I’m introducing a new posts category for cultivating a grateful heart.
These posts will just be short little snippets of gratitude.
Everyone has struggles, and those struggles are real and valid, though always context-dependent. I have plenty of struggles right now too, but I know that in this life I also have many, many blessings. Fresh water, access to safe food, access to safe, clean water for my daughter’s formula, access to formula in the first place…the list goes on.
I am not someone who believes in hiding or downplaying life’s challenges and nor do I believe in constant positivity.
I do believe that there is a way to balance being real and acknowledging struggles with an awareness and appreciation for blessings, and that’s what I intend to do here with my Grateful Heart posts.
Well, it’s possible and probable that he’s right. It could take five years or ten years, and that’s if we’re lucky.
In which case, my resistance to the idea doesn’t really change the reality, it just puts me in pain.
And I am trying to spark some big transformations in our lives, yes, I am. I have been mentally pushing hard on these entrepreneurial ideas we have. I have been resisting the urge to settle down, put the mask back on, and work at a job beneath my abilities simply because I know that otherwise I have to find a way to work with my rhythms and damn, they can be difficult. I can’t do big brain work, as I like to call it, in an 8 to 5 job. It just doesn’t work.
I have had success doing physical jobs within that frame work, and I do enjoy that quite a bit. I have no problem working in manufacturing, or cleaning, or food service. I really don’t, and in fact I love that those jobs are a natural weight management tool for me (as opposed to seated office jobs which make me feel like I’m wearing someone else’s body).
But, one caveat with those jobs is that after a while, my brain runs on overdrive while I do the physical work and that tends to result in me dreaming up some scheme to leave the job anyway. I can’t get the monkey in my brain to quiet down.
Add to that, if you’re an employee in one of these jobs, it can be difficult to bring in enough income to support a family, particularly if you’re not all that good at the social and political maneuvering required at many jobs to secure raises.
As usual, I digress, but all of that is an explanation for why I’m resisting that urge (compulsively resisting I might add), to apply for a regular job, one of those that doesn’t pay great, but at least the benefits are cheaper than the Marketplace. But at this point, I don’t know if I can be a “compliant” (a word my former boss loved, which I think says a lot about him), employee.
So I’m sitting here, asking myself, how can I truly settle in to the understanding that the transformation I want could take a decade or more to happen?
How can I truly help myself to grasp that there is no quick fix coming? No lottery win? No unexpected inheritance (an idea that makes me feel queasy anyway, plus I don’t have rich relatives, but I’m including it because it’s a fictional trope)? No surprise bonus (I’m not even working a job where that is probable)?
Just a whole lot of one step forward, two steps back in our future.
Can I stomach that? Can I truly take the uncertainty without trying to find a way to cheat, to trick the universe by secretly hoping for a miracle?
How can I live with the idea that the cavalry isn’t coming?
Can I accept that it’s just me and my husband (and baby and cats) painstakingly stacking one block on top of another while the universe shows up as an irate toddler who keeps smacking at the blocks, pissed at us for trying to build a little tower?
Let me ask myself this: what would I do differently if I truly understood that all of these hopes and aspirations were likely to take ten years or more to come to fruition?
