There's a crack in everything

My April 1 post was about signing on to the Ultimate Blog Challenge and why I refused to consider it setting myself up for failure.   I gutted my way through the first five days.  The pros were:

• I was proving to myself that I could do it (building mastery is one of the skills I'm working on in DBT therapy)
• I was building momentum
• I appreciated having the support of a community instead of just blogging into space the way I had been
• The writing itself was therapeutic
• I was pleased to do something from my agenda on a daily basis (instead of everyone else's)

The cons:

• I had yet another thing on my to-do list.
• I was staying up late to blog, getting behind on sleep.
• Some days I was blogging instead of other, more important things
• I was seeking approval (mostly from myself)
• I felt exposed and shrunk back from it

I didn't write any posts on the weekend.  At first, I though, weekdays, that's pretty good.  Five of seven days.  That's consistent.  And I cut myself a break because my dog had gone missing.  It took time to make and put up posters and call around and cry and all that.   After three days, we found her, and she had been safe the whole time, but then my inner taskmaster flipped a little switch and said, alright, now you have to get back to that blog.  That might have been okay.  But other things came up, and I did write.  I have long observed that I can't blog (at least not on this blog, with themes so vulnerable) unless I am well enough to do so.  I wrote 26 pages last night and 4 this morning, but they were all for me.  Not suitable for all audiences.

What happens when I blog for 5 days and then not at all for 3?  What is that 3-day gap?  A lapse?  A failure?  A crack?

Art by Shari Elf http://www.sharielf.com/2010.html

I need for it to be just a crack.  So many obstacles pile on, so many mistakes are made one after the other, I start to feel broken.  I know it's the Perfectionist and she doesn't necessarily deserve my attention, so it helps to take my brokenness and narrow it down to a crack.  A crack that is there for the purpose of letting the light in.

This verse reminds me how much beauty I do find in imperfection.  A little wabi sabi going on.  I love collage, mosaic, patchwork, any kind of art made from beach glass, or driftwood, or old lawnmower parts, or recycled material, or random found objects.  Taking something incomplete or useless and making it part of a whole.  Repurposing it.  Ringing the bells that still can ring.  I am reminding myself now to apply my attraction to imperfection in art to my life.  The imperfection of 5 days on, 3 days off, of a blog challenge can be something that appeals to me.  I can look at those 3 days as just a crack, and write another post while the light gets in.

Self-Talk is Applied Linguistics

For many years now, I have been greeted every morning by Brook Noel, in her Good Morning newsletter.  Brook is a best-selling author who provides solutions and support to help women live their best lives.  The Good Morning emails are an anchor for me.  I read them for years before I ever bought a product or took a class (now I am a Make Today Matter lifetime member).


The concept is simple:  quote, reflection, affirmation.  I unsubscribed for awhile a couple of years ago when I had a particularly bad attitude and wanted to cling to my depression, but I came back.  Many of the emails are repeats, and I've started to have my favorites.  Sometimes it's the quote that packs a wallop, other times Brook's reflection strikes a chord, and still other times the quote and the reflection are okay but the affirmation is just what I needed to here.  This is the one that came this morning, and it's one that always makes me sit up a little taller and open my eyes a little wider.  And this time, I saw a dialectic in it very much like what I am practicing in dialectical behavior therapy.

Optimist, pessimist or poptimist? 

(Brook Noel's article from April of 2008)

When I was in high school, I called myself Emily the Eternal Optimist.  I don't recall why I gave myself that name, except that I always tried to be optimistic.  The thing was, I wasn't really great at actually allowing my feelings, the "negative" ones, and then moving to optimism.  In eighth grade health we had a unit about stress, and we took a test of our life stress.  It has been many decades but I believe it was much like this one, only age-appropriate, ranking stressors based on how recently they had occurred.  I remember going up to the teacher and asking if I had to include my parent's divorce, "because I have no stress about that" or my dad's fight with cancer (he wasn't out of the woods yet!) because I was "dealing with it really well."  She said, yes, if it happened I needed to check it off.  I guess the Perfectionist wanted to have the lowest score in the class, so I could win the prize for Least Stressed.  The other kids thought I was weird because my whole family and I practiced Transcendental Meditation, so I needed to prove that I transcended stress entirely.

Fast forward a decade or two, and Emily the Eternal Optimist ends up with postpartum depression and anxiety, morphing into regular ol' clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and an eating disorder-- which are all labels for excellent book learning, impaired emotional intelligence (in my case).  But hey! getting with the program now.  I was much like the friend that Brook Noel describes, jabbing myself repeatedly, hurting myself with my internal dialogue, over and over, like water torture.  I still am, I guess, but I am learning a new language.

Self-talk is a special language.  I don't know if I'm an optimist, a pessimist, or a 'poptomist,' but I am a linguist.  I appreciate the opportunity to use language to explore parts of me that aren't made up with words.  That's part of why I'm out here in the blogosphere, being vulnerable with friends and complete strangers; I need to practice the language of emotions and positive self-talk.  And to teach it.  I taught French and Spanish for many years, words fascinate me, and I approach everything as if it were a language (even math).  So I can't really learn this new language unless I have a way to share it with others who might need to learn it, too.

Thanks for the practice session.  You are way better than flashcards.