I was whining mightily about traffic this morning, pleading for positive energy, asking for good vibrations, praying to the Almighty and cursing inside my car at people who could not hear me.  Yet low and behold the world did not come to an end and I did make it to work but my nerves were pretty much shot. I said “get it together girl, let that go, it’s just traffic, you’ve been in a million traffic jams, let it go.”  I shook that off and let, key word LET some more stuff jump on my back.

Interruptions, so called fires, hearing people talk so loud you think they were yelling from the porch, hunger. Oh yeah this stuff was BOTHERING me today, but I kept saying to myself, shake it off, this is not a big deal get busy. I did get busy but my heart just wasn’t in it. As far as I was concerned the day was shot.  Productivity banished, desk in shambles, and phone ringing with more problems. When the clock struck the magic hour and I got in my car. I exhaled, until I turned the corner.

Traffic again, a wreck. Pass that, turn the corner another wreck. I’m whining all the way and then I got a text and it said “you think you are mad, then check out that sister with a pink slip in her book bag.”  My mind and my whine hit the brakes at that moment.  I thought I was having a bad day, an inconvenient day, the sister with the pink slip is contemplating her future.  She’s wondering how she’s going to feed her family with no job.

I had to acknowledge that the whining thing is human, it happens when my little universe is out of balance. I had to acknowledge that what I’m whining about is no big deal at all. I had to acknowledge that while I whine about the small stuff, there is some really big, really life changing stuff going on in the lives of others. I had to acknowledge that whining is the opposite of doing and that a better response to a situation is to do something about.  My perspective changed. It is still changing.

Because we love we sometimes feel as though we have an obligation to put up with stuff and to a certain extent we do. If your partner, child, or other loved one has had a bad day and they come home and unload on you, you certainly want to be that shoulder to lean on. Ideally, once the venting is complete, you and said love one can go on with the rest of your evening and maybe even enjoy it together. Sometimes that’s not the case and you know that it is not the case when the unload/vent time happens on a DAILY or even more frequent basis.  The more frequent it becomes is an indication that is not event and circumstances alone that are bothering your loved one, but that there is now some sort of eternal struggle.  When the eternal struggle makes an appearance, you become the recipient of that struggle, of that negative energy on every occasion that the venting comes.

I’ve been on both sides i.e. I have allowed circumstance and problems get the best of me by internalizing them and then unloading them on someone I love repeatedly. I tried to release that energy but couldn’t because it wasn’t the circumstance it was the internalization, it became a part of my energy and efforts to shake it off on the other person, were futile. As a recipient of negative energy, I’ve offered ears, shoulders, advice and all manner of comfort to the giver to help them shake it off, to no avail. Regardless of the side you are on, that negative energy can become all consuming and once it goes there it is exhausting.

What do you do about it?  How about using the Dog Whisperer technique. Trainer/psychologist/all around dope guy, Cesar Milan talks about setting rules, boundaries and limitations for out of control/unruly dogs. The technique is simple and really can be applied to anything. In this case we apply it to negative energy.  The rule: acknowledge the negative energy when you see/feel/hear it.  The boundary: keep it external, do not it allow it to become a part of your spirit/energy/vibe. The limitation: time, internally set a time for how long you allow yourself to experience that energy before you shove it to the exit door.

Are you facing some negative energy? If so put on the hat of the Dog Whisperer and send that energy to the exits.

Planning, to-do lists and time management have always been things that have fascinated me. I’m a major seeker of all things time management related and have tried many different methods, to manage my time and my life, like the Franklin Planner (remember those big honking books), the Personal Efficiency Program (which I used with the Franklin) and finally I kicked and screamed into the 21^st Century and bought a Palm (the cheapest one of course). I’ve read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective people and several books by Julie Morgenstern on how to get it right, get organized, get my time managed and my task list done. Yet after 20 years of all this foolishness, there’s still absolute mountains of paper, the dishes and laundry continue to pile up, I still forget stuff (because it hasn’t been entered into the Blackberry), and I still don’t get everything done that is on the list.  I’ve been through all these systems and used all these tools and have found them all useful, but I’ve never been able to stick to any one system.

I think all of these systems are fine systems that work for some individuals, had they not worked, I doubt they would have been so wildly popular. The thing about any system is that in order for it to work, the person using it has to be committed to it and remain committed to it. That is something I have been unable to do.  They’ve been either too complex, too fluffy or to be frank, I just got lazy and resorted back to my old ways of doing things, which in the case of the paper piles, meant doing nothing until it was absolutely out of control and a fire hazard.

I’d like to do something new. For the past two years or so, I have worked diligently on simplification and dropping things from my radar that just weren’t important. Some of this work was done out of necessity, some was done out of the desire to really be more focused.  I believe I’m on the right track in the sense that I’ve taken the focus away from the task lists (though I still use them) and management of time, to the management of my life and how it ought to be lived. It’s not about living the best way that I know how, but really living a life that is full. Not of stuff and things to do but of joy and peace and productivity and purpose. That’s the direction I’m moving in and I’m definitely taking some lumps along the way but I’m believing that I will end up in a place that will be beneficial not only to me, but to everyone and everything that I touch along the way. What I learn of course will be shared.

What makes you productive?  Has your methodology allowed you to live in a way that’s more fulfilling to you and those around you? If so, please share your thoughts.

I pray to my creator on and a daily basis.  I’m praying for my family, my friends, people I don’t know, for strength, guidance and protection.  In other words, I pray for stuff, events, things, for giveness. There’s nothing wrong with praying for any of it, the Creator has the power to all things, hence there is no one better to ask of.  The rub however is the asking. This morning I prayed before I began writing.  As I think back on what was said during that prayer, about 90% of it was asking for something, the remainder was praise and thanksgiving. For me, that is an imbalance. That imbalance is a reflection of my neediness, my self-absorption and my perception that I’m in need of MUCH.

Here’s the deal.  My Creator knows what I need, He knows who I love, He knows all that ails me and mine. The Bible says something to the effect of ‘you have not because you ask not’ and I believe that, but I don’t think the intent was for prayer time to be full of requests.

Now the challenge.  I challenge myself to make a shift in my prayer time, so that the gratitude, the worship and the praise are the focus, as opposed to the asking. I challenge you to do the same.  Regardless of your faith, my belief is that the more time we spend in gratitude, praise and worship of our creator, the less time we spend absorbed in our own stuff.  This isn’t a challenge to not ask, it is a challenge to make a change. The one who created you and me deserves more of our higher selves and the world around us does too.  What will your prayer be today? Will it be more gratitude? Try it.

The last two weeks my schedule changed and I’m going to work an hour earlier. The problem is that I’m not a morning person in terms of my ability to interact (live) with people first thing in the morning. Yeah I’m ON when necessary but in terms of style and preference I’d rather ease into the day and really pump it up after everyone is gone for the day. Yes I can get out of the bed early but I’m not much for a whole lot of moving and talking. Thinking, writing and a little morning exercise is my preference. The thing is all of this thinking, writing and exercising in the morning before work was getting me there later and later and later every day. Fortunately I was given pretty massive flexibility in terms of my schedule. What was flexibility however, turned into abuse (later and later and later). That I will cop to, even though my time spent met or exceeded what is the norm.

We’re living in tough times. Where I work we’re facing a budget shortfall, and as such we’ve had our wages frozen and have had to make some drastic cuts in improvement projects. There is an electricity of fear in the air. People are afraid of losing their jobs and don’t want to do anything that would give an excuse/reason to be let go.  Some of that electricity caught me.  I’m not fearful of losing my job, but became increasingly aware of the perception that I was getting away with something that others could not.  Sure, I’d been given a flexible schedule (that I was flexing to the extreme) but I work in a culture that permission to do something other than the norm is frowned upon.  Everyone is particularly troubled by what everyone else is doing and when they are troubled enough, the murmuring about it turns into a roar.  I wanted to stop the roar.

So now, it is all about appearance and visibility. Am I where I’m supposed to be when everyone else is? Yes. Do I like it? No not particularly because it really doesn’t fit my body clock, nor my work style.  Adaptation was the key I had to learn to live with a schedule that I didn’t particularly care for. Once I got over that hump I realized that the new schedule, made me more available to answer questions early in  the day, that it would keep my blackberry from blowing up before I got there, and would ease the nerves of my boss, which of course made my nerves better.  On a personal level, the earlier schedule gave me more freedom in the evening. I’m able to get to the gym earlier, have time to cook more during the week and get to leave work every day in the light, instead of the dark.  I realized that in this case, doing something that was not fond of (going to work earlier) was actually beneficial to other and to me. Something this simple got me thinking about more changes that I can make in other areas of my life, which may not be comfortable but have the potential of opening new areas of opportunity.

Is there something or someone gnawing at you that may require a change of appearance, a change in style, a change in habit? If so, don’t ignore it. Try it, you make like it and it may benefit others as well in spite of your initial misgivings.  

This was written on Saturday 3/14/09 I didn’t post it because I wasn’t ready to release the pain. Now I am, it's time to heal.

Happy Birthday

My son came to me at age 6. His father and I were living together. His mom sent him to us. We were getting married, he was cutting up back home. So there he was. We trying to make it, trying to get married and all that and here comes this little boy. Absolutely off the chain, in the beginning we didn’t get along at all, he reminded me and anyone who he could tell it to, that I wasn’t his mother.  He called me by my name.  I was fine with that. After while we got along alright, then better than alright. He became my son. We were together, always. Every PT conference, every game, every Sunday school program. When he was 12, he and I were baptized together. It was my second time, but I wanted to do it again as I had rededicated my life and I wanted to be there with him. This was a funny child, a brilliant child, he was my son. I took him to the King Center, I took him to museums, he did AIDS Walk, he went to Alvin Ailey. We talked, he was comfortable and would tell me some real whoppers some time but I was the MOM I could handle it and I taught him the best that I could. I loved him as hard as I could, I protected him as much as I could but it was not enough.

Shortly after the baptism, the boy went wild. Yeah he was feeling himself, I knew that because he told me about being horny in class, yes this chile said horny to my face without flinching, neither did I, I was so glad he felt he could tell me what he was going though with the changes in his body it was all good, but then it wasn’t.  There was something in him that was always restless.  He never wanted to be contained, I loved that about him, he was very free, loved to discover things and he didn’t have any fear. That all turned into something very devastating though. There were calls from the teachers, craziness about threats at school, being bought home in cuffs by the police from school. Then came lying about school, then came not going to school at all, then came weed, strange and shady friends, suspensions, expulsions and juvenile detention. Let me say that broke me into a million pieces. Going there on those Saturday’s, seeing him in that detention gear, going through the drill, what do you need, buying candy, seeing those parents every week. It was only a little while though, a few months. When it was time for him to get out, and it was a Friday I told his father, we need to grill out, let’s have steaks, my son is coming home. He wasn’t back home 2 months before we put him on a bus to go back up north. He was stealing and lying and smoking and all kinds of foolishness. I said “you not gonna bring this heat on us, you got to go, if you change your mind about how you gonna behave you can come back” He didn’t change his mind. He didn’t come back. He was in and out of trouble, but he was making money, doing his thing. We talked from time to time, but not much. I said that’s it, it’s on him, Can’t do it. He couldn’t either. My child is in the pen now. I haven’t seen him in 5 years. We have written a few times. His father and I have split.

This summer was my first summer alone. One Saturday I got a letter from him. He said something to the effect of he knows me and his dad aren’t kickin it right now but no matter what happens I am still his mother and he appreciates all that I had done for him. I cried that day.

I am crying right now. My son is 21 today. I cannot see him, talk to him, hug him. I cannot tell him happy birthday. I’m sick as shit over it right now.  Thinking about all of it the good and the bad, what was supposed to happen and how it went so terribly wrong. There isn’t shit I can do about it. Not a damn thing.

The O’Jays had a song called Living for the Weekend. In the chorus they sang “Living for the weekend, cause that’s when I party down”. Today is Friday, the start of the weekend, everybody is feeling really fine, can’t wait to walk out the doors of their jobs this evening and get the weekend poppin after going through an entire week of drudgery. Are you one of those people? Was this week drudgery for you? Are you living for the weekend? If so, let’s put the brakes on that thinking.

In America, we for the most part follow the five day work week. Monday through Friday, we head to our place of business, do our jobs and fly out the door on Friday with the expectation that what we see, feel experience Friday night to Sunday night has got be better than the Monday through Friday grind. That doesn’t have to be the case however. If the grind is really grinding on your nerves, then maybe it’s time to take a look at your job. Is there anything that can be changed to make it more fulfilling? Can a change of pace, a change of order, or additional responsibilities give you a Friday feeling every day at the job? Maybe you’re don’t think you’re in a position to make any real changes in the way you work, because you work on a line, have certain numbers that you have to meet or have other reasons that require you to do things in a certain order.  If that’s the case have you talked to anyone about a move? Why not?

Finally if you’ve exhausted all possibilities in changing the way your work or the things you work on, then maybe it’s time to change your mind.  Is it time to do something new altogether? What do you want to do and do you have the skills to do it? Can you obtain those skills if you don’t? You most certainly can. The bottom line is that the way we approach our work and the enjoyment or lack thereof obtained from it has everything to do with what’s going on in our head. We don’t have to just live for the weekend if we make up our minds today to do things differently, take a new approach, add to our knowledge base and appreciate each day that we have to go to a job. Doing so will open up all sorts of possibilities.  Are you willing to test it out for yourself?

There was no happy feeling on this day. In fact I think the first word from my mouth was a swear not at a person, but at my clock. My clock had betrayed me, it’s jarring, shrill honking and beeping, told me that my time was up. The time that was spent in rejuvenation and rebuilding had come to an end and it was time for me to go build and rejuvenate that which was around me.However there was a problem. At the moment of the betrayal, my mind and my body let me know that they were not ready, they both needed more time in order to be effective, but on this day I knew that would not be. On this day, I would not be ON.

This is not typical, it’s downright strange.  I’m not a morning person, but once I finally do move, everything is alright but this morning the movement was just too slow.  I had a strong desire to NOT move.  Daily I hear a song in my head or feel one in my heart. Then I fire up one of these machines to hear some music.  This morning, no music was played within or without.  I knew that I was not ON.

The morning prep continued in its strangeness. I finally made it out of the house and tried to shake it off in the car, by putting on music. The same music that had me bobbing my head and singing along yesterday, sounded loud and abrasive. I had to let it go, I just wasn’t ON.

What I was ON was some old bullshit.  Ready to curse anyone out for nothing, not ready to have any semblance of productivity, ready to get right back in the car and go back home, but I didn’t.  Just because I wasn’t ON didn’t give me a right to be foolish or temperamental so I succumbed.

I realized that there are days, that even with the greatest effort and best intentions I cannot be present and in full flower.  This is okay.  I realize my imperfection is my humaneness and that I will not be my best self, nor will I perform at my optimum level on every day that I walk this earth.  Not ON is certainly not a place where I want to live but I know that from time to time, I will have to pass through it.

Everything and everyone around you right now is good. There is no one there to rain on your parade and when the rain comes down, you just get an umbrella and keep it moving.  We all know that although the “Everything is All Good” state doesn’t last forever, there is no reason to brace for pending doom.

I’ve been in a position where the good things, the good energy, the peace and light are oh so overwhelming. Existing in that state is like a dream that I don’t to be awakened from. As the good vibrations continued I recognized that I was living in that energy, it wasn’t a dream and that the fear and hesitancy that I had was a fear of living in peace, goodness and light.

What I know now is that the good things are there to be enjoyed in that moment. Good things will but the good of this moment will never come again.

What’s good in your world? Are you embracing and enjoying it right now?

Waiting on the other shoe to drop? Looking for the boogey man around the corner? Sucked in by talk of pending doom? Been there and done that. It comes down to expectations, in this case expecting the worst. Expecting the worst is born out a series of bad experiences in the form of loss. The shoe has dropped repeatedly, lost job, lost spouse/partner, lost possessions, even lost keys. What also was lost in stringing those types of events together is all the good stuff. Finding a childhood friend after many years, feeling pride at your child’s all “A” report card, making it home without hitting traffic and opening your eyes and breathing each day to experience all of it.