personal

Simple decisions are not always easy

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

There are times in our lives when we are faced with a decision that on the surface is simple but the ripples are not always easy to ride out. For me, most of those kinds of decisions come as a parent.

I was reminded of this when one of the women I not only work with but admire made the decision to take a break from her career to focus on her daughter who is facing some significant physical challenges. While the decision to do it and take care of her daughter was a no-brainer, my friend will still be facing quite a change in her own life that may not be easy to get through at first. She likes her job, is good at it and definitely provides value to our organization. I didn’t ask, but judging by the tears when she told us she was leaving, she is also fulfilled by her work.

I’m sure she would agree with me that nothing is more fulfilling than raising the children we love, but when we also find something that fulfills those other parts of our being, it is not always easy to leave that behind. Even if only for a little while.

I would like to espouse my views on how our civilization today is at a critical juncture wherein the genders are experiencing new levels of introspection resulting in more conflicted parents and workers. Women are rebounding back from the workforce into motherhood later in life causing a tidal wave of emotions on their choice – whichever that may be. Men are staying home with the children in greater numbers than ever before resulting contradictory feelings between generations of presupposed social mores and the natural pull towards their own offspring.

However, for my friend, this is much more personal and localized and I’m not sure I care how the rest of civilization would deal with it.

I would bet she doesn’t either.

Warning – discombobulated post

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

There is nothing more important at this moment than sleep.

After not sleeping almost at all last night due to a late dosage of Allegra-D and a four-overtime win for the Dallas Stars, I can honestly think of nothing else but sleep.

I can barely type.

(I was able to stay awake through Dancing with the Stars – Go Christian! Way to dance through the pain!)*

Why bother to write a post at all, then? Why not only allow myself to just close my eyes and drop into unconsciousness and in the process not inflict my apparent lack of faculties onto you, my oh-so-new-readers?

Simple – two reasons: I made a promise to myself to attempt to write something every night in the hopes of building momentum and creating confidence in my commitment. And I have power in my voice which is, in this case, expressed digitally.

My power does not stop because no one reads it. My power is not weakened if it is barely, remotely related to a Pulitzer’s seventh cousin, eight times removed from my friend’s half-sister’s step uncle’s parakeet.

I have strength in power even when the only beneficiary is me.

I have power still even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The sense is in the effort to remain a voice of power in any form available.

*Please note: this post contains a confession of a secret obsessive vice – DWTS. For future reference, all judgements against the author are respectfully requested to be given a bit of slack. It has been clinically proven that often we do not chose and cannot control that which we obsess over. Plus, I don’t have many vices left!

Trying something new to find something old

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

Have you ever lost something and conducted an obsessive, exhaustive search only to come up frustrated and empty handed? Then, a few days or weeks or more goes by and you begin to accept that no amount of searching you do is going to find that precious something that was lost.

It is just lost.

So, you give up and let it go.

You know what’s coming, right?

The very next moment after having sincerely surrendered the search, that beautiful something manages to miraculously appear in the very place you could have sworn you checked a hundred, million times.

It hasn’t moved.

It hasn’t changed.

It’s exactly as it always was and it is right where you left it.

It’s like it was never lost at all, only hidden from your sight for a while.

I lose things all the time. Right now I am currently missing one of my favorite necklaces, the key to the second lock on my front door, the cable that connects my camera to my computer, and whatever shoes it is I decide I want to wear out that day. I continually lose things inside my purse and end up having to dump out the entire bag’s worth of stuff to locate my glasses or phone.

I lost my car once in a parking lot and was minutes away from calling the police to report it stolen before I remembered that I hadn’t parked in that lot at all – it was in the lot next to it. (Besides, I was driving a ’79 brown Pontiac LeMans at the time – who’d want to steal that?)

And yet, each time I lose something, I go through the same ingrained routine of obsessive search that upends my entire life spreading chaos along my whirlwind hunt only to be left standing alone perplexed, baffled and defeated as to where “it” could possibly be.

Well, I’ve finally decided my life is too full to waste time and energy terrorizing myself on a quest that always ends in disappointment.

So, I’ve decided to try something new. I’ve decided to trust that I will find it when I find it.

More importantly, I’ve decided to believe it is not lost at all. It is right where I left it.

Of course, you know the answer to the riddle about the three frogs sitting on a log and two decided to jump off and one decided to stay, so how many frogs are on still the log?

Which raises another question – am I jumping? Or am I staying?