A dead woman's plea

I know I am lost
My soul can see
It's cold out here in the dark of day
My heart is cold
I wish to be free
Please find me
And release my soul.
I'm right here, I wish I could see
I try to reach out
I try to breathe
My soul sheds tears
And clings close to me
I dream of the day
That someone will see
Someone will discover me
And solve this mystery
I'm gonna stay right here
My silence is loud
My soul will stay by my side
But she is getting cold
I can feel the earth on my bones
My body is long gone
Now it's just my soul and I
Waiting here in these woods
Waiting here until the end of time.

Tonight. Tonight? Tonight.

Well today is the day that I am faced with planning time for these new changes. My health needs it. My writing skills need it and my income needs it. How much time do I need to create for each one of these? Where do I squeeze these things into my life? I am faced today and ultimately with my time/space conundrum. I ultimately want more time with my kids, and the freedom to do things outside the confines of work and home.

 To do this I need my health. I need to have strength to be active.  I need to have the energy to follow through with what  I want. I need to exercise and eat right. I need to want this for myself. If I want more time with my kids I need to be healthy enough to provide it for them.

 I need to practice my writing as I am today. I have spent enough time getting the list of contests together it would be a waste of previously spent time to not follow through with this. I don't really know how much time it will take me to write each one. I need that window of dedicated time to do so though. This might not make any money, but writing is a great hobby that can be honed.  I will take time each week to work on my video game that I want to create. I need to carve a notch of time to do this. When? I don't know yet.

During the next week, month, 6 months I will work diligently to create the reality that I want. Health, freedom, knowledge, love and family.

 Tomorrow is the first day. Tonight is the first night.

These tasks might sound insignificant, but they feel like mountains on most days.
To take better care of me, I will wash my face twice a day, I will brush my teeth twice a day, I will shower daily.

To take care of my children I will have dinner with them very night. I will make sure they brush their teeth twice a day. I will make sure they get enough sleep, and they will have stories read to them every night.

I am already overwhelmed by my small task list. I start tonight.

I have let my physical strength go for so long that I will start with walking and yoga stretches. Daily? Daily.

At least I have my writing out of the way for tonight.

The voice in my head.

I'm moving onto a new path. I need to, and will, I am taking responsibility for my own lack of inaction. I need to stop listening to the ugly self sabotage voice in my head. I will overcome and adapt to my anxiety. I have the power to stretch time by simply living more life within each moment.

I have decided that it is time to train myself into self confident me. I have decided to empower myself. I am no longer a selfish person because I want to feel good about myself.

I will lead by example instead of waiting for the leader.

I will no longer force myself to choose one area to learn and expand in.

The voice is loud, and I need to be louder than the voice. I will not let the voice dissuade me from my path.

The Dawn of an Era

Well today is the end of an Era and tomorrow is the dawn of new Era. No one will notice the change just yet. Tomorrow it will feel the same, yet life will be on a different path, headed in a new direction. I will stay humble and focused. I will start to train my body and mind for great things. I will not count the dollars earned only the successes. I will pursue all of my dreams. I refuse to choose between on dream and another. I will no longer trade my time for a paycheck. My time is more valuable then that. I will maintain a financial focus, and my risks will be measured with research and balanced with reward margin. I will no longer live in discontent. Every moment from here forward will be a moment closer to success. I will plant seeds for future success, not just for me but for all of those around me whom I love and want to share my success. I will continue to pursue knowledge in all aspects of life. I will take time to focus on my family and appreciate each moment, as irreplaceable and unrepeatable. My faith is no longer something I search for outside of me. I will look within to find my faith, I have faith in me to know the way. I have faith in the elements and the life forces around me. Tomorrow will appear no different, yet it will be a whole new world.

Motivation and The Plan

Motivation and self care. Important words for everyone. It is important to know ourselves well enough to create our own motivation, and to care about ourselves enough to be healthy both inside and out. For some people these things come almost naturally to them. Little thought is but into a healthy lifestyle, or curling their hair every morning. I happen to be one of those people that over analyze everything. I notice every small nuance of my thoughts and emotions and look at them as if they are a separate part of me that can be attached or detached at a moments notice. The action in life is almost painful, for fear of not having a complete enough analysis to move forward. At some point a person just needs to tell their mind to stop. And just let the physical muscles do some work. I have been letting my mind take over, because the actions didn't seem to be improving my life. I keep thinking I must be missing something simply because I haven't seen my plan to fruition. My end result of course are skinny, happy, beautiful, and rich. My plan was to work 8-5 while saving money to invest in RE and buy a house and buy rentals and start a business and quit my 8-5 job. Do I need to alter my plan? Because it hasn't worked yet, not even started to work. I have no savings or a house bought, let alone a rental, and I'm still working 8-5. All of my mind/thought time hasn't cleared a new path for me either. I simply haven't found something I love doing regardless of whether I'm getting paid to do it or not. When I feel like my mind has me on a good path, I am able to create action much easier. When I feel like there is progression in my life that does not require constant mental apprehension, and focus, I feel free to take care of me and spend that time not thinking. At what point does someone decide the end result is still good, but the plan to get there is not?

Questions on Life

I feel like I am in static inaction. I am enjoying the little moments, yet my thoughts and energy are off in the ethers of the unknown. I am surrounded by movement and decision making and learning, yet the idea of movement is unappealing to me. I have sunk into inaction, into my thoughts and emotions, lifes heartaches and the unknown future. Here is the reality of it. My skin is broken out, I am out of shape and I feel stuck in my apartment. My care for my self has declined to almost nothing. Why cant I take care of me? Put myself first? not in wants but in needs. I feel like I am not providing anything to the world. I  feel like I am imaginary at work, people walk past me, plan events, as though I am not even there. I know it is not true, but the loneliness is palpable. There are many facets to the feeling/problem. I need to have action in all realms of my life. I need to make room for self care for me. I need to carve this out of time that I don't feel exists at the moment. Nor do I feel worthy of that time. Time spent on anything besides work, kids, home and learning feels impossible. I need to learn how to do something different to make money, I need to spend time applying for jobs to be able to move, I need time to research articles or stories I want to write. I need to work at my job. I need to keep the house somewhat reasonably clean, I need to feed the kids, and interact with them, read to them, hug them and I refuse to carve me time out of this time. Somehow I am supposed to feel good about myself. Am I simply not managing my time well? I feel frozen. I guess I need to map out my time and create action, even if I don't want to. I don't want to fall deeper into this hole. I need to change my own thoughts, and decide I am worth my own time. How do I make myself go to the gym every day when I don't feel like I am worthy of that time spent? How do I put energy into something that feels like it is a waste of time, or could be used for something more worthwhile. How does a person decide their own worth? How does someone decide they are worthy of something, but not too much, not conceited or arrogant? self absorbed? to what extent am I worthy? who decides what I deserve and what I don't?

The Job

I have been working on ways to bring in money so I can stay home with my kids. I have many ideas, but very little time to see them to fruition. I also don't have the money to invest in ideas that require...well any money. Is it possible to replace my income from my 8-5 with at home work? Here is what I have discovered so far: NO It is not that it can't be replaced. But what I am wanting is time. If I work from home the time is simply swallowed up by another form of work. I don't really want to work from home. I don't want to sit at home and try to juggle the kids and find time to get my "work" tasks done. I want money to be coming in, but not from a menial task of one sort or another. What do I want? Do I want a more enjoyable 8-5? Would I do better part time? Part time still requires childcare unless I work at a time when their dad doesn't work. None of these things can be done while we live in a place that is beyond our means. What really needs to happen is a relocation of our family. Either with part time or if I must; full time work. Relocating means many changes. We haven't done it yet..I haven't done it yet, because I don't want to be the source of angst when things are tough. When my son has no friends at school, and my little one misses his Martha. All of the explaining in the world will not make it feel better. I worry that the move is not for the right reasons, or that it is selfish on my part. Will the kids feel the benefit of us moving? will they feel better than they do now? Is moving really the only answer? Granted I don't think my kids are unhappy, but they could definitely go in either direction on the happy scale. I think a big part is I just don't love my job anymore. It started out as a job I loved and slowly turned into a job that I don't want to continue in. I had hoped that the pay increase would help our living expenses, but it is barely noticeable after taxes. I am disappointed that it did not do more for us.I had hoped it would allow us to move into a bigger place, or allow us to go on more trips, but instead it is covering the newest rent increase and the higher food costs. It is such a deflating feeling when your efforts are blocked by unseen forces. It will be sad to leave our home. I vowed never to move my son again after I settled here. I wanted him to have roots and a sense of belonging. I didn't want his future self to say " I grew up in a bunch of places". The idea in and of itself is somewhat overwhelming. Again I don't want to be the decision maker. The jobs I apply to determine where we move to. There are job opportunities everywhere, but that doesn't mean they are all great places to be.  I will gather my thoughts and reflect on our next move.

Change Starts With Me

Change starts with me. I heard this thought float through my head today. I have been ruminating on the life I live, the life I want, and life of my fantasies. I feel like I need change in my life. I feel like I went from contentment to discontent in a really short amount of time. I went from busy, and striving, and social, and motivated....to nothing. Now I don't want to see people, I don't want to exercise, I don't want to keep up on my home, I don't want to keep up on me. I need to take a moment to reflect on the changes that DID take place, that I have allowed myself to move into this mental state. Let's rewind 1 year. At this time last year I was reviewing my numbers for my spa business and coming to the realization that not only did I not earn the extra money I wanted, I didn't even earn back the money I invested; but I lost enough money that I couldn't pay for my son's birthday party. Nor did I have money for Christmas. December I stopped the spa business. January came and went. February came and went. March came and Kieshan decided because his grandpa's health was not well, that he/ we needed to be closer to Mt. Shasta. We sorted things out and decided to move to Sacramento after my 9 year old got out of school. My heart did not want to leave SB but my mind told me it was the right thing to do. I agreed to move but only when Kieshan got a job with benefits, so when I quit my job the insurance would not have gaps. I mentally prepared myself to move. I disengaged with the people I worked with. I started trying to figure out how to make the move work. I started applying for jobs in Sacramento. April was filled with stress. I convinced myself I didn't like my job anymore. I decided that I needed to get in shape before we moved. In May I started going to the gym every morning. I was exhausted at work every day. I was asleep by 8pm every night. I tried to interpret the reasons behind us not getting any job responses. I started to feel like we needed to move no matter what. I was offered a new position within my clinic. I studied the possibilities surrounding the job, the impact of the pay increase. I studied the pay rates of jobs in Sacramento and the surrounding areas. I studied the real estate, the rents. I started feeling really aware of the space we live in. I started to feel like I was not a good provider for my children because of the space we live in. I started to feel proud of the action we were taking to provide our kids with more space and opportunity than we had. June came along and we had no responses to jobs. We pushed our max move date out to July, and then to August. I stopped wanting to make dinners because I was starkly aware of our small apartment, our lack of money to get groceries, our expensive costs of living, the lack of parking, lack of outdoor space for the kids to play. As we entered into summer the heat in our apartment was unbearable. Days and nights of heat. Unrelenting heat. It was exhausting. I didn't want to move when I got home from work. It was too hot to cook, too hot to wash dishes, too hot to take to kids to the park. Too hot to enjoy life as we knew it. I struggled with the fact that we were not moving. That all of my planning and reading, and disconnecting was all for nothing. I tried to accept that we were going to be here for a whole nother year. I accepted the position at my job with the expectation that I would be leaving soon. I hate my new position. I am lonely and separated from everyone. I feel horrible that I am not taking action like I thought I was. My promises to my kids came up empty. I am not giving them more space to run free. Now I spend my days and nights trying to learn where I went wrong in my deductions. Did I plan for the wrong city? Should I just be applying for jobs still? Should we move before the end of the next school year? What if I fail again? What if I can't find a job somewhere else? What if my family is not happy somewhere else? If I can't find a job somewhere else... What is plan B? Stay here? In our tiny space? With the unbearable heat? And no outdoor space for our children to play? And constant frustration over parking? And fail my children even more? Plan B is definitely a cold back up plan. It is only slightly more appealing than staying here. I feel like I'm frozen in time now...waiting for the window of light to unveil this mysterious timeframe to start our plan to move again. This time I can't let it fail. I can't let this sit just solely on whether we get a job or not. This will have to be a: we move no matter what, situation. And then I feel another pang of sadness in my heart, because this is where I am successful. Yet I still failed in some way. I am still not providing a good home space for my kids. This burdens me and I can't seem to shake it. I need.......something. My kids need........something. I need time with them. All of this time I have spent working so hard to provide a home, has not been time spent with them. Now my heart aches for both sides of the coin. For not providing a good home space, AND for not being home with them. Now I feel like I not only need to guarantee a move, but now my heart wants to be home with them too. I can't do all of this. I don't know how. I don't know how to guarantee a roof over their head and have me home all the time. Now it is November again. This year I have money to have a party for my son. My sister is coming to visit and stay in my little home. I fear I will be judged again, for having worked so hard to get here. I am struggling with where I should aim my focus. I am torn between feeling good with my job and feeling bad for my home.

Of Electricity and Currents

I have been asked before if I am a christian. I am what I like to call "A Pleaser". for those people whom I do not hold near and dear to my heart I answer questions in a way that I know you want me to answer. The people that I hold close don't ask me questions they don't want answers to. I always answer the same. "I believe in God". Most people nod their head and say "oh well then yes your a christian". I smile to them and carry on with whatever we were doing or talking about. What I want to say is: I believe in Electricity, and magnetism, and sound; on all vibration levels. I believe in different levels of reality that I can't understand nor is it tangible. I believe in the soul. I believe in MY soul. I believe in the laws of probability, and the language of math; though just to be clear I speak Spanish better than I speak math. What I don't believe is the bible says what it was meant to say 5000 years ago. I don't know who created the human, nor do I care. I do believe that religion was created to control people and make money. It was a great business venture that still works to this day. The bible is an interesting read. It has some really great points that if you so choose to live by them you could do great things. You know the ones: Don't Lie, Don't Cheat, Don't Steal. Do unto others as you would have done to you. Basic life rules that if you kept them at the forefront of all of your interactions with every living thing you would be happy. The air, water, earth and all that it encompasses is my God. When I pray, I am praying (or trying to focus my thoughts) on a certain sound level. We are all tiny atoms or cells inside a huge body. There are millions of bodies. We are an electric signal passing our spark to other electric signals. The moon affects us because of the magnetic pull. Our tides also get pulled by the power of the moon. That is more powerful that I can even grasp. Even when I am watching the tide rise and fall. The heat from the sun is felt by every thing on this earth. Except the deepest darkest depths of the ocean; it is its own world within our world. Everyone needs to feel like they have a purpose. Life is challenging enough without the sense that your soul is an unnecessary spark that is not needed. Cancer is one cell that mutates instead of reincarnating as a regular healthy cell and instead starts to infect and help mutate the cells around it. Sometimes the mutating cell is surrounded by healthy happy cells and the one bad cell is left to live out its life and reincarnate into either a healthy cell or a mutated cell again. Sometimes though the other cells hold strong and the electricity that feeds the cells become a regulated current instead of power surges through the system. We each have to be strong and not become infected by the mutated cells that are around us. We all need to understand that we might be the cells that make up the heart, and never know it.

      This is a hard concept to grasp in the day to day living of life. Having a job doesn't fit with a cell floating in an electrical current, nor does money. In my next post I will give some examples of life and all of the "stuff".

   
 

Happy Me, Happy Home

The difficulty with having a full time job, kids, and a spouse is trying to find the time, energy and resources to cultivate the home life everyone deserves. In my home we have tried a few different avenues of time management. For instance I used to insist that dinner be made every night. I had a calendar that marked who was cooking, who was cleaning up and what we were eating that night. It served its purpose in the sense that we had dinner every night together. It also created alot of tension when one of us was too tired and we didn't or couldn't complete our assigned task. I am exhausted. I don't know why. I don't feel focused, or happy most days. The tension of life leading in a direction I didn't want it to go is overwhelming. I imagined a way of life, but didn't know what it would take to get there. Now I'm on a dusty side road freaking out because this road is veering further off the path I wanted and imagined. We stopped our dinner regime because we were both tired. I started cooking all of the meals on Sundays. We could all eat whatever we wanted during the week. This worked for awhile until the family got bored of the leftovers. We were spending money on fast food as our cooked dinners grew mold in our fridge. Lately we have moved even further from our original idea. Now it is more of a fendforyourself dinner style. With the exception of my 3 yr old on some days.
    Part of my dilemma is that I had a grand vision ( long ago) that didn't include children. Then my vision morphed to include the kiddos. Now my vision is incorporating my kid's dad and that is something new. He is grown and has his own visions. I can't force my ideals onto him, yet we need to live cohesively. I struggle with frustration and jealousy regarding his help, and then the lack of it. I struggle with the reality of our relationship that is not what I imagined. I am technically doing what I am supposed to. I feed my kids, I bathe them, get them in bed, read stories, cuddle, buy them toys to play with. What am I missing? I need to create my happy home. This is what I struggle with. Why? Because I'm not sure what is missing.....or if I can fix the things that I do know are wrong. Today I will re- set my home vision. I will build a plan for the foundation of my happy home. Me. I am home. For me and my kids. My space around me needs to feel good. It doesn't right now, for a multitude of reasons. Some I have control over, some I do not.

Thanks to Authors

Today is National Authors Day! National Authors Day became a nationally observed day in 1949. You can celebrate today by buying a book by your favorite author or you can find your favorite author through social media and pass on a thank you for writing their novels, and use the tag line #NationalAuthorDay. Today I would like to thank some of my favorite authors. The first one is James A Michner may he rest in peace. James A michner wrote the most amazing, detailed historically correlated fiction. They were works of art spread across the pages. His words made memories. When I read his books I was there, in the book. I could taste the dust, feel the rain, smell the flowers and I could hear the voices of the people living in that time. The next author is Patricia Cornwell. This woman is my idol. She lives, and feels, and experiences the police work that she details in her books. She is able to bring to life a crime scene, and the internal process of all of the people involved in the investigation. Kay Scarpetta; though a fictional character is in her own right an amazing woman. Brought to life by the words of Patricia Cornwell. My next favorite author is Michael Connelly. I am proud of him like I would be of my brother. His books have become an amazing show produced by Amazon TV. His writing brings the life of a homicide detective in LA to life like no one else can. His knowledge through his own experiences as a detective shine brightly in his writing. My next favorite author is John Sanford. He writes with an intensity that is unmatched. When I am reading his books I can't turn the page fast enough. My heart races in rhythm with his writing. I am blessed to have these authors in my life. I am a better person for it. These books all sit proudly on my book shelf among other great writings. Thank you for writing. Any one who is out there wondering if they should write a book, the answer is yes. Your writing will have an effect on people that you will never know.