TCA ~ Perspective. It all comes back to you.

The past six months I’ve been busy with real life.  No time for Twitter, blogging or much ‘online fun’.  I gained perspective after the emotional dredge which fueled my last blog post in September.  I’ve spent my time thinking, “What in the hell do I want out of life?”  I love Twitter and my blog, but I’ve shifted free time from ‘cyber playing’ to living and enjoying real life.  This is a good thing.

In July 2013, I started to actively enjoy the fun of Twitter.  I met many wonderful tweeps, who are still to this day, my actual friends.  At the inception of my blog up until October 2014, I self-rehabilitated myself to work through the emotional aspect of being a Domestic Violence (DV) survivor (mild physically, major emotionally).  I tweeted, thought, wrote, and voiced my inner thoughts/monologue into cyber space as a healing process.  Through this process, I learned, made new friends, laughed and started to believe life has indeed only begun to be a ‘Beautiful Life’.

Let me share some things I learned from my interactions on Twitter and Blogging:

Kindness, respect and understanding should be universal in everyone’s being.  We are not here to speak, act or believe what others think we should.  We are in this life for our own intentions, happiness and beliefs.  However, the choice to fuel this is each individual’s and we can only hope that we each use goodness, courtesy and selflessness to live.  Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all had this mindset?  Pretty amazing it would be, I think.

Individuality is not a negative thing.  Be who you want to be without worrying what anyone but YOU thinks.  What some other person random or not thinks of you means nothing.  It is their opinion that they are entitled to, so let them think and be opinionated as they wish.  If it is good, then good fills them.  If it is not good, then not goodness fills them.  Not you.  Also consider it in reverse, it is key to be able to let things roll off your back.  I have begun to realize I have the ability to control my emotions and thoughts about all of this and it has been a wonderful milestone.  This mindset will push you to the next level of well-being and the ability to make the right choices for YOU.  There is a learning curve, so don’t beat yourself up if it takes years to “get”.  I know it took me years!

There are times to make changes in your life.  Be wary of stagnation and complacency.  If you don’t like change, learn to.  A business cannot thrive if they don’t change the way they do things if business is not going the way they want, as is a person’s life.  It’s like watching television, if you don’t like the show that is on whether it’s boring, upsets you, or is not interesting, you CHANGE the channel.  Same with life.  It does not mean change your job every time you feel derailed or change boyfriend/girlfriend because you’re bored with them.  It means, look at YOURSELF and change the things about you that will in turn change the situation you are in, in a positive way.  If you point the finger at yourself always, or always look in the mirror when you feel things are not ‘going your way’ or ‘life sucks’, you will learn to make changes in the way YOU think, act, feel, behave that will get you where you need to be.  And again, not a quick thing to learn or master.  Give yourself the time to grow.  A redwood tree as majestic as it is, does not just appear that way.  It took time.  You CAN do this.  I know, because I’ve done it.  It’s taken me 18 months to learn all that you’re reading about in this post.  It CAN be done.

While I will not be as active as I once used to be on Twitter or my blog (as you probably already noticed), I will try to stay ‘connected’ as much as life will allow.  I’ll be tweaking my Twitter handle and blog name a bit to tone down the ‘shock’ of the all in fun name of “Toaster Cum Ass” (although keeping it in my Bio).  I would like to be worry-free of virtual, fun me and real/professional me crossing cyber paths and raising eyebrows in the professional realm to allow for my real/professional self to continue to grow, develop and accept presented opportunities.  Very recently in my current job, new responsibilities and inclusion in a corporate video that will be accessible globally is definitely something to give courtesy to in regard to my company’s reputation and expanding potential as well as paving my road for a long-term and successful career path.  In addition, being a Board Member of a non-profit should also be given that same courtesy to ensure the success of their mission.

This is not a goodbye, rather the closing of a chapter in the Book of My Life as “TCA”, the lost soul, needing direction, guidance, a chance to be free and the true person she is.  Almost like graduating high school and moving onto college.  I will be away, learning, growing, living life to its fullest.  Remember this though, you all made this happen for me - my Twitter followers and my blog readers.  The teeny percentage of ‘not so cool’ interactions has been muted by the magnitude of respect, love, admiration, care and understanding of many of you male and female tweeps alike.  This has given me courage, more compassion and drive to continue to be who I want to be thereby doing things that make me happy and that are in the best interest of me and my life and overcome the experience of DV.  I am merely shifting efforts from personal rehab to professional/personal motivation and determination.  My treatment has been successful, thanks to you.  I truly have a place in my heart for all of you who have been on this journey with me these several months.  I miss you when I'm away.  I really do.  Keep in touch!

Soja - "I believe"

Emotional Wave ~ Renewed Motivation

It has been quite some time since I blogged, hasn’t it?  I was somewhat avoiding blogging to be honest.  Why?  Negativity.  I had so much internal negativity, I didn’t want to expose any of you, or spread it.  Know what I mean?  I started blogging as an outlet for working through my thoughts and feelings.  I didn’t have much negativity then.  It was more feeling lost, hopeless, hopeful, aimless thoughts, new adventures or muddling through emotions.  When extrication happened in October (new readers, reference the “In All Seriousness” page before continuing to read), the ball started rolling in December with the few legal aspects of this whole freakin’ debacle.  However, only in the past couple of weeks the heat turned up and all hell broke loose in the ‘emotional bearing’ arena.  Needless to say, I found myself withdrawing from posting or tweeting and having to face down real life drama and circumstances.

So, what brings me back to blog?  My self-awareness.  I worried that my toxic real life drama and emotional chaos would bring you, my readers, my tweeps, my friends, down.  The friends via Twitter and my blog, who genuinely ask how my well-being is regularly because they've read my blog or we've had heart to heart chats on DM about life in general, cared.  I didn't want to worry anyone.  Always the ‘Protector’.  We protectors end up with the most burden.  We care ‘too much’, therefore, we get hurt the most.  Well, that’s my opinion as I've found this to be true in my experience.  This is what made me snap into a realization – we do this to ourselves.  I am responsible for my thoughts and actions, feelings and reactions.  I need to remember you all are as well.  I am not anyone’s keeper.  You keep yourself in check, and I’ll keep myself in check.  Simple.  My blog is mine.  To express as I feel, not what anyone thinks or feels I should be expressing or if it will affect them.  I lost sight of that back in February when the cyber drama happened then real life wants to throw some shit in the mix too in March.  Boo. Anyway, I’ve shaken the ick off and am back with renewed motivation.

While I was working through the real life muck, I started reading again.  I finished reading “Tuesdays with Morrie” by American Writer Mitch Albom last week.  It's a true story about a dying professor (Morrie) who teaches a student (Mitch) from about twenty years ago, about what's important in life during the last months of his life.  I started reading this book in September last fall.  When the shit hit the fan in October, I was 86% into the book and hadn't picked it up since.  After finishing the book, I kicked myself in the ass and remembered why I blog.  It is part of my self prescribed rehab!

I felt like sharing my afterthoughts, my inner monologue of what I learned by reading this book.   I hope you find this profound in some way to jolt thoughts in your life if you're going through a rough patch, or patches or fields. Hell, endless acres even!

There was an amazing, singular aspect of life from Morrie's perspective, that will forever stay scorched in my being.  It's about learning to allow your emotions to FULLY penetrate in an experience so you can detach from that experience.  What?  Right.  Here's an excerpt from the book that may hopefully help you better understand as Morrie explains to Mitch:

"...detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you.  On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully.  That's how you are able to leave it."

"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid.  You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief.  You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails."

In my real life situation, this helped tremendously.  I have always tried to be 'strong' (in enduring the last twelve years) and 'keeping it together'.  Now, what I needed, was to be strong to let my self unravel.  Feel the anger, shame, sadness, hopelessness, love, hate--EVERY emotion, penetrate me fully.  Not a quarter way.  Not half way. Completely.  Of course though, by doing this, comes a hefty price to pay in the 'coping' of your emotions department, let me tell you.  You must let yourself cry unabashedly, get fired up and explosively pissed, be end of the world sad - unbearably, heart achingly, heartbroken to be exact, feel completely and utterly lost and despaired...basically far beneath rock bottom of your emotional capacity really.  It. Will. Fucking. Suck. Bad...

Chin up, though...the detachment part is worth all that pain searing agony of allowing every single emotion to FULLY penetrate you.  It's like your self, your being, is a colander.  You've strained all the excess bullshit with a pressure washer.  When it's all drained, what's left is what really matters.  The true you.  The cleaned you.  The you that was lost in all that muck.  Thoughts become clearer.  Emotions are renewed.  Motivation has been brought back up to the surface instead of forgotten at the bottom of all that ick.

You may or may not be in a situation that would warrant such an extreme kind of emotional journey, but if you should someday, I highly recommend letting yourself be fully penetrated by all your emotions.  Once you do it, each successive time you have to, it'll come easier.  I know.

This book was deeply inspirational for me.  There were so many other aspects of life Morrie's perspective highlighted.  If you haven't read this book yet, it most definitely should be on your reading list.  One of my favorites, without a doubt.

Thanks for sticking around you guys...xoxo...and yes, another snippet should be upcoming with this new motivation.  *wink wink*