shapeshifting

It struck me today that Style Statement works. Remember mine? Sacred Natural. And this week it seems I'm closer to living that than ever. It feels good.

I'm writing this as part of my 800 words for Bindu and shall be following up with some Legs Up The Wall. I know it's an easy yoga option but I'm clear about my needs at the moment and they include some rest.

I'm reading about ways to raise my spirited child and discovering that life is much easier and nicer for us now I've acknowledged the clash between her extravert nature and my introversion. If I take time to make sure both of us get what we need in terms of company and intense communication for Evie and quiet and alone time for me, then she is able to spend time alone while I do, and my brain doesn't meltdown while I play many, many games of ninja turtles or dog rescue centres (what? she's my daughter) with her.

Of course there's hooping - my newest love. It was Sara (yes she of the wonderful dreads) whose newest blog showed me the way and already I'm falling asleep visualising myself hooping. Have you seen what she can already do after SIX WEEKS??? Now I'm waiting for this to arrive tomorrow, watching the lovely AHni and Beth and knowing you don't get much more Sacred Natural than that. You know I'm going to be practising a few spins before I hit the yoga wall.

I'm still working through what happened with LK, the creative kinesiologist and things I'd long forgotten are floating to the surface. I'm drinking a lot of water and doing my energy unscrambling exercise (that I forgot to blog about but yeah). I'm doing reiki self-treatments and sifting away the crud with some cool drumming from Fabeku.

I've got some mind-blowing business advice from the former Ms Style Statement herself, now giving the world her White Hot Truth in the Firestarter Sessions, Danielle LaPorte. All thanks to my sweet Kiwi sister, Sas (watch out for her, she's about to start some big old fires of her own).

And as if to prove that all this good stuff is bringing me home, today I got my first client for Wag Bark Love. He's 14 weeks old, his name is JJ and he looks remarkably like this.

It's a dirty, sacred, natural job...but someone's gotta do it.

I'm not quite done with the set up yet.

I'm still processing and most of it can and should stay in my head but some of it needs to be explained before things change here too.

Also there are things I can talk about now that I couldn't before.

Charlie has been home for nearly five months, I mentioned that. He was off work with stress-related depression. Twenty years ago he signed up to work for an airline as cabin crew because it meant he could go birding (birdwatching) all over the world for free. The job was so-so, he was promoted, conditions changed, blah blah blah and now the job is rubbish. Well-paid rubbish for those who signed contracts decades ago, but rubbish. Unbelievably stressful mentally and physically. Especially physically. Twenty years of jet lag is an evil thing.

But it has brought us a small amount of financial stability. Not a lot, but some. It has allowed me to work part-time through Evie's preschool years. It has allowed us to move here. And it's been living here that has led Charlie to a place where he can no longer spend seven months of the year in a plane or hotel. 'Right there in your back yard' etc etc.

These last few months have been very hard. For Charlie but also for Evie and me. For Evie, life changed enormously, hot on the heels of a house move and temporary reunion with her twin sister. For me, I came here to the place I love most of all - this healing, special place that nourishes me - and then believed we would lose it and everything we'd built.

I work things through inwardly and bide my time. I believe that things work out in the end and that sometimes you just have to put your head down, grit your teeth and get through the bad days but it got harder and harder to do as I sank into my usual winter blues. Yeah, we were The Happy Family.

Charlie sought help and got it and eventually it had an effect. He has risen to the huge challenge of sighting his dream life - the life he both deserves and has to have for his own health - and going after it. He has moved personal mountains and achieved great things. The path to this new life is now clear, if still quite long.

I have fought my own internal battles (always internal with me) and firmly believe it contributed to my weakened immune system and endless sickness and fatigue. But mostly I locked myself into position and tried really, really hard not to move (I am a Taurean after all). Fought with all my might to stay in my comfort zone where I had the freedom to float about a bit ...flitter ...dream ...procrastinate. Lucky me.

Finally now I think I'm learning the meaning of surrender. Give up that comfort zone and something more precious, vital and important will follow. Let go of my utter devotion to independence (that ironically allowed for financial dependence) and acknowledge that you are in nothing alone. You are never and can never be unchanged by the influences at work in the lives of the ones you love.

Am I making even the slightest amount of sense? It doesn't feel as if I am.

Because life is. Magical. And I've learnt that magic is an organic, messy, smelly thing sometimes. And it's viral.

Remember my crappy immune system? Uh huh, couldn't withstand the magic either. But it's changing me beyond my control. I have no say at the moment so I'm just letting the shapeshifting happen. I feel skins shedding and (this may be the week off and the sunshine speaking but I'll go with it) it's kind of exciting.

My name is Jo and I'm a control freak. I like to be in control of my surrender. Heh. And this time I can't be. I just read Ken Robinson's The Element and found that I think I know my element, but not my medium. Maybe I'm being led to that medium now. I hope so.

In the meantime, with regard to my last post, I'm getting started on decluttering myself.

Vegan breakfast.

And today's head-clearing exercise will be following the lead of Rachelle and Tracie and taking a long hard look at my online time. I not only spend too much time faffing about (and not all social networking is faffing, I remain a huge fan) but I also spend to much time comparing myself to others and feeling inadequate or distracted or influenced or wistful.

So I'm off to clear out Google Reader and Twitter. Not because of any disaffection for the people involved, but because if anything I love them a little bit too much.

That's my Friday. Thanks for reading. How's yours?

Seriously. I have things to say here that I really want to get into but stuff keeps happening. And it's good stuff. I feel like I should update so that there is context when I do get down to real writing.

Here we are. A year into the 3YP and Charlie is about launch his own business(es - yay for portfolio working). We looking at a period of huge, positive change for all of us (after all, I'm still following my own stars) and a need to re-examine the 3YP because it's all happening way more quickly.

This last few months has taught me some things about myself:

• I like money. I thought I didn't but it turns out that I just don't like what it does to some people. Money, I like. I like the security it offers. I even like what it does to some people.
• I am an introvert who needs and craves alone time but I have discovered more validation and joy and inspiration in the friendships I've found this last year, than anywhere else. Suddenly, I love having friends and miss them terribly when they're not around. Who'd've thought it?
• I cannot, to use a phrase my friend Lisa introduced to me, hold a space. I run the moment it feels as if I might be examined. If it feels as if someone could get too close a look at me. See my faults, my flaws, my sheer ineptitude. How much easier it is to flit between Twitter accounts (2), Facebook (false name), blogs (3?), dreams (too numerous to count), jobs, homes, even moods. Just don't try and pin me down because I will scream and wriggle and slip away and get...? Nowhere. Nowhere. Running to stand still, as someone once said.
• I am still fighting what my life has become. I still resent the fact that I cannot sit and work at my computer, or a notebook or a flower bed or a wall that needs painting for longer than about 15 minutes at a time. It drives me INSANE. It takes me a good 20 minutes to get into my groove and work through my personal tendency to flitter away from holding space but add in the rest of my life and...no groove. My life is wonderful, being a parent is wonderful and I need to find a way to have my family, my day to day life, my responsibilities and my 'me time' support each other and not just create stress and struggle. I believe the first step is acceptance and I've never been good at that. Time to try harder. Time to acknowledge that before I had all these things, I didn't care about 'me time'. I wasn't that bothered about doing anything creative. I just liked walking with my dogs and daydreaming. What these things make difficult, they gave me. They are gifts but challenging ones.

I wanted to keep this short and already I'm rambling (dude...I'm HOME ALONE for the first time in months). I'm going to try to do less thought-spilling and more story-telling here. More practical stuff. More...something, less endless examination of my every scintillating thought. Heh.

Back soon.

Happy Tuesday.

x

In the meantime I'll just say that I had a very splendid Sunday with some of the BBCers. Pen, Sas (whose home is like something out of a design magazine), Susannah and LeonieWise were as inspiring and hilarious and kind and generally gorgeous as ever and even though two of our magnificent seven were absent, we managed to whip up some magic that hopefully will whisk all of us into 2010 with a big smile on our collective face. I love my girls.

I've been living in my head most of the last week or so which has meant that everything requiring a practical touch has suffered from neglect. But it's been good work. Worthwhile. I've learnt a lot about my self and where I want to go next.

Ain't it the truth? The minute you say to yourself,"I've got a good idea of who I am and where I'm going and I understand where I've been" then you realise that you've just unwrapped another layer. You may technically be nearer the prize but there's a few rounds left in the game yet.

Next!

Happy Friday.

I just bought this:

Oh and just for fun, I bought one of these each for me and Alisa:

Okay stop.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Sleep.

Lack of.

I know many of you feel my pain.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>As has been well-documented on one or other blog of mine, Evie doesn’t like to sleep. Actually that’s not true. She’s fine about sleeping as long as I am with her at all times. From getting into bed, to reading stories, to waiting hours while she falls asleep, to being in physical contact for the entire night (Me. Who sleeps best alone in the dark and silence.), to being reassuring when she wakes every night at about 2am, to being there to lie on whenever she chooses, to being the first thing she sees when she wakes up. As long as all those things are in place (i.e. I am in place), then she doesn’t have a problem. But after nearly three years of spending almost every night of my limited spare time staring through dim light at a bedroom wall, while a child spins like a plate on my arm, I do have a problem. Call me a crap mother if you like but this is not how I want to live my life and I will disagree with you.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Evie’s a high energy child even compared to her high energy, male cousins. It’s not just physical; her brain is whirring all the time. She stopped napping on a regular basis when she was about two and a half. She now sometimes falls into a deep sleep at about 5pm and then raves all night, topped up by Satan’s Nap. She is unwakeable (that’s not an actual word but ykwim) from these naps for a good 15 minutes, which appears to be long enough to wreak havoc on her body clock.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>We tried co-sleeping but we don’t have a huge bed, can’t afford a huge bed and she is almost as active asleep as she is awake. It doesn’t work for us. Love the theory, loathe the practice.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>She has one parent who is almost permanently jet-lagged and who is sometimes asleep during the day, sometimes wide awake at night. She has another parent who is almost certainly perimenopausal and incapable of much at all without a good, solid eight hours sleep. Preferably ten hours. So the sleep deprivation is not just Evie’s thing, it comes from all three of us.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Meanwhile we’re trying to make sure she gets the best possible start to her life (and the best possible life right here and now) while planning for the second part of our own. My usual coping strategy is to soldier on as if everything is fine. Set my shoulder against the obstacle, my fingers in my ears, sing and just. keep. pushing. I’m a Taurean, that’s my job.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>We go through phases. We’re all always A Bit Tired but it’s okay - we’re middle-aged, she’s three, that’s how it is - but there are also crisis phases. We are currently deep in a crisis phase. We’re all whiny, grumpy, short-tempered, frustrated and unable to function properly during the day. It can’t be long before we fall back into the cycle of illness that comes when you’re run down and have low immunity. Evie is permanently in that exhausted state that kids get into usually an hour before bedtime: we're getting tantrums, hitting, shouting, wailing, defiance, screaming at any given time of the day... And when it gets as bad as it is this week, our relationships are damaged because believe me when I tell you fuses are not just short, they’re non-existent.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>And so it came to be that I found myself, at the weekend, before the last two nights in the seventh circle of hell, thinking that I’d try to find some time to look again at my crazy Mondo Beyondo list. Maybe while I was staring at a bedroom wall. Perhaps I’d try to whittle it down into big but realistic things. Shorten it. Focus.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Well last night I realised what my Mondo Beyondo list is. It’s one thing. It’s sleep.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>That’s it.

1) Sleep for all of us.

How’s that for minimalist? Everything else can wait, it really can. Charlie and I were discussing plans the other day and he reminded me that in the middle of the 3YP is what is now a 1YP: we get by financially, as we are, until a year from now when Evie starts school, I either work full-time again or work part-time and do something else independently, and we save £lots a month on nursery fees. So my obsession with finding some way to earn an extra buck today has subsided.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Everything else I want to do is then, a luxury (sort of), be it dreaming, wishing, planning even doing. And this latest bad sleep phase has pulled me up sharp. I’ve been talking recently about simplifying our lives, about finding a place of peace for my family now, with what we have now and I need to put in more work on that. As with any relationship or endeavour, the nurturing is ongoing. <o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>Until we’re all functioning at more than 30% then the chances are we're not even close to appreciating what we have, bad choices are being made, plans aren’t well thought through, wishes are skewed and hopes…well hopes aren’t even getting off the ground. The foundations aren’t there and I’m all about the foundations right now. If I’m going to be dreaming big and doing big things, I want to build a solid base and do it properly.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>I’m not going to give up on everything that keeps me rooted in my identity as an individual. I don’t see that as having any kind of positive long term effect on my family. I need to model managing and coping strategies to Evie, not just roll over and give up. Also, if I give up my self, I’m the only one of the three of us who will and that way deep resentment lies. Not to mention a first class martyr complex. Not pretty and not fair on those around me. But I have a family, a child, a home and responsibilities that come with immeasurable joys attached when I pay attention. My personal stuff usually comes third or fourth after my family and home anyway and for now it’s going to have to have a quiet period – which is no bad thing for me at this time of year when SAD looms and I go a bit crazy anyway (what? you noticed?). <o:p></o:p>

I generally only blog at work because I can concentrate at my desk. I have some major deadlines coming up so I may be absent for a while. I may be even worse at replying to email than I usually am. I’m sorry, but I’m having some early nights.<o:p></o:p>

Yes. So. There was and is the 3YP (3 Year Plan). It still stands in a much improved form. Some of it has been achieved, some of it [ that should have been] hasn't. Some of the steps are taking longer than others, mainly because the the bits that have been achieved were achieved more quickly than we could have imagined and I'm still spinning a little. As is clear in the completely muddled intro to this post.

After we'd been here about a month I started to feel edgy. It seemed that we/I had lost all the focus that had propelled us through the previous couple of months and I was scared that we'd fall back into bad habits: talking the talk but never, ever walking the walk.

I remember reading an interview or seeing a TV show or something where an aspiring actor spoke about heading for LA and taking a job as a waiter while looking for his big break. He said that some people make it and some just keep waiting, in both senses. And after a while, you're no longer an aspiring actor, you're just a waiter. That has stayed with me for years. 

My response to this was to get moving with some regular setting of teeny, tiny goals. Baby steps that are so small that even I can't slide under them into procrastination. Of course these things work better when you're being supported by someone else so I do fortnightly planning and reporting with Jackie, here in real life, and daily 'I did something good today' check-ins with Alisa. Finally using IM to discuss something other than the Fug Girls and power-crazed three year olds. Dude.

We split things into areas of activity. For example, some of mine are Photography, Family/Home, Etsy, Crappy Admin (I hate paperwork and avoid it at any opportunity thus causing myself great and unnecessary stress) and Me (the much vaunted 'personal care' type stuff, be it a long hot bath, a long cold walk or a short, sharp talking to. Me time.)

I have things to do within a week, two weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. Hardly revolutionary I know, but I've never done it before. The short term things are the teeny, tiny steps; the 5 year goals are the Big Dreams. I like this because I tend to spend so much time thinking about what exactly the Big Dreams might be that I don't actually take any tiny steps. This way, I'm sorted on the Big Dream front. They're written down in b&w. Waiting. I don't need to keep thinking about them.

Now, a major part of the 3YP (AKA the 5YP in some areas) is my work. I've already said that I want to do dog photography, eventually have it take over from my current part-time work and then overtake it in terms of income.

I have been thinking of the photography as My Big Creative Dream. The thing that my whole life I've been hunting: my passion (anyone else seeing Steve Martin as a 'poor black kid', musing on his Special Purpose?). Why did I not have a passion? My god, I've spent my whole life looking for my damn passion only to find 101 Things I Love (But That Aren't My Passion). Where was the thing that would have me pacing the floor? Not sleeping for days as I "create"? Feeling fulfilled in a way I'd never even imagined I could be? Yeah, yeah, yeah...

And guess what, over the last few weeks of adjusting to our new life, I was beginning to think,"Hmmm, dog photography. Why haven't I knocked over old people and a couple of toddlers in my scramble to start doing this yet? Maybe it's not my passion!"

Noooooooo! I heard the click! I did! 

I put it down to adjusting. Gave myself some time. Some more time.

This last weekend I spent working on our home. Saturday morning was cleaning and tidying and fluffing the house from top to bottom. Saturday afternoon and evening were the front garden. All day Sunday was the kitchen garden. At this time of year and with no financial resources, it was all about beautifying what we already have and we suddenly have a lot.

Evie happily helped, played or read or chatted or snacked alongside me for most of both days. The animals dozed in the sun or played Cat Beats Up Dogs. The neighbours had fabulous sitar music playing all day that drifted over to caress my ears and I worked hard. I was physically exhausted and it felt fantastic. Our home looked gorgeous and that felt fantastic.

Since then I've had cause to think more on something I'd said to Jackie in our first planning meeting. I'd said, tongue in cheek, that if we had enough money to carry on as we are into the future then I wouldn't care about doing anything else. Since we've moved I have my ideal home, my ideal environment. I love my family. I love my animals. I love my life. (Yes, I'm that lucky and I never forget it.) I'm only thinking about getting out there and starting something new because we need the money.

And it's true. I realised this is true and that it changes many things. It's taken me a while to work out in what way they've changed and I'm still processing but here's what I've got:

I love photography and I adore dogs, so dog photography would be an awesome thing to do.

We need me to work. When Evie goes to school in Sept 2010, either I try to go full-time at my current employment or I get a full-time job elsewhere and spend even more time away from home.

Or I build a business between now and then. See: The 3YP

So if I have to work, let it be at this thing that I'll love.

But...

It's not my passion. It's a wonderful job but it's a job. It's a business and I need to respect that. I need to be practical and plan things and have financial targets, business goals and a grown-up attitude alongside the 'oh your dog is so handsome and I get to spend the day with you talking about dogs and taking his picture' stuff. Also, and this is very liberating for me, I can stop being precious about the idea. I can chuck it around a bit. Knock the corners off. Throw it in the back of the car. Have bad days. Swear about it. Scream with joy about it. Be real about it and not feel I have to hold it carefully cupped in my soft focus hands. I love this realisation because  at heart, as I've said before many a time, as much as I love the whole floaty-skirted, dreamy, creative vibe (and I really do), for me it's not authentic. For me authentic is jeans and boots and very old t-shirts. Eyeliner and tattoos and a surfeit of dog hair on my clothes. I'm 100 times more likely to be watching 'Desperate Romantics' on TV than being desperately romantic myself.

My passion? Well, well, well...it was in my back yard all along. In fact is is my back yard. Now that I live somewhere I really love with people I really love, I find that my passion is here with them. What I work to maintain is not my 'creative destiny' out there in the world, it's my home. I don't mean in a 50s Housewife kind of way - not that there's anything wrong with that if that's your thing - I mean in a really profound way. In caring for and working creatively with my home I am physically very active and outside a lot. Both of these things are extremely important to my well-being physically, emotionally and yes, spiritually. The results are both instant and ongoing, internally and externally. It strengthens the bond between the three of us. It connects me with the land and a building that is so old it feels that it has become part of that land - it is a real boy now! And it creates a place that is aesthetically pleasing to me and that, almost more than anything apart from my family, makes me feel alive and joyful and grateful.

On Wednesday I had the most stressful day I've had in years. A catalogue of bad luck, bad timing, forgetfulness and cumulative stress meant the whole gloriously sunny day was wasted on me as I lurched from one panic to another. Central to the melodrama was the loss of my purse (as in small thing that holds money and cards, not as in handbag). When at 6pm I surrendered and gave up the search - beside myself with what this was going to mean for short term financial issues - I took a  deep breath and headed to my sister's across the garden. There in front of me, sitting in full view, was my purse.

In my back yard, the last place I'd looked.

And that, is the Universe at work if ever I saw it. Okay already. I get it.

I was all geared up for a flying start on the shiny new blog and bam...I hit the wall with a two day migraine. Hormones. Who'd 'ave 'em?

I'm just coming out of it and can't really string together a decent sentence yet (see above) so instead - in case there's anyone reading who hasn't seen this already elsewhere - I give you a slightly iffy photograph of my soon-to-be-home. On the other side is another level where the kitchen is, with a kitchen garden. Also the big, living room and master bedroom windows but you can get a good idea from these pictures.