Outside the Box

I am currently in the process of transferring items from one website to a new site I just started using a new hosting service (www.intentionalmusing.com).  Since I just had to reread all the essays on the old site, I could not stop myself from writing a fourth entry (!) in what was supposed to be a trilogy of unemployment essays. Lucky me, the saga continues. It seems we are stuck in the same place and yet time has moved forward making me feel ever so ineffectual and wildly agitated. Unfortunately, I seem to lack the ability to find a new job for my husband all while being terribly sad that one of my children seems mired in an issue that I cannot resolve fast enough for my liking. Control freak, who me?

I desperately need some sort of outlet for all the stress and frustration I have been feeling and while writing has always been my 'thing,' my way of finding focus, it, too, seems to be failing me right now. After careful analysis, I now realize why I am not getting as much out of writing as I used to in the past. I write best about what I find most close to my heart and the personal stuff in my life right now is just plain old depressing. So, I have decided to think outside the box and go outside my comfort zone, my comfy wallflower, duck the spotlight safety zone, and totally throw myself out there. No, I am not becoming a cabaret singer or selling everything off and moving to some foreign land no matter how tempting that might be these days. I have always tried to model for my the children the importance of facing your fears head on and so, feeling at a loss about the next topic to write about, I am turning it over to you, dear readers. I have read enough blogs to realize that this is an interesting way to not only discover a little about my readers, but also to perhaps shove me out of my inertia.  Don't be fooled by my bravado because I am a nervous wreck as this suggestion is a double-edged sword. What happens if no one has a question for me or what if I need to face a critique of my writing that might not be so PC?

Well, I suppose I will just have to 'buy a coping skill' because nothing could be worse than being trapped in your own mind or thoroughly bored with your own ideas. I need a distraction from my life right now. Who's brave enough to be the first one to offer a topic or ask a question?  I look forward to reading your comment.  This could be fun all around.

Self Talk

Those who know me well know that I come from a long line of women who worry and being the type A+ person that I am, I have taken the worry gene to new heights. I obsess about everything from the smallest issue like whether or not I can have one load of  laundry washed/dried and put away before we leave for school to how we are going to survive the third round of unemployment without imploding. Both my mom and my husband agree that I even worry about the fact that I might not have anything to worry about though sadly, that has not happened since 2002.  Right now we are facing a struggle with one of our children that has me impossibly sad and being the proactive person that I am, I need (notice I did not say want) to fix this, but the remedy seems somewhat elusive right now. We are working it though and part of that process for me means that I need to talk about it 24/7.  Talking and communicating help me process and order the chaos in my life.  Unfortunately for me, the same is not true for my husband which has led me to talking to my dog, Phoebe, almost non-stop. Poor Phoebe lived through what we in our family call the Boston Debacle, essentially Round 2 of unemployment, and she is sick of listening to me. I have said this before but I swear if she could talk like Martha the Talking Dog, a children's book that my son and I have read over and over, the first words she would say to me are 'shut up!'  Those words might be followed by the suggestion that I get some therapy and fast.

My mom has told me for years to 'talk to myself' when feeling stressed and by this she means that type of calming self-talk which would not only help me to put the situation in perspective, but might perhaps offer a more 'glass half-full' approach to my stressor. Over the past few years, I have talked to myself in this manner so many times that I have begun to tune myself out, basically my self-talk pretty much consists of me telling myself to shut up. Obviously, my 'self' has been talking to Phoebe.

Recently, Phoebe saw me watching my son's new beta fish, Shark.  Afterward, she pranced over and started barking at the little Art Deco tank in which Shark swims happily, staring at us as we watch him swim or nestle in the pretty pale blue blue rocks on the bottom of his abode. At first, I thought Phoebe was jealous that I was paying attention to Shark, but now I realize she was trying to clue him in that he might be my next 'therapist.'  I think if she could speak she would want him to know not to make eye contact with me or I might start prattling on and on about this problem or that, one stress or another, bemoaning how we ended up in this infuriating and frustrating situation. Phoebe truly is precious to want to protect her little fish sibling from me. I actually wish my children were as kind to each other as Phoebe is to Shark. That said, Shark had better watch out because while Phoebe can walk away, he is the proverbial sitting duck and I am feeling very chatty these days.

Get Back

I have never been more frustrated or stuck in a bad place in my life before now.  Emotionally mired in muck. My son often talks about having a teleporter and where he might visit and how quickly he would get there. I know exactly where I would go right now, back in time approximately five and a half years. Why that point in time?  Just to get out of MN?  Actually, no, though my readers would have to admit that my time in MN has not exactly been stellar or particularly happy, but I would want to travel back to the point where we had the option to take the job to come here or to turn it down. The writing was on the wall had we taken the time to read it and I may have (okay, I definitely did) strongly suggested to my husband that we turn down the offer to move here since the offer had been rescinded and then reinstated and I took that as a bad omen. But, no, with no other offers present, we took this one and our free fall into this maddening abyss of bad luck commenced shortly thereafter. Having my car broken into and my purse stolen, having to testify against the perpetrators of the crime in a series of trials that were postponed every three months over the course of two years, the loss of three jobs in fours years and the failed attempt at selling our home, not once, but twice over a twelve month period to name a few annoyances we have had to endure. Seriously, I am starting to believe we will never catch a break.

Unfortunately, all this stress and flux has now started permeating the lives of my children and I am totally ticked.  Mess with me, mess with my husband but don't dare mess with my little ones...yes, I know they are not that little, but they always will be to me. While I joke with my children about wanting a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes or a to die for Celine handbag for Christmas, all I really want is nice strong dose of pre-MN normal.  Hey, Santa!  Are you listening?