I see me differently, now…

Holy Cowabunga!

All kinds of amazing personal self-discovery going on over at Havi’s today! Check out some of the links in her post, especially this one:

S is for Stimming, which for me is Supportive of Sanity and Serenity.

I personally self-identity (S-word!) as HSP and not so much with autism but hello, stimming (my dear friend!), and also hello, spectrum, another important S-word. May we all find a comfortable spot, a sense of security and “oh, this is me!”

And this one: rediscovering-stimming-as-an-adult by ExtendedExile.

Please read them, and the awesome comments, and then come back here. (Oh, please do come back – I’d miss you something fierce if you didn’t!)

Those posts are being as transformative (in the last 2 hours!) as reading “You Mean I’m NOT Crazy, Stupid or Lazy?” was.

I really AM OKAY, just the way I am. I’m NOT broken or wrong or crazy – I just don’t didn’t know how to use my brain-hardware happily.

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Bright [if chilly (understatement of the year – it’s 5 above right now)] Blessings to you all ~

Karen / Kharmin / Kay 🙂

 

Hah! Another Friday morning dash-it-off post ~ And SEND!

 

Me, Showing Up! (Finally)

Happy New Year, everybody!

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Happy New Year, especially Little K!

Little K – you just stood up and took ownership of what you’ve really been doing all evening, instead of either hiding or lying to yourself and the people you feel certain you’ve let down.

I was hiding all evening, fucking around on the computer, not even writing, or doing anything “productive” or even creative – just playing solitary games, and debating putting off getting dressed and going to a party that I really wanted to go to, up until about 5 o’clock, when I got all nervous and insecure and cold and hungry, and I didn’t make the Choice: I simply Didn’t Choose. No *decision* made, I simply puttered until there wasn’t enough time left.

I’ve done that to myself for 50+ years – WTF??

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I’m not particularly proud of *what I stood up about* – but I am definitely proud *that I stood up* at all!  Progress, yes? YES!

Thank you for being here…

 

This is Me, Asking for Help…

I just did [a thing] that I’ve been resisting for a long lo-o-o-ng time.

gofund.me/j1z7k8

 

I sat down and wrote honestly about myself, and some of the ways I’ve been less-than-together (under-statement of the century) in my Real Life, and then Actually. Ask. for Help! (Progress, right?) (Thank you, Ash and Shanna and everyone who’s ever written about how vital that is.)

The next step is to ‘make that visible’, because, well, *writing it*, committing it to screen is one thing (Yay, Me), but if nobody can actually *see it*, it still doesn’t do much good, right?

So, here’s Me (Ms. Karen Johannessen in Chicago, Illinois, USA), being vulnerable and visible at the same time: gofund.me/j1z7k8.

All the heavy-duty resisting and denial I’ve done in the last year (decade?) – about losing the house, editing my stuff (by definition: eliminating options!), getting what’s left packed up and mostly stashed out of reach – all of that has come down to ‘spare-rooming’ it (a step up from ‘couch-surfing’ but a really small one), and now, losing the latest couch (at the end of December!)

It’s time to step up, get a “real job” with a “real income” (I know: you-all are a lot about “‘don’t just ‘work for the Man'”, but right now, I haven’t left myself time to start a side gig – face-palm!), and get into a place that supports my genuine needs. I see that as a place of my own, where I can be not so off-balance every minute of every day. First I need the place. I need the job, too, to support the place, but the hard deadline for a place is January 1!

Meanwhile, Thank You all for your wisdom, your advice, your support and your role-modeling. If it weren’t for my friends and the folks I’ve found on the internet, I don’t know *where* I’d be now (not anywhere any more comfortable, that’s fersure) ~ Blessings to you, and a shiny New Year!

Please take a look at this page, and if you can contribute, I’d surely appreciate it. Even if you can’t (or choose not to), I appreciate you, for sharing You, and for reading my words! gofund.me/j1z7k8. If you see fit to share it, that would be wonderful, too.

Bright Blessings (the sun’s coming back, hurray!) and

Happy Winter Holidays (all of them) ~ Karen J

PS – I do have a PayPal account, too: k m johannessen at yahoo dot com. (Thanks for the reminder, Cordelia’s Mom!

 

On more check-it-offs and fewer blows to your self-regard

On more check-it-offs and fewer blows to your self-regard ~ from David Caine at Raptitude http://www.raptitude.com/2014/02/procrastinate-later/:

“You don’t need the mind’s approval to get started. All you need is to get clear, on an intellectual level, what you want done, and then move your body until you’re in the middle of it.”…

“Your body, quite reliably, does what you tell it. Your mind insists on deliberating and debating, consulting with a hundred trustees and boards. It draws up complex documents for you to sign, demanding feasibility studies, immunity from all liabilities and a guaranteed return on investment. Skip this meeting, it’s a trap.”

I convene *that* meeting several times a day! It is a time-suck and an energy-drain, and a slippery slope into depression. ~ It’s time to install a new management model.

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Since this post, like most others here, has been sitting in Drafts – untouched – for several days, I am taking more Baby Steps to installing my “new model”:

“POST!” 🙂

Added, ten minutes after “Post” ~

Corrina Scott-Barnes’ post from yesterday: http://youinspireme.co.uk/2014/what-i-wish-for-us-in-self-employment/

Beautiful, and just what I needed to see and hear this morning! {{{Corrina}}} – you’re beautiful!  ~ K

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And this, from Andrew at Nurturing Creativity: http://nurturingcreativity.net/a-message-about-self-worth/

Closing the window now, and putting my coat (back) on… 😉

 

First Impressions? Yeah, Whose, Exactly…

I read that old saw again yesterday – you know: “You only have one chance to make a good first impression.”

And I started wondering  just how true is that??? I mean, it’s true in the microcosm – with these particular people, in this particular venue — but mostly, if you change your target, you get a whole new audience to impress! And since (contrary to your “I AM the Center of the Universe! aren’t i?” voice) you aren’t the topic of all conversation, most of the folks who didn’t see the first iteration won’t ever know about it; so you can start over, again and again and again.

But — your Inner Voices will always remember what that very first time looked and (more important) felt like – and I think that’s what really underlies the oh-so-commonly-paralyzing “fear of failure”!

~~~

So… Your assignment, Mr. Phelps* whether you choose to accept it or not(!) is to look at the story you’re telling yourself about this, and rewrite it so  it doesn’t become another club for your I.V. to beat you with, but an “AttaBoy” for Doing It At All (flagged with a fluorescent sticky-note and a glowing gold star)!

Love to you-all, and to me (that’s important to remember, too) and

Bright Blessings, as always!

 

*Yes, that’s a “Mission Impossible” reference, there (wink)

Hooray! This only took one morning to write, edit AND POST! Yay, Me! 🙂

 

Resentments and Distractions…

I resent the costs (time, energy and/or money) of living within both my values and my limitations – a lot.

Of course, I also yearn to Avoid Overwhelm, but the over-thinking that I do – in order to ACHIEVE that – leads to its own special kind of Overwhelm.

And then, I resent how easily distracted I am. Talk about yer non-productive roundy-rounds –

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The list of things that I’d choose to do or not, if given the choice (which means I have to decide every time!) is huge. I’m trying to systematize my decision-making {link to Joel’s post} more of these, but so many come under “It depends…”. And my ADD-ish brain keeps coming up with more conflicts that add to the ‘it depends’ list.

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Intellectually, I *know* all the tips and hints and platitudes folks talk about do work. But I need to be able to see the minute, step-by-step, check-off-able “what do I do next?” bits, and trying to figger ’em out for myself often leads to reinventing the wheel. (Then I catch myself doing that, and go through a session of ‘beating myself up’ for not skipping it in the first place, and then ‘accepting that I’ve done it again’, and, and … now it’s 5 hours later, already!) Do ya see what I did there?

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I’m easily distracted by: feeling cold. being hungry. being thirsty. feeling inefficient (causing duplication of effort – mine or others’). needing sleep.  being confused. not understanding the why, the how, or the priority of a project.  too many “high priority” parts. not enough time. no “extra” money. not enough money to begin with. clutter (visual). clutter (energy). the “stingies”. other people’s issues. “I wanna do (something else)”. “I don’wanna do (this)”. technical difficulties. wandering thoughts. dirty dishes. too many decisions to make before I can even get started. forgetting where I was, before I got distracted.

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… This post is a direct result of wrestling with somebody else’s spreadsheet-as-delivery-route, with DIY maps. That I only deal with quarterly. AND that isn’t accurately updated (by them) in between. So, I have to re-create/re-do most of it, every damn time! (Boy-howdy, do I resent the hell out of that!) 

I’ll probably edit the heck out of this later, but I want/need to feel like I got *something* done today, even if it isn’t what I really *need* to get done, so here it comes…

 

Getting it Right the First Time?

“What do you think of talking about something more interesting?” – lista de emaile

I’ve been sitting on this anonymous comment from Portugal for almost 2 weeks. I’ve been bouncing around between “Be nice!” and “This is link-spam, and kinda rude, too! Delete it” and “It’s TRUE! But what DOES ‘more interesting’ look like??”

Meanwhile, it’s been gnawing at my self-esteem and piling on my “Why do I bother? Why do I dare?” whimper-mess.

So, why did I post it here?

To face the fear; to learn to accept that some-unknown and irrelevant number of the 6+ billion-with-a-B folk who inhabit this rock aren’t going to like what I write; to prove to myself that not “getting it perfect the first time” will NOT, in fact, kill me.

See: I’m still here. I’m still typing. I’m still breathing and walking around and doing (or not doing) all the normal things I do on a Sunday Monday night.

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I don’t know where that bogus notion – that I MUST get it RIGHT on the FIRST  try, or else I’m worthless – came from, but it’s been floating around for a long, long time. Perhaps from an impatient-Mommy-day, or an overheard comment from a teacher or an Auntie, or even a previous life-time. The details may not be all that important.

Certainly, my very young brain created inaccurate  “lessons” and have been  repeating them loudly in the background of my consciousness ever since.
Digging them out and finding the kernel of Truth that’s buried beneath the really un-happy-making interpretations, and reshaping the story I tell myself, is the next step…

 

Thank you(?) Nancy Drew

I’ve just realized that Nancy Drew was my hero in grade school!    (Psycho-archaeology report 6-23-2012)

~ I was just ‘watching’ (using for audio wallpaper is more like it) Geoffrey Baer touring the Chain o’ Lakes (intriguing former playground of the rich, famous, “connected” and corrupt, NW of Chicago) in this mahogany runabout:

My first bubble-up memory was “Ooh yeah! I always wanted one of those, ’cause Nancy Drew looked so spiff on her book covers when I was  a kid!” ~ and that reminded me of how much I wanted to be her, because:

• she had good, close friends (who would help her (un-)bury the bodies)

• … and scads of good acquaintances (“weak connections” – I read  a really good comments-conversation recently  re: choosing a church community primarily for the social benefit of the kids… can’t find it now, though)

• she (and her family) had plenty of cash / ready funding for any adventure (though money was never discussed, it was also never an issue)

• she always dressed impeccably fashionably – impeccably, too, come to think of it

• she clearly lived several-many rungs higher on the socio-economic (read: class) ladder than I did. (Most of the folks I knew even vaguely, and all of Daddy’s relatives, certainly did. And after-the-inheritances, I’ve found that my Mom’s siblings had the money, too, although it didn’t “show” the same way…)

((How did B and I miss getting that? Not the money per se, but the money-know-how. I don’t even know if B really missed it, or if I was the only one who was “somewhere else” when they gave that lecture — that education on how to marshal one’s resources and accumulate ‘wealth’ so as not to be desperately living from paycheck to paycheck? ))

• her sleuthy thinking surely informed my “find the obscure connections – look for the work-arounds” inclinations. I wonder which is ‘chicken’ and which is ‘egg’??

• she had easy access to nifty toys: that mahogany speedboat, her baby blue roadster, the vacation cottage, the horses…

• she always ‘won’… she was ultimately ‘right’ – ’cause they always nailed the bad guys, yaknow! (Since she’s a Fictional Heroine, “Of course!” and even “Duh!!” would be an appropriate reaction, here. )

This is all based on my memories, mind you – I haven’t read  (or read about)  Nancy Drew books since 8th grade.

I’m pretty satisfied with what I believe I learned from ND ~ not so sure about some of the expectations I built about myself and how my life *should* be ~

Clearly, more psycho-archaeology is called for…

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Who were your role-models when you were growing up?  Are you still happy with the things you learned from them? Do you recognize where your self-expectations came from?

 

Fast, Right or Cheap?

You can only have 2

… and once you state that out-loud (and believe it),  it’s time to reconsider your relationship with anyone who DEMANDS all three, anyway.  (even if, or maybe especially if, it’s yourself.)

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Oh, the things I’ve learned in 2-1/2 years! – David Leonhardt  just wrote about this for Carol Tice’s “Make a Living Freelance Writing” blog. His suggestions *start* with adjusting you price-quote, based on likely price objections from the prospective client…

 

Spot: the beginning

I’ve been looking for a Kitchen Chicken for ages – and I found this guy at Meijers a couple of months ago – on SALE, yet! Clearance, even.

I wasn’t crazy about the color – he’s pretty much egg-zactly the color that I’m deleting from my life these days: beige.

But – he ‘s big enough to not look lost on the kitchen counter;  he’s handsome, has a great attitude – how could I resist? His name is “Spot” – because he’s just as contrarian as I am – and I’m really looking forward to liberating him from Greige-land, via assorted implements of art…

Here’s my general target, as far as ultimate colors is concerned:

Brooster’s  Chinese cousin, Fook Yu*               by David Lobenberg

* translated: Have a great day!

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Won’t he be bee-yoo0ti-ful?

I’ve been contemplating my paint collection for weeks now ~ Time for a “Just Do It!” methinks!

*** No! I’m not “collecting chickens!”                                                                                        Please, please, please!!! Don’t buy me every chicken-chotchke you see…

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Hah! WP, in its infinite wisdom, just tossed out this pearl in the “You’ve made XX posts” page:

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”  – Stephen King 

~ Perfect!