So I thought I had escaped...

I have been avoiding church since two weeks before Thanksgiving. I have a major issue with family gathering holidays, so November and December are difficult. I became handicapped almost 4 years ago, and cannot put on any family dinners - heck, I can't even clean my own house. I didn't want to hear any Christmas carols or hear about the season. I don't have the money to help other people and I can't be up long enough to even visit others who don't have anyone. So I decided to treat the season as though they were just regular days, like August the tenth, etc. It worked pretty well when I wasn't crying over what I couldn't have. I got interested in website and blog design projects, which were fun, and some counted cross stitch planning, also fun.

On Christmas Eve a phrase came to me that I wish I had paid more attention to earlier. I had a mentor who counseled me one Christmas season to say to myself: "This is not the Christmas I wanted, but this is the Christmas I have." I remember I said it over and over, and over, and I was able to find some enjoyment in what was possible given the limitations I was experiencing. And that, of course, is the trick....getting into the moment and mining what is there for the positive experiences that are possible. I did finally manage to have some good times.

I had the opportunity to spend a few hours watching my 2 and a half year old grandson play, and got to hold my 3 day old granddaughter for ten minutes or so. Those were wonderful hours and minutes, and I can choose to focus on what I have or what I don't have - my choice -always my choice.

When I showed up at church on the second Sunday of the New Year I found out I had not escaped the New Years resolution operation at church...forms and pens were passed out. I took them but didn't even try to write anything. Resolutions were put into envelopes, so that after they were prayed over for the year, they could be mailed back to us in December so we could see what all had transpired over the year. It is a really nice project, byt sometimes I have a hardness in my heart and I don't want to be vulnerable. At those times I don't want anyone to know anything about me, and I don't want anyone to pray for me or look into my eyes and give me a hug. At those times I want to be alone...but there are other times when it doesn't hurt to be close to someone, times when I can imagine more good things in my life again. So I guess my New Year's resolution for 2010 needs to be to appreciate family holidays as they come, and let my expectations go....I still have the forms and the envelope...

A New Beginning

There is a book called Each Day a New Beginning. It is a book of daily readings that I haven't read in years - yet the title stays with me whenever I have a positive outlook. I get to experience each day, and I can sometimes choose how I experience it. I am told that I can do that every day, and every hour and minute of every day. I don't know if that is true or not. At the moment I am having a good day, but I recognize that it would probably be a lot different if I were to do certain activities. And I woke up feeling good, rather than feeling depressed. What I guess I am saying is that sometimes I am living in a different world. Sometimes I am living in the world of suffering, and while in that world I don't experience a positive outlook - in fact, a positive outlook sounds really stupid.

I need to come up with a way to clue myself into the knowledge that I am in the suffering world when I am in it, and that there is another world available to be that will give me a different experience of the same situation. When I'm not in it, I know the suffering world is not real, but when I am in it, I don't have that idea - when I am in it, it is the only real thing, and anything else is just nuts. There must be something I can do to create the idea that I can shift out of this mode, but I don't know what all that is.

I bought some press-on dots to leave around to remind me, but I haven't used them. When I am not suffering I don't need that dots and don't think of them. I guess I had better do that.

I found an exciting group that I am going to try to join...an online group who are cross stitching the Lavender and Lace Celtic Ladies. I started them a few years ago, and just got them back out a couple of weeks ago when my son was talking to me about doing a birth sampler for his soon to arrive daughter - well, she arrived on Christmas Eve evening, and I keep thinking and thinking about what to do. I can't find my cross stitch software - my son wants a fairy, but will settle for an angel if I insist. I have a Lavender and Lace fairy, but she is huge. I thought maybe I could scale her down to a do-able size if I had the software. I went on line to look and now don't know what to get - I don't know if I should get the pro or the regular and which of the two programs I see out them to try...and of course I am in the middle of learning two different kinds of website construction, which I also love. It is pouring opportunities right and left!

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

It has been awhile since I have posted here -I've been trying to get the website and some products together. What I have discovered once again is that when stressed I will fall asleep when I am supposed to be working, I break
most promises I make to myself, and I would rather clean and organize than face the
anxiety of putting myself in the public eye when I am identifiable as me. I would also rather learn how to create a website than write the product that is supposed to go on it. One of the things I want to do with the site is to offer a slide show of beautiful scenery designed to refresh the spirit. I found this one of a gorgeous sunset over the Limpford fijord with east Aalborg, Denmark in the background. Unfortunately I can't credit the photographer because he or she is also shy of the public eye and did not fill in their profile.

The sunset is so gorgeous, I could almost picture myself there in the quiet beauty. Isn't sunset one of the most awesome parts of the day? Sunsets like this remind me to slow down and allow the beauty of the moment to allow peace to slowly drift into my spirit - it is ever so much a beautiful reminder to slow down and stop trying to cram one more task into the day.

Julie and Julia

I am not a big movie goer - the last movie I saw in a theater before Julie and Julia was Star Wars Episode One - so it was a really big deal to go - wheelchair and all!

The movie is hilarious - I was laughing out loud! I loved both Amy (Julie) and Meryl (Julia) - well done! Stanley Tucci is fabulous! I feel that the energy of the ending does not equal the energy of the rest of the movie - my wish is that should rework it....like they asked me to review it... but the movie is so worth seeing. I wanted to stay and see it all over again.

Some of my interest in the movie is that I can remember we used to sit down as a family and watch the original Julia shows - she was amazing! We loved Julia Child - she was so human, and we just loved her more with the screw ups... she would just say something like, oh, that's all right, no one will notice! She was so cool and such a klutz! She was wonderful!

I guess I should take a page from her book...my newbieness is keeping me from turning in my class project - well, I had it turned in, and when Craig went to test the link, he couldn't find it - the server was down - so my blurb did not get posted. When I went out on the site that had all the blurbs, I was not happy - my project would look so juvenile in comparison. Back to the drawing board. I withdrew my project and have not yet replaced it. I don't want to have something junky or stupid out here on the web, going out under my name. I am working today on making what I have look more presentable as well as adding a beginning hub page, since there are messages within the project that keep referring back to a hub page. I am thinking that I need to change the freebie into something else...

So here's the deal...I am not willing to throw something junky up there just to have accomplished the task...and I am not willing to allow myself to wallow in self doubt so long as to lose the opportunity, so today I am going to dare something worthy and tune up the page I have, decide what to use for a giveaway, and write what I need for the website. I need at least two articles for that, and I have the topics picked out. Time to get started before I talk myself out of it. Will keep you updated.

Day Five

No, you haven't missed day's 2, 3 & 4...I have been off working on a class project, forgetting my most important words like Blessings and Gratitude...

Everything I have touched in the past 3 days has worked out in the same unexpected way - nothing accomplished towards my stated goal of getting this project done by today.

So...the question finally occurs to me that if my conscious goals weren't being met, then what was going on? Now I feel the need to digress for a few minutes to set the mood, so to speak. Last Thursday, which I think was the 21st, in the interest of having a place to hang the class project, I had scoped out my old website and found that it was ooopso, a technical term meaning gone, disappeared, wiped off the face of the web. I contacted tech support at my host, and discovered that my domain name had expired, so they had taken it down. I opted to get a clean start with a new name, which I thought to be a step in the right direction.

My host told me where best to obtain a new name, and that site would not load, so I went to another and got a new name. I needed "nameservers" so back to tech support. They gave me two and I inserted them. All went well until I went back to let tech support know that all was in readiness for them to do their magic. It turns out their servers were down! There goes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That's ok, I needed to get a freebie, anyway. I chose what I was going to do, and the site was ready.

On Tuesday I took tutorials 1, 2 & 3, and felt insane. The tutorials were from my host's site, and yet the screens in the tutorials did not match what I had. Calling tech support yielded misinformation, and the intervening days have been much the same. When there have been those squiggly words I needed to enter in order to prove I was a real live person, I couldn't read them and thus was treated like I wasn't a real live person....

All of that aside, and it needs to be aside because I need my sanity, as I was retrieving a second email from Google telling me what to do about the fact that my password to this blog didn't work, I found an email marked "blessings". I was really startled and set the Google email aside to read it. In there was a copy of the prayer request I had turned in on Sunday last (when I wasn't insane), and if I can find it again, I will put it here - because it is so very important - much more important than any class project....

Jeannie G: I am filled with joy and peace of mind minute by minute as I practice forgiveness and gratitude. I accept each and every circumstance in my life as being Divinely inspired for my highest and best good.

Are these not beautiful words? And just where has my peace of mind been? Oh, wait, did I forget to be grateful in all things and circumstances? Did I regard them as Divinely Inspired? Or did I perhaps treat them as tho they were obstacles to be pounded into submission? I think that perhaps that is where my peace of mind and joy flew to. I think that by Monday morning when I awoke with a new medical condition, and was anxious and afraid...I think I had forgotten about that second sentence. I think that as I proceeded thru the week with frustration at the mounting obstacles, I forgot about gratitude and forgiveness, and then wondered where my peace of mind had gone. I remembered about the Law of Attraction, but forgot about the practice of Allowing - if I want good things, pounding into submission, is not a good tactic. Counting my blessings and reframing seeming obstacles into positive lessons yield more peace of mind than does righteous indignation.

Practicing gratitude for all situations is a good preparation for calling tech support - desperation, is not. I think I shall try the gratitude and forgive myself for forgetting what's really important.

Day One

Now that the big moment has arrived, what meaningful words do I have to offer up to the English speaking universe? The world is waiting with baited breath for the one thing that has been missing up til now.....I'm thinking...I'm thinking....Still thinking....What comes to mind are two things, no three things...The first is something I was told that is probably copyrighted somewhere...Angels can fly becasue they take themselves lightly...Whew! the burden has been lifted, and I can get a grip on reality now.

The second thing is that there are a group of people working on something called the Gutenberg Project. In an effort to preserve books into the future, they put books that are in the public domain (not copyrighted) onto the web where anyone can go and download them to read or publish. Books like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Jane Austin books, Dickens and other classics are being put online. All kinds of books can be found there. Not only that, but everyday people like you and me can help by becoming volunteer proofreaders. Isn't that cool! The Gutenberg project can be found at http://www.Gutenberg.org.

And the third thing is that there are two guys who have found a lovely way to finance a trip to a conference by offering words for sale. They have put up a website where inspiring words will be displayed - the words are also links to websites or blogs - they can be purchased for advertising or just as a gift. They are words like gratitude and forgiveness, joy and laughter, peace and possible - lovely words (which, in fact, as of this writing is available - lovely that is). It made me feel good just to read them. I started writing down the words I would consider purchasing, and there are 66 on my list of possibles. What shall I choose? You will have to go there are sample a few to find out. They are at http://www.LawofAttractionWords.com.