Monday, October 8, 2012

One of my biggest kept secrets...

I'm a softie. I am. I can't help it. Well, I try. My heart is so big and I feel so much that I have to shut down my emotions so I can deal with life. Otherwise I would be a big emotional mess. Tonight I just learned that many of my friends are being laid off or shuffled in their jobs. My heart is going out to them and I wish I could do something to help them.

If I was on the Titanic, I would make sure everyone else was on a life boat before I got on. That's who I am. I would organize the whole damned thing and probably order everyone about while doing it. But in my world, everyone would be saved.

So to anyone that is reading this, I care. I may not always show it. In fact, most of the time I probably don't. But my life is shifting and changing and making me more open to connecting and re-connecting. And it's nice. I hadn't realized I had become a hermit.

For those of you that get it, Wheel of Fortune, here I come. Big Money, Big Money, no whammies! :) I've had enough of those already. Time for something new. Anyone down for a ride on the Wheel?

Saturday, October 6, 2012

To be or not to be...a tortoise.

Thinking about my life and my energy, it strikes me as fascinating, the way physical stamina mirrors mental stamina. When running, I am great at sprinting a short distance. Long distances, screw that. I go slow and steady and yearn to give up the entire way. No way can I aim for speed goals or I'll never finish. But boy do I hate life while I'm doing it. At the end, I feel a sense of accomplishment but am mostly glad that I can do something else.

When it comes to projects of a mental nature, I've realized I'm the same. Short term goals are easy. I power through and make it happen by the sheer force of my will. Perhaps that's why I work so well under a deadline. If the deadline is far out, I usually procrastinate until the deadline is closer and creates a sense of urgency. A need for a huge amount of energy and the ability to move mountains. That's the energy I find thrilling.

I admire people who seem to plod along, moving forward toward their goal. In my heart of hearts, I would rather magically leap over all the slow and steady and zoom to the end like a rocket. But life doesn't work like that. I mean, I guess for some it might, but a lot of things that are valuable and lasting are built from the slow and steady.

Quite unexpectedly, I think of The Tortoise and The Hare. My natural tendency is to be the hare. To dance around the slow pokes and show off how amazing I am and how fast I can go. But in the past, I have always dipped out or taken a vacation or just lost interest and, lo and behold, those turtles with conviction keep moving, right past me, right to the finish line.

I suppose I need to embody more of the tortoise. Boy does that feel stifling. Constricting. But if I want lasting success, maybe I need a balance of the two. Maybe I need to dredge up my inner tortoise and use my inner hare to give the tortoise more flare. How can I get them to work together? I wonder. I dunno. Food for thought.