Vision Board

Well, I did it.  I actually collaged my way to a Vision Board.  The process started with the task of eliminating the stacks of magazines (one of the many PoS in my life).  As I flipped through a few, certain images and phrases caught my attention. And then I heard my friend's voice urging me to create a Vision Board with the dream house in mind.  (Why do I keep capitalizing the "V" and the "B?")

As I gathered images and phrases I had flashbacks to the few other times I've done this in the past--all during high school.  I covered a clip board, I created a locker display, I covered a Ziggy corkboard that hung in my room.  I know I didn't do these projects thinking Vision Board, and I honestly can't say whether or not the Universe listened.  I assume it did, though, and some of the things that found their way to those projects manifested in my life in one way or another. 

I assume this because I believe in the power of connection~ the connection between people as well as the connection of our past self to our present and then future selves.  And by "past self" I mean both who we were as children as well as possible past lives.  Why else would some images and phrases feel right while others didn't even catch my attention?  Each one somehow connects to who I am or who I want to be, and those selves were/are built on my past self/selves (there I go, again sounding like I suffer from multiple personality disorder).

I selected items for my board without strict rules~ my right brain enjoyed it and my left constantly worried whether or not I had the right items, too many or too few, and how they were all going to fit.  And my left brain remembered that my friend who urged me to do this mentioned she had a book on creating Vision Boards.  Since I have no book, Left Brain is worried I did it wrong and will somehow cause the Universe it's very first nervous breakdown.  Or that I placed the future goals in the wrong spot (Feng Shui of Vision Board?) and the Universe will think they are past goals I'm trying to release.  Right Brain tells Left Brain there couldn't possibly be one right way to do a Vision Board, and, in fact, there's no such thing as a wrong way because it is what I need and want it to be.  I really hope Right Brain is correct on this one.

My categories are the house, my physical health, my educational/professional goals, and a future goal that relates to my education and profession but is big enough to need its own section.

Oh, and it's double sided because I had a few images that Right Brain wanted but Left Brain couldn't make them fit on the first side. 

It's crowded and wordy, but I trust the Universe can sort it out. 

Shrinking PoS

Just a note to officially document that many of the PoS (piles of stuff) that dominate my life are gone.  The dining room table is clear.  As in we-could-actually-eat-there-without-any-effort-clear (except that we eat at the kitchen table because, well, that's where the food is and it's a shorter walk).

Not that anyone cares that much about my progress towards cleaner lines, reduction of excess, and the unburdening of the self, but I wanted it known that I can make it happen. (Ha!  And you thought it was just about random paperwork and the like.) The reduced PoS lifestyle is only guaranteed for 48 hours though, because I know better.  Stuff will enter my life and will be put into piles.  Those piles will secretly mate in the night and will take over my space again.  And someday I'll have the time, energy, desire, and recycling bins to eliminate them again.  And that time will occur when I'm really avoiding getting back into an exercise routine (which was the other goal for this week).

I strive to be one of those people who can stay organized and live in what appears to be the Ikea catalog. (Despite the inventory in that store, it appears that one must purchase the furniture and never put any stuff on it.  I admire that, I really do.)  But this determination fades because I get bored and annoyed by picking up the same stuff over and over.  It's just easier to let it pile until it threatens a coup.

Funny, I wasn't going to write much about the PoS reduction when I started.  I just wanted a time stamp to prove I had a clean house at one point.  I wanted to write about the Vision Board I'm starting and the fact I've become obsessed with a house that is on the market but is overpriced.  If you are ever in the car with me, I will drive you there to show you what I now call my new house.  The fact that we've made no offer to purchase is a minor detail easily overlooked.  The fact that it may never be in our price range (though, it should, based on all market data), or that someone else will be willing to over pay are also easily overlooked details.  I have faith it will be my house someday because the Universe proved itself to me recently, via a friend.  Not that I needed proof; I always felt this friend would prevail, even if it wasn't in the exact way she had planned.  But it's so much fun to watch her process unfold that it has inspired me.

More on all this later.  For now I'm going to sit and admire the lack of PoS.

Restless.

I'm feeling restless and fidgety these days.  Maybe it's early spring and the eagerness to leave winter behind.  Maybe it's competing priorities~ the never-ending sense that there's something that needs to be done thus making it impossible to stay in any one moment.  Maybe it's procrastination and guilt.

It's school vacation week.  Instead of putting the kiddos in camp and working a regular week, I took the week off from work.  And remember how I said what I wished for was a week off to clean my house, but who was I kidding because if I had a week off the last thing I'd do would be to clean?  Well, I spent a large part of Saturday and Sunday cleaning. But I didn't get to any of my piles of things that I desperately need to declutter.  The kids' rooms look fantastic.  The bathrooms sparkle.  The laundry is done and the seasonal "out with the fleece, in with the short sleeves" has happened.  But I am still surrounded by energy-sucking PoS (piles of stuff). 

But it is school vacation week and the kids aren't interested in my issues with clutter.  In part, I want to do some really fun things so we create good memories and enjoy each other (read: so they are distracted enough not to fight).  I don't want to waste the week away.  Then again, we're all so busy with school, after school, work, activities, etc., the rest of the year that I think it's good for them to spend days in their pjs without any concern for a schedule.  Doing fun things, heck, doing anything requires effort.  And if we just hang around the house, the kids can watch tv while I declutter.

Yet I know that is a fantasy.  Home with both kids means every 15 mins I'm interrupted in one way or another.  Someone will want a snack.  Someone will need help reaching something.  There'll be fights to break up and time-outs to supervise.  My frustration will grow because I'm not getting my goals accomplished.  I'll be annoyed and angry at the kids and their fighting, which will quickly lead to guilt that they are fighting out of boredom.

A few minutes ago I asked them what they wanted to do today and the answer was simple~ take a picnic lunch to the local playground.  Excellent.  I have to make them lunch anyway!  We'll go for a couple of hours, come home, they'll take baths (since the bathtub sparkles! and since it's been 4 days since anything but their hands and faces have seen soap and water), and then they'll want to "rest" in front of a dvd.

Maybe then I'll get to some of my piles to organize. But if not, at least one day of school vacation wasn't spent entirely in pjs, in case their teachers ask . . .

And away we go.

I applied for a job today.  It's a five week, part time, 80 hours for $2,400 job, but it feels like the start of something bigger.  It's a baby leap, if there is such a thing.  It won't require me to resign from the other two jobs I have.  (Despite desperately wanting to run screaming from one of them,  I'm not ready to leave the security it provides.)

But it's not so much the job itself that is the baby leap.  It's the fact I saw the posting at 1pm and by 3:30 had written my cover letter, revised my resume, uploaded my licensure/certification info and letters of recommendation (which are two years old and I didn't bother to reread), and completed and submitted the online application.  I didn't dwell.  I didn't agonize.  I just did.  No hesitation, no weighing pros vs. cons, no tiny tug of dread at the process. 

So why was this different?  Two weeks ago I saw a similar posting for a permanent job in my field about 30-40 mins away, close to the town where I grew up.  I had an initial jolt of excitement when I saw it, and immediately contacted a friend in the town to ask if she could help me get some info.  She used some of her contacts, netting minimal info I coudn't get on my own.  The deadline was today--and by that the application and supporting materials needed to arrive to the HR office by today.  I still haven't applied.

I had a lot of conversations with myself about doing that application.  It was on my daily to do list, I had the mail-by date circled in my planner.  But even though I'm wicked persuasive, I couldn't talk myself out of watching reruns and into working on the application.  So I figured I didn't really want that type of job because when I do want something, I go for it.  Usually.

Maybe it was because Job #1 would have been a bigger risk because it is permanent (for a year, pending contract renewal and budgets), and would have required other bigger changes in my life.  Job #2 is temporary, so even if I hate it I only have to survive for 80 hours.  But deep down I have this feeling that it's more than feeling safe. It felt right, like it was meant to be.  Of course there's no guarantee I'll get it or even be considered.  But then just a little while ago I was reading meeting minutes and saw an announcement of a retirement. I realized part of what held me back from applying to Job #1 was the vision I have of myself doing the same work in another location--the very location a retirement has just been announced.  That is the truth I haven't been accepting until I found myself applying to Job #2 without a second thought.  And Job #2 could very well lead into the position vacated by the retirement.

I might just get what I really want after all.

Now to work on imagining myself in the house I want.

Away we go.

A Good Day for Karma

It's Good Friday, which meant an extensive conversation with my eight year old last night about why there's no school today.  I honestly don't get it, either, considering the whole separation of church and state thing.  I mean, I get why Good Friday is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar.  And I suppose in communities where most of the students and faculty would take it off as a religious holiday it is more cost effective to close the schools, but that's not necessarily the case where we live.

But that's not why I'm writing.  Although both my spouse and I were raised Episcopalian, neither of us are church goers now (other than Christmas and Easter, out of respect for my parents, with whom we attend church).  The reasons are long and complex, ranging from Sunday being on the only morning we don't have to rush out the door somewhere so we're loathe to give that up, to not being really sure of what we want out of organized religion.  But again, that's a whole other post that I'm not sure I'll ever be too interested in writing.

My conversation with my child focused on why Good Friday was important to those who believed in what Good Friday meant.  We talked about the Easter story, the Bible, the man known as Jesus for whom many consider a savior.  

But we also talked about the idea of interconnectedness; how each living being has an energy (some call this a spirit or a soul), and how all those energies influence all the others.  Some call the keeper of this energy God.  Some call it the Great Spirit.  Some call it Karma.  Being eight, and thus deeply concerned about justice and fairness, she really liked Karma.  We've talked about it before in the "don't pick on your brother because putting that sort of vibe out there only invites reciprocity" (and yes, I use words like reciprocity with my eight year old because that's how she'll learn them), but this was different.  This conversation was more about spring, rebirth, renewal, and how Good Friday is a reminder that we all embody a power that should be directed into a life that seeks goodness and kindness and all the other virtues that strengthen the greater spirit that connects us all.

It helps that today is warm and sunny after a March of record rainfall and unprecedented local flooding.  And it really helped to walk out of my house to see a ticket on the car parked illegally on my street for a week, in my spot, even after the owner sweetly promised he'd only be there a day and would move and understood that there was designated parking.  I had all sorts of mean thoughts every time I saw that car.  I wanted to let the air out of the tires.  I wanted to bribe a towing service to take the car away.  I wanted to get the neighbors to park bumper to bumper so that car had no hope of getting out of the spot even when it wanted to.  But ultimately, that's not the kind of person I want to be in the world.  So I bitched about it.  I visualized the house I want to move to that has a driveway.  I let it be.

And Karma took over.  Good Friday, indeed.