The Mire of Uncertainty

I'm starting to get back in the swing of things after my blogging hiatus. I've been thinking a lot about my friends who work for the company that will not be named and are facing lay-offs. It's hard to move forward when you don't know what the future holds. None of really do know the future but when times appear stable and secure we feel we have control over what will occur tomorrow, next week, even next year. When life tosses in chaos and ambiguity, we can be thrown off our game. That has happened to me more times than I care to count. And I have panicked. I'm learning to step back and not give head to my emotions.

My provocative thought for today has to do with living in the mire of the unknown.

Og Mandino, an American essayist, stated:

 If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will thin of past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be the master of my emotions.

 He also said:

Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence. 

 I'm reminded by these quotes that while we don't have total control of the future with it's mire and muck, we do have control over our reactions and our thinking. We can think ourselves into panic and anxiety or we can master our emotions and move forward.

Which reality you live is up to you.

I'm not going to lie and say it is easy, but I believe God looks down on us with favor and that when we live within that favor we find peace and rest and can master our emotions. If you don't believe in God, I think you can still find that refuge from turmoil. It's in the choices you make and the realization that you are valuable and you have purpose and meaning.

Which reality will you choose?

I hope my friends who are feeling this very real uncertainty can find some peace this weekend. I hope they can reflect on their successes and know that regardless of whether they have a job at this company come next week or not there is something special waiting for them. I also hope they know they have support. When we live in uncertainty we often feel we are alone. We're not. This is the time to take stock of who is there to support us emotionally, socially, economically and even spiritually.

Who do we know who can help with job leads and establishing ourselves professionally? Who can commiserate with us in our time of loss and need? Who can kick us in the pants when we need to stop living in our emotion and start looking at action? Who can hold walk the road with us in understanding and compassion? Who can remind us of our successes and meaning and celebrate with us?

No, we're not alone. And we don't have to stay stuck in the mire.

Blessings in Disguise

 I worked for a great education company from 2002 through 2008 when I was laid off due to restructuring. I learned a lot while I worked there, made a lot of friends and grew as both a person and a professional. At the time I was laid off I took the change philosophically and knew there would be additional opportunities for me ahead. To be honest, I had been trying to move out of my role as project manager into a role that was more training and coaching oriented so the lay off meant the world was my playground.

I landed a new job about three months after the lay-off (and about 3 weeks after my last severance payment). The end of my tenure at this great company was truly a blessing. I know others were impacted differently and didn't see the blessing this end could be. As I talk to people who were laid off at the same time I was, they all seem to be in better places. Blessings.

I just learned today that this same company is reducing it's workforce by 8% and that this 8% will come from support staff. This means people I worked with are going to be impacted. I haven't heard yet if any of my colleagues are going to be saying good-bye to their jobs but I'm sure some of the people I know will be leaving this company and not by choice.

It's always hard to have a job taken away. The most difficult thing for me was knowing that it could take a long time to find new work. That lack of security touched me in a deep place. I am a woman who values security. The exercise in losing my job taught me that security doesn't come from a steady paycheck. It comes from doing work you are passionate about and surrounding yourself with people who love and support you. It comes from planning for emergencies when the times are good so you have a cushion when the times aren't quite what you were hoping for. It comes from faith. I have faith in my family and faith in God. Other people have faith in other things. Faith gives us hope.

I'm really glad I was laid off back in November of 2008. I found a lot of blessings through what could have been a devastating event.  Those same blessings may have come to pass if I hadn't been laid off, who knows. All I know is that today I have a stronger sense of who I am and what I want to do when I grow up. I found I had more support than I ever dreamed. I learned I was stronger than I thought I was. And I lived out the lessen that when one door closes another opens.

I pray for my former colleagues who are living in uncertainty and perhaps will lose their jobs due to this work force reduction (what a civil way to describe a lay-off).  I hope the world offers them blessings they would not otherwise have without this life event. If I've learned only one thing in my life it is this - even in the darkest moments there is something good and right waiting just within grasp. All I have to do is reach out and grab it.

My gratitudes for today:

1. I'm thankful for the people in my life who lift me up when I can't raise my own head far enough out of the mire to see the opportunities for myself.
2. I'm thankful my husband and I took Financial Peace University before I was laid off because we had the forethought to build an emergency fund - something we continue to build to this day.
3. I'm thankful I was able to reconnect with my creative side and that the story I've been working on off and on for years has finally bloomed in my mind. Now, to make the time to write it down...
4. I'm thankful I have a great boss who takes the time to know me and my goals and is supportive and encouraging. 
5. I'm thankful that I'm starting to see the gift in all of life's moments. I'm not there yet, but I can start to see those gifts more clearly than I could in the past. 

Timely Intentions

A friend asked me what it took to find time to write. She's a mom with three children - a teenager without wheels, a tween who lives in high drama, and an active 4 year old. She works. She carpools. She cleans. She is truly the chief operating and finance officer for her family. She wants to write a book on her journey as a mom but didn't see how she could add that on top of an already busy life.

I thought about her question and the first thing that came to my mind was, "how does she do it?" She balances so much and still manages to have an organized house, well adjusted children and from the outside looking in it appears she has a healthy marriage. I struggle to keep the house organized and I don't even have children!

More and more I understand we are all gifted with the same hours in a day. All of us. We all have 24 hours. We all choose what we will fill those hours with. If we don't choose for ourselves, someone else will choose for us. 

I used to bemoan the fact I didn't have enough time to write. A good friend who is willing to hold up a mirror and call me on my crap suggested I do a time study where I would write down what I was doing every 15 minutes. I used my daily planner and every 15 minutes wrote down what I was doing. It was enlightening to see how much time I spent getting side tracked, how much time I spent surfing the web aimlessly after I accomplished a task such as paying bills or emailing a friend. Then there was the amount of time I spent reading. And the day dreaming.

None of these activities are negative on their own. Pile them together and I saw that my days were getting away from me because I was allowing my inner ADOS (attention deficit ohhh shiny syndrome) to dictate where my time went. The saying that where we spend our money and our time tells people a lot about what we value and who we are suddenly rang true for me. I said I wanted to write but how I spent my time told a completely different story.

That day I started to live with my eyes open and with intention. I'm still learning. There are still those days where at the end of it all I feel like I have accomplished nothing. Those days are few compared to a couple of years ago.

So, when my friend asked me what it takes to find time to write I answer it takes intention. Time management, it's a myth. Living lives with intention and being consciously aware of the choices we are making and how those choices impact our desires and commitments, that's a reality. Making time to write, go back to school, volunteer, learn a new skill, that's all about intention.

Are you walking awake and with intention? If not, what's getting in your way?


To continue the theme of gratitude, today I'm thankful for:

1. Cadbury hot chocolate mix
2. Being able to speak honestly with my husband and know I am heard even when we have those difficult discussions
3. Knowledgeable people in my life who I can turn to when I need advice, especially this week with Velcro Dog 
4. Friends who have amazing fashion sense who I can email with my fashion questions. I would be lost without you!
5. That my car is working again.

Catch Me, I'm Falling

I was going to post about the second book I picked up over the holidays but I haven't made it past the first chapter. Not because it's not any good. On the contrary, it's a great book but  I want to focus on one thing at a time. That's a part of this mire I find myself navigating - I want to do float from good idea to good idea and I can't seem to find purchase enough to see one idea through. So I'm sticking with gratitude and generosity right now.

I want to practice gratitude. It was difficult today. We had yet more snow. I  developed a killer migraine. My car is still in the shop and the dealer we purchased it from is being a little smarmy. So today I'm digging in deep to find five things that in this moment I am very grateful for.

1. I am grateful I have a warm home and can afford the heating bill that comes with living in the snow belt in the winter.
2. The traffic was really light on the way home, which made it really easy to get home quickly after work.
3. My husband took the dog for his evening walk, which is usually my job. He did it with grace and love which is such a gift.
4. My husband is a wonderful man who out  of the blue will bring me chocolate or ice cream. Sometimes both.
5. While it's still snowing outside, I am thankful about how magical fresh snow makes the winter landscape look.It's inspiring.

The Mire and The Gratitude

For a while now I have felt as though I'm starting over. I'm caught in this between world of what I used to be and how I am becoming. Perhaps starting over isn't the right term. I'm in this mire of becoming. I call it a mire because for the last couple of months it has felt mucky and boggy. I'm not stuck, but my forward progress is very, very slow. And messy.

2010 is over and we are in the second week of 2011. I turn 40 in just under 2 months. I'm itching to move past the mire and become already. Realistically I know becoming takes time, but living in this mire has made me impatient to see at least a glimpse of the end result and to know I won't be caught here forever.

Over the holidays I picked up a couple of books that I'm reading. Normally I would pick up books on writing, life coaching, money management, organization or a topic that has something to do with a book I’m writing. This time I did something different. Something to help me move forward.

One of the books I purchased is One Simple Act: Discovering the Power of Generosity by author Debbie Macomber. Just as the title states, the book is about intentional acts of generosity and how these acts can change our lives. From her website:

Debbie Macomber, through the power of story, invites us to live with open hands, offering who we are and what we have to God, to use in the lives of others. When we do so, lives—including our own—are changed in ways we couldn't have imagined. All it takes is one simple act.

The book is divided into seventeen easy to read chapters and each chapter ends with some thoughts or call to action to help the reader apply the lessons within the chapter. I read chapter one this weekend and one of the calls to action is to start a gratitude journal. I used to be very good at journaling. I found some of the journals from my early marriage while cleaning boxes the other day and I was so glad I chronicled those moments of my life. Part of my mire, I think, is founded in not really taking the time to reflect. And definitely not taking time to be grateful. If I learn nothing else from this book I think it is that I need to take the time. Starting today I will be posting daily 5 things for which I am grateful.

Tomorrow I will post more on the second book I picked up. For now I’ll end with some gratitude:

1. I’m grateful for a patient and partnering husband who gets me and allows me the space to be.
2. I’m grateful for a loaner vehicle while my car has been in the shop for the past 3 weeks
3. I’m grateful we built ourselves an emergency fund so when issues like said car come up we aren’t scrambling to figure out how to pay for repairs.
4. I’m grateful I work for an amazing manager! You know who you are.
5. I’m grateful for authors like Debbie Macomber who remind me that there is so much to be grateful for in life.

Where did the time go?

I have many, many drafts of posts and nothing on my blog since my husband's birthday in November. Why?  I would love to say it's only because life got in the way or because Blogger didn't want to post my scheduled posts. Which is part of the reason.

The larger reason is that I took a break from blogging so I could reflect on what I want this space to be. In 2009 and 2010 I started many topics that I didn't follow up on here. Great topics that I think have a lot of value for me to write about and for others to read. I wasn't able to find my rhythm and I wasn't very good at follow through. Which is odd because I am a project manager and implementation is the name of the game at work.

So I took a break and asked myself why I was blogging. What was the purpose? What message did I want to send out to the blogsphere? How did I want readers to perceive me and my words?

I don't have a complete and total answer yet. Time is something precious that I don't have a lot of so I need to be smart about my blogging. And if I continue I want to be consistent. It's only fair to you and easier for me - less guilt at not posting and all that.

Advent, the religious and spiritual season we are in, is a time of reflection for me, so I'm taking the time to reflect, ponder, and to determine a course of action. I'll share what I come up with, I promise! In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me. I appreciate it, and you!

Soundtrack Friday

My husband turns 40 today. We've been together for 18 of those 40 years - not quite half his life. I love my husband. He's a wonderful man with many strengths. He can also be infuriating. Can't we all?

Today's Soundtrack Friday isn't about me. It's about him. My husband is complex yet simple. He has a hilarious sense of humor. He can think deeply and can also step back and see things from a broader perspective. He doesn't always have the best taste in clothes, movies or TV but I admire his willingness to try new things and to take my recommendations seriously.

We fell in love over a mutual admiration for Canadian prog rock group Rush. In some ways, Rush is the soundtrack of our life together. You name the song, I can tell you how it fits into our relationship. Scary, huh?

So, to my wonderful husband, today's Soundtrack Friday is all about Rush. I give you their hit single, a staple of concerts everywhere, Freewill. Babe, this one is for you!