ABAW:14-16

Maybe you've noticed that I've been missing.  Maybe not - gosh, I wish I knew more about who was reading and why.  I apologize, I'm just not a pre-planned poster.  This is what you get!

My husband and I had the luck to be invited to a wedding located in the Florida Keys, a place on my bucket list!  I've always wanted to see that arm of islands stretching out into the blue sea.  It was a lovely trip, one in which we reconnected, I relaxed a tiny bit, and we again fantasized about moving somewhere warmer.  I would die happy if I could live next to the beach.

Before I left, I worked crazy long hours just trying to get damn paperwork done.  I didn't get to make art, I didn't get to read, I just stayed late, I came home and did more work.  Every time I'm in it, I love it.  I feel invigorated, invested, dedicated, and yes, exhausted.  I wrap myself up in the intensity of the adrenaline, coaxing more and more out of my adrenal glands, knowing I'm paying a price.  I step away, and I realize that its crazy.  What the hell am I doing?

And then I think about all the things I know, and how being an adult child of an alcoholic influences this tendency to overwork, to have poor boundaries.  Then I disregard this, and slip right back into the comfortable insanity of being a overworked, underpaid and ridiculously idealistic therapist.  I make promises to myself to be more balanced, and then I find six hours of work in my bag to come home with me.  I bend my rules and schedule an early appointment here and a late appointment there, and think about the extra money and being needed.  My husband begins to question what happened to the brief period where I was coming home semi-on time.  I make jokes, but I feel like an a-hole. 

I don't know how to change it.  Right now, there is a part of me that absolutely loves what I am doing.  Actually a huge part.  Its fulfilling something for me, healthy or not.  But I also love making art, and writing, and reading, and I am not really doing those at all.  Am I avoiding those things?  Or do I really genuinely love what I am doing?  It seems the moment I stop to reflect, and possibly make a change, I entangle myself further.

Perhaps the question is really about what change I would actually make.  I can't think of anything more fulfilling and thought provoking, developing these strangely intimate and yet terribly separate relationships, full of meaning and frustration, pushing agonizingly through and wishing upon hope for change. 

Right before I left for vacation, I was so overworked that I felt vulnerable, my heart hurt, my poor boundaries were leading to poorer boundaries.  A good friend recommended visualizing closing the energy to my heart (the heart chakra), much like a flower closing at night.  And she's right, it works:  I need distance, balance, fulfillment.

Over vacation, I was able to read a bunch.  I loved the titles for these books:  Saving the World, When She Flew and What Was Lost.  Maybe I reached for these because they fit so well.  Maybe they reached for me.  And I feel oddly vulnerable as I post this - I've put it off wondering why I do this blog at all.  I'm not sure.