I like my car, again...

I wrote a post some time ago about how I was stressing out because I was focusing on all the imperfections in my car now that it's not new, anymore. Gotta love mothers. My mom knows that I function best when things about me are clean and organized, so she helped me clean out, vacuum and home-detail my Corolla.

I love that car.

Feeling the Universe work through me as a result of taking this small step forward, I seem to have trained my eye to look for small things that I can do around the house (more like a habitat with a 4-year old running around) to make things a little easier on all involved.

Pretty cool, huh?

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A reminder that I post elsewhere...

I don't know how many of my followers read Your Tewksbury Today or Your Dracut Today, but I post to these platforms regularly.

I miss this blog and I think I lost sight of it when I was offered a position as a contributor for my local online newspaper. I thought it would be a great way to get people interested. The more my ego is inflated, the deeper inside my head I go.

By the time I came out of it this time, The Introvert Exposed hadn't seen a post in almost a week. I used to post twice a day, and my readers would hit on both to give each approximately the same number of hits.

I attribute my loss of creative spark and spirituality to a number of factors which led me to believe that I could dismiss the karmic armies and take things into my own hands. I need to remember that I'm apt to be more productive working with what the Universe is affording me than I am trying to control things.

Stress is a necessary evil in life but it does not need to constitute the majority of life. It just happens to be more convenient than choosing not to worry when the urge arises. I read a quote recently which moved me so deeply I had to write it on a notecard and tape it to my notebook.

"I am tomorrow what I establish today."

A great day of fishing!

I went fishing with my dad yesterday and we caught about twenty stripers between us. Of those, probably half were keepers but all of them fought the good fight. I woke up sore and sunburned but refreshed.

For those of you who have never been on the ocean: When you spend the day on the water, your equilibrium adjusts to the waves. When you get back to shore, your equilibrium thinks you're still on the ocean so you feel like you're rocking. The longer you're on the boat, the longer your house rises and falls with the swells.

I still have the rollies from yesterday...a very minimal case, but the rocking sensation is still there. I'll take it for all the luck that we ran into yesterday. There was hardly any sun, very little wind, the ocean was calm, and the fishing was amazing!



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Finally, a release valve...

I mentioned that I asked to be guided by the hawk this morning. Update: I was finally able to break free from the anxieties of high stakes trading without selling everything off.

As long as there is volume on a given day, a stock will inevitably go up and down. Just because I close with a loss on the day, even on the week, that doesn't mean the stock isn't worth anything or that I will turn around in a moment of insatiable curiosity to find that I've lost 80% of my net worth.

This stock has an exceptionally friendly trend and projection model. I can finally let go.

Also, I mentioned that my hermit crabs attune to my spiritual condition. An hour after I let the anxiety go, I found Ruby dead in the enclosure. I put her carcass next to Sebastian, who is currently molting under the water dish.

I've asked to be guided by the hawk again...

I could really use the bird's eye perspective on my life right now. Clouds of confusion and of waiting seem to have enveloped me.

In spite of it all, though, I seem to have a radar that I didn't have before. I'm being compelled to stay the course even though I have absolutely no idea where it's taking me.

It's time to regroup. Maybe I'm in the Waiting Place on the hill with all those weapons laid out before me. I got so caught up in the numbers on Wall Street and other personal challenges that I forgot all about the karmic armies and about the compassion that the Universe can show when we ask for comfort.



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Proof that healthy coping mechanisms are sacred...

Lately I have been investing in stocks. The obsession started several months ago and finally hit a peak yesterday when a stock that I've been invested in for quite some time really started to turn for me. For the first time, I learned that financial success could be a stressor.

In order to distract myself from the numbers, I've used a number of coping mechanisms, and the more I use them, the less emotional impact the dollar signs in my investment account have on my spirit. Among these are writing (I've added probably 25 handwritten pages to my novel and recovered another 100 of the same which I thought I had lost), and spending quality time with Olivia.

The reality is that having money will make things easier, but without a solid hold on what it means to enjoy life without thinking about financial security, the more money you have coming in, the more you have to worry about losing. So beautiful and pure were the moments I spent with my daughter because they were not laden with emotional stress! Our relationship has improved a million percent over the last 36 hours because for the first time in my life, happiness and money have absolutely nothing to do with each other!


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Waiting for the dust to settle

As things in my life continue to rearrange themselves, my thoughts wrestle with each other for superiority. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and financial goals crowd the space that I usually have in my head to work things out. It's like having too many pallets in the aisles at work and not being able to move around.

Everything needs to be addressed, but I'm not sure which problem to address first.

It is very difficult for me to stay at rest, which seems to be the foremost problem in my life at the moment. That's why I know it's important. When I used to train, I was tested immediately upon deciding to embrace the challenge. When I decided to focus on patience, it was gravely tested. When I decided to try to let go of my ego, I was presented with more opportunities to embrace narcissism and to abandon humility.

At a time when I need order in my life, I don't have a freaking clue how to organize anything but to let it organize itself. Things happen as they need to, but I cannot let go of control altogether. I need to pick something to focus on, something to tether myself to progress.

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Why my readership is suddenly going up...

When I give someone a business card now I don't do it with the hope that they will look at my blog. Instead, I ask that they keep the card for themselves, or that they give it to someone who needs it. That way the Universe determines where the card goes, not me, and that falls perfectly in line with what this blog is all about...using the karmic armies to generate productivity at a lower cost.

I've been meeting a lot of resistance lately trying to do things my own way and I have once again been beaten into submission. I am not the Eternal Judge. It is not for me, in my finite existence, to say that something does not work when so many others are of the assumption that it does.

I relate this to skidding out on the snow in a car. The more desperately we turn the wheel against the skid, the harder and wider the rear end of the car swings. The harder we press on the brakes to stop, the more traction we lose. If we take our foot off the brake, turn gently into the skid and wait for the car to correct itself, we can usually regain enough control of the car to make the necessary adjustments in time to avoid collision, maybe even to pull over and catch a few breaths before merging carefully back onto the road.

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Why we meet resistance: the Hurricane

When I woke up this morning I had a brief conversation with someone who was having a difficult time processing some things in her life. How amazing that we can see solutions in another's display of confusion when for the life of us we cannot see past our own! 

I found myself telling her something that the Universe has been trying to hammer into me for several weeks, something I refused to see simply because it did not fit the perfect mold I had decided would solve all of my problems.

When we meet resistance, it is usually because we are trying to reinvent the wheel. We get frustrated with deep breathing exercises because our our body's natural rhythm rebels against the idea of being controlled. We let laundry pile up in our rooms and weigh on our minds and our souls. Procrastination is corrosive to our sanity, yet we continue to avoid doing things because we feel it's easier to put them off and deal with it when we 'feel like' doing them.

Instincts are all the justification that animals need to do something. The only difference between intuition and instinct is...well, nothing. We feel the prick in our side when we avoid doing something in a certain way because we feel there's an easier way to do it. It's almost silent, but it's there. 

I communicated this to someone else this morning using a hurricane as a metaphor. The strongest winds in a hurricane are on the outer edges. We get battered by resistance when we try to skirt responsibility by finding another way around it.

Conversely, the closer you get to the center of a hurricane, the eye, the calmer it gets. Stay close to the eye of the storm in your life by listening to that prick in your side. Let it guide you. If you feel it, listen closely to where it's coming from and make the necessary adjustments.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel...it works fine!