gonna take load after load to Goodwill and the dump and jam things into our recycling bin until they won't fit anymore. I will have systems and know them. I will look all my ridiculous mess in the eye and I will stop doing it. When company comes I will not run madly around shoving everything into a box or a bag and then throw it on the scary heap in the basement. I am done. This is the year.

Its gonna be a good year. I'm excited. 

Also, I am heading off on these challenging, scary adventures with so much in my corner. I have good books, pretty spaces, certainty that I can do it and an adorable baby with the cutest static halo around.

 

Poetry Friday: Marriage Advice for Myself

Happy Poetry Friday everyone!

I am writing today about a personal journey I'm having at the moment. I chose a theme word for this year to help me focus my thoughts and ideas and efforts. This is the year of "Acceptance" for me. I'm working more to accept the circumstances I am handed, to accept the problems that I am facing, to accept the people who have been put in my life, to accept myself and my flaws, to accept the good I'm given and the help and creativity and hope around me.

One of the biggest areas I'm really flexing the acceptance muscle is in my marriage. Its so easy to decide that the person we are with needs to change all of their problems, to distance ourselves from them and find ways to differentiate instead of unify, and even to wish away for refuse to acknowledge some of the truth of the current state. I'm on a quest to go to a different place: a knowing and a seeing that is not resignation but just awareness and honesty with overtones of oneness and deep compassion for him and for myself.

And then I made a poem.


If I Were Wise

If I were a wise woman
I would allow my husband to just be.
I'd let him care obsessively about
The exact time he goes to bed and the
The turning off of lights in empty rooms.
I would let him rage about slow traffic
And children who forget to put their shoes on.
I would listen to his worries about the
Dangers of caffeine and alcohol and liberals
And understand it all as his honest now.
I would live like a great warm radiator at his side,
Walking my own path and letting go of his.
I would see myself winking from his mirrored-skin
And hear his voice ripple in my exultant shout
Below the great cement arches of an over-pass. 

Go to Violet's blog this week to see all the other contributors to Poetry Friday today and read a cozy bunch of verse.