I find it so hard to believe that I used to not like the holiday season. Again, this year, I had a lovely time with my family. Our traditions held strong, my mom and I spent the better part of 4 hours putting together two toys. Then we woke up with the kids and got to experience all the wonder and excitement of the gifts Santa left (although, my sister told me that my nephew is starting to question Santa mainly because all that he does defies science - smart kid...he took the gifts nonetheless and stopped questioning when he saw the half eaten cookie by  his toys.)

I went to a weekend retreat last February about recovery. The speaker was a little out there for me but there was one message that I really took to heart after the retreat was over. He had us do an exercise in which we described how we felt when we were younger. Open, carefree, curious were some of the words that came up. He encouraged us to remember to approach life this way. I can get so bogged down in the events surrounding me that I truly forget the magic of pushing all of that aside for a while and viewing life with a big open heart.

As I watched my favorite little people open their gifts today, I tried to tap into their wonder and curiosity about the world. I don't think it ever hurts to try to look at the world through the eyes of a happy child. I noticed with my niece and nephew that they were imaging all the fun things possible once they got this toy out of the box. They were filled with such excitement and, of course, that makes everything worthwhile. It is, afterall, about the giving. This year felt more about giving than ever. I had such a blast getting my gifts together. 

I miss George Carlin. I have to say I was fortunate enough to have seen him live back in the early 2000s. Still one of the best live comedy shows I have ever seen. No fuss, no muss, just George, the stage and tremendous wit. I found this on the 12 step recovery site this morning. I don't remember if George was in recovery or not, but he certainly had a lot of wisdom to share within our community.

This semester of school is finally over with. I am not sure why this semester seemed so much harder than the previous semester. I know from personal experience, that I get a bit of the seasonal blues starting in about October. This year when I called in to talk to the clinic about feeling depression symptoms creeping back in, they suggested that I get a light box. I can't quite afford it yet but my health insurance will start 01/01/2014 and that is one of the first places I will be heading. In the meanwhile, my doc made some medication adjustments and within a week I started feeling much better. I know this played a role in the semester feeling difficult. Not sure why else, but it was really a struggle to stay on top of everything. For the first time my attendance to class was below the acceptable expectations. Good for me that nothing really happened; however, I was getting pretty annoyed with myself because I was not getting there as often as I should. Anyway, for whatever it is worth, it is done now and I can't wait to have a break. Although, I am working - I am sure this is not a surprise to those who know me....I got this love/hate relationship with work, always going back for more.....

The Big Book describes an alcoholic's relapse signs as being irritable, restless and discontent. I have a little bit of this going on right now and its been going on since the beginning of the semester. So, the dating saga continues and I am starting to wonder if I really should be dating at all. I called my sponsor because of this texting nightmare that developed. Was I overreacting? Why do I feel absolutely crazy about a rather innocent misunderstanding? She listened and didn't really comment. Then the famous phrase was brought back to the forefront "Let go and let God." Turn this anger and annoyance over to God and ask for peace of mind or at least a mind quiet enough to sleep! I started to think about this concept in the broader context of my life and not just this one situation. Am I turning my will and life over to God as I understand Him? Tough question, tough choice, and no doubt tough to enact.

I have been experiencing this little twinge of "Wanderlust". It's a desire to travel, to move, to start things over in a new place. I frequently dismiss the idea because there is so much that I have here that I like. I like my friends, my family is close, right now my job is close. I just can't seem to shake the feeling and I think it is one of the reasons that I am feeling restless. I think my desire to move or relocate is really more about wanting to "run away" so to speak. I am feeling uncomfortable at the moment and the easiest thing to blame is the environment. As such, the environment can be easily changed by moving. I not overly convinced that I actually want to move or travel. I think I want to feel like I have some control over something. In four months I will be done with school. I have no idea where I will be working. I don't know if a potential job offer will come through. I don't know how much money I will make. I don't know how much my student loan payments will be. I don't know how much my rent is going to increase.....blah....stop already, brain, enough. So, by thinking of moving, I am in essence thinking I can interview, get a job, find out about pay, get a place to live that i will know exactly how much it costs, etc. etc. Then my reasonable mind pops in and says "do you have any idea of how miserable you would be if you left everything that you have there?" In my heart, I know that this answer is "very miserable....".

Interestly, my dreaming has kicked into mad overdrive. I have yet to find a really good book about dreams and the nature of symbolism in the context of dreams. I know that when I start to dream of tornados, something is out of control in my life. In most of those dreams, I am staring out a window and seeing multiple vortexes dropping out of the sky, screaming for everyone to take cover while I sit in the front row to watch. Generally nothing happens beyond that; however once I did have a dream of the tornado moving over me, that was freaky. Anyway, I am usually in the work setting in these dreams and these dreams have been really prominent since I graduated from college. I think the area of work has always been very unstable for me, mainly by my own actions and behaviors (frequently changing jobs, etc.). So I feel pretty confident about this interpretation. Last year, about this time when I was making the decision about leaving my job to go back to school, I have tornados dropping out of the sky almost every night.

The other dream that has been coming up recently is the crashing airplanes. I had one vivid dream in which I was on the plane, watching out of the cockpit as the plane was crashing into a field and I woke up right before impact. All the other dreams are me watching a low flying plane flying out of control and crashing to the ground in a large fireball. I am trying to figure out how to get to the crash and I never find my way. In a few dreams, I just walk away. When I googled dreams about crashing airplanes I got a similar answer to what i just wrote in the previous paragraph. It is about losing or not having control over a situation. Since I am not driving the plane, I cannot control the fate of the airplane. I am reasonably satisfied with this interpretation, although I am thinking there is more to it than just that. There is something so strange about the way I react to the crash. I seem like I am more interested in the idea that planes actually do crash. I am fixated on what the cause of the crash would be. I am just more stunned than anything at a plane falling out of the sky. Beyond that, not much. It's just weird.

I remember my first real full time, non-temp job after graduating from college. i had it all, good pay, the company car, the cell phone, the pager. 23 years old, feeling like a rockstar....well, that actually changed rather rapidly. I found out, quickly, what it is like to be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, available all the time. I was heavily drinking at that point and fortunately, the amount of calls outside of business hours was quite minimal. But right away, I didn't like it. 

Fast forward to 2009-2010, again, I am provided with a cell phone, pager and laptop for work. For only 1 day a week, I was accessible for 24 hours a day. Toward the end of my drinking career, I was having a harder and harder time staying sober for that 24 hours, especially since I was in organ transplant and the job was very exciting, stressful, crazy, and unpredictable. I absolutely hated that day of my rotation but in a weird way it was one of the reason that I wanted to get sober too. I was having a hard time NOT drinking but I knew what could happen if I DID drink. I was finally figuring out that my alcohol problems were pretty big. I needed to choose, the job or the bottle. Job won. Yippiee!

Now 2013. Sigh. When I first got a cell phone and could text, I think I text messaged about 3 times a month. Usually it was "hey, I am late, be there in a minute". Nothing like extensive conversations that people are needing and wanting to have over text. With this whole date phenomenon, I have begun to hate my cell phone. I text a few message back and forth with friends and I like that, but these boys....30 messages a day....with a lot of "are you there? OK, where are you? Text me back soon.,.," I am stuck in this position (self-imposed of course) of feeling required to text back. Then the back and forth, back and forth, misspellings, stupid autocorrects, whatever. If I don't reply immediately, every person (by everyone, I mean every person I have agreed to meet with) starts in with the "OK. You must not be there....Umm...when are you going to text me back....are you mad at me? What does your silence mean...." AHAHHHAHAHHAHAH Drives me crazy. Suddenly texting turns dating into a borderline personality festival. (Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships.~NIMH) 

I spent many years in this back and forth battle of "I don't want to give up what I am doing" and "I need to change everything about my life." I see people struggling with this every day, especially in my work setting where we are moving this way and that way with technology and changing processes and designs every other minute. 

As the level of absurdity reached an epic level today. I was glad that I read my daily mediation before hitting the road today.

"Maturity is measurable by our response to the ebb and flow of the day, the season, even our lifetime....absorbing from every experience will strengthen our character and prepare us for what lies ahead. Today may offer me pleasure and also pain. I need both to meet tomorrow."

This year has been a bit of a struggle from a few different angles. I have been trying my best to take each day as it comes. For the most part, I have been able to see the light and the benefits of most of these experiences. One of the great lessons of AA: "Learning to live life of life's terms." That was an important one for me to remember today as I watched office politics soar to a new level of annoyance. 

I had a meeting today. Within my DBT training, I worked a lot of my interpersonal skills. They are, by no means, perfect, that is for sure. Anyway, I was going into a meeting in which I was entirely sure I knew how I was going to answer the questions posed to me. I try to plan some of these conversations out in my head so that I can meet my goal in the conversation. Initially, I thought my goal was going to be to preserve my relationships with the people whom I work. I had carefully thought out the pros and cons and decided the right thing to do. 

Upon my arrival to work today, that whole idea when right down the drain. I realized suddenly, all my assumptions and ideas were not going to preserve my relationships at all. The next move was to preserve my self-respect. (There are three areas in communication - objective - I need to ask for something, relationship - I need to address something or self-respect in which I need to stand my ground on the issue at hand.) I wasn't prepared to sit down in a meeting and defend my self-respect, although on some level I knew this was going to happen so there had been some forethought at a different time.  Ultimately, I think I did pretty well in the situation and realized the relationships I had hoped to preserve were no longer salvageable. I got lucky because I will have other opportunities now, but it is coming at a pretty distinct price to the good relationships that are still viable. Had I continued to push forward, I think I would have been extremely disappointed in the outcome and am glad I opted for some self-preservation.

Interpersonal communications has been one of the most difficult things for me to master in the realm of DBT skills. I still have the "what if people get mad at me" syndrome on and off again. I am fearful of rejection at times. I believe on some levels it is easier to just not ask and down play my needs or wants. Dating has helped me break through some of these barriers recently. I am starting to stick up for what I believe in and maintaining a much higher level of self-respect than I ever had in the past. I can say "no" now, not easily, but I can and do. In the work environment, however, it is more difficult. It is one thing to say or ask for something then never see the person again. It's another when you spend more time with co-workers than I spend with my cats. (The cats aren't that easy to say "no" to and I have no dignity or self-respect around them :) So, I struggle on the priority of the situation, always seeking to maintain the relationships overall.

Well, today I learned a valuable lesson. I could not be calm with myself if I was unable to have my self-respect at the end of the day. I spend a lot of time with these guys but I spend the most time with myself. I need to be able to lay down at night and know that I did what I could to preserve a relationship. At the end of the day, if this is going to be a destructive relationship, then I need to know that I did not let myself get trampled down in an effort to save something that was only going to cause pain and emotional discomfort.

I am sitting in my bed tonight, with Duke at my side, listening to him purr while he waits for his belly to be rubbed. I look back on the events of today and feel calm and collected about the decisions I made and the outcome of all the various discussions of the day. My boss is super cool and has a tendency to shield me from some of the more juvenile behaviors going on with the office politics. I know I do good work, she knows I do good work. Boom...self-respect. I do not either need to prove myself to anyone or go to further lengths than I already do. I knew at the beginning of this last summer I was likely to lose some friends at work. I was certainly right there. Sadly, we were unable to forge a professional working relationship after a few months of trying. I feel I made a concerted effort on my side and if that is not accepted by other parties, I need to relieve myself of the worry and anxiety that creates. I did so today and I couldn't be more pleased with the outcome.

It is days like these that I am truly grateful to have found some inner peace in my life. Three or four years ago, I would have compromised just about anything to make sure I preserved all the relationships even if that meant going against my own values and judgments. I had commented in past blogs about playing both sides of the fence. I did that in order to be everyone's best friend. What I got out of that was nothing but anxiety and terror that I would be found out or I was doing things that were against my core. I struggles for so many years living against my values and wondering why I was crying myself to sleep every night. I won't do that anymore because I know how truly lost it makes me feel. I want to say what I mean and mean what I say. That to me is living life on life's terms. I know the kind of life I want to live. I need to adhere to the values I have deemed important and necessary. If I get unexpected results, good or bad, that is life guiding me to my next destination.

OXOXOXO
Julie