I Just Wanna Freefall For a While….

Its kind of late in the day for me to be writing a blog, but I had something I needed to get off my mind.

Its been kind of a rough year and a half.  I got laid off from what was a successful career as a kitchen designer, as the housing market in the area came to a standstill. After spending the winter with no work, I accepted a job doing sales at a log home company, only to be told 3 weeks in that I wasn’t agressive enough for the position, a judgement that I felt was unfair and undeserved given the amount of time that had passed. I finally settled into a job that I liked at St. Lukes. A new relationship blossomed and I fell in love, and then I struggled with the fact that it didn’t fall into place like I wanted it to.

I had problems with a roommate and that had no more than ended than I began having serious problems with new neighbors.  The teenage boy of that family broke into my house, attempted to assault my daughter and then issued death threats. The dad got in my face multiple times and made threats. I had to file a police report and decide whether or not to press charges. I ended up leaving a job that I loved, to take another one that I didn’t like so much, so that I could be here for my kids.  Thankfully, the neighbors eventually moved, but I struggled with a job that I didn’t enjoy very much. It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, which was going to nursing school. Nursing school didn’t seem POSSIBLE though.

We made it through the holidays, had a fantastic Christmas, and then in February, my Grandpa died. As I wrote before, my Grandpa was my everything when I was a child but we’d kind of drifted out of contact as I moved around with my own family as an adult. Subsequently, I had a hard time grieving when he passed away. The funeral was difficult and I don’t know how I’d have made it through if Jeremy hadn’t been there, but it was a weird feeling at the same time. I had to grieve for what ‘used to be’ instead of what now was, since Grandpa and I hadn’t been close. I felt strange to be so sad when we hadn’t talked in years. But the sadness was there nonetheless.

Immediately following that were a lot of ups and downs in my relationship, most of which were my fault and completely out of character for me.

Why am I writing all of this now? Because here I am, in pre-nursing school and for the first time in a while, I feel peace again. I feel my head clearing,  I don’t feel the constant battling of emotions that has been present for the last year or so.  I heard a song on the radio, by a new group called Gloriana, the song is called “Wild at Heart”.  It isn’t the title or all the words in the song, though it is a neat song…..it is one line. “I just wanna freefall for a while.”

I couldn’t sum up how I feel right now any better than that. I just want to stay right here for a while, just freefall. Just be.

How Do I Love My Office Space? Let Me Count The Ways….

About a week into school, it became clear that I needed some dedicated office space where I could spread out, keep my various assignments organized and feel motivated to work. I’ve been really bad in the past at keeping my laptop either in my room, or by the couch, where I could sit back and goof off to my hearts content. It wasn’t working well when I started school. I wasn’t really able to concentrate, too many distractions and I felt shut away from the kids.

So I created this:

This is an existing desk in my guest room, which is downstairs with the kitchen and living room area, the only downstairs ‘bedroom’. It tends to be a guest room/storage room/place to put stuff. Since I use a laptop, the desk works well, and Karen loaned me a printer (which I could not have lived without!) until I can buy one. Of course the desk also holds and entire shelf of first aid supplies, another of movies, another with boxes of batteries, user manuals, greeting cards, etc. Just a general storage area.

I also brought in a table from the garage that I hadn’t been able to find a place for yet.

This gives me even more spread-out room to put books on, finished assignments and anything else that won’t fit on the desk or I need to set aside for a bit.

In my little work area, I have all the necessities. A candle, glass of pens/highlighters/sharpies, shelves to put extra paper, even room on the desk for either a cup of tea or glass of wine, depending on what time of day it is.

It is a great place that I can feel motivated to work, not so comfortable that i’ll sit for hours though. It is a space that is all MINE.

The #1 reason I love this space is because it is steps away from the kitchen and a direct view to the living room, where the kids are usually hanging out. I can feel involved. I can go start dinner and come back to homework without worrying that I’ll forget dinner and burn it. At the same time, I can feel like I can step away and go start dinner and come back and work while it is cooking. When I was upstairs, I felt like coming downstairs was an all or nothing ordeal. If I came down to start dinner, I had to STAY downstairs until it was done. Now I can just get more done!

Before The Law

Yes…this is another one of those Philosophical posts…get used to it!

I have one obstacle to going to school (and eventually becoming a nurse) that I cannot seem to overcome. Last night, I was ready to give up. I don’t see a way out. Yes, I think God wants me to do this. Yes, I believe He will find a way. But, right now I’m not seeing that and I’m losing hope.

As always happens, I got that little wake up call in the form of a 2×4 upside the head. I’m pretty thick headed and don’t take hints well, so sometimes that is what it takes.

Today in Ethics class, we were given a handout with a reading on it. I’m going to retype it for effect.

Before The Law

Franz Kafka, from The Penal Colony

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper comes a man from the country and prays for addmittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.”. Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall, there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.” These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected. The Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly, later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeepers mind.

At length, his eyesight begins to fail and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only decieving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radience that streams inextinguisably from the gateway to the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in those long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, so how does it happen that for all these many years, no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?” The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”

Ok…heavy reading there.  Some of it makes no sense. What is the Law? Well…we came to the conclusion in class that it represents Opportunity, or dreams and goals.  Who is the doorkeeper? After a lot of discussion, we decided that he’s “Obstacles”. He’s anything that could potentially stop someone from achieving what they want. The problem is, the man never tried to pass him. The Doorkeeper said “go ahead and go through if you like, and face the next doorkeeper. Instead of proceeding and confronting the next one as it came, he choose not to approach at all. Were the obstacles mostly in his mind? Did he, like I tend to do, decide that the obstacle was bigger than it really was? It is really just ’suggested’ that there is an obstacle there, since he never really tries, he never gets to find out if there truly is an obstacle of some sort.

We also drew a diagram, of a mountain, which represents life’s journey. This was a concept developed by a Philosopher named Nietzsche. Along the trip up the mountain, things sometimes get hard and there are obstacles and at that point, most people turn around and go back. Those people are “everymen”. But sometimes, there are people who actually make it to the top and the term for those people is “ubermensch“.

Be careful not to let the obstacles that you imagine in your own head stop you from doing what it is you want to do. Do you truly know they are obstacles or do you just expect them to be? Will you be an “everyman” or will you be “ubermensch”?

Procrustean Bed

 

One of the things you lovely blog readers now have to look forward to, since I’ve become a student, is random writings on things I’ve learned about in class. I’ll warn you now, I take interest in some of the oddest things and I can find a life lesson in just about anything.

Today was the first day of my Ethics class and it was a doozy.  I have to be careful to not let my emotions get wrapped up in the sometimes ‘worldly’ mindsets that exist today.  I felt myself getting fired up a few times and I have to remind myself that the class is not about a right or wrong subject but rather a discussion of beliefs. 

Something I found very interesting was our discussion of the “Procrustean Bed”.  I’d never heard of it. Here’s the story.

Some time ago, in the middle east, there was a Highwayman called Procrustes.  When the professor asked if we knew what a highwayman was, I took the opportunity to get the first laugh of the day in by piping up with “a carjacker!’  Once a class clown, always a class clown, I guess.

Procustes would waylay his victims on the road, which of course back then meant they traveled by horse, donkey or mule. He’d drag them back to his lair and place them on his ‘bed’, which was a stone slab.  Any body part that hung off the slab, he’d take out his sword and lop off. Any body part that was too short to reach the edge of the slab, he’d stretch until it did fit.

The principle behind this is that he always made the person fit the slab, instead of the slab to fit the person. An attempt to make someone conform to an idea or principle would be putting them on the “Procrustean Bed”.

Which got me thinking….how many of us, today, are trying to make ourselves fit a slab instead of finding a slab that fits us?  In our jobs, our relationships, our homes, our parenting styles….it is applicable to any area of life. We have a standard set by society perhaps, or by our parents. We have to fit a certain mold in order to be ‘right’.  I know I’ve done this in many areas of my life, mostly in work. My desire to be successful prompted me to try to make myself fit into something that I truly didn’t fit into. The truth is, most of us won’t fit onto a slab made for someone else, we have to go find our own!