Difficulties

I am having great difficulty at the moment with something that I really, really want to be good at. My approaches are simply not working, and I find myself getting tied in knots, mentally speaking.

I also made a big big boo-boo today. It was rather large. Fixed now, but I should really have known better.

This would be the point where I would start blaming myself, and beating myself up about how much of a failure I feel. It's tempting to go back down this thought process route. But I am not going to do that. This is the point I need to show myself some compassion. Just because I am not good at everything, doesn't mean I am a failure.

High achiever.

You wouldn't want to be one.

Houston, we have sanity

I was driving home this evening from a long work day. Normally I crank the tunes up to level 11, Spinal-Tap-style, but tonight something made me refrain from even turning the radio on.

I drove home in complete silence. Apart from the sound of my car, I just sat and drove home with just my thoughts. It was amazing. And very illuminating. The feeling of just moving along the same route I've taken for the last 8 months, with a difference, made me realise something.

I'm fine.

I'm not being cute. I have realised that I am absolutely fine.

After years of a lot of self-reflection, counselling, therapy, meditation, kinesiology, breathwork, life coaching, mentorship at various places of work, long fireside chats with some pretty amazing people in my life, as well as the normal coming and going of the various little challenges I've faced in that time, I feel about as balanced and at peace in myself as I can remember feeling.

I am at the end of the tunnel, in fact, I'm probably way out in the fields that line the edges of that tunnel. If I remember the start of my walk through it, I had absolutely no idea I could ever feel this way, serene and calm and unflappable. I had no idea I could sit in my car in silence and be at peace with the thoughts that floated to the surface. They were things like "this feels good" and "gosh, I have a nice life, when you really look at it" and "I wonder what's for dinner."

In fact, I've been fine for some time.

A letter to my future partner

A friend of mine once asked me to blog a letter to my 16 year old self. I thought a lot about that request, but the energy is just not there to give the task what it deserves. I am normally averse to dwelling too much in the past, a very very strange thing to say given I am in the process of writing my memoirs. But, as a rule, I don't like encouraging it. I am trying to cultivate and foster the habit of living in the "now", for that's where life takes place.

But, it has gotten me thinking about what I used to do a lot - think about and wonder where "the one" is. I spent a lot of time over the past half a decade or so wondering whether it would ever happen for me again. Enough to write a letter to my future partner.

So here goes.

********************************************************************************

It's wonderful to have finally met you. I feel like a gift has been given to me, something that I had once given up on, but worked really hard to believe I was worthy of.

I know that I will love you to the core of my being, because I have a lot of love to give, and I've been waiting for someone like you to be open to that love, care and affection.

I know you are a very special person, because only a very special person could have overcome my resistance to change, to allow me to yield my independence once more, and give myself to interdependence. As lonely as it's been sometimes, my ability to be myself completely and without reserve has been a hard-won struggle for me for a very long time, and I've encountered many false starts along the way that have made me pull my toes back out of the water again. For someone to inspire me to give my heart completely to them, to change my status from "single" to "in a relationship", you must be true, loyal and committed to a life with me. For that I am grateful.

I am grateful for the work you have put into developing a strong character, to be able to stand up for your ideas and opinions. I am grateful you have the ability to have swept me off my feet, to be able to clear away my doubts from the remnants of lovers past that have caught me in their webs and hurt me.

I have thought about you quite often. How you are living your life, what you might be doing or seeing. How your character might have been shaped. I admire the clarity of thoughts that you have, and your ability to debate with me about anything and everything. I love the way you are unafraid to disagree with me, or even to call me on my bullshit occasionally, for I know that occasionally I can be difficult. Something which you no doubt would realise after half an hour in my presence, with my incessant mental gymnastics, especially when I feel open and vulnerable emotionally, the way you make me feel.

I love your sense of humour, the way you can be both serious when needs be, but silly and playful all the other times when seriousness is not called for. It keeps me young and mentally agile to play verbal volleys with you and pit our wits against each other.

I am grateful for your affection and attention, for so many men believe this makes them seem weak and less of a man. For me, this is untrue. I love your ability to melt into me and allow me to melt into you, and our affection, touch and love could never be considered "too much" for each other.

I love your passion, not only for me, but for life. Sometimes I get morose and depressed. My anxieties and worries can get the better of me. I do not ask you to bear any responsibility to "make me better" as I have learned to do this for myself, but I also appreciate the way you can, with just a few positive words, turn a dark day around with a smile.

We all have a tendency to project our weaknesses onto those we love and blame them for the resulting "issues". I am so very grateful for your wisdom and insight in these situations. I don't expect us to never fight, for where's the growth in a life filled with peaceful avoidance of the truth? But I do appreciate that when we do fight, we are fair and never nasty. And that we can both navigate the truth of any situation to its ultimate solution. I love that you are committed to finding solutions with me, rather than simply pointing out the problems.

Finally, I am eternally grateful that I will be falling asleep next to you, and waking up with you, with our arms wrapped around each other, from now until the end of our days.

I feel very blessed to have met you, my best friend, my lover, my partner. I will do my very best to be the best version of myself with you, and I hope that my presence in your life has the same effect for you.

Natasha

Insight

I am now in my second quarter of my self-imposed "romance-sabbatical".

It's so very interesting to note the number of things I used to do for attention, good or bad. Without realising it, I actually was a lot more interested in how I was perceived in a 'dating' or 'availability' sense than I cared to admit, even when I was saying I was putting dating on hold, I'd never actually put it down altogether.

My motivations for doing things were not always about what I wanted, necessarily. And it took a lot of energy denying that, as well. I'll give an example. After my improv comedy graduation night, my meditation teacher commented at following sessions how I'd "now put myself out there more" and that it was a matter of time that I'd be noticed. This was in reference to my constant requests alluding to the fact that it hadn't "happened" yet for me, and how impatient I was getting with the self-improvement thing, and it not "working".

Yup.

A lot of my self-improvement was all about getting myself to a place of perceived "sanity" from the crap I had been through in previous years, and all about my trying to be "normal" again. And that normality would be vindicated once I found someone who was "normal" who wanted to be with me.

It's pretty twisted thinking, innit?

But that's life, and that's what I craved for such a long time, and that's just where I was in my *ahem* "journey".

It was all about meeting someone to partner up with.

I am not saying this is a bad thing. And I am not saying that's not what I want anymore, because it very much still is something I hope I get to do again. But my sabbatical has shown me just how much I was wrapped up in this way of thinking. That this goal, if not reached, was somehow defining me in a negative way.

I have really enjoyed the first 3 months of my romantic "time-out". I still hope to meet someone special. But it doesn't define me as much as it once did.

Hankering...

Oh dear.

I knew the calm couldn't last.

I knew I'd need to shake myself up again from my Buddha-like state.

At least now I can recognise it.

It is coming as a slow itch.... to do something... be somewhere else... aspire to something I don't have.

It's manifesting in me looking over at other patches of grass, thinking, believing, they "have it better".

It's all bullshit, of course.

I have what so many crave - freedom. I should really enjoy it.

Still, I am looking at mummy blogs with envious eyes (nawwww such sweet kidlings..... REALLY Tash? You are thinking WHAT now?)

I am looking at foodie blogs (I really must do something MORE with my cooking ability)

I am looking longingly at fitness tweets (I really should "do" something else, like join the 12WBT program again, or another gym, or more boot camps..... honestly, Tash, this is getting old)

I am watching programs like Selling Houses Australia, thinking "I want to do that."

I am reading travel stories thinking "I really want to travel, live overseas.... yadda yadda yadda"

I am feeling dissatisfied with being pushed in my job (again) and thinking "why can't I just chuck it all in a be a hippie feral on the dole... just writing away my ideas.

Yup. It's that itch again. I have learned to both expect and dread it. It's that horrible itchy feeling in my head that keeps waking up the "dissatisfaction beast" within me, believing that I could be so much more... or so much less... or so much elsewhere... or so much something-else--other-than-where-I-am-right-in-this-present-moment.

Wake up, Tash. It's an illusion.