Landmine (Blog #1031)

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Today I raked leaves, sixteen bags full, for a client who has a dog. Y’all, I stepped in so much shit. It was like walking through a landmine, bombs going off left and right. You should have seen me slipping and sliding. Crap was all over my shoes, my gloves, and God knows what else. And whereas my client apologized, their dog did not. Rude, I know. Thank goodness I had my poop boots on.

Poop boots are the best.

That being said, it did take me fifteen minutes to clean them in my client’s bathtub before I left because they (my boots, not my client) have deep grooves.

Think about it.

It’s gross, I know. Some things in life are.

Despite all the shit I stepped in today, I actually had a good time raking leaves. Sure, it was manual labor, but considering all the peanut butter I’ve been eating lately, I needed the exercise. Plus, it’s good to be employed, especially at a job where you can work, listen to a book on tape, and get paid all at the same time. This is why I told my client, “It’s okay, the poop is just part of the job.” Not that I loved all the odors or having to clean my boots and gloves later, but it’s not like I didn’t know it was going to be a dirty job. My client told me their yard was full of leaves and poop. Well, in my world that sounds like cash, so I agreed to brave the wilderness.

My point being that since I agreed to the conditions, why complain? Even if I hadn’t known what I was getting myself into, let’s face it. Dogs shit, people step in shit, and shit happens. No matter who you are, no matter where you go, no matter how well you plan. Sooner or later you land in something gross. Life is messy. Okay. This is why God invented soap.

Along these lines, this evening I’ve been thinking about how we so often want our lives to be pristine perfect, anything but messy. But they aren’t. In fact, they’re way messy. For example, for over three weeks (and a good part of my life) I’ve been fighting a sinus infection. And whereas I’ve felt better today, for all I know I could wake up tomorrow sick again. Or fit as a fiddle. Either way, at some point I will feel better and then turn my attention to all the things I’ve let go while feeling gross–my diet, my gym-going, my stack of papers. This is the way of it. We make a mess, we clean it up, we make a mess again. Here on planet earth, nothing stays one way (clean, messy, healthy, sick) for very long.

To me, the idea that nothing stays one way for very long sounds like hope. So often I get discouraged about my health and/or finances. And it’s not that things are so awful right here, right now. It’s that I convince myself that things will never get better. That they’ll just rock along at “blah” level until the end of time (or until the end of my time). This is ridiculous, of course, like thinking that you’re going to step in shit every hour of every day for the rest of your life. Please. There aren’t that many dogs in the world. Even if there were, they’d be no match for a good pair of boots, a bar of soap, and the right perspective. A perspective that says, “I can do this. I can make it out of this landmine alive.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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The deepest waters are the only ones capable of carrying you home.

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On Letting Go and Moving On (Blog #1001)

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Last night’s blog was #1000 in a row. (Woowho.) And whereas my average post takes about two hours to write, last night’s took four. I think it was five in the morning when I finally published it, shared it to social media, and wound down. While writing I told myself I was going to go for a celebratory walk when it was all said and done. However, later I was so tired that I never made it past the end of the driveway. Still, I played some music on my phone and danced under the new moon. Then I came inside, curled up in bed, and promptly began snoring.

This is how I party.

This afternoon I helped my parents clean our house–dust furniture, wash dishes, scrub the bathtub. Honestly, this was the perfect thing. One because it’s easy to let things pile up, and cleaning is a good opportunity to throw this away, put that in its proper place. Two because it was a reminder that life goes on. Just because you’ve had a big milestone (or tragedy) doesn’t mean there isn’t trash to take out. Indeed, these are things I’ve often encouraged (preached) here–getting your relationships in order, taking out your emotional garbage, moving on with your life. I have a friend who’s insistent on taking down their Christmas decorations the day after Christmas. This is the same idea. Like, the holidays are over. What’s next?

Along these lines of moving on, this afternoon in an effort to get some wrinkles out of one of our area rugs, I tried ironing it. Y’all, this was the wrong thing to do, since apparently the rug had some plastic in it and plastic and heat don’t go together. “Crap,” I told Dad, “I just melted this corner like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll put the coffee table over it. Besides, it’ll give your mother an excuse to buy a new one.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“Get over it,” he said. “It’s not important.”

Still, I started to self-flagellate. I should have known better and all that. But recently I’ve been asking myself the question, “How long do you want this to last? How long do you want to suffer?” Like, when someone cuts you off in traffic or cheats on you with your best friend, you know that AT SOME POINT you’re going to stop crying about it and start laughing. Even if it’s twenty years from now. (If instead you know that you’re going to be stuck right there in that moment forever–bitter, angry, resentful, and unforgiving for the rest of your life–that’s a problem.) Anyway, my point is that you can decide–I’m going to be upset about this for an afternoon, a week, or a month and then let it go. Getting back to the rug I screwed up today, I decided I’d let it go within the hour.

And I did.

Consequently, although I ruined the rug, or at least one corner of it, it didn’t ruin my day.

My suggestion: try this technique with something small before you try it with something big.

After my dad and I put the coffee table on the melted rug, I started thinking about all the other things in our home that are less than perfect. Like, the wood under the kitchen sink is rotted out because the sink’s been leaking and we just found out about it (we shut the cabinet door so no one will see the damage). The sheetrock in my bathroom has hole in it from where we hung one too many heavy objects on a screw (I positioned a large shelf over the hole). There’s termite damage on one of the baseboards in the sitting room (we put a futon in front of it). Anyway, my point is that things are always falling apart on planet earth–houses, material possessions, relationships, bodies. And whereas I don’t recommend covering all the damage up strictly to maintain appearances (because some things should be repaired or handled directly), I do recommend not getting stuck when things aren’t perfect. I do recommend moving on.

Because if it’s on planet earth–if it’s a material object–it wasn’t DESIGNED to last forever.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You've really got to believe in yourself and what you're doing. Again, it comes down to integrity and making something solid of yourself, something that's so well-built on the inside that it can handle any storm.

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Paix et Travail (Blog #818)

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Six months ago today I had knee surgery to repair my ACL. And whereas I still have progress to make–things aren’t perfect yet–I’ve technically reached all my milestones and hit the “all clear” point. As of now I can jump, spin, dance, and swim. Wow. Talk about the end of a long journey. Again, there’s still work to do. This morning I walked down a steep driveway, and my left leg felt a bit wobbly. My surgeon says it will take a full year to regain my strength. But I don’t have to limit my activities anymore. Now–supposedly–my new ACL is getting good enough blood flow to be considered “healed.”

To celebrate, this afternoon I ate a cheeseburger (and fries) and went shopping. There’s a shelf in my bathroom that has an empty spot on it (oh no!), and although I rarely shop for knickknacks (at least since I had my estate sale and became a minimalist over two years ago), I thought, Maybe I can find something to put on that shelf. And whereas I didn’t find anything for my bathroom, I did end up buying a medium-sized statue for my room at a local antique store. Basically the statue is a hot (shirtless) dude holding a flag. I’d admired him a number of times over the years, but–alas–he cost more than I wanted to spend. However (thankfully?), he was much more affordable today because at some point he’d been damaged. Like, now he’s missing a finger and part of his flag pole (and yes, I mean that literally). Oh well, I thought, I had knee surgery six months ago. I understand not being perfect.

I can’t tell you how exciting getting the statue was. For one thing, I’d completely forgotten about him, so it was like a surprise. Oh yeah, I like him! For another thing, the shop owner gave me a discount off the (already less than it used to be) sticker price. Knowing there would be some savings because they had a sale going on, I said, “Oh, that’s even better than I was hoping for.” Seriously, I almost squealed. On top of all this, I had the best time talking to the shop owner, who chatted with me for over thirty minutes about some of the pieces in the store and how she got started in the business in the first place. “The banker tried to convince me that a shop like this would never make it,” she said. “That was thirty-six years ago, and we’re still standing.”

Thinking about my knee and my anything-but-perfect life, I thought, Me too, lady. Me too.

This evening I spent over an hour shuffling things in my room in order to accommodate the statue. You know how moving one thing means moving everything. No kidding, over seventy-five percent of the books and other items I had on the piece of furniture where the statue is now got rearranged. This, I think, is why people are afraid of change (in their lives, not on their shelves). Because everyone, deep down, understands that you can’t change one thing without changing it all. The example I often use is that if you develop even one ounce of self-esteem (Oh yeah, I like me!)–watch out–every relationship in your life is about to be turned upside down. Said another way, when you change the way you see yourself, you change the way you see–and interact with–the entire world.

Moving one thing means moving everything.

You can’t change one thing without changing it all.

The statue I purchased this afternoon was originally sculpted by Charles Perron and is entitled “Paix et Travail,” which is French for “peace and work.” I didn’t realize this about the title when I bought the statue, but I think it’s one of those cool universe things, since my goal here (in therapy, on this blog, and in life) is more inner peace, and I often talk about doing The Hard Work. For me, the two go hand in hand. That is, if you want real peace in your life, there’s a lot of damn effort involved. It means looking at and cleaning up your past, owning your shit, having difficult conversations, and being willing for everything in both your interior and external worlds to change. Conversely, a certain amount of inner peace, or at least inner stability, is a prerequisite for doing The Hard Work because–again–it completely shuffles your deck and cuts it in half, and you’ve got to be centered enough to say, “Even if my entire world falls apart, I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to come together.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Your life is a mystery. But you can relax. It’s not your job to solve it.

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