shishnit.org

I never blog about work because that’s an area of my life that’s largely off blog limits to me. It gets too cloudy and just makes me jittery.  However, today I had a rather disturbing day personally and it caused me to realize something.

I often allow other’s to treat me poorly, I tell myself I am overlooking their treatment or issues because I’m being the bigger person but I realize that it’s really because I’m trying to be a peacekeeper and this is because of my big fear of chaos.  This fear of chaos seems, to me and my unclearness on the issue still, that it is largely due to the chaos in my childhood due to dysfunction.  I avoid chaos like the plague.  I am largely the peacekeeper in my marriage and will often apologize even when I feel I’ve done nothing wrong because apologies diffuse chaos and murky air between two people.  I prefer to clear the air and not feel uncomfortable over the “issues” just hanging in the air unresolved.  So much so that often things are not at all resolved for me and yet I tell myself they are just to move past that bad feeling.

In all of this chaos avoiding I am really harming myself because I allow all of these things that I bypass and ignore and try to disregard to build up until they are rather huge problems that I’ve allowed to fester not only within me but outside of me because I never STAND UP FOR MYSELF.  I never say “That is not ok with me; I have a problem with that!”  When you don’t voice your issues you are allowing them often times to overcome you in a more lethal way.   I do tend to “try harder” to voice myself with Rick, but I’m not nearly as fearful of him.  I do play peacekeeper too quickly for sure because I love that boy and I can’t stand to be on the outs with him at all.  There surely is a good balance in there that I could feel better about.

Now, I am just getting a handle on this in terms of understanding that I’ve been doing this and just how harmful it has gotten to my overall happiness and self peace.  I am not assertive at work because I see this as “rocking the boat”.  Now this all seems rather silly to me on another level because I almost always speak my mind, or so I thought.  However, I am coming to the realization that I am not assertive and if I even attempt assertiveness I abandon ship quickly if the matter becomes ugly just in order to maintain peace.  I’m seeing through this haze and fog that still exists that I need to face the ugly and overcome it and assert myself in order to truly be healthy mentally. Fearing honest and open communication due to the negative aspects of conflict is just wrong.

I think that 12 years of a bad marriage with virtually little to no communication didn’t help matters.  I often just took the emotional abuse and tried to “fix it” to keep any semblance of peace and quiet in my life.  I’ve often read that people that are a product of dysfunctional families seek chaos.  I often wondered if I was doing that. 

I now realize that I’m pretending it (the chaos) doesn’t exist when it does creep into my life.  I really need to work on my assertiveness and not be in constant fear of negative retaliation because of it.  I also need to stand up for myself because I need to stop being everyone’s door mat just in pursuit of wanting and seeking peace.  It only enables others to walk all over me until I’m a pulp of pain when it all catches up to me.  And also because I apologize, overlook, avoid, or play peacekeeper things don’t have a chance to come to a head and then to a resulting resolution so I’m lying to myself about peace, hiding from chaos, and nothing gets resolved.  And then when I can’t stuff anything else down, I’m on emotional overload and can’t even begin to approach the original problem anymore.

Have you had this problem?  If so, what did you do to resolve it?  

For the time being, I had a good cry during my lunch hour when it all dawned on me and I realized I am Jack and this beanstalk of a problem exists and I must overcome this.  I am also going to start by reading this book.

Ya know, because if I’m consistent about one thing, it is relying on books to inform.  If that book doesn’t help at all, I’m going straight back to therapy!!  I can no longer justify suffering when help exists.  I cannot “wishful think” this one away, it must be a goal and I need to find a clear and concise “task list” to overcome this.  Ya know, all those management courses and I’m still learning how to manage my own life.  *sigh*  I’m also still unclear and unsure if I’ve accurately pinpointed the true and real issues, I’m still finding my way and I’m really rather in shock to discover my avoidance issues.  I’ve added this as a blog category and I apologize in advance if I start to blog about this one way too much. I might become over the top….just pretend I’m a Mommy blogger having a diaper or breastfeeding outburst and ignore me if you must. No wait, that’s not very assertive on my part.  Let me rephrase that. I ‘m going through something, I’m working on it, respect me or bite the big one. 

ahhh…blog assertiveness…..that’s just not enough!

I love my husband.  I mean like I really love him. Yes, it’s still exciting and it amazes me.  I’m so happily in love.  Yah big difference between loving someone and being all gushy “in” love. And so when he goes to the bookstore with me, I triple dipple double scoop love him like madly.  He’s hot, but in a bookstore reading a book, my lord..I can barely stand it!!  A hot guy wearing blue jeans, sunglasses propped on his head casually….READING.  Ahhh sweet life….I haz it. 

I used to see the prospect of setting goals as the same thing as writing down a wish list.  Or talking about what one would do if they won the lottery.

“Wow, if I won 10 million dollars…I would travel and buy this…and..and….”

Those crazy hypothetical conversations we have with ourselves and other’s about things that probably will never happen are wishful dreaming in my mind.  Certainly one would not set a goal of winning the lottery because logic would tell you that no amount of doing things would cause this to come to fruition.  That to win the lottery is pure luck and ok…doing the deed of purchasing tickets.  But really logic tells us that winning is not something one can simply go and “do”.  I used to associate goal setting and goal reaching as the same thing.  Lists of goals were things that I would like if I could wish my dreams true.

I once wrote down 1001 goals and oddly I met all the financial ones because that wasn’t about wishing them into reality.  Last year when I bought a house, I had an epiphany of sorts.  I set that goal and then I went about doing all the necessary tasks…often ugly tasks of facing the reality of my finances, to make that goal come to fruition.  I came across that list, blogged about it somewhere here, and the fact that I met the top 5 things on my finacial goals.  This was only because I got serious about those 5 goals and did the “doing” of bad tasks to get them done. 

Then I graduated from college and again the hard realization that my desire to gain a college degree wasn’t a wish, it was in fact a goal and I had gone about all the hard work of doing those necessary tasks to make it happen.

Wishing is a wonderful thing, a dreamful thing, a pie in the sky thing.  We wish for peace and yet we don’t do the necessary things to make it come to fruition.  Now, don’t get me wrong on all of this. I still dream big. I still wish things that probably will never happen.  But I now realize that looking at someone else’s life and thinking “It must be nice” is really quite ludicrous.  What’s nice about doing all the necessary tasks to achieve wealth, success, and happiness?  There’s nothing nice about it.  It’s just hardcore work and task doing, most often a lot of tasks being done, and really just a lot of “doing” in the end.

I used to think “it must be nice”.  After finally figuring out that by doing I could attain a goal, I now think “wow, congratulations, look at you go!” when I see someone else achieve something. 

I now realize that if one knows beforehand what needs to be done in order to achieve a goal, then that’s a worthy goal to set. Especially if you realize that you can do the doing of those tasks systematically.  IE: Clean up your credit means…write letters, dispute wrong things on ones report, save money, pay off bills, have a plan, stick to the plan, etc.  You know…the “doing” of it.  Most people want to reach a goal but don’t consider the “task doing” and then they don’t have a plan for the “task doing”.  They just have the goal in front of them.  And sometimes since there’s no logic in the goal, only wishful thinking, it is a total impossiblity before they even start.

Now, I once set a goal to read 52 books in one year.  That was some easy doing because those tasks were tasks I enjoyed.  Ahh meeting a goal that’s simple….but wait, now I realize that was ludicrous because a goal is not easily attained.  That was merely me putting my normal behavior on the line and then rewarding myself for my normal behavior.  Doh….stupid really.

Recently I’ve had a lot of wishful thinking. “I wish I didn’t have to work so I could write a memoir”.  Or “I wish that I could be on vacation every week for a few days, or that I could work only a few days and get paid the same thing”.

I’ve been doing a lot of wishing.  I’m now trying to determine which wishes can be converted into goals and coming up with the tasks associated with those goals.  Because without a task list, I’m sunk because that’s just wishful thinking.

A blog friend..er..acquaintance…er….quite a nice blogger person I know…wrote about re-evaluating her life. I get that. I’m doing that now. I’m re-evaluating my goals, my dreams, and trying to spy my wishes so that I can get down the the doing of goal setting and meeting. I saw a magazine today called “clean eating”. I almost bought it because I thought “gee I could do that!”  but man I don’t know if I could because I don’t know if I’m ready to do the doing of those tasks.  I’m just being honest here.

Now, I realize this is a lot of round and round I go talking, but what are your goals?  What goals have you met?  How did you do it?  Can you tell the difference between wishful thinking and proper goal setting?  Oh do tell…do tell.

And just so you know…technically….

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing toevidence or rationality..

I spent 6 hours working on a paper last night until the wee hours. I’ve just spent another 3 hours.  I still have 3 more sections of this paper to write.

I’m not really having fun with school anymore.  It used to be fun.  Now…now it’s just more work.

My back hurts….from sitting at the desk chair for so many hours.  I’m pretty tired….weery…bleary……blah.

And to make matters worse…I’ve been off since last Wednesday.  So much time off…and I feel like crap.

Earlier tonight…Doug and his gf came to visit from Daytona.  Her ex-husband (what?  doesn’t everyone have one of those?) lives in St Pete and she is sharing custody.  I can relate.  So they came to pick up kids and stopped to visit san’s the kids.  She has 3, all under the age of 13.

Somewhere during the conversation on the back patio…Doug popped out with “You need to give Rick some kids!”

Hmm…and I thought that subject didn’t hurt anymore.

Me and my sore back are going to take our bleary tired eyes and typing fingers to bed.  Thank goodness for Tylenol PM.