Staying Focused in the Midst of Life Transitions

NOW: A FLASH FROM THE PAST (WITH UPDATE AT THE END)

My Year 2019 In Review

Wow! Looking back, 2019 was a really big year for me!

- Started off pretty well with continued work at Lowe's, recovering from an on-the-job foot injury, etc.

- I kept up with my sewing seven sets of basket liners, etc. at least in the early part of the year.

- I made some more progress on my Bible Text-Coding project, though not as much as I anticipated.

- Throughout the year I put in over 250 volunteer hours as president of the Friends of Green River Lake. In support of the USACE GRL Visitor Center, I took the lead on what was ultimately a successful 50th Anniversary of Green River Lake event held on June 15th.

- During the middle of all of the above, I started applying for and ultimately was offered a position as Office Clerk for the same USACE Visitor Center. Now my commute to work is less than one mile! WooHoo!


-Between the 50th Anniversary Event and starting my new job, I traveled to my old stomping grounds of Cookeville, TN to participate in the National Speleological Society Convention. I enjoyed visiting with many of my friends there from time I spent as a student at Tennessee Tech.

-I started my new job on June 24th, working full-time, while continuing to work a day on the weekends at Lowe's until September 1st.

-In mid-September I started "moving" - i.e., repositioning most of my belongings downstairs to make room for my sister, Connie, to move in as a more full-time presence and caretaker for Dad. She joined us the first weekend of October.

I know it may seem like a small thing, but I really liked what I was able to do in re-organizing my room. In addition, I completed one personal sewing project I've had on my agenda for a long, long, time - multiple plastic bag holders to hold all different sizes of plastic bags. Now I have them, and I think they look pretty cool hanging from my craft storage rack!

-After thoroughly cleaning the side opposite the workbenches, I also re-positioned all of my boxes that have been stored in the upper level of the set-apart garage to the lower level, so we could move the older Cadillac into the set-apart garage to make room for Connie's car in the main garage. Thanks to my co-workers Kai and Cole for helping in that effort, everything went pretty smoothly. I have some big plans for this space that I will share more about in the future. For now, consider these some of the "before" pictures!

- In November, my mother, who has been in an assisted living apartment in Dalton, GA for the past 12 years, became sick enough to be hospitalized. I traveled to Dalton with my sister Carolyn to assist in transitioning her to a nursing home after she recovered enough to be moved. That trip was followed by second, accompanied by another co-worker, Josh, who provided a truck and know-how to help move my mother's electric chair and other pieces of furniture.

-We had a larger than usual get-together of family for Thanksgiving, and I prepared the turkey and helped clean-up afterwards.

-After Thanksgiving, I traveled back to Dalton one more time, to finish moving the rest of Mom's stuff from the apartment and to thoroughly clean everything and make repairs as necessary (mostly tracking down a replacement globe for her light fixture in the kitchen). Granted, that included "Black Friday" and it was dreary and rainy, and I didn't know my way around Dalton too well, but I managed to get everything wrapped up by Saturday evening, November 30th. (Thanks to Carolyn for helping me with a hotel room for Friday night.) I started driving home around 8:30 pm on Saturday night and drove in rain and sometimes fog that lasted the whole trip. Definitely one of the times when I came to appreciate the significance of the reflective bumps as lane markers!

-So that left me only a few non-workdays in December to finish four months' worth of basket liners and painted cord-locks (i.e., 28 liners and 91 painted mini-cord locks)! Somehow I managed to do all that before Christmas!

-And then...I was off to DC via Boone, NC to see Jocko Willink Live at the Warner Theater! I passed through Boone to visit with my friends Laurie and Don and stayed with my friend Ilona in Bethesda. I also visited with my old boss at NIH, Dr. Swaroop, and checked-in with a few of my previous co-workers who were still there.

At this point I feel a little elaboration is in order...

I have written about Jocko Willink before, especially with respect to his co-authorship of the book, Extreme Ownership. (See my post: "On Parenting and Leadership"). I give credit to that book for helping guide me in my leadership of the 50th Anniversary Event this past summer.

Every morning, Jocko takes a picture of his watch, usually a few minutes after 4:30 AM, and posts it on Twitter. In turn, followers will "Like" his post and/or post pictures of their watches and the time, etc., as a reply. It's almost like a morning "muster" or "roll call."

Now I know Jocko is a true-blue "Warrior", archetypally, and, as an archetypal "Medium," (on the opposite side of that polarity) I have had some resistance to "externalizing my locus of control," or seeking external validation or motivation from Jocko or anyone else for that matter. Besides, Jocko lives on the West Coast, so when he tweets, it is actually 7:30 AM here in the Eastern Time Zone and I'm already at work!

However, just prior to focusing on this upcoming event in DC, I had an epiphany:

- First: I really did want to be getting up early and getting through an exercise routine before going to work every day, for myself. Up to that moment, though, I had not found enough motivation on my own to do it consistently. Granted, working all kinds of crazy hours and shifts and days at Lowe's did not help, but with the new job, that was no longer an issue, so also not a reason, nor an "excuse"...!

- Second: Given I already had this intrinsic motivation, it wasn't really an "externalizing of my locus of control" issue, it was more taking advantage of a little extra (albeit, external) motivation from Jocko & Company.

- Third: Rather than "following" Jocko's lead, I realized I could become a leader myself, i.e. I could be the one to tweet first for the "#EasternTimeZoneCheckIn."

In addition, a few weeks earlier, I took the opportunity to listen to the audio version of James Clear's Atomic Habits... It really impressed upon me the power of making very small but consistent changes that could add up over time. Furthermore, I have always identified with the "slow and steady" progress of turtles, so Clear's message really rang true for me.

Consequently, with more than enough time to establish a habit (i.e., around 21 days or repetitions), on Monday, December 9th, I started getting myself out of bed every morning around 4:30 AM (or earlier, as necessary). I used a roughly drawn calendar on my whiteboard to track my progress and included the images of the calendar and my watch in each post along with the hashtags "CountDown2JockoInDC," and "EasternTimeZoneCheckIn", etc.

My workout included time on an older style stationary bike, generously given to me by my new boss (whose name also happens to be Lori). Then I used handweights for a series of upper body exercises, followed by yoga (one of the three Daily Exercise Routines from Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan), followed by meditation.

This is what the board looked like after I'd completed five weeks, including the week of the Jocko Live event in Washington, DC:

Since starting that regimen, with some increases to intensity and/or time, weight and/or repetitions, along the way, I've only missed ONE DAY so far out of 45 days! And the day I missed was the day after waiting in line until 11:30 PM at the Warner Theater, to meet Jocko and get his autograph on my books! (And yes, I had TWO books for him to sign, since I ended up with an extra ticket - and, therefore, and extra book.)

I didn't actually get to sleep until closer to 1:00AM Tuesday morning, and then I had to be out the door of my friend's apartment by 6:30 AM to get back to Campbellsville in time to return my rental car by 5:30 PM. So, I did not want to miss out on sleep for SAFETY reasons! And, trust me, since part of that return trip took me through West Virginia in a snowstorm, I needed all the sleep I could get!

I will admit, there have been some mornings since I started when I did not want to get up at 4:30 AM! Mostly because there have been some nights when I got to watching T.V. (or more recently, working on a 1000-piece puzzle "just for fun"), and I got into bed later than I should have. However, I have gained some Twitter Followers/Accountability Partners and when I have trouble getting up just for myself, I'm also getting up with and for them. We're all helping each other Stay On the Path!

Furthermore, I think it is important to understand that I am not trying to "prove" anything by this. Instead, I am letting it be a "demonstration" of what a woman, of my age, and abilities can do, when she puts her heart to it. Also, my focus has not been on an end result, i.e., losing a certain amount of weight, or whatever. Instead, the focus has been on building the habit itself.  As I learned from James Clear, it doesn't matter how small the effort; as long as it is consistent, changes will happen naturally over time. And once you have established a foundation, you can start tacking on more and more desirable habits over time.

Once again, it is all about "Turtle Power" - slow and steady wins the race!

We'll see what lies ahead in 2020!

Update: June 21, 2023

Well, we all know now what was "ahead in 2020"! The COVID-19 pandemic! In addition, my dad started needing 24-hour care which, for me, became cleaning, dressing, and getting him settled in his lift chair each morning before work, and sitting with him for an additional eight hours on Saturday and Sunday. I won't go into details of how that particular arrangement came about, between me, my sister, and the overnight caretaker(s), but it was pretty much the same for the next two-and-a-half years until I got COVID myself at the end of April 2022. That laid me up for a long stretch, through which I eventually had to go back to work, and still tried to help out with dad as much as I could until he passed at the end of August that same year. We are still working to finalize the material and some financial matters of his estate. I also had to help my mother get moved again when the nursing home she was in closed, shortly after Dad died.

As for work...I am still with the Corps of Engineers, however, at the end of 2020, the Office Administrator decided she liked being home all the time and chose to retire. Another employee from the maintenance side of the project, who had lots of admin experience from his work for the National Guard, and had also worked as a ranger, was hired as the new Office Administrator. I was not interested in applying because I was still figuring out my own position, having yet to go through a "normal" fiscal year or recreation season at that point. 

The transition for the new Office Admin was not an easy one though, and he was just starting to get things figure out when, lo and behold, he gets deployed to Texas with his guard unit...for a year, which is now going on more like 20 months, and will probably be getting closer to two years before he gets back! We had a couple of people fill the admin role as a 90-day temporary assignment, but that didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. I still carried the load of a significant part of both jobs even while they were with us. After the second temp left, it fell to me to continue, doing most of the work of both jobs until we were able to get another temporary employee in the clerk position, with limited responsibilities.

(With regards to that garage space that I mentioned above...I'm pretty much living down here now. But I will save the renovation story for a separate blog post.😉)

With regards to exercise, etc.: I became a new follower of Andrew Huberman's podcasts, and I learned about the health benefits of cold exposure. I started swimming in Green River Lake in June 2022 one to three times a week. It had the triple benefit of cold-water exposure, low-impact, high cardio exercise, and early morning light exposure. I continued with that into October or November? I know I posted photos of my thermometer and my watch time regularly in response to Jocko's regular Twitter posts (mentioned above). And I definitely took the plunge on New Year's Day 2023! However, I later learned I could get a good response at least with the cold exposure, just by taking a one-minute cold shower, which I generally do almost every day now. In addition, I continue to follow the practice of getting early morning and dusk sunlight to help synchronize my sleep/wake cycle (circadian rhythm). 

While we were on Eastern Standard Time, I also managed to stay on a decent morning work-out routine, but once we lost that hour, with the shift to Daylight Savings time, I have not been able to make the adjustment, and because my sleep cycle is so critical to my overall mood (i.e. to avoid depression!), I've just allowed my body to stay on Standard time as much as it needs to, and I try to get some active outside work or exercise in the evenings instead.

Most importantly, though, I'm trying to get back into researching and writing more. Opening up this un-published blog from over three years ago and finishing it, is a start! Turtle Powering On!

Now we'll see what the rest of 2023 has in store! 

Peace Always, my Friends, whoever, and wherever you are!

In Defense

Here's the latest video from my friend Ben Ralston:

How to Be Love

It ties very directly to recent realizations of my own.

First of all, it has come to my attention that the last time I actually had a place where I lived by myself for any significant period of time was when I was in Rockville, MD between, 2004 and 2005. I had just come off of sea duty, which meant I had been living in very close quarters with other people, a lot of other people, for several months at a time. I'd also lived with a couple of boyfriends during those years, but that was at least somewhat better because it was only one other person sharing my shore-based living quarters rather than 60 (as was the number of other women who typically lived with me in the berthing areas on board the ship, and then there were the approximately 5940 other people on board when the ship was "fully deployed").

However, because I was committed to a spiritual practice that encouraged communal living and because one of my female co-workers proposed the idea of our sharing a place together, I only stayed in that apartment in Rockville by myself for about a year, the term of the lease, before getting an apartment with the woman from work, and then we moved again into a house. It was not too long after that before her boyfriend started to live with us as well, or, at least, he stayed over enough to almost qualify as another housemate, even though he did not contribute (as far as I knew) to the rent or utility expenses.

I won't go into detail about all of the other living situations I was in over the next six years or so, but will simply say, I have yet to have my own apartment again, completely by myself. Furthermore, one of the motivations for my wanting to leave Maryland and ride my bicycle across the country was because I had become quite tired of having to live with other people, very, very tired in fact. (Again, I won't go into all the details, but as much as I have tried to "rise to the challenge", on a deep level, it's kind of been hell for me, emotionally and psychologically. Why else would being on the road, on my bicycle, living in the woods if necessary, be so much more appealing?!)

However, I grew up living with my mother, day in and day out. Our lives were "enmeshed" emotionally and pscyhologically. I was in no position to assert my own needs for personal space or even personal boundaries. I adapted myself to that experience and, in many ways, I have been adapting myself ever since.  Not that this is a unique experience for me. I totally get the fact that other people have also had to live in the company of other people maybe for most of their lives, and maybe they are okay with it, maybe they even prefer it, or maybe they have disliked it as much as I have. We live in a very complex and increasingly crowded world, so being able to Be Alone and Just Be may be becoming even more of a luxury. Nevertheless, it is a luxury that I am beginning to realize I need to figure out a way to afford myself, because, there is a part of me that has stayed "on the defensive" all this time, and I do not want to stay that way for the rest of my life.

In re-reading Invisible Partners by John Sanford, I have come across this particular passage and I had to stop and do some "home work" on it:

P45, para 4 - "The animus [a woman's "inner man"] often keeps other people from reaching and experiencing the warm, feeling side of a woman because they cannot get through the animus and his opinions. Children with such a woman for a mother feel deprived of their mother's affection because they keep coming up against the animus.  She comes across to them as a hard disciplinarian, and the critical, judgmental attitudes of the animus effectively shut them out from her tenderness and affection.  (The situation is exacerbated when the father has relinquished the masculine role of disciplinarian and forced the mother to assume this role in the family.) It is not that the mother does not have warm feelings for her children; they are there, but the children do not receive them because the animus blocks them.  Such women may appear hard and steely, and other people may be leery of them, for their animus can wound; however, strangely enough, they themselves easily get their feelings (p. 46, para 1) hurt, and when this happens they are terribly injured and bewildered and do not understand why other people do not love them..."

Although I read this book for the first time in my late 20's and got a lot out of it then, now, almost 20 years later, I am realizing other things as well.

First of all, and this has actually been part of my self-awareness for a long time, I know that I have had to "be the man" in my own life, even from the time I was a young child.

To begin, my father was a long-haul truck driver, which meant he was not at home very much. (In that case, as Sanford suggests, he was not there to play the disciplining role in the family, although I can see now that my mother was very much an "animus driven" woman herself, with or without my father's presence.) Once my mother divorced my father and especially after my sisters went to college, I was left to become the "opposite" of my mother in terms of the "masculine/feminine" polarity that tends to emerge in very close interpersonal relationships between single children being raise by single parents. This is especially true when those single parents have mental illnesses that often prevent them from developing healthy, functional, interpersonal relationships with men or women their own age. Given the child's natural dependency on the parent, they are ready servants to the parent's emotional needs.

I can't find the source right now, but I know I have read somewhere that children who are the same sex as their single parents very often polarize to the opposite role; i.e. boys with single fathers will polarize towards the feminine and girls with single mothers will polarize towards the masculine. This happens in part because of the emotional neediness of the parent when they are not able to get those needs met with men or women their own age, or, possibly even from a spouse who is physically present but not emotionally available to them. Regardless of the source, I know the reading stuck with me because I easily recognized that was exactly what had happened to me, and I have since observed this to be the case with others as well.

(As another note though: Opposite sexed children who share this kind of emotionally codependent relationship with a single parent are also at risk as the surest way to keep the child in the relationship with the parent is for the parent to make sure the child never matures enough to have a close relationship with any other adult; i.e. an adult peer. And it is quite easy to prevent that maturing...by not expecting it. In such cases, the children instead remain a "Mama's Boy" or a "Daddy's Girl", and may not ever establish truly intimate ties with their spouses because, should there be challenges that demand growth, they can always return to the "unconditional" but also unhealthy and controlling love of the parent.)

Having started in ernest when I was 10 years old, the masculine patterning I developed in relationship with my mother was well established by the time I was in college. Furthermore, given my mother's paranoia and her keeping me from socializing normally with my peers, roughly from age 7-16, I entered college with even more naivete about men than most. Yes I was of "legal age" to have relationships, even sexual relationships, but I was not emotionally prepared for all of that, and I feel now my "animus", my "inner man", became a very significant part of my life in part to Protect Me, to Protect my still very vulnerable emotional core from the inevitable trauma so often associated with intense emotional-sexual relating. Truth is, my animus became active to Protect my vulnerable psyche From My Own Mother way before I set foot on the college campus, and without my father's presence in my life to protect me from her or from other men who may not have had my best interests at heart, again, I was left to figure out ways to protect myself.

But, I wonder, am I really that different from so many other women in the world, or just a more intense case, skewed somewhat towards one end of the continuum because of my more challenging relationships with my mentally ill mother and absent father? In other words, my "animus" has become even more developed as my Protector than for other women?

If you were to look at the previous writings in this blog, the defense is also there. In much of what I have written I am providing a defense against Unconscious Relating. For instance, in the
"The Biology of 'Omnipotence'" I am defending myself against being seen as Only a "Mother/Woman"; i.e. a perpetual Source of love and nurturance for a man that he may want to control for his own purposes without recognizing that, as a "Woman/Woman", I have love needs of my own; and that, in that case, I need him to be a "man" with me - an equal who can reciprocate love and not just a dependent "boy". In "Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love...", I am also defending against the unreasonable expectations that often come when people are seeking "romantic love" partners. I do not want to be seen as "The Goddess" or "The Witch" - I just want to be seen for who I am.

With regards to Ben's video, how often are we allowed to really "connect with ourselves"? To connect with that love-core of our being so that we can also express that more fully moment to moment and in relationship with others? If we are being constantly bombarded by others "projections" and expectations, often irrational and unreasonable, if we never have a "safe space" where we can go regularly just to be alone with ourselves, to be at peace with ourselves, to meditate through the various moments and activities of our lives without the persistent distraction or demand of others, then how much more difficult is it to get to that Feeling of Being Love that he is talking about? How often can we carry out the normal activities of our days as a moment-to-moment Meditation of Ourselves as Love rather than a "performance" for others to observe and possibly judge or criticize?

The problem is, most of what people have been seeing of "who I am" over the past 20+ years has been heavily shadowed by my animus: My inner masculine is fairly quick to come to the front should there be any threat to my heart. Sometimes I can keep "him" at bay, and sometimes I cannot.  And given that I have not even been able to relax out of that completely, even in my own living space; i.e. in what should be the physical and emotional privacy and safety of my own home, then it is pretty much who I am perceived to be, all of the time.

But it is not All of who I am, and it is certainly not expressing the depth or warmth of my feminine core. And, I am beginning to realize that is not only a loss for me, it is a loss for those I care about as well.

Consequently, in the next year or so, I am going to put out the very clear intention that I be able to find a suitable living situation where I can actually live (and afford to live) By My Self for a while, even for a long while. I have a feeling, at this point in my life, if I am given the option to relax those defensive masculine patterns consistently, at least in my own home, it will also help me to relax those patterns in relationship with others outside of my own home as well. I do not want my animus to prevent or block others from experiencing the love and warmth that I know is in me.

In the mean time, I will once again highly, highly recommend Invisible Partners to anyone who is interested in following along with me on this part of my "inner journeying".

Oh, and for all of you men out there, be advised: Your "inner woman", or "anima", functions in very much the same way as the animus in a woman, in that she can undermine your masculine core if you let her rule your life, especially in your "defense". I will be writing more about that in future blogs as I continue my re-reading and reviewing of Invisible Partners.