The difference between thinking and doing

I often think that I am a certain type of person, and to be fair I was before I become ill, but I started to realize who I thought I was and the actions I actually took were not really the same anymore.  I have always considered myself an outdoorsy person, but there is many a beautiful day where I remain inside and just look out upon the world or hide myself in bed. Sure, much of this is due to not feeling well and needing to avoid being in the sun too long, but there have been other times when I COULD have gone out and done the things I used to enjoy; being outside, walking, poking about in the yard, making a fire at night, where I didn't do them.  So can I say I'm outdoorsy when I rarely spend time being outside and more time thinking about it or being a couch potato? There's a big discrepancy there.  Outdoorsy is who I WANT to be, but haven't been following through on, whatever the reason, and so I wonder if I am lying to myself about it. 
I spend a lot of time looking at art and design on the internet but not actually doing any of my own.  There comes a time when soaking up influences and gathering information becomes of diminishing returns if there is no end product to it.  I've people close to me who talk all about their ideas and what they're going to do and want to do, yet they never actually sit down and do it.  Now have I become the same as they? Basically yes.  This was a very harsh realization.  After a while all the good ideas and 'potential' mean nothing if they are not acted upon.  You may notice others in your life who are prolific artists or doers. They don't spend all their energy talking about their ideas but DO them instead.  And yes, that is who I want to become and really own. 
I read a lot about Buddhism and Zen, but the main concept there is doing the meditation which I seem to rarely take time to do.  What is the use of my studying something I want to be a part of my life if I am not living it?  One could say the same about those who believe in a concept, way of life, religion, etc. but fail to make it part of who they are.  They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions - I intended to be creative; I intended to write; I intended to meditate; to be a good person, etc.- but I never really followed through.  We are not just our thoughts, we are very much our actions and that counts in all aspects of our lives.  This has definitely made me take a serious look at myself and has not been an easy sight to behold.  I cannot blame all my inaction on being ill or depressed, or what have you, I have to own my life and actions, too. 
I'm slowly learning that I've read enough books, etc. that it's time to do and not just read, study and think about it.  Now to take that big step...and do.  It's remarkable how intimidating it is and for the life of me I cannot image why other than a fear of failure, but it's not like I've got a darned thing better to do.  So even if I fail at what I attempt I will at least have something to show for myself other than I've just sat around thinking about it. That helps no one, especially not me, and so it's time to learn from this mistake and do something about it.  There are legitimate things to fear so why does the idea evoke a feeling of fear and anxiety within me? 

I am actually going to go meditate on this now.  An action.

In between jobs at work, I look at other people's blogs. Mostly design and art blogs.  I am fascinated with the creativity and vision that people have that they are able to manifest. It makes me want to go home and do something creative!  When I do get home, I've forgotten about my inspirations ( it's an hour and a half drive) or I take one look at my cluttered bedroom and my mind turns to mush.

I REALLY want to have two sunny warm days in a row where I can pull everything out of the bedroom to outside on the deck and only put back the things I want to keep, or that I think fit in there without it being too chaotic.  I've learned that chaos of surroundings leads to chaos of the mind.  I literally can't think in a messy cluttered room.  I have tons of art and craft supplies which I do nothing with at this point since there's little or no space to work and then I can't decide what to work on or where to begin.  It doesn't help that I live in 300 sq. ft. and that there are no closets.  but I need to create a solution and half my possessions so I can be creative.  I love looking at pictures of minimalistic spaces that are clean and uncomplicated like the one above I have pulled from the internet. But mostly I like big wide open spaces with a lot of light and few possessions. It really makes it so much easier to think in a big empty clean space. 
My family and myself still need to work on the concept of owning you items instead of them owning you. 
I crave simplicity.  Yet, like most, I'm at a loss when it comes time to rid myself of things.  I've never been that good at 'letting go', but I am learning.  Now to put more of the lesson into action. 

In the Beginning - the Creek, Mmaa Preggers, Simpkin, the Kittens and the Bird from Hell!

The Beautiful Hedges Creek - with chairs. Taken when I first moved there after the end of a relationship. I figured where else but the wetlands to retreat and get one's head back together?

This is Mmaa Preggers. (Mmaa - is Botswanian for Madame or Miss) The stray/feral unwed mother who eventually dumped 6 kittens on Simpkin (my cat and significant other) on me and went on to greener pastures or sadly the great catnip patch in the sky.  I am known far and wide as a sucker when it comes to animals.  They see this tattooed to my forehead I believe.  Simpkin didn't chase her off since he didn't wanna hit a pregnant girl and I'll feed anything - human or animal that asks.  And boy did she ask. She literally hollered at us all the time.  And we couldn't turn down a girl 'in the family way' all on her own in the world, but we did later live to regret our being big softies.  Not only did Mmaa Preggers meow a lot, but we had a cat bird that used to look in our door and squawk at us until we went to see him standing on the grill  (6 feet from the door) making a scene (this was pre-kittens).  He literally got us up out of bed one morning with all the fussing.  Then spent the next month screaming at us all the time. It was weird!  My mother asked if perhaps this was someone I knew in another life time who had a beef with me.

This is the brazen little monster that came into my life and spent a month yelling at me and Simpkin, even when we were in the house!  Need I mention I had moved into this place in April and HE showed up in mid June!  I WAS THERE FIRST!!!  Our first experience with him was when Simpkin and I awoke to lots of noise (HIM) and we went into the living room (door isn't visible from bedroom) to see this guy standing on the grill (it faced the screen door which lead into our place) looking in through th e screen door and screaming his damn fool head off!  Was he calling us out? Because if that is the case he must have been drinking the "10 foot tall and bullet proof" whiskey!  Simpkin, by this time was 16 years old, and no longer hunting. Mmaa Preggers was too pregnant to hunt and had conned us into feeding her so we had no idea WHY he was screaming at us when he couldn't even see us inside the morning this odd relationship started!  I always assumed it was a boy, but perhaps it was a female. 

And things just kept getting better with this guy!  He'd hop from different place to different place badgering us! And when we were inside he'd holler at us in there.  Being only 5ft away is pretty brazen no matter how you slice it!

 Standing on the steps by where I was sitting 5 feet from me.  I was NOT enjoying the after noon with his constant squawking at me and was forced to move inside and shut the door. Pest.  

 Here he has moved to the post by the door to scream at us.  I am only 5 feet from him.  He has made a serious pest of himself to the point where I wanted to throw something at him. I've never, ever entertained the idea of bringing harm to a small creature in my entire life, but he actually had me considering what I could throw at him!  I was on my LAST nerve!!  And, NO, I didn't actually ever throw anything at him, but I did think about it. I also called him some nasty names.

 A cold and rainy day on the wetlands! 

 My landlord's chairs that were useless as chairs but cool as art.

 Eying me up on my landlord's deck taking his picture.

 Simpkin lying on the bed after surfing porn on the web

 Or maybe this is the one after surfing porn.

 The kittens.  From Lt -Rt.  Fleur, FuzzButt, Prissy -in back, Whacket (short haired) and Pumpkin. Kagome was off somewhere else at the moment.  I couldn't touch any of them just yet.

 In this basket in the front is Whacket. the only short haired kitten of the bunch. She was a bitch and a half!  Thus "Whacket" since she was always trying to 'whack' you.  Mmaa Preggers didn't bring them around until after they were 6-8 weeks old and she was just starting to wean them. 

Simpkin was the most wonderful cat ever. He was more like a person than a cat. Far more intelligent than most people let alone most cats. The kittens, now the grown cats you see from the beginning are dumber than a box of rocks, but very very sweet when there's not suddenly sent into a panic.  Big, stupid and very fluffy.  

Simpkin passed away two years ago at the age of 18 from Kidney failure.  I still miss him daily.

Writing, Family and Garrison Keillor—Not Necessarily in that Order

Above is a winter evening's picture of a collapsed pier in LI, NY, Atlantic side.
                                            

Whenever I am particularly stressed out, I listen to the monologues of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion (PHC). I find his voice to be more effect than Xanax for taking the edge off anxiety or any worry in my head.  Most folks tend to think he should avoid singing which he does on each program, but I am a big fan of his voice even though his singing isn't perfect.  I identify with this pretty well, too. I love (or loved) to sing, but most folks would prefer I didn't.  Bizarrely, my birth mother was a singer as was my mother.  I took singing lessons growing up and even sang in choir–the times I wasn't kicked out for laughing or goofing off.  There's something satisfying about singing; be it vibration or deep breathing, either way, it's satisfying even if you're not very good at it.  I recently read a fantastic book called, "The Mozart Effect" which basically discusses why humming, mantras, and extended vowel sounds have a healing effect upon the body.  And looking back at my life, the periods of greatest happiness surrounded times of my singing, or being part of music, so I tend to think this is a pretty sound theory; plus, they have scientific data to back it up.
Listening to GKeillor talk about Lake Woebegone and his family made me think of my own.  My family who is always saying, "Don't talk about this," or "Don't talk about us to other people", etc.  Now, it's not like we're the Mafia, or that we are even up to anything smacking of being vaguely illegal in the least! It's a left over paranoia passed down on my mom's side for at least three generations that I know about.  I guess we don't publicly like to admit to our idiocy and short comings. You'll never see any of us on the t.v. unless we were duped into it, at which point we'd pull our shirts over our heads and run blindly for the exits.  So I'm always tentative about what I talk about so that I'm not discussing anything or anyone I shouldn't.  To top it all off, my family always says to me, "You should be a writer!"
What, pray tell, am I to write about if the first rule in writing is 'write about what you know'? I always felt I couldn't be a published writer until after my grandmother's passing since she would get very bent out of shape by anything that wasn't exactly squeaky clean and relatively wholesome even though she knew I was neither.  I've always suspected she wanted me to be like Beatrix Potter, but Beatrix Potter was already being Beatrix Potter, and last time I checked, she died an old spinster.  Present day similarities aside, at least I don't dress up my animals in clothes! It was easier to be BP during the Victorian times in which she lived. No one was ever supposed to know about where babies came from in those days, and talking animals were considered cute and in the realm of the possible, not a sign you need to be put on medication.
I remember reading about the writer who wrote 'The Great Santini" and how his family wouldn't talk to him for a while for 'exposing' them. I guess it explains why Mark Twain didn't allow a portion of his works, and certainly many autobiographical parts, to be published until 100 years after his death so no one would sue him for slander or get their panties all in a bunch.  AND most of his family had died before he did, sadly.  It's an age old writer's conundrum I guess.
I also don't want some of the people in my life to read what I write as I tend to be opinionated and somewhat acerbic with my tongue at times. Being a 40-something, over-weight spinster, I mean single woman, I can be a bit..pissy, and I'll admit that I get a tad petty now and then when I'm tired and stressed. Okay, so I'm tired and stressed all the time! But I hate pettiness, especially my own!
For example, I've got a perfectly nice co-worker who was pregnant and kept referring to herself as 'the pregnant lady' in the way that people talk about themselves in the third person. This used to drive me  crazy and makes no senses at all. It's not as if I want to be pregnant or that I am jealous; I've just got a pole up my ass.  Some days it's jammed up there farther than others, and now I know why it is that we don't like to talk about ourselves, or each other, in my family–the women of my family tend towards 'pole'-ness.

I've been listening to lots of short stories lately in the myriad of audio books/podcasts I listen to regularly and so realize that there are other things to write about other than one's family.  It is however,  my natural inclination.  I'll just have to work outside my comfort zone and there's just not a lot of places where a girl with a pole up her ass is going to feel all that comfortable.

A little more rest

I decided that it worth it to stay a little longer on my vacation here in Barbados.  I think it's the first time I've been really able to relax in quite a while.  I even got to finish a whole book (that wasn't recorded) in between seeing a little of Barbados, a couple of trips to the beach and eating some wonderful food. 
As is the case with most people with Fibromyalgia, I found the need to sleep quite a bit the days after I accompanied Linda to the beach.  While being in the water was quite a heavenly experience, the sun does me in. Maybe it's the Lupus/auto-immune thing, but I found it hard not to keep falling asleep the next day despite meds to the contrary. 
Sleeping for most of a day, even when it seems to be necessary often fills me with guilt. Guilt that I am missing out on part of my life and should be fighting it.  It is a very big sign of depression, too so it's hard to know where one stops and the other starts and vice-versa.  There is definitely a trip to see a doctor about having to adjust meds for this situation in my future! 
But, I have enjoyed just being here and away from the world even though I have had some internet connection time.  There is much less envy and resentment in the people here than a lot of places one goes for vacation.  I have noticed that New York is set up very much to bombard you with advertising nonstop and showing you what other people have and what you should have, too if you want to be; happy, in, noticed, successful, etc.  There is little in the way of how to just 'be'; enjoy the simple things, and how to be happy with what you have instead of needing things to make you happy. 
I suppose there is a lot of judgment involved in the New York life.  People stand outside of a club waiting to be picked to go in based on who they are, who they know or what they look like.  I guess I'm a bit too old to waste my time waiting on line in front of a club to be judged as attractive or cool enough or being stylish enough.  I don't choose to have someone have that kind of judgement over me and accept it.  Hating house music or dance music loud enough to pierce ear drums is another factor that discourages me.

I have been reading " The Mozart Effect" a really remarkable effect about the effects of music and vibration on the human body and its potential to help and heal people.  Granted there were bits in there that fell into the hokey category, but there was much more thought provoking and scientific proof than anything that made the eye brows raise. 
Looking back to parts of my life, I realized that some of the happiest times were times when I was singing regularly.  Sure, part of it is breathing, but sound vibration is  a huge factor. 
Everything vibrates. an atom is an is vibrating energy that gives it form and function. It's mostly empty space!  I want to look into some of the workshops and clinics when I return to New York, as no one is more tired of having the sleepin' through life blues than I am! 

I've been reading a lot more about Zen and getting a clearer understanding, but all is mere curiosity if I am not putting it into effect by meditating.  This seems to be a bit of an issue with myself and another family member.  One can talk about something 24 hours a day, but it means nothing if it is never put into action. Potential is lost if it is never acted upon.  One lesson (among many) is to learn to talk less about things and do more.  I wonder how I am going to motivate or challenge myself to do this effectively...

And away I go!

I hemmed and hawed but finally decided to take my friend Linda up on her offer to stay with her at a place she rents each year in Barbados.  But at first I thought about all the stuff in my apt. that needs to be sorted, boxed up and disposed of in what ever way seems most fitting.  Also, work has been a grand pain in the ass of epic proportion and I felt I needed to be there to keep face, and then I thought about all the complaining I do about not having any unmarried or un-intwined friends with whom I could go away somewhere with.  I realized this was EXACTLY what I wanted and needed to do. So I've got a cat sitter (honesty and opposable thumbs being the requisites for that job) to watch the beasties and I threw some clothes and a couple of books in my bag and here I am!
It's wonderful here. The air is fantastic even in the sporadic rain storms which I very refreshing and peaceful.  The land and the people are beautiful and the apartment makes my place look like a tiny little closet with a lot of cat hair.
Even lying in bed at night listening to the peeping frogs is a joy and fresh grilled fish and wonderful rum drinks is an idea way to nourish oneself!
I am still living sugar-free though I've been hitting the sugar-free candy of late and while I know it is no good for me and makes my tummy rumble, it fakes my mind out that I am eating something sweet so I don't cheat.  The only thing I am relaxed about in the sugar category is alcohol.  I don't drink much at all and especially not the way I did when I was a bar tender in new Orleans, so I figure it literally a treat that I won't abuse.
Traveling to the Caribbean always makes you think about what it might be like to live here full time.  The problem being is how one would make a living if they weren't already independently wealthy.  A writer or someone who worked over the internet could do so fairly easily, but motivation might not be something in great supply living down here.

Traveling with people can be heaven or hell and I've had some traveling companions in the past I wanted to dump in a swamp for the alligators to finish off, but I must say Linda has been a fabulous and generous companion and I super thrilled to be here with her.  It's nice to just to sit around listening to the night and chatting away or being silent with no pressure to be or do anything that what you already are.   Like a significant other or a  chiropractor, a good traveling companion is worth their weight in gold!  I enjoy people who are who they appear to be.

Life was so hectic and complicated before I left I thought I was going to lose my mind, but two days here and I'm already starting to unwind and feel like a 'normal' person.  I brought some books on Zen and a book called "The Mozart Effect".  I am looking for different ways in which to incorporate peace, calm and self healing into my life.  No easy job with working with a couple of real wankers 40 hours a week not including the 3.5 hour round-trip commute.  I would love to live a few blocks from work, but i don't wanna be so far from my folks, my good friends, and life on the wet lands which is my sanctuary as well as my self styled prison.  I love the wind, the birds, the sound of nature that make up the audio-scape of my home life.  In the warmer months when the landlords aren't  there, I leave the doors and windows open and let the sounds of the wind in the leaves and the communication of the animals be my sound-track.  A well placed wind chime also adds a lot to peaceful quality of the place.

Winter is quite and has advantages all its own but the shoveling of snow isn't a strong point for me and my back. I parked the car close to the road so I wouldn't have as much shoveling to do at the last big storm, but it was still a challenge and I was struggling.  After about 8-9 minutes of this my neighbor came walking towards my house with his snow blower and dug out my car and made a path to my door. I was very grateful and practically gushed all over him with my thanks.  It's very comforting to know there are kind, thoughtful people around you.  Appreciate it if you have good neighbors since bad ones can make your home, your castle a living hell.  Acts like the one my neighbor did for me and the invitation to come on vacation with my friend have really done a lot to look at humanity with a warmer and less critical eye.  So much of how we are affected by the world has to do with our level of gratitude. If we find a lot of things that we are grateful for, we find less things that make a serious problem for us.
With all that in mind, advertising and t.v shows such as "the Real Housewives of Spoil Bitch, USA" and other shows akin to theses, make people envious.  We're bombarded with things we're told we need or should have if we want to be noticed, cool, excepted, up-to-date, etc.  We look at these silly, petty, rich women and think, " I should have that house, those things, etc., not her!"  We see all the things on t.v. we're told we just gotta have or we even need.  It's a non-stop campaign to get us to go buy more, more, more!  None of it says, " you are wonderful the way you are and with what you already have."  I do understand keeping the economy going, but whenever I purchase something I purchase it because it's necessary for my life or if it is a luxury that will bring pleasure to me and my family/friends.  Nothing is purchased to show status or show off.  Envy eats at the soul and creates unrest and disharmony.  Having advertising and t.v. constantly filling us with these thoughts and feelings takes away from our happiness and gratitude and now that I am seeing how great an effect it has on us and our society, I wonder how others are dealing with the feelings it creates and how it has affected their lives.  Are they more dissatisfied after watching all these people flaunting their wealth and bad manners?  Does it sow deep seating envy into their lives where they become judgmental and resentful?  I think it must have some effect such as that and I bet most of us aren't even aware of it.

Day 7...(cue dramatic music!)

I've done remarkably well staying away from sugar and I must stay I've feeling a LOT better!  I eat quite a bit of fruit, but I know that's good for me and I'm not going over board with it. Well except today.  I went grocery shopping and I think I've eaten half the groceries.  It was really the first day I got any real sugar cravings and it might have been because being a slave to hormones, or that I've had such a bizarre and sleep altered (rather sleepless) week that it just caught up to me.  So despite the desire to find cake and ice cream and eat 12 pounds of each. I've not done so. 
I did manage not to eat any sugar today, but did some damage on some pistachios which will be filling in any area of my jeans not currently stretched to the limit.   It seems one of the hardest parts of this journey is keeping the journal.  I believe this is important to really understand what nutrients I'm getting, how many calories I really am taking in and how I've burned my energy.  Whoever designed the cellphone app is great!  It's showing me more information and patterns than I assumed it would.  Now if I could figure out how to add 2-3 more hours to my day to add exercise and meditation.