I’ve never been nostalgic about high school.  I don’t, in general, look back fondly on those days.  I wasn’t all that good at being a teenager, and I remember trying desperately to fit in and feeling like I was always failing.  For me high school nostalgia has always been something to be avoided, simply because in my memory it wasn’t that great a time in my life.

What’s weird is that when I really start to examine those memories, I realize that high school wasn’t the problem.  During my high school years my parents were on course for the final crash that would derail their marriage during my freshman year in college and my family life wasn’t that great.   It was in high school that I was targeted and abused by a teacher whom I should have been able to trust.  My high school years were also the beginning of my long spiral into a depression that would derail my life for a year when I was in my early 20s.  None of those things specifically had to do with high school, but all those events have infected my memories of high school.

Oddly enough what started me thinking about all of this was making use of a Facebook account I’d started a while back but never really maintained.  Enough people whom I trust and listen to had told me that Facebook was fun and useful, so I decided to give it another try.  Several people with whom I went to high school had contacted me on Facebook, but I’d mostly ignored them, thinking that they would have the same memories of me in high school that I had.  As usual, I was being harder on myself than anyone else could be.

Reconnecting with some of the friends and acquaintances I had in high school has allowed me to see that time in my life and myself in a different light.  There was fun and laughter and friendship.  I wasn’t as much of a misfit as my memories tell me I was.  The connections that I formed during that time still hold, even after years of benign neglect.  It’s like being handed a different mirror that allows me to see a part of my life in a whole new way.

In the last few months I’ve had several experiences that have allowed me to see that what I thought about myself, or what others told me about myself and I accepted as truth might not be as truthful as I thought it was.  Having that realization is freeing and a little bit sad at the same time.  It’s freeing because that means I can drop some outdated ideas about who I am, and some of those ideas really need to be banished.  It’s sad because I’m now wondering what opportunities I missed because I believed something about myself that wasn’t necessarily true.   Since you can’t go back and change the past, I guess I have to let that one go.

One thing I know I won’t let go, at least not again, is the new connections I’ve made with my old high school friends through Facebook.  I fully intend to stay in touch with these people so we can share old memories and make some new ones.   I may never be big on high school nostalgia, but I’ll always be big on keeping in touch with old friends.

I’m a bit of a control freak.  I’m a Type A personality and I like to know how things are going to go.  I want to manage my life so nothing bad happens and everything goes smoothly.   I’m not good with the unexpected and I’m awfully good at bargaining with a life that doesn’t accept bargains.  I keep trying to live up to my end of the bargain and then getting pissed when life doesn’t live up to it’s half of the deal.  As though life made a deal or even cares that I had expectations.  Still I keep banging my head against the same wall.

They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  In my case, my lesson about lack of control has been a little something called Afib.  For those who don’t know, Afib is a heart issue.  Basically the rhythm of your heart gets all screwed up.  Your heart races, you retain fluid, you get short of breath.  It’s not life threatening, unless left untreated over a long period of time, but it’s not fun.

Until last Sunday, it had been nine months since I’d had to deal with Afib.  I took my meds faithfully, right on time, every day.  I exercised.  I ate right.  I worked to minimize stress.  I got more sleep.  I did everything I could to live a heart healthy life and, in return, I expected Life to keep my heart healthy.  Except Life apparently didn’t get that memo.  This Easter saw me in the Emergency Room with a case of atrial flutter.  My bargain and all my hard work apparently didn’t matter at all.

I guess the Universe is trying to tell me something, and will keep bringing the lesson until I get it.  I can’t control my life or the people in it.  I can’t even control what my own body does.  All I can control is how I react to the circumstances of my life.   All I can do is go with the flow.

A lot of this year so far has been spent railing at the circumstances of my life.  I’m mad that I haven’t met the love of my life yet.  I’m bored with my job.  I’m angry that my body isn’t working right. I’m annoyed by this and depressed by that and generally grousing about things I can’t change.  Being the control freak that I am, I want to bend the world to my will, instead of bending to the will of the world.

The thing is, the world and the people in it, will do as they like regardless of what I want.  The only thing I can control is how I choose to react to what happens around me.  I can do my best to provide myself with opportunities to have the best circumstances possible, but I can’t make life work to suit me and my need for control.  All I can do is relax and swing at whatever gets thrown at me.   All I can do is live my life as positively and with the best attitude I possibly can.

My attitude, thankfully, is one thing I can control.

I don’t discuss politics or much of anything controversial on this blog.  Mostly I talk about my life and I leave the opinions out of it.  That’s largely because I know that it isn’t easy to convince other people to agree with you and a bit because I’m not generally the sort who goes on crusades.  I tend to keep my cards pretty close to my chest when it comes to what I think and what I believe.   I can, and do, lead, but I’m not so great when it comes to being a follower.

Still, ever once in a while something comes along that just gobsmacks me with its stupidity and I have to shake my head and wonder if we’re all really as dumb as this particular thing would make it appear.  In this case, the event in question is Earth Hour.   If you haven’t seen this yet, the idea is that everyone will turn their lights off for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. on March 28.  Supposedly switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, while leaving your lights on is a vote for global warming.   There’s so much wrong with this idea I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, neither the Earth nor global warming care which way we vote.  I’m guessing most of the people for whom we actually could vote don’t care whether we turn our lights off or on either.   I highly doubt our elected officials, or the elected officials for any country are going to be running around counting who has their lights on and who has them turned off.  We know our planet has climate issues.  It’s not like a lot of people have been in the dark about this.  Except perhaps those who will voluntarily be in the dark tomorrow night.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this is another example of a program that makes people feel like they’re doing something without actually doing anything at all.   It’s rather like sleeping in a cardboard box for a night to dramatize the plight of the homeless and then going back to your comfortable home the next day, it’s all show and no substance and it changes exactly nothing.

I’m about as liberal as they come, and I believe that people can bring about change, but they only way to effect that change is to do something.  Turning off your lights or sleeping in a box or doing a pantomime in the town square doesn’t accomplish a thing.  If you want things to be different you have to roll up your sleeves and make them different.  Buy the homeless man a sandwich.  Help build a Habitat for Humanity house.  Plant a tree.  Install solar panels.  Help educate others about cleaner burning fuels.  Do the work and take the time and make a real differnce.

What scares me the most is the idea that there are people out there who believe that something like Earth Hour is really doing something.  I’m sorry to say that it isn’t.  If you want to preserve the planet or attack any of the problems that face us, you have to be willing to do the work.  Sitting in the dark for an hour tomorrow isn’t going to change the fate of the planet or stop global warming.

Going out into the light and working your ass off to change things just might.

I have always wanted to be one of those people who was relaxed about things.  I never have been.  I’m probably the most relaxed that I’ve ever been in my life right now, but I have to work at it all the time.  I can’t just accept that things will work out and that everything is working for the best.  I have to manipulate and plan and worry and try to control things.   I can’t just seem to go with the flow.

I like to have plans.  I like to know what’s going to happen.  I like to feel that I’m controlling the situation instead of the situation controlling me, and to a certain extent that’s a good thing.  The only problem with wanting to be in control is that it’s not always possible.  Sometimes events don’t go as you wish.  Often people don’t do what you would like them to do.  You can plot and plan and try to control every facet of every detail and still sometimes things won’t go the way you’d like them to go.

I know the quality of my life would be better if I could just relax and accept that things will happen as they’re meant to happen.  I certainly know that a lot of my relationships would be easier.   Being less controlling and more at peace with the process of life are exactly why numbers 24, 26 an 27 made it on the list.  I need to learn to trust more and worry less.  I need to believe that things are really working for my highest good, even if I”m not quite sure what that highest good might be.

I’m not sure how one works at going with the flow, or even if it’s possible to work at that, but I’m going to try.  If anyone has any tips on how to go about doing that.  Please share.

After all, we all know I like to have a plan.

There’s a theory, one which I’ve never been sure I believed, that we all make our own reality. If bad things happen in your life, it’s because you subconsciously want those things to happen. If you’re constantly getting sick or getting hurt or short of money it’s because something in your belief system or how you think about yourself requires you have that issue in your life.

As I said, I’ve never much believed in that idea. I do understand how people can not think highly of themselves and cause themselves pain. I certainly understand self sabotage. I also know that people can make really wrong choices for what they think are the right reasons. Still, I’m not sure that I believe we have that much control over our lives. It just seems too easy.

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, I’m going here, to my upcoming move. It started off so smoothly. It only took two weeks to find a place I wanted. The offer was accepted practically minutes after we made it and only had one very minor addendum. It looked like everything was going to be easy and smooth. I’ll admit to a bit of apprehension about moving and taking on a mortgage,but mostly I was ecstatic and excited. I certainly wasn’t, at least consciously anyway, trying to conjure up obstacles to the move.

Still, whether I conjured them or not, the obstacles are there. Bureaucrats got involved. Suddenly there’s all these things I must do and all these things I can’t do and I’m left standing uncertainly in the middle. As far as I know we close next Friday. As far as I know we close the twelfth of never. Take your pick.

I want to move. I’m eager to have a place of my own, and a place of which I can be proud. I’m ready for the responsibility and ready to take this step. So, if I’m so ready, why am I also wondering if somehow I’ve conjured up these obstacles so I can have a way to say back out? It’s a rather perplexing dilemma.

Right now all I know is this, next Friday I’m going to sign my name on a lot of dotted lines and take possession of a condo. I also know I like the condo and that I can manage the mortgage payments. The rest I guess we’ll leave up to whomever is in charge of these things.

I was recently tagged with a meme. I wrote the post for it on my other blog, When I’m Thin. Writing the post really started me thinking. I tend to focus on what I haven’t got and what I haven’t done. I’m still not married or in a committed relationship. I’m still working on losing weight. I still have family issues and conflicts. I still haven’t found work that fulfills me. Focusing on that stuff isn’t all bad, it does keep me motivated and moving forward, which is where I want to go. I do, however, think that sometimes I need to turn my focus to now, if only for a moment, so I can appreciate how far I’ve come.

In the meme post I wrote something to the effect that anyone who knew me 15 years ago would have given you even money that I would be dead or in a mental institution before the year was out. 15 years ago was my bad year, the year when I basically lost the will to try and make sense out of the mess that was my life. That was the year I threw up my hands and let myself drown. I figured I’d either make it back to the surface eventually or I’d go under permanently. Most of the time I didn’t really care which.

Eventually I did surface again. I decided that living was the better choice. I got therapy so I could figure out how to live better. I started liking myself more. I went back to school. I turned in the teacher who had molested me. I lived through a heart surgery, my mother’s remarriage and eventual death from cancer, and a host of other events, large and small. I won’t say my life is exactly where I want it to be today, but it’s much closer than it has been in the past.

I’m not one to pat myself on the back. I tend to expect more of myself than anyone else does. Still, when I think about where I was than and where I am now, I really do feel that a pat on the back is in order. A lot of people wouldn’t have come back from where I was. I did make it back. Today I want to take a moment to be proud of that, and proud that I’m still working to do better and to create the life I want.

I have come a long way, baby, and I’m damn proud of that fact.

Worry runs in my family. My grandmother was a champion worrier. My mother was a gifted amateur. I have the worry gene myself and used to spend a lot of time worrying about things that never happened, or worrying about things that did happen, and which worrying never prevented. Eventually I learned that worrying about something was neither a preventative or a solution. Most of the time that stops me. Occasionally it doesn’t.

Afib is a health problem that is a worrier’s paradise. There are so many unknowns that practically anything can be worrisome. Will it come back? What if the meds don’t work? What if the meds do work and you can never go off them again? What if the symptoms get worse? What if this morphs into something more serious and life threatening?

I have to admit, I’ve had my moments of anxiety. I’m working on building up connections, but right now I feel the lack of supporters around me very keenly. I want someone to hold my hand and tell me it’s going to be o.k., and I’d prefer that someone be a person who cares about me, not a nurse or a doctor who’s paid to care. Not, mind you, that the majority of the nurses and doctors haven’t been great, they have been. It’s just that their caring tends to end when their shift does, and I’m just the patient in room whatever. Besides, in the hospital I’m watched over and protected. I need that same feeling when I’m out in the world on my own.

One thing I have learned is that worrying about all this is not the way to fix it. Action seems to be the way to get to where I want to be. I’ve definitely expanded my social horizons already. I’m working on eating healthier and getting more exercise. I’m also working on replacing my anxiety and worry with positive self-talk. I’ve never been one for affirmations, but I do believe that filling my mind with positive thoughts will be more beneficial to me right now than it would be to dwell on the negative. So, I try to do that, and not to borrow trouble.

In the end all I can deal with is this minute and in this minute my body is functioning as it is supposed to function. That’s all I know for sure and all I can ask. As for what happens next, that’s the next minute’s problem.

I have to confess, sometimes I feel like I’ve paid enough dues in my life.  I’ve survived a lot of things and I often get the feeling that, from here on out, it should just be gravy.  I know that’s not a realistic expectation, but it still pops up quite a bit. 

Like everyone else I have a vision of how I would like my life to be, my ideal life if you will.  Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get to that life, every once in a while I think I’ll just keep trudging along until I drop in my tracks, the goals I’m shooting for still unachieved.  They say that all good things are worth working for and I believe that, I just feel sometimes as though I’ve had to work especially hard.  That’s generally not a good thought pattern to follow.

One of my personal resolutions is to try and be genuinely happy for other people when something good happens in their life.  I don’t want to be one of those people who always secretly, or not so secretly, whines about the fact that things never seem to come easily, and that everyone else seems to get the cake and they’re left with a plate of crumbs.  Most of the time I’m able to keep that resolution.  Every once in a while, however, the little green monster takes a seat on my shoulder and pushes me toward the dark side.

I don’t want to be jealous of the success and good fortune of others.  I don’t want to whine about how the good things in life never happen to me.  I want to appreciate what I have and look forward eagerly toward the good that exists in my future.  That’s what I want to do.  I just haven’t quite mastered it yet.

I suppose we’re all human and even the most actualized of us will occasionally feel a bit jealous of someone else’s good fortune.  I’m no saint, but I am going to try to celebrate the good that happens to others, if only because that’s the sort of person I want to be. 

As for the little green monster, he can go find a seat on someone else’s shoulder.

I used to be the queen of not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.  I always felt that I should be nice and kind and never tell anyone “no”.  The result was that I frequently got dragged into doing things I didn’t want to do and my personal boundaries were often violated.  I thought that the way to get people to like me was to say what they wanted to hear, but the words I said often didn’t reflect how I really felt.  As a result I made other people feel good while convincing myself what I felt didn’t matter.

As I’ve made progress toward getting healthier, one of the things I dislike the most is people who won’t tell me what they really think.  I’d much rather hear a firm “no” than a lot of dancing around the subject.  I’d much prefer a forthright “I don’t want to” to some half hearted participation and a lot of whining.  What I really wish is that someone would tell me when we lost the ability to be honest with each other.  When did saying how we really felt become such a bad thing?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate brutal honesty.  Telling someone their hair looks awful after they spent a couple hundred dollars on a cut and color isn’t honest, it’s mean.  When someone asks you if they look fat, the kindest answer may be one that is slightly less than honest.  There is a time and a place for the little white social lie, and that time and place is when it really won’t do any harm.

There is also, however, a time and place for honesty.  There should be honesty between people in relationships.  There should be honesty, at least about the goals the organization is pursuing, between those who work together.  There should be honesty between family members.  Sometimes there should be honesty when being anything less than honest, even if in the pursuit of kindness, would simply prolong a situation that shouldn’t be prolonged.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes being less than honest only drags out a situation that could be ended, if both parties would be honest about what they want and need.  I’ve also learned that being honest about what I value and what I want can get me out of doing things I don’t value and don’t want to do.  Being honest also helps me separate those who really care about me from those who only care about what I can do for them.    In a lot of ways, saying what I mean and meaning what I say has brought a certain lightness to my life.  It has allowed me to clear out a lot of deadwood while still preserving the vital living vines. 

I wish more people would learn how to say what they mean.  I’m guessing it would save us all a lot of time and heartache in the end.

When I was growing up, I never worried about money.  My family wasn’t enormously wealthy, but I always had money to do what I wanted to do.  Looking back, I suppose my parents did try to teach me how to manage money, we had savings accounts and we had jobs, but I don’t remember ever worrying particularly about saving for something.  If we wanted it, we bought it, or at least that’s how I remember it.

The gravy train, if that’s what it was, ended at the end of my freshman year of college.  My parents split up and my biological dad cleared out the bank accounts, including my college fund.  Suddenly there was no money.  I did not handle the transition well.  I got myself in debt using credit cards I never should have had in the first place.  I bought because buying was supposed to make me happy.  It actually did just the opposite.

Gradually I learned how to manage my money.  I learned to say no when I needed to and I learned how to live within my means.  I wouldn’t say I’m living in the lap of luxury now, but I’m managing my debt, living fairly well with a few small luxuries and putting a little aside for a rainy day.  I really felt like I was getting a handle on things, and then I got sick. 

Medical bills can really put a crimp in your fiscal planning.  I spent a week in the hospital.  The total bill came to something like $22,000.  The portion for which I am responsible is in the neighborhood of $3,000 or so.  It’s not an unmanageable number, but it isn’t an amount I have just lying around.  Owing this money also means that some of the plans I had for things I wanted to do and buy will now have to be put on hold.

Whenever I think of settling for more, part of my more is always financial freedom.  What I’m starting to realize is financial freedom can be defined in many different ways.  Can I fly anywhere in the world I want, buy anything I want and pay any bill immediately?  No.  Can I set up a plan to pay the debt I need to service, keep myself fed, clothed, housed, and purchase a few small non-necessitites along the way?  Yes. 

I’ve finally learned that happiness when it comes to money is all relative.  While I wouldn’t be adverse to winning the lottery, where I am at the moment isn’t so bad.  Having been through months where I only ate every other day and sparingly at that, knowing that my fridge is full, my car is gassed up and runs, and my rent is paid feels pretty darn good to me.