Calling on the Serenity Prayer for Help

Horrible time with my husband last evening. I understand that he is feeling abandoned by me as I work so many hours on the book. It comes out as resentment and blame. It involves not only the book but also my family coming here next week, my attention already focused on them and what I can do to make it a good time for them. As the resentment bubble builds, it gets directed at me as anger and blame.

Let me be clear. I am not an angel. I am not blameless. I do enjoy (most of the time) working on the book. I do get engrossed in it to the point of ignoring him. I do emotionally distance him, put him on the back burner, when my attentions are directed toward my family. Maybe I do put them first. Maybe I do care more about doing what I can to make them happy than I do about making my husband happy, at least when they are here. Maybe that is harder on him than I realize or admit.

Calling on the serenity prayer for help: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change,

1. I can not change that I signed a contract and made a commitment to honor book deadlines.
2. I can not change my husband's emotions or fix his black hole.
3. I can not reverse the plans for my family to come here.
4. I can not make my husband be helpful and supportive toward me in the way I need or want.

the courage to change the things I can,

1. I can open my heart toward my husband's underlying abandonment issues with compassion and understanding.
2. I can change my expectations of both myself and him and not expect myself to meet all of his needs or him to meet mine.
3. I can work on my own anger, blame and resentments.
4. I can honor and protect the fearful spirit within me, nurturing myself with understanding and compassion.
5. I change how much I expect myself to solve (control) these issues, and turn it all over, instead, to my higher power.

and the wisdom to know the difference.

1. Yes, the wisdom to know the difference. That's a tricky one. Obviously from the above, I think I know the difference. But do I? I am filled with doubts at the moment.

I am also filled with gratitude... gratitude for OA, the people in my OA group (the group "conscious" as one member calls it), for Julie, Loretta, PJ, Anne H, Sweetpea, Coral-Seas, DB, Robbie, Dees, Karen, Carol, Lois, and Peggy - who read these ramblings and give their time to write supportive and caring comments - and for my walking partner. Without them, I am well aware that I'd be binging like crazy, gaining several pounds a week, dealing with these hardships by driving to town a couple of times a day to buy cake, cookies, ice cream and the like, hiding in my car and eating without pleasure, the binge voices ever hollering at me for more. What a blessing to be writing around the serenity prayer instead! Now there's a gratitude thing!

Been in a slump for a while. Have doubts about my ability to do justice to the book I'm currently writing. Wanting it to be really good and really comprehensive, but not quite knowing how to pull it all together. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Sometimes I get bored with it, especially with working on the images, the step-out pictures, in Photoshop. To say it's tedious work is a terrible understatement. My photographic skills and my equipment aren't really up to the job, so I have to spend hours (no exaggeration) working on each photo in Photoshop and still they're not as good as I'd like. Sounds like a gripe. Is a gripe!

Had an accident with my motorcycle a week ago. Damaged my spirits as well as my bike and my foot. Lucky I'm not in a cast though. Spirit damage just adds to the book anxiety.

Then there's my family... three brothers and their wives, sister, 2 nieces, 2 nephews and possibly 1 grandnephew... arriving here next week to scatter Mom's and Dad's ashes. We're not the closest family in many ways, emotionally as well as geographically. I'm nervous about how it will go. My house is a mess... haven't really cleaned, except for the quickest necessities, since I started the book on July 1st. Have never hired a house cleaner, but do have somebody coming on Friday. Expensive, but a blessing, I think. Food, transportation, sleep... all issues. Think I was crazy when I suggested we do it here. Akkkk. Didn't know then that I'd be in the middle of book deadlines now. I guess the cup-half-full news is: I'll get a 1-week break from working on the book. The cup-half-empty news is: I'll have one less week to get everything done for the next deadline.

Obviously, there are some food challenges ahead. I've decided to write a few sentences when I find myself in the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and looking in the refrigerator. OK, so I can eat. But before I do, I will write a couple of sentences in a little kitchen notebook. Maybe I'll choose not to eat after I write. We'll see. It's an experiment.

As I well know, one tool to help me to not overeat and to feel better is gratitude. The earlier paragraphs sound like the cup is more than half empty. So here's my list for today... 10 Things
I'm Grateful For:

1. kindness, people who are kind to me, especially my women friends
   
2. the two people who fought McDonald's in the libel suit and the great documentary movie made about it (McLibel)
3. everyone in my OA group
4. women who make spirit-based art, quilts, etc.
5. our garden
6. our firewood supply and my husband for doing the work
7. Julie, Jennifer and Karen (my sisters-in-law)
8. Janet and her contribution toward sun bear rescue efforts
9. Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker
10. Captain Jack
11. One year+ of abstinence from my binge foods... a huge blessing!
    

Do I feel better? Perhaps, a little. Time to get some sleep. Good night, world.

Hanging In There...

Eeeegad! Twelve days since I last posted. Lots has happened, yet I just haven't had the mojo or energy or desire to write about it.

A dear friend who follows this blog emailed, sending concerns. I responded, saying:

Despite the joy of not having sugar obsessions blaring in my consciousness every moment of the day (or possibly because of it), my emotions and thoughts are a bit confusing and extreme. My husband and I continue to work at our marriage, but have had a few set-backs lately. I don't seem able to do any beading, although I've been knitting and quilting a lot. I think it is mostly a matter of dealing with all of the emotions that surface at this time of year in some other way than overeating and binging. I've been thinking of writing a post trying to work with, or at least name, the emotions... a bit stuck there as well. Not to worry though, this will pass.

Her compassionate reply to the above indicates a remarkable depth of understanding and provides the impetus I needed to open this posting window. She also sent me the image of a little, porcelain bunny, the one you see above, giving me the title for this post. Yep, I'm hanging in there, ears back, stretched out, gripping firmly the lifeline of sobriety, just like the rabbit. What else can one do?

It feels a little daunting to face my emotions, to write about my feelings. Maybe a Ten Things List will do the trick? OK, then. Ten emotions that surfaced today:

1. Worry. I had three Dr. appointments at our local clinic today. One for little-toe bunions with a podiatrist who comes here once a month. One for a flu shot. One for an odd lesion on my left breast, a little red mole that turned red and got all scabby starting 9 days ago. I can build tragedy in my mind so easily. Worry. I worry and procrastinate, hoping it will go away. Turns out it was only a scratch (how that happened I have no idea) across the mole that got a little infected.
2. Fear. It's snowing a goodly amount right now, accumulating rapidly. When it snows like this, my car does not leave the garage. Lots of fodder for worry and fears here. How many days will it last? Will we have enough food? Will our pipes freeze? Will our water pump break as it has in past years? Will I miss the OA meeting tomorrow morning? Will our power go out from snow laden trees falling on power lines? (A calm, little voice is saying: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...)
3. Joy. I decorated a wooden stick-tree with battery-run Christmas lights, twigs of fir and white ribbon bows as a display for selling beaded spirit dolls at the Farmers Market tomorrow. Probably won't make it because of the snow, but it gave me great joy to make the display and have it look so sweet.
4. Happy. Walking 2.2 miles this morning with my neighbor made me happy.
5. Despair. Looking at Christmas cards in town today lowered my spirits considerably. Do I want to send cards this year? Some years I've had fun making cards, sending them to a few special people. Most years my husband and I send cards with a brief newsletter. Many of our card and gift exchanges feel hollow, little more than a habit, following the path of expectations, meaningless.
6. Resentful. From thinking about cards and gifts, my thoughts drifted toward my husband. A few weeks ago, I suggested we volunteer to help with the community Thanksgiving dinner this year. He doesn't seem interested. I got a list of work assignments and read them to him. None of them appealed to him. Do they still need helpers? Should I go alone and leave him home to have a peanut butter sandwich for Thanksgiving dinner? I am procrastinating, not volunteering, not planning a meal for us either, feeling stuck and resentful.
7. Relieved. I'm glad I saw the Dr. about the lesion today and relieved to know it's a non-issue.
8. Sad. Last week I went to our annual Quilt Camp, four days of stitching and socializing with about 40 local women who quilt. Big bag of mixed feeling there, some good, some not so good. I don't make main stream quilts using the latest patterns and fabrics. The noise of sewing machines and constant chattering annoys me, so I find a spot in the corner to work. I'm shy, always have been, not much of a socializer, a loner. I tend to focus on working and getting my projects finished rather than on people. Part of me wants to be more like them and with them... sadness blankets me. I don't seem able to shake it.
9. Lonely. My three best women friends are unavailable to me right now because of work, travel or other activities.
10. Guilty. I'm behind on lots of things and not very focused about catching up. Procrastinating on both little and big things, the to do list grows ever longer and I feel more shame.

Well, that's a bag-o-feelings for the day. I feel good about naming them, revisiting them as an on-looker, detached a little from the experience of them. They're not so bothersome in a Ten Things List as they are in my mind. How cool is that!

Hard Copy, Soft Bound...

I used Blog2Print to make a book of my first 95 posts on this blog. Easy-peasy! 116 pages, chose the black/white cheaper version, selected black for the cover with my blog header painting for the image. Twenty something dollars, including free shipping. Not bad! Arrived yesterday (much faster than promised) and actually looks really good!

Two regrets, two things I'd do differently if I decide to do it again... I'd use reverse chronological order, starting with post number one and progressing to the most recent post at the end of the book. I thought it would be good the other way, but reversed my decision as I started to read through the book.

The other thing is that I'd pay more attention to the front and back cover photos. (1) There's a little box under the photo where you can over-type their instruction to title the photo. I'd delete their words but leave the window blank as the title looks goofy. (2) I'd make certain the photos I upload from my files are high resolution, not the ones that work fine on the blog but look all pixelated and stupid on the cover of the book.

Oh, and I might also delete a few posts from the book, particularly the ones with lots of pictures. Blog2Print formats everything just the way it appears on the blog (text size, font, text alignment, bold, italics, etc.) EXCEPT placement of photos. Two of my posts have a bunch of photos with a few lines of text under each photo. The book ended up having the text lines all bunched up and the photos at the end with no accompanying text.

I chose black and white, because this blog isn't about color or photos and because it's MUCH less expensive. But still looks good. The color photos in the various posts just show up as black and white. They look fine that way, especially since it's not about art here.

I chose not to include the comments. Maybe I'll regret that decision because many of the comments are soooooooooooo great, helpful, inspirational, funny, nurturing... dunno... we'll see.

As I said, it's really easy to do the book on the Blog2Print website. You just check your platform (Blogger, WordPress or TypePad), tell it the range of dates you want included in your book, and then tell it to upload. At that point, if I remember correctly, you can actually "see" and "read" your book. Then you get some editing options... like cover color/design, uploading cover photos, whether or not to include comments, how to order the posts. Not a lot of editing possibilities, which keeps it simple.

All in all, I'm satisfied and will do it again. Nice to have it in print... like a journal...