How does one get unstuck in life?

How does one deal with being so lost that they have finally gotten tired of throwing their hands up in the air? Of starting all over once more.  Of staring at the end and knowing how much work it is going to take to make it a beginning. If one is a writer, you write.  You talk about it with people and then you write some more.

This is me doing just that.

This is me working it out.

Today, I crossed off 11 of the 14th things on my to-do list off.

I did good, today.

All and all, it was pretty spectacular for someone who has been sleeping through much the last month of her life one of two sofas.  My living room is a mixture of items I have been given over the last five years.  There are only a couple of items in the room that I purchased. A lamp shade I purchased with an ex-boyfriend  from Ikea that looked vaguely like one of the chocolate oranges you see around the winter holidays. It is absolutely hideous.  And fits perfectly.  It works in the space.  It adds something to it  The rugs and one of the bookcases as well as the TV make up the rest of the items that I purchased.  Well, beyond the books which even some of those were passed on by the dearly departed.

There are a lot of things in my home that came from death.  The death of a friend or love one has filled my living room with furniture.  My favorite lawyer bookcases and the desk where my TV sets all came from a friend’s parents.  They gave me these things after her death because I needed to furnish my new home and they were moving. It was too much for them to stay where she had died. So much of the last two years of her life were spent with them watching her.

I wear a set of rings they gave me everyday. These belonged to my friend. It is my way of remembering her. Of honoring her. I feel naked without them. If I forget these things then I will dash back into the house.

Death and the past are constant companions. Maybe that is why I have such a hard time mapping out my future direction. So much of the home I cherish has come from the past. When you walk in my house, it is clearly that I have an affliction for darker things.  I stopped repacking the entirety of the Halloween decorations years ago..  My living room, the first room, that you see has seven skulls in it.  One witch, two bats and a couple of dragons. The only room without a skull or something Halloween in it is my bathroom.

Then there are the books. Lots and lots of them.  A great deal of them are histories from around the world.  Scattered among these are the skulls and various nick-nacks.

My house sometimes scares my landlord. I have been a good tenant for the last five years which combined with being a writer as well as teacher has ensured the good will of the landlord.  Thus he has learned to humor me. I may be odd, but I pay my rent on time and don’t cause trouble.

Drapped in death and the slightly macabre my home gives most visitors a sense of peace. What is more peaceful than death?  The long sleep.  The goal for me in decorating has been to create a place that is inviting.  So far,   it seems to be just that.  I have worried in the past that my collections and love of skulls would turn people off, but as far as I know I haven’t scared anyone away.  And if I have then I have no problem with it since they didn’t tell me they were uncomfortable.  I can’t fix what I don’t know is a problem.

The map I am trying to layout currently is going to take me away from this place sooner or later. This is the second place that has been totally mine in adulthood.  I have lived here longer than anywhere else since I graduated college.  Before that I lived with my birth father after my mother and I lost our home.  I would spend the next three years living like a guest in his house.  My picture rarely made the wall of family photos and when it did, it was only for a short time.  If you walked into my father’s home, you would never know that I was his child. There is no evidence of me there at all.

The house I live in now is home. I love the idea of the life that I have built for myself.  I am proud of  how far I have some in the last couple of years.  And then there is the shame I feel for not having gotten farther. Why don’t I own a home? Why do I live so close to the edge?  Truth be total, my family won’t allow me to fall too far. They have always been there to save me from rock bottom.

Another truth be told, I have been coasting for the last couple of years.  I am smart.  This isn’t a bragging. It took me a long time to realize that I am in fact intelligent.  My mother and sister are genius so being an intelligent woman runs in my family.  I am not a Mensan like them. I haven’t bothered with the test or like my mother has suggested on more than one occasion when I as in therapy had a psychologist sign off on the paperwork.  She believes in me.  She has always seen the intelligence that has been bouncing around in my head. Years of being talked down to by my birth father, grandparents and the rest of my siblings taught me that if I wasn’t as smart as my sister and mother I wasn’t smart at all.   So I never pushed myself academically.  It was either sink or swim.  I am good at floating.

My mindset was that I only had so much intelligence. There was no way I could be as smart as other people.  Talent was something I lacked and could not develop.  Psychologist Carol Dweck calls this a fixed mindset.  I didn’t really see that I was coasting a great deal of the time just below success. I honestly thought that if I was meant to be successful it would just happen.  I never quite got there but I am never far off from it,

Don’t get me wrong, I do work hard.  Sometimes I work too much.  But that is mostly to make up from having coasted. Or when things really need to get done.  Or when I get the energy. Lack of energy has been the theme of the last couple of years.  Truth be told, I believe that I burnt out before I ever became a teacher.  Ironically, teaching is where I finally began to believe in my own intelligence.

I have been working since I was 12 years old.  Given the nature of the employment,  I worked long days and made little money (75 to 100 a week), which at twelve was big money since I didn’t have any money.  I saved pretty much every penny I yearned for either school clothes or my college fund.  I made it through college and went where life and opportunity lead me. I didn’t explore much. Kept waiting for a sign or something.  The course catalog was the sign I missed.

Kept waiting dreaming of that door to open. Kept dreaming of it.  Didn’t know how to manifest it.  People kept telling me I could do this or that.  I didn’t believe them. Seriously, I thought because  of my learning disablity (dysgraphia)  that I would never be a writer. Mmm, who was an Amazon Best Selling Author? And who is going to continue to write no matter what? Me.

I follow some very talented people online. Some of whom I am friends with and the thing about their talent. The secret to that talent is that they work at it. They keep working on it, made mistakes and kept working on it. They do the work.  (Thank you, Lisa from Halfmoon Creative Works  for reminding of this. )

I wrote Blood Child in a heart beat. I did the best I could. I got help from professionals and friends to make  and after months of hard work, there were mistakes.  There are always mistakes. No matter how hard you work there will always be typos and things you can do better.  You have to learn to do them better fix them the next time around.

The next book is coming slowly, but it is coming.  It is going to take more energy and way more work.  It is time for me to take the skill I have and begin to refine it.  I just need to shake things up and make a new map for myself.  One where I am growing.  Get out of the comfort zone and back to my happy.  My happy often comes from learning new things, traveling and having conversations.  Things that my depression and anxiety nearly robbed me of.  Things I can’t always do from where my life is right now.  From where I have directed my life.

Happy isn’t easy.  Happy doesn’t always mean that you feel well happy. There isn’t a glow to it always.  My happy maybe more of a flow.  When I am flowing, I am growing I moving with my life and better able to see opportunity when it presents itself.  I think though for me it is a little bit like the lamp in my living, not always pretty by itself but given a chance a thing of beauty.  The trick of manifesting that thing of beauty is seeing the potential, not listening to doubt and doing what is necessary to make it shine.  The lamp shade, didn’t natural fit the lamp.  The lamp itself had to be taken apart and reassembled.  It is still a little wobbly when bumped.

My new map is going to be made day by day.  Word by word.