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Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

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Meh:
@ Hops


After the meeting that happened today, I was still thinking about the details of the projects so I emailed the director some ideas or actually I wrote about the fact that I saw some things really need to be defined because there are three public groups involved and all over the page with who does what etc. etc.-- there is not even 100% agreement on the point of the project and the message it will send to the community. I'm not sure what the director will think of my ideas, I want to hear back from her before I get too full of myself.

It's a new program for this area that is based on other similar programs that have been successful in other communities. Yet, there is no telling IF it would be a success here or a flop...because there are varying regional economies that have a play in things. I need to be really careful about getting too deep into this volunteer stuff until I have a plan for myself also.

But THANK you for the encouragement! I need to consider it some more, what I really want- if I even get to ask myself that question.

I know, a lack of confidence can really be shooting oneself in the foot. Maybe that is mainly what the "qualifications do" is give a person confidence.

I'm not 100% sure what role the director sees me in, I'm just a brand new volunteer but she wanted me to be involved with planning meetings that new volunteers are not typically a part of. I'm just wondering what they would think of me if they knew what my personal situation was.

People can't understand how badly I want an interesting measly job unless I tell them my personal situation and my ps does not look so good. I will have to see what happens.

Meh:
The funny thing is I just applied for a part time job in a psychiatrist's office.

I want to say that "I feel so lost" because I have heard other people use that phrase, but I don't feel lost, I'm simply wondering am I on the right track? And I know that I am not because I am in a homeless shelter! There is a stigma to that. It's just a place to stay with a roof and a shower and why is that very different from a person staying in a house or staying in a tent or staying in a hotel or a yurt or whatever.

I'm tired I think I will sleep.

Ok, here is another weird thing. I should not even write this because I don't want it to be true and if I write it then it's written.
I almost prefer being in a homeless shelter then being in my own apartment. I had my own apartments for 8+ years before I came to this point in my life and I felt stuck living by myself in my crappy little apartments. At least when I am in homeless shelters they are temporary and I don't feel stuck and alone, instead I feel frightened because I'm lucky to even get into shelters since I don't have children.
--AND I ask how can that person in the previous paragraph be a Project Manager?

I want to make myself more light-hearted because it's unhealthy to worry all the time. Everyone who is here feels as though they are on unstable ground...and I question that because I can only think of one time that I didn't feel that way, it was when I was living in a rich guy's big house.

I'm so tired, I guess what I am getting at is I wonder what is my personal capacity to ever feel "secure" ...basically meaning safe and healthy and OK, and having a smile sometimes. That is pretty modest security.

Sometimes I wonder if I am WAY out there in crazy land. I just saw a pointless theater performance that was sort of wacko so maybe this is part of why I'm questioning myself and feeling topsy turvey.

Topsy Turvey.. "no mind, no body, no possessions, no topsy turvey...ohmm...

Part of me on the inside is horrified by my life.
Yet today is just one more day and the next day will be new again...ready for me to start my TO-DO list. The list that I use to say belonged to Miss Doo-Doo head. Doo-doo head being that part of my psyche that can't relax and has to be controlling everything.

I feel like a major control freak right now. MAJOR freak out need to control my life because it is way WAY out of control right now.

I'm almost tempted to go to an AA meeting and say I'm not a drinker but my life is so out of control I just need to be some place where I can talk about how out of control my life feels and I ask what would the point be and I wouldn't fit in and really dont want to spend my spare time doing such a thing.

I feel really worried. Tonight I have a warm cozy bed to sleep in and that is all I can hope for I think.

Being unemployed in the fashion that I am would make any person feel crazy.
The thing not just any person is unemployed like I am...and then that thinking leads me to start saying to myself:

"what is wrong with me"

This is the phrase I would say to myself when I was growing up and at some point I decided that there wasn't something wrong with me just because I was living a wrong life.

I'm just venting. When I got into the little theater tonight, I sat down in the seat and the lights dimmed, then I had to talk myself out of what started to feel like the first part of a panic attack.

I haven't been having any panic attacks recently but I feel that I am ripe for them.  

I just re-read a part of what I wrote and teared up and exhaled a big EXHALE. I've been bottling it up. There is no privacy around here I don't just cry and I have been too busy to cry. I just need to be allowed to be a normal imperfect human being.

Maybe I am just trying to live a life that I am not "cut out for". CUT OUT FOR would mean like a cookie cutter or something, that the shape of a person's life would naturally lead them to do something/become something. The problem is the things that I would naturally be led to do based on the shape of my life are BAD. BAD. BAD!!!!

I need to get over my overwhelm, realize that I am too stuffed up with unhealthy emotions that are going to mess me up. I need plans lots and lots of plans. At least this is my normal response but clearly my plans dont work so well.

sKePTiKal:

--- Quote ---CUT OUT FOR would mean like a cookie cutter or something, that the shape of a person's life would naturally lead them to do something/become something.
--- End quote ---

You'd think this would be how it works for people, wouldn't you? And that they'd be happy with what they became... right? One of the biggest illusions going is that "successful" people are happy doing what they're doing. Almost every single person like this that I've met have a "Plan B"... that is worlds away from what they're doing for money; for their living. Even some creative people. I like the idea that we each of us, create our own opportunities... and it sounds like you're in the process of finding out how this works. What I've also noticed about people who ARE happy with how they make a living, is that they looked for those opportunities that connected with something in themselves... something that clicked... and pushed one of those secret smiles to the face... and then maybe by accident they found just the job that let them do this.

I was a project manager... in a lot of different situations. The words used will vary... but here's all that's really required to do the job well (everything else you need, you can learn from the rest of the team)... you must be obsessively organized and not daunted by a huge pile of seemingly unrelated details - those details need to be categorized, translated to action items, tasks, sub-projects and assigned to someone with a report-back time/date... and an overall completion timeline created and managed. You may also be asked to "synthesize" all those details into a summary narrative of the goal of the project, the benefits or efficiencies that are expected to result from the project... and then gussy up the narrative into marketing language - to sell for buy-in from constituents, to sell for grant money, to sell for public support. Sometimes the second half of that is done by someone else... I had the background and the B.S. (the bull...) degree, to do the second half too.

[By the way, being a project manager is kind of an "outlet" for that controlling reflex. It can get out of hand, tho. In reality, the project's success is only as good as the relationships between the manager and the team - and the team's work is way more important than the manager's!]

Ya know? I really worried about you moving into a shelter... I couldn't foresee any good coming from it at all. But, I was wrong. I don't think it's wack to prefer this type of situation over being alone all the time in your apartment. For you. For right now. I think there's something in this experience that's helping you. I don't know what yet... maybe you don't either. It's part of that process I mentioned - creating an opportunity. It's like making a dream come true - in reality - out there, with all those people... something you imagined becomes real. It's a really cool feeling when that happens, you know? I think the shelter - for all the negatives about it - I think there's something really valuable in this experience for you.

Transcend... I'm not completely sure I know what I meant! LOL... you're on the right track, tho. It's through being centered in the body, that you get to what I mean... I just don't know what words to use to describe it. It's not like "no body"... beyond comes closer... but body's still there, necessary, valuable... same with mind, all the thought-chatter, even the fleeting feelings - moods and even shades or tints of emotions.

Edit in: WAIT! I know... it's like the arrangement "shifts"... the order or hierarchy is subtly different; the priorities change... I don't know if that's completely "it" either...

Meh:
Along the way, personal items have been lost and discarded intentionally and unintentionally. Most of my family pictures have been hastily discarded (imagine that) because I know I don't have children to show them to, even if I did I would not be compelled to tell untrue stories about the warmth of family. I looked at my family photos and all I saw was a failure of marriage or lies.

There were two post-cards that I have had for years that didn't get discarded, one is a black and white photo of a little boy sitting in a window ledge from the 1940's. The other postcard is of a custom-altered Volkswagen bus that was welded together to be very very compact, it has the phrase on it "life is short".

For years, I would look at the postcard of the boy and I always imagined him to represent a street urchin on a train, I suppose that appealed to me. Few days ago I was looking at the postcard and realized he is not sitting in an old train like a child hobo in India.

I guess my point, is that I realize how I saw the world the way I wanted to see it rather then for what it really was. Now I question if I am still doing that to some degree.
  

Meh:
The director responded to my e-mailed ideas and she was very positive about my input. She is encouraging to me and she still wants me to continue contributing at least in a small part on the pieces that I am working on.

The one idea I was most worried to put out there she actually liked and commented the most strongly about!

I'm glad that she thinks my contributions are valuable. I know that my self esteem is more vulnerable then it typically is.

Something else, this morning I just had a conversation with a person in the shelter about alcoholism in families and Adult Children of Alcoholics. I have such little contact with my family but I'm considering going to an Adult Children's meeting because she told me that there is one near by, the existence of these meetings is a little rare. It's not something that I want to be a part of but maybe the 12 step process could help me bring a little more structure into how I relate with the events in my life. I don't know but I will consider it.

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