Balance: An Obsessive's Unicorn

Aleathia says:

So my friend said to me the other day..."you haven't written in awhile". Yes, I know. "It's brewing," I told him. It wasn't all together untrue, but I wasn't sure what I was brewing. I'm always brewing 12 things at once. Choosing is hard. Finishing is hard. Focusing often challenging.

Days before I started thinking about balance. As a Buddhist, balance is often on my mind. Finding the middle way the goal in all things. Just being can be more difficult than it sounds. One of the scariest things in Buddhism to me is "form is emptiness and emptiness is form". I am one of those people who loves things in little boxes or on lists or categories. It gives me a sense of purpose. It makes me feel safe. It is my woobie. But consumed by boxes, lists and categories one misses out on life and opportunity. I think this is in part why I chose Buddhism all those years ago. I recognized the lack of freedom in my life and the stand up nature to be brave enough to look at my own shortcomings and still maintain some loving kindness towards myself. This talk isn't about Buddhism, but about balance and discovery, though Buddhism is always present when these two things happen.

Anyway, I have been struggling through winter in Upstate NY. Grey, dark, cold, blah and repeat. February is a millstone and often my most isolated and the time when obsessive behaviors are their worst. To battle these issues, I have been listening to 2 Dope Queens comedy. They make me laugh and I can always use more of that. On one of their episodes they were bantering back and forth talking about exercise and noted that people who just talk about their workouts and exercising are so boring.

I stopped smiling immediately. Panic. Looking around in isolation. More panic. They were talking to me.

January was the start of my training for a section hike of the Appalachian Trail and it has been my obsession. I have tracked every work out. I talked about all my workouts so much so my kid retreats to her room every night instead of hanging out with me. I talked about it at work. When I was alone, I talked to my self about it and have spent much of my free time doing research. I make personalized oatmeals. In effect, I am going bat shit crazy in my house.

Having goals are so wonderful. It inspires ambition and gives direction, but when you have an obsessive personality things can derail very quickly.  I would not say I am OCD as it would be unfair to take such a label from those that are truly diagnosed. My house is a damn mess....an organized chaotic mess. I'm not overly concerned with germs. Everything does not have its own place. But I do have obsessive tendencies that can make me short sighted. I believe this comes from an early childhood of being hyper-vigilant and scared and having to grow up too fast. How many of your friends can say they were left in charge of a newborn baby with no parents in the house at 8 years old? I grew up real quick. I needed certain things to be in certain places for life to make sense. So at age 44 it is hard to begin to untangle the wiring.

So here I am having some balance and trying to not feel guilty about it. I skipped my evening workout tonight to take my kid to dinner and say goodbye to my future hiking partner and go to the bookstore. The two hours I would have spent at the gym were replaced with good food and laughter, hugs and smiles, and more fucking laughter. It was followed up with the nerd fest of non-fiction book reading with my 16 year old and exchanging information on the relationship of trees and the history of colors. That is a memory I get to keep. I wouldn't have remembered the workout past its notation in my training journal. I guess what I am saying is that balance is a struggle for me and always has been. But it's never too late.

Try something new. Give yourself a break from routine. Be nice to yourself when you don't reach goals when you planned to. Enjoy life. It sounds corny.  It is corny, but true. Oprah says "The most valuable thing you can give yourself is time." That's some gospel right there. Spring is almost here friends. We can make it....one obsessive day at a time.

Thanks for reading.
Aleathia

Podcasts! I'm Outside of Every Trend

Aleathia says:

I have come to realize that I am fashionably late to every trend that has ever been. Maybe it is my cautious Cancerian nature always approaching everything from the side after I have had ample time to research what it is all about. I have a fear of being trendy; of being a sheep in the herd. I want to be the one to like something because it strikes a cord in me, not because it is popular. I have been this way my whole life. The girl on the fringe (vanilla as hell, but there); the new kid in town; baby in the corner. Where am I going with all this? Yes, getting to the point.

My training program for the Appalachian trail next year is well under way. A whole month under my belt and as the workouts have gotten progressively more challenging and longer, I have needed something other than music to distract me from burning muscles and peak heart rates. The distraction makes me breathe easier for some reason. I'm here for the oxygen and endorphins, you know. So there are these things called Podcasts, have you heard of them? This is where most people look at me as if I have several heads and have been living under the rock of Gibraltar for the last 5 years. They smile, nod, and walk away.



I had to look up how to play a podcast. This is no joke. Bless Google. Where would we be without the answer to every question you could ever ask? So there I am with my Google Play Music scrolling through types of podcasts and having no earthly idea what any of them are about or where to begin when I see "Philosophize This!" Oh.  I like philosophy. I was the nerd that sat in the library stacks reading reference books. I was the girl who took every philosophy class she could in college.

I sat on my living room floor doing my pre-workout stretch listening to this soft voiced, super nerdy sounding guy talk about philosophy...starting at the beginning. What makes this podcast magical is that the host is able to put these really deep, seemingly unreachable ideas into something very modern and relatable. He's funny...in that peculiar smart friend way. You will find me on the treadmill pushing the inclines higher and higher learning about Plato and Aristotle. There I am in my own universe publicly nerding it out in front of all these roided up folks at the gym trying to not be self conscious as I still to my endurance workout plan...trying not to keep up with the Joneses.




One thing leads to another and on weight day I wanted something a little less mentally taxing, so there it is. Oprah's Super Soul Sunday conversations. Yeah, I see you rolling your damn eyes. Don't be a hater. You know in your secret heart of hearts you love Oprah. As I was listening to this conversation, I realized why I have been drawn to her my whole life. She asks amazing questions. Next time you watch or listen to an interview pay close attention to the pause that almost every person she interviews does. Oprah will be going along with questions and then she pulls that one question out and the interviewee, in all their life journeys and experiences, gets asked a question that no one has bothered to ask them before. We know what these questions feel like. Anxiety, bewilderment, panic. Maybe these are questions we avoid asking ourselves, which is easy to do, but when someone asks it of you, you owe them an answer. I have decided that Oprah is the queen of revelation questions and that is why I love listening to her.

Now I'm prattling on about podcasts and you are thinking, please just shush.  Ok, ok. I'm almost done. Today I woke up with an empty cold house. Most days this is fine. I have gotten used to the ringing in my own ears without need to drown it out. But today felt especially lonely, soooo I decided to make banana bread and listen to a podcast. I went in search of something new. Listened to several for a few minutes and they just didn't grab me. It made me appreciate the time before television when radio was all you had. You had to be a master of sound, have the right voice, and a gimmick that would keep listeners tuned in.




I landed on Mike Posner's podcast called "What Does All This Mean?". I don't even know who this dude is. He has a nice voice and awkward pauses. It felt right. Supposedly, he is some famous music dude, but because I am not trendy I had no clue. I listened to this his story "The Possibility of Being Here" in which he talked about having set his life to a false story he created in the second grade after his best friends moved away...a story that he would never fit in and never belong. Unwittingly, he spent the rest of his life trying to be over productive to make up for it, trying to improve himself around any corner in hopes that it would somehow make him feel like he belonged. This struck a resounding chord in my soul. I have spent my life feeling this way. It has given me a lot of heartache and one shitty relationship after another.

After this last failed long term relationship, I made a decision to be alone, to stop chasing men who don't really want me, to stop looking to others to validate who I am, to stop looking outward to see if I belong. In a few months it will be a whole year since my world crashed around me. It was the first time I had felt like dying in a long time. I look at where I am right now and feel pretty great about it all. Sometimes you need to scrap the bottom to remember what the light looks like; to challenge yourself to find a love for who you are that you didn't know existed.

I have a lot of grand plans and challenges ahead of me, but I am learning the art of temperance and patience and loving kindness. There are smiles where once frowns lived. So if you see me at the gym with a half grin on my face, know I'm probably consuming philosophy by podcast. Asked me what I've learned.

As always, thanks for reading. I appreciate every visit and every chance to share what I have learned in this world. Sharing is the best thing we can do to lift each other up.

Aleathia