Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You are fine just the way you are.”
Ravens cawing
Laughter
A witty joke
A Linkin Park song, preferably Somewhere I Belong
My blood circulating through my veins
My joints cracking
My muses’ voices
It’s time to get back to Calen’s current challenge. Yes, I am a few days late, but I’d already scheduled the older challenges a few days ahead and wanted them to play out. This prompt is from the Self Discovery Journal and is supposed to be a bit on the light-hearted side.
I think I saw my dad smile a few days ago when I made some homemade buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy. It’s rare that either my dad or my brother eats anything I cook, almost as though I might poison them. However, they did both eat the gravy and biscuits. Small wonder.
I can’t say I blame them, even if it does hurt my feelings. You see, I wasn’t allowed to help mother cook as a child or teenager. She never taught me how to make biscuits or gravy or any of her other recipes. She did teach both my sister and my brother. They both think they have a monopoly on mother’s recipes. However, my sister did send me all of them once and I did teach myself to make quite a few of them. Still, if I were to cook any of them, dad might eat some of it, but my brother definitely wouldn’t.
And now that I’ve gone and reminded myself of my unhappy childhood, I think I will go in search of something that will make ME smile.
Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom
Chaotic, but not outwardly. This is an inner chaos that I deal with on a daily basis, minute by minute throughout my life. The result of decades dealing with mental illness. The chaos manifests as anxiety, OCD moments and the occasional bout of depression.
Uneventful. This is my outer life. Rarely does anything happen around me these days. I go through the same daily routines and only on rare occasions do I deviate from them. This deviation is usually one or two trips a month to the store, or an unplanned evening walk, or an early morning outing on the front porch.
Hopeful. Despite my sometimes negativity, I really do seek out positive reinforcements. I try to remain hopeful that my health will improve, that my writing will go well, and that I won’t have another major mental break.
12/16/16 – The Devil
The message of the Devil is a warning, a cautionary tale. The Devil is imperfect balance recklessly pursued. Anything in the extreme – eating, working, sexual activity, exercise – leads to an unbalanced life. Take head and moderate your behavior. Keep watch for obsessions in your life. Do not let any belief or practice overshadow all other aspects of your life or you responsibilities to yourself or others.
Be aware of being so afraid of pleasures out of fear of addiction that you repress or deny all desires, even healthy ones.
Curse ye, tarot! Get ye out of my head! Okay, enough of the archaic. But seriously, I’ve been thinking about my food obsessions lately and how to counter them. I am so addicted to carbs it is not even remotely amusing these days. Cookies, cake, bread, bagels, candy, potatoes, biscuits… I cannot get enough of them. Seriously, I can eat a bagel and an hour later I am into donuts or cake or eating a ton of Milky Ways. Then a short while later, I want pasta or french fries. I eat and eat and eat until I go to bed and I am never satiated. I also know this obsession is reeking havoc with my blood sugar levels. I don’t even take my readings anymore. I just take my meds the same each day and pray it is making some headway, but I know it isn’t. I also spent months (9!) on a Low Carb, Healthy Fats diet and was hardly ever hungry. In fact, I ate one meal per day. But I always missed carbs and eventually went off the diet. *sighs* I also know how healthy I felt eating just vegetables and meat with the healthy fats of coconut oil, butter and olive oil. I want to get back to that!
Want to know how I know I’ve done harm to my body by going back on carbs? I’ve lost muscle mass again in me arse and sitting is now painful. My joints also ache, especially my hips, which means sleeping on my sides is now painful as well. AND I have to pee, constantly. I know I am damaging my body. I know it! I am such an idiot sometimes.
So my goal is to go back to LCHF beginning on January 1st. No more carbs. Just healthy meat, fats and vegetables. Because of my current dental situation, I cannot eat raw vegetables and cooked ones are depleted of vitamins, so I plan on doing blended vegetables and eating more sauerkraut and kimchee, even if I have to make my own! I plan on making vegetables (mostly leafy greens) about 75% of my diet and keeping meat minimal, just enough to keep my muscle mass up. And lots of healthy fats!
Time for an intriguing question from Calen’s challenge based on Roberta Allen’s The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself:
This is something I have struggled with for decades – stillness. The inability to still my mind has plagued my meditation sessions, as well as my attempt to be mindful. My biggest obstacle is an over-active imagination. It goes full-force all day and even while I sleep. I also have two randy muses who won’t shut up and an animus who constantly thinks he knows what’s best for me. Now this is not to say that I’ve never experienced stillness because I have. Short, random bursts. If I concentrate on one small thing, I can hold a few moments of stillness. If I hear something beautiful (a gap moment), I can be still for a bit. I can even go blank sometimes if I am daydreaming. They are rare moments, but deeply cherished ones.
Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom
For me, the best way to feel safe is to be alone. In my alone~ness, I am far away from those who seek to harm me. I don’t have to struggle from the grip of cruel jokes and unwanted advances. I don’t have to dodge bullets of foul criticism that pierce into my mind and heart. I don’t sink into holes drilled through my self-esteem and self-worth. And I don’t get caught in webs of deceit and lies.
I spent my youth seeking safety with others, thinking that someone else could protect me and keep me from harm, but most of the time, those I sought shelter with were the very ones who nearly destroyed me.
There was one I called my knight. I repeatedly sought him out whenever my life crashed around me. And yes, he would protect me for a while, once for a couple of years, but usually only for a few months at a time. In the end, he always discarded me. So why did I run to him so often when I should have been fleeing from him instead? I still have no answer for that.
After one harrowing relationship, I fell into the arms of another ‘savior’ who did save me for a short while, but she became critical of who I was as a being. She constantly tried to change me, but in the end, all she managed to do was strip me of self-confidence. When I finally got up the courage to leave her, I disappeared under a cloak of alone~ness for a short while and managed to rebuild my shattered confidence.
This was also around the time that mental illness manifested as a major component of my life. As I attempted to rebuild myself, depression overtook me. Again, I sought shelter with one I thought would protect me. I mistook his initial kindness and generosity for love, but in the end, he too was a wolf out to devour me. And he nearly did. He ate away at my esteem and worth, and nearly sucked the marrow from my bones. It took me 13 years to escape him.
Now I realize that the only person who can keep me safe is me. I have little trust in people, even family and friends. I’ve built up walls and moats around my heart, rarely lowering the draw bridge to let others in. I walk a thin line around people these days and I have a lot of safety nets surrounding me in case I lose my balance and fall. I no longer allow others to lift me up, but rely on myself to do so. I spend a lot of time dusting myself off, but I’d rather do it alone than to be reliant on others who may seek to harm me.
Digging even deeper into Calen’s challenge from Roberta Allen’s The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself
I am probably one of the least balanced persons in the world. I have a joke that I tell people – When God was giving out balance, I thought he said talents and I got a double dose of it instead of any balance.
This lack of balance can be seen in all manners of my life. I cannot walk a straight line – never could, never will. My body is out of balance – large on top, small and thin on the bottom. My mind is completely unbalanced – manic one minute, depressed the next. My spiritual self is unbalanced – one moment I am thinking angelic thoughts, the next I am thinking devilish ones. Even my perceptions are unbalanced – I prefer night to day, feel more alive when things are decaying (Autumn), and am more interested in all things dark and twisted, even as I strive to be a light in the world.
On rare occasions, I can find some balance in my life, but it takes a lot of effort on my part. I’ve done this through meditation, yoga, pilates and mindfulness. The balance is only temporary though and I don’t have the patience to do a continual practice. I am not disciplined enough. I’ve lived my life skewed for so long, I am not sure how I would react to a centered, balanced one. It would probably unbalance me *winks*
CQ 24 – What would your ‘ideal’ society look like?
My ideal society would be a place built on mutual respect, kindness, love and honor. A place where mankind lives in a symbiotic relationship with nature, like homes built like hobbit houses, lush gardens, lots of trees, clean waterways, and wind farms for electricity. A place where animals are free to roam and not fear humans. It would be a place where everyone helps to take care of everyone else, seeing that all of our needs are met collectively. No selfishness, mean-spiritedness, or discourse. It would be a place of skilled workers and artisans, where each does work that benefits others and in return benefits themselves as well. There would be no politics, no money and definitely no ONE person in charge. A council of elders would guide, not rule. And every man, woman and child would be equal. I would also leave out organized religion and replace it with a simple spirituality, a belief that we are all ONE, with each other and the earth. There would be no need of a military, a government, nor warfare. Peace and tranquility for all.
Of course, this is all a pipe dream because humans ARE selfish, demanding and jealous. Humans are a ‘me first’ species. They don’t care about human, animal or environmental welfare. So long as ‘I’ get what ‘I’ want, to hell with anything else. And this human collective will eventually destroy itself for its selfishness and waste.
(I think this is the last CQ for now, but it was fun catching up *smiles*)
Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom
Very early this morning, I wrapped myself up in a thick blanket and with a cup of coffee in hand, I went outside on the front porch. I sat down in the rocker and gazed out at the gorgeous morning mist settling on the mountain tops. It was a beautiful grey morning as the sun hadn’t yet broken through the clouds. In the distance, I heard the sound that I knew would bring gratitude and joy into my heart… ravens cawing. It is the best time of day to hear them and they always make me grateful to be alive.
After a while, I returned to my room. The heater was on and it too made me grateful. These days, I get cold far too easily. The past two winters, I only had electric heaters and couldn’t run them for long because they upped the electric bill, but now I have a lovely gas heater that I can run on a very low setting and my room warms up so fast. It’s a shame that gas is still cheaper than electric, but on a chilly morning like this one, I am grateful for the gas heat.
And now, I am sitting here eating a warm blueberry bagel with cream cheese and feeling grateful to have food to eat. As I swallow each bite, I am aware that somewhere out there, there is a child starving, a mother unable to feed her family, and that times are hard for everyone, including myself. I barely had money to finish out my month of groceries and had to concede to the estranged one for assistance. Even though he never complains, I don’t like accepting money from him to make it through the month, but on the other hand, I am grateful that he is there on months that I am barely scraping by.
I’ve got my shovel and I’m ready to dive into the sandbox with Calen’s first challenge questions from Roberta Allen’s book, The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself.
What do I see? An unrecognizable face. This is nothing new for me though. I’ve never recognized myself in a mirror, or a photograph for that matter. The ‘Me, I Am’ is not reflected in this body. This would probably be difficult for most people to understand, so I won’t go into great details. Just suffice to say, the ‘Me, I Am’ entered this body when it was 5 years old, sealed by contract. I will never get accustomed to her face.
Like? The smile is nice, as are the eyes. The hair is appealing as well.. long, blonde and a bit wavy.
Dislike? Truthfully, this entire Earthly Human body. It’s too plump, wrinkly, and peachy-pink pastel (ewww). But the worst aspect? It’s a physical body.
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