STUCK
I am stuck. Haven’t blogged in months. I have been having lots of experiences that people would imagine would make me want to blog…but I just have not had the desire or the energy. I think city life is sucking mine out of me. Make sense?
First, ever since I completed my teacher credentialing program, I have felt a loss. The entire program had instilled such fire within me to be an educator and to fulfill my “life’s purpose” of being a teacher. After moving up north to the Bay Area, I have not felt any fire within me, but rather have been experiencing the kindling smoking and making me gasp for air with the thought of entering an urban classroom. What has happened? Is teaching in an urban area that much different than teaching in a suburban one? I suppose so. My toughest days in my suburban classrooms have looked like scenes from a cute Disney movie compared to my experiences in urban classrooms. So, what have I gone and done? I have given up on teaching and thinking that I could be a teacher.
Now, I feel like the sad soul who went through law or med school and now works at Petco… NOT that I work at Petco, thank the Good Lord…but, eh~~~ close enough. My work does not fulfill me. I know this. Unfortunately, instead of using that knowledge to ignite my fire again and look for teaching jobs, I am stuck in apathy.
Now all I have to Google is “getting rid of that apathetic feeling…” and move on with my life. Right? :-/
Challenging Times in Romance Land
Romance is a tricky thing. I looked up an article today to educate myself about how to more effectively communicate my desires for my partner to do certain “tidying up” things around the apartment more often. Why must you spend the time looking up such trivial things on the Internet, you ask me in boredom?? Well, it is because, as I have been constantly reminded by my partner, I come off as insulting whenever I do it “naturally/on my own”–without the help of strangers who write Self-Help columns for people with relationship roadblocks to constantly jump over. People like me.
All I want is for my partner to DO these things…NATURALLY…like I do. Is this too much to ask in life? Say for example, when I see that the contents of our recyclables container are about to spill over…I take it out. I recently began to take it very personally and began feeling insulted that I am always (except once) the one to take out the recyclables. I began telling myself, Well, there is no concern for keeping our apartment tidy, now, is there? or Well…someone must certainly be impressed by how the recycling container never gets too full. WOW.”
So, thankfully the first article I pulled up was this great piece:
http://www.deliberateblog.com/2012/03/18/can-i-use-loa-to-get-my-husband-to-take-out-the-trash/
And now I realize that I have been equating the lack of household chore participation with a lack of care and/or respect for me. How terrible. :-( Now all I need is the follow-up article that discusses lots more tips and tricks to use in order for me to change my thinking. Wish me luuuuuuuck.
“The world only goes ’round by misunderstanding.” –Charles Boudelaire
Miessence and Me
Well, you know I am always doing my best to incorporate healthy foods into my diet and treat my body right. Welllll, okay. Not all the time. 
I have been feeling kind of blah and haven’t been fueling my body with the best foods available to me. Stress= CHOCOLATE! Loneliness=COOKIES! Occasional boredom=MORE CHOCOLATE! I know that I need to get my eating habits cleaned-up once again. Sometimes my diet is so pure and I feel like a rockstar, other times I let my diet sink into a trash-can-sort-of-state and I feel like a roly poly.
I, as many people know, used to be (key words there…) a raw foodist. Even though I am not a hardcore raw foodist these days, I still keep up with certain websites and friendships I’ve developed. Anyway, I have a great friend (whom I’ve never met) in the Philippines and she always sends me information about new products/retreats/etc. that she hears about through her work if she thinks I might be interested.
So, to make this long blog shorter…she got me in contact with a woman here in the states who sells certified organic health supplements from Australia. Oh, the world is so small now! http://kvorganics.mionegroup.com/products/productDetail.jsf?item=15101
I contacted the woman, Lacey Swartz and she sent me three samples. After using InLiven and Deep Green (two of the products) for a month, I noticed a few things:
1) I do feel better. Who knows if this is the placebo effect or not. I am fine with it being either way, since how I feel is most important to me.
2) After using InLiven, I would have to go to the bathroom a lot. I honestly think it’s because it has organic spirulina in it and I know spirulina always makes me go to the bathroom a lot. (I’m talking every 20 minutes…) Haha. It’s supposed to be really healthy for people and regulates body fluid levels by removing excess fluid. I guess I am just soooo full of excess body fluid whenever I consume it.
3) Deep Green has a strong “green” taste, so I found that when I mixed it with cacao or carob it was muuuch better! 
It is alkalizing for the body because it has a bunch of different greens in it and I found that I felt really clean after I consumed it.
Both of these powders do have their own “green” flavor, so I enjoyed them a lot more when I added them to my banana/green smoothies. They go really well with bananas. I got three samples: InLiven, Berry Radical, and Deep Green. I will write about Berry Radical next time. ^-^ So far, so good. I really like the products because they make me feel healthy. Lately, my diet hasn’t been where I would necessarily *like* it to be, so these powders are a super easy way for me to get heaps of nutrients into my diet while eating less clean than desired. Oh yah!
Here’s an oldie, but goodie:
“The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine.” –Hippocrates
2012…Ay yie yie
2012 seems to be a really crumby year. OK. I should be more positive. It is a year that is, ahem…less than stellar that others. Better? Eh~ I feel fake saying that.
I personally know several people who have suffered very difficult/rotten things and we are only in month four. Eep. Watch out, folks. Guess we are being prepared for the rapture after all…
To boot, I feel really out of whack these days. Anxious. Weary. Confused. (In a state of confusion, I should clarify…) I almost feel at times that everything is surreal and I am dreaming it. All this crapola is beginning to bug me.
To help calm and medicate myself, I have begun eating chocolate in mass quantities. It might be partially to blame for me feeling like a looney toon.
Anyway, I was talking with a friend recently who shared that her sister has been hearing voices (from ABOVE). Important: Her sister has a very intense prayer life. I am going to bump up my prayer life so I start hearing voices (from ABOVE!), too. Perhaps the voices will tell me to stop eating so much doggone chocolate…
Until then.
I must include a tidbit from Einstein:
“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
2012
Hrrrmmmm. 2012. Hrrrmmmm.
I do not feel as though a “new year” full of endless possibilities has arrived. Strange? Kind of. I have never had this feeling before–ever. In the past, whenever a “new year” has come, I have felt a change. Small, medium, or huge…I always felt a shift of some sort, a newness, and as though I had a clean slate. What’s different about this year?
Possibilities:
- I am just about finished with my Teacher Credential Program…but I feel as those I am stuck in the middle of it still. No newness there.
- My life feels very stagnant…even though I know intellectually 2012 will bring a lot of changes in my life, I am in a space right now where I can’t see over the divide. Does that make sense?
- I am still battling issues I was battling 10 years ago…mind you, not in the same way or as intensely…but still fighting the good fight (possibly wearing down).
- I am on the fence as to whether or not 2012 marks the final year of our world as we know it. Part of me believes that come December 21, 2012…we will all be goners. The other part of me remembers Y2K and thinks, “La la laaaaa.”
All of those reasons and probably 5 more that I’m not thinking about right now… 2012 just seems like a blah year. 
I don’t want to be negative! It just doesn’t feel energetically charged with happy stuff, that’s all.
““So the Myan calendar ends in 2012. So what? My calendar ends in December. I just buy a new one.”
― Mr. Youngblood, Geography teacher
Cute. Hopefully we will all still be around on the 22nd of December to laugh about it then, too.
Laryngitis? Me? Never! Well… now, I guess. :-?
I started my Student Teaching seminar in late August and since then I have been sick four times. UGH. What is UP (or should I say down?) with my immune system??! I have had three sinus infections (gee…am I experiencing deja vu???) and now, I have laryngitis. 
Seriously? I have never had laryngitis before. It’s kind of a tricky illness. My body isn’t achy…I *am* tired…but the main trouble of this illness is my very sore *sore* =ouch=pain=discomfort=tightness=no bueno throat and lots of pain when I swallow…a pesky cough that is often phlegmy when it wants to be (Oh, I know…TMI)…and well, a raspy voice that cuts in and out. Reeeaaaaalllly weird. You know? I will start to talk (which, I KNOW I’m not supposed to be talking) and I will feel as though I’m speaking normally but not a whole lot comes out. 
Boo hoo hooooo. I can’t talk!~!~!~!~ What a frightening experience. I mean, Imma be a teacherrrrr. Teachers need to do quite a bit of talking…Ay yie yie.
Then of course I am thinking paranoid thoughts and am caught up on this girl I encountered while I was working as a Site Coordinator for a Parks and Recreation office years ago. She and her fiance were getting married at one of my park sites in town. Well. I had never talked with her, only her mother. Her mother, however, informed me that her daughter had a vocal cord disorder and couldn’t speak normally. I was on-site during their marriage ceremony and could hear the girl talking into a microphone and it sounded like she had laryngitis!!! But, laryngitis every day of your life?!?!?!? How frightening. It sounded as though she was fighting to get words out. Lord. Please don’t let that happen to me. Amen. <–Quick little prayer. Say it with me–Amen! Oh my goodness.
Oh, this poor woman from the '40s suffered just like I am. I feel ya sista'.
I need to kick this laryngitis stuff in the tushy. Acute laryngitis lasts for three days or less. This is Day Two for me. Cross your fingers that the constant, nonstop warm ginger-lemon-honey tea I’m drinking will cure me. Today is Sunday. Lemme break my laryngitis experience down for y’all in case you’re ever in a similar situation:
Tuesday night: TERRIBLE throat pain when I laid down in bed to go to sleep.
Wednesday: Woke up in total body pain (very flu-like feeling ) and a sore throat…body pain subsided after I was up for 1 hour. Sucked on cough drops throughout the day and took DayQuil.
Thursday: Major throat pain when I swallowed…cough drops did NOT help the pain.
Friday afternoon, I came home from work and discovered I had a “sexy” hoarseness…raspy but, my voice was still steady and fluid.
Friday night, my voice continued to get worse and worse, raspier and raspier…
Saturday: Tada! I woke up with laryngitis!!! :-/ Very raspy, broken cough, too. Pain in throat=no bueno and I felt tired and weak. I was home alone and so ended up making myself some chicken broth, vegetable porridge. Very healing. xoxo However, I had to go to the dreaded Win-Co grocery store for ingredients and that probably stressed my body out so much that I backslid…just sayin’…that place is especially kuh-ray-zee because Thanksgiving is coming up.
Sunday: (*Today…) It continues…and ooh~~today I am soooo phlegmy…icky icky icky.
Gots ta stay healthy!
I found this one quote on laryngitis… why not? I prolly DO need to do some more listening…BUT it’s not my fault that I talk a lot!~!~! I HAVE TO!!! I’m a kindergarten student teacher.
“Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.” —William Arthur Ward
Resistance
I’ve been feeling resistant a lot lately. That is, I have been fighting (putting off, procrastinating, doing the opposite, etc) certain things I know I need to do.
Now that I have started my Student Teaching time, I have been instructed to keep a journal of my daily experiences and reflect on classroom time. Well, whenever I am TOLD to keep a journal…I don’t. Whu-ohhhhh. Goodness gracious. I need to stop fighting against certain responsibilities I have in my life.
Also, along this same vein, my most recent RAW INITIATIVE has been most unsuccessful. I have been feeling really resistant this time around and I want to pin it to the fact that the women who are running the initiative are so gung-ho about the process that it is causing me to RESIST the process. Am I backward, or what?!? Or perhaps I feel that in both cases (needing to keep a journal and needing to eat raw foods) there are certain expectations of me that I am scared I won’t meet so I just blow them off completely? Argh*
Time for some internal dialoguing…dun dun dunnnn! Wish me well.
“Resistance is thought transformed into feeling. Change the thought that creates the resistance, and there is no more resistance. –Robert Conklin
Thanks, buddy! You just saved me at least 10 pages of writing!!! Now I can just jump ahead and figure out WHAT the negative thought is inside me in order to end the resistance. I honestly think it is mostly related to my perfectionist tendencies…time to go back to my old self-hypnosis books!
Sadness is like Yawning…It’s Contagious.
I have been in a sad sort of mood as of late. Not to the POINT of NO RETURN or anything like that…just…sad. If I try hard enough to pinpoint the exact time, date, and place of this newfound sadness, I would say it was 5 minutes after watching the documentary (which I have blogged about) The Day My God Died and has continued on from there with little bits of depressing stories and news fueling my sad feeling flame.
I know part of my new “sadness problem” is that I’ve been “in my head” too much this past month. But oh boy, I sure don’t know how to get out of there. My head is the type of place where once I step foot inside, a captivating seductress grabs a hold of me and ties me to a chair where I’m charmed until I go mad. Hrrmmmm. Good analogy? I’ll hafta think about that one some more.
I keep hearing about depressing stuff, though. That’s the real contributing factor to my problem. I need to go away to some place far, far away where I can only watch reruns of Leave It To Beaver and The Wonder Years for the rest of my days. Ahhh, wouldn’t that be grand? I’ll be a happy camper then, fer sure. Sure, I *might* GO a little berserk…but that’s better than standing in line every month for my Cymbalta… 
I watched this video http://www.ted.com/talks/eve_ensler.html earlier today and thought, Wow…insomnia for –3– years. And then I remembered back to the saddest time in my life when I couldn’t sleep for –3– MONTHS. Three months compared to three years. When I think about all those nights I was laying awake in bed, not being able to sleep after having fallen into a deep, dark hole, and tormented by the types of thoughts that keep a person awake through the night, I felt two things: 1) I felt sad about the depressing news I keep hearing about and 2) I felt grateful to have conquered my own difficult life experience. Life is no box of chocolates. It’s more like a tool shed…filled with plenty of things that can cut you, disfigure you, cause you severe harm and pain, but is also filled with things that help you improve your situation and lot in life…things that you can use to create beauty and harmony in your life.
I really hope I start picking out those things again soon…and get back on my path to feeling God’s grace, blessings, and seeing all the wonder in our world…and not the ugliness.
“Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.”–Dale Carnegie
*ugh…I haven’t learned that trick yet, Carnegie…
Stolen and sold
You know, I’ve been feeling down on myself for the past few days. Different little things have been on my mind and I’ve been feeling 1) partly sorry for myself, 2) lonely , 3) frustrated by various life situations that have presented themselves to me as of late.
And then tonight I went to class and my professor showed a documentary about Human Trafficking and I feel rotten for even being the slightest bit disgruntled with my current life situation. I highly recommend it: The Day My God Died. Watch this documentary when you want to feel hopeless and miserable and convinced that our world has gone to the poo-hole. I was stone-faced during its entire 70 minutes but walked out to my car just buzzing with pent up anger, emotions flooded me and about two minutes into my drive home, I cried. And cried. And cried.
The documentary looks at the child sex trade in India and Nepal. It was filmed in –2003–. Can you believe that?! Eight bloody years ago and I’m only now aware of it because my professor showed it in class. Otherwise I would still be blind and dumb to the fact that INDIA is most likely the HUB of child sex slavery in the world. With a population of over A BILLION people, I suppose it makes sense just because of sheer numbers…
At this point, I am confused, frustrated, and wanting to go to a kickboxing class for a few hours. Why are there so many sickos in our world, people?! WHY!? These women (mostly YOUNG girls from 7-14 years old) are all contracting HIV and living horrid lives. Is having an argument with my father significant AT ALL after watching a video like this? Let’s think about our lives for just a minute and then realize that NOTHING is important when so many lives are being stolen and sold and then repeatedly tortured~~ for pennies. The average “customer” pays only (US) $2.00 per RAPE. Pathetic and sickening that other “human beings” <–and I am using those words SOOOOO loosely — can sexually enslave young girls and women IN THE 21st CENTURY and nobody can stop them? What the hell is wrong with our world? Anyone?? CAN ANYONE ENLIGHTEN ME, PLEASE?
I want to help them. http://www.maitinepal.org/ is an organization that houses and rehabilitates the GIRLS if and when they are freed from their enslavement. I send my utmost respect to Ms. Koirala.
I got this from Humanrightsteam.org…just to let y’all know that it isn’t all about the ladies anymore.
– Traffickers are … family members and friends of the trafficking victim. A six-year-old boy, Mohammad Mamun, was taken from his poor Bangladeshi parents by a neighbor, and ended up in a foreign desert land being exploited as a camel jockey. Mamun is one of hundreds of young Bangladeshi boys who are trafficked into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) either after being abducted or sold by impoverished parents to human traffickers.
![Eigerøy lighthouse III [Explored #4]](http://static.flickr.com/2879/8805431526_732f27a085_t.jpg "Eigerøy lighthouse III [Explored #4]")
