Finding Something to Say

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Sometimes I get this feeling and I just can’t speak. It’s like a wall, or a dam, and not even a trickle of a thought can get by it. That’s how I’ve felt about writing this blog for the past week and a half. Normally, I would have had strong words for myself about being a “wimp” or a “baby” or some other pejorative to indicate my inability to act appropriately—my failure to act at all, as it were. But this time, I used the opportunity to understand a pattern.

I believe that most of us could admit to having a natural rhythm of ebb and flow, like the tides. Sometimes we come rushing in at our life, full of energy and powerful strokes, and then we back off a bit, regroup or tone down some of the intensity, and then come back at it for another push. We wake and sleep. We have lots of verve and then go limp on the couch. We’re happy. We’re sad. It’s humanly impossible to keep barreling through life, full steam ahead, 24/7!! Frankly, we just need to vary the pace—regularly—to survive it at all.

This idea so often eludes the perfectionist in me. I want it all, all the time, all the way. No wonder I’ve spent so much time being exhausted!!! (I’m really starting to see the “woman who [does] too much” in me!)

However, I’m pleased to tell you that I spent the week and a half of blogging silence enjoying the heck out of my life and not worrying about when my next post would be. I let myself believe that the post would come when it needed to. (There’s always another post in me somewhere, right?) I went with the flow, dude, and I must say, IT ROCKED!!!

I was able to spend two whole days preparing my daughter’s 15th birthday celebration. I continued to do my workouts and follow my diet (ok, except for a few indulgences, but that’s another story). I went to an all-day seminar. I started taking a course with my husband (yay!!). I watched a movie by myself during the work day (formerly a big “no-no”). I talked to some friends on the phone, or went and had tea. I paid the bills, bought some groceries, cleaned a little and played with the dog. I even went to the Houston Rodeo for the very first time! In short, I just lived my simple, quiet life and enjoyed it. I didn’t judge it or rush it or over-schedule it or beat myself up because it wasn’t perfect.

I honestly think that I was about twenty-eight years old before I realized how much mental time and space I had devoted to expecting my every thought, word, and deed, to be perfect; although I never used the word “perfect.” I thought about improving things. Oh, this can be better next time and that could be more efficient! I could be more patient or the house could be neater—at least more often! I thought I was challenging myself to be better and to do more, and isn’t achievement and growth a good thing? Why would learning from today and making it better tomorrow be a negative endeavor? Well, it’s not; at least, not in theory anyway.

But when life holds no true enjoyment; no, not enjoyment...but what? When you can never feel satisfied—or when you don’t know what that means—then perfectionism has its hooks in you. I’ve had to learn what being satisfied means over the last decade or so. For me, it means to be able to be still and survey the scene with a smile and an inner “Aahhhhhh!” No judgment (straighten this, add that)…no anxiety (how long will this last?)…no worry (surely something isn’t quite right with this picture)…no expectation (I wonder if this will happen again soon)…no blame (this could have been better if you or someone else had only…)…no nothing…just PEACE—the kind that makes your face beam and your eyes twinkle.

That’s the space where there is no wall. No dam either. And in that moment, there’s no need to say anything at all.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Still Craving Something

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I quit smoking over four months ago. It was easy! That is, as soon as I started thinking that every cigarette I didn’t smoke was an instance of loving myself, of being kind to who I really am via the body I live in.

I always knew it wasn’t the nicotine I was addicted to—it was the chemical flush that altered my mood when I couldn’t handle life. The boredom of grading papers, the loneliness of my life as a hermit, the pain of not being understood or acknowledged by my significant other, the sadness of living over 1,000 miles away from my entire family. There was always something missing, and I kept trying to fill up the space with smoke!

But, like all the other times I’d quit, I just started eating sugar instead: cake, cookies, ice cream, and chocolate. Oh how I love chocolate! Whenever I have had overwhelming feelings of any kind, I would run for something to give me the rush I needed to keep going. So, not long after quitting the smokes, I became a carb-aholic.

See, it wasn’t just the sweets I was eating too much of. Oh no. I started eating bread and bagels and ramen noodle soup. I ate all kinds of potatoes: mashed (with gravy), chunks in my homemade soup, and lots of French fries and hash browns at a certain fast food establishment within a half mile of my home. When ice cream was two half gallons for $6, I’d buy four at a time so everyone would have their favorite flavor! I bought several boxes of ready-made cookie dough from the girls’ fundraisers. I ate out too often and ate too much. I gorged and gorged.

I consoled myself by saying, “I can’t quit everything all at once, and hey, at least I quit smoking, right?!”

Wrong.

I watched in silent horror as I broke the promise I made to myself two years ago when I’d hit my ideal weight again after losing almost 25lbs. I wasn’t going to do that to myself again. I was going to love myself by eating right and staying trim. But when I’d grown out of all my clothes by my birthday this year, I knew I’d hit rock bottom again. It was time to quit everything all at once!

Five days ago I quit sugar, cold turkey. I started exercising. The good news is, I’ve already lost two inches around my waist. But I can’t tell you how awful the carb withdrawals are! You know you’re an addict when you sneak some extra parsley, celery, and cucumber bites and sigh with pleasure. I’m in lust with vegetables right now because they’re the only source of carbs I’m allowed.

So, now I’m faced with the source of my addiction. The utter longing. What my friend Camellia calls “The God-shaped Hole.” Now, when I’m not “busy” with something that engages my mind and body utterly and completely, I’m thinking about when I can next have some vegetables! I sip herbal tea and black coffee to try to calm the part of the craving that feels connected with ingesting something! I wrack my brain for something—anything—to do that will make me feel better.

Yesterday I did two workouts: 40 minutes of muscle sculpting (can you say lunges?) and 30 minutes of a fat burning, “special occasions” workout. After that, I still had too much energy; luckily it was time for lunch, so I ate and savored every bite of the grilled onion and bell pepper on top of my steak. Then I wandered around trying to decide what to do next. I finally decided to go looking for the diet book, to see when I could start adding in other foods and what they would be.

Apparently, this addiction thing is bigger than I thought! Well, that’s not entirely true. I knew it was big, but I thought it would be easy to kick. Get rid of the cigarettes and sugar…et voila! She’s cured! I thought that if I just put the focus on my dreams, all of this would pass away quietly. I can honestly say I really don’t want to face this part of myself. And by the laws of the Universe, that which we avoid comes back to haunt us.

So it looks like you’ll be hearing more about me learning how to face my addictions head on. I know I have described this blog as showing “the ups and downs of one woman getting a life,” but I think I was secretly hoping to avoid the downs. And that’s another lesson, isn’t it? Can’t have one without the other. Perfection is not an option, but I hear that happiness and peace are. I keep forgetting that I can be happy without having the “perfect” life. And maybe it will be perfect—well-suited—for me, but not free from challenge or change.

Craving perfection just doesn’t make me happy. But, I believe I can transform this craving for perfection into a craving for peace and happiness—one that comes from making good choices to create a life that is, at least, more of what I truly want.

Then again, maybe peace and happiness are already here, like Camellia says, and I'll just let the cravings go altogether!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Love, or Something Like It*

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Karen Carpenter’s lyrics poked at yet another of my sore spots on Monday.

During the bridge, Carpenter says that when she gets these blues—the ones when she wants to quit because “nothing ever seems to fit”—she runs to “find the one who loves” her. But more than that, she suggests that she needs someone else to make her feel better. She can’t seem to console herself. This is a classic sign of the relationship addict. I, too, have found that the chemicals of love can be just as effective as anything in food, alcohol, or drugs. The highs and lows, the mood swings, the delusions of either grandeur or insignificance are one and the same.

Hello, my name is Nicole Williams, and I am a love-aholic.

It hasn’t been very long at all since I tried to control my love interest or felt personally out of control where my emotions are concerned. But the first step is in realizing that I have a problem, and that I am NOT in control. In addition, what I’m learning this year is that I’m just not the victim I think I am.

I’ve been in relationships that might be termed “toxic,” on some level at least, for the past 20 years. I learned early on that “like attracts like,” but it took one failed marriage to really see what that means. It’s like the three finger rule—on crack! (see my blog on Feb. 8th for an explanation of the three finger rule!)

It took a couple years, after the divorce, to realize that I shared in 50% of the responsibility of that relationship. It was easier to point fingers at the behaviors of my partner because they were obviously “bad” ones. Only later did I realize that my bad behavior was just in stealth mode. Not because I intended to hide anything, but because that was the nature of my part of the problem. I had been involved with persons who had extroverted their anger, making it look like I introverted mine.

But I didn’t know this until the Universe served me up another mirroring soul, one more like me. I looked like the feeling extrovert in comparison this time. That’s when the light dawned and I saw myself in a whole new way. I had to take responsibility for my role in the relationship, and I worked on that for a good long time.

Deep below the surface of all of these relationship lessons I was learning, though, there was another current to be reckoned with. What about ME? All the years that most of us spend “finding” ourselves were spent finding group answers. With very few answers about who I was as an individual. Wife and mother were always at the top of the daily to-do list, but that put me below dirty dishes and folding laundry. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I got that far, so I kept postponing those me-centered pursuits.

Motherhood tends to have this effect, or so I’ve heard! And it’s true that wives often feel that they compromise more often than the husbands. So what’s “wrong” with that? Nothing at all. And that’s exactly what I held onto for all these years that I’ve been a wife and a mother. But something clicked along the way and I saw that I have, oftener than not, used my dedication to avoid probing my own depths.

In other words, whenever it starts to look like I might have to make my own way and express myself as an individual, I slink back into the comfort zone of my relationships…especially partner love. For me, loving a man is the perfect thrill ride for my insecurity, self-doubt, and fear of failure to set in motion, hoping to keep the focus on things outside the self. Do you love me? Do you need me? Do you want me? Does your world revolve around me?

Ok, right now, this seems pretty serious. But hey, don’t we all do this at one time or another? I bet we all do! But there’s a subtle difference between any substance use and abuse. Use and ab-use. Engagement v. Compulsion. Even good things like exercise and a career and, yes, love relationships can be ab-used. It’s the spirit behind the emphasis.

For me, I just happened to notice that I’ve spent a lot of time using the slings and arrows of insecurity and blame and focusing on the motes in my partners’ eyes to avoid myself. Keeping the instability going and feeling like a victim has created a world of fear that I’ve lived in because it gave me something to fight with or flee from. It’s like a constant state of war. Of death and destruction. Living like that isn’t really living at all.

So now it’s time to create and connect. To take responsibility for myself. To live from the inside out. To be free and fully alive.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

*I just found out today that this is the title of a Kenny Rogers song. I think the spirit of the refrain fits my idea about addiction to love: “Something's got a hold on me/It's cheap but it ain' free/Love or somethin’ like it's got a hold on me.”

Something About Rainy Mondays

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Any time since the late Seventies that there has been rain on a Monday, Karen Carpenter’s refrain plays in my mind. So today, listening to the thunderous downpour outside, I heard that chorus again and decided to look up the full lyrics to “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Lo and behold, I found out that Karen must have felt like I do right now when she wrote it.

The first verse struck me because just this morning I had been “talkin’ to myself and feeling old.” I celebrated my 37th birthday a little over a week ago and for years now I have been using those numbers to beat myself up. Something like, “You are 30-something years old and you should have this all figured out by now; you should be sitting back and riding the waves of success by now, not floundering around in the surf, trying to get up on the boat!!!”

So what really upsets me about Carpenter’s lyric is knowing that she was younger when she died than I am right now.* She was a famous singer with at least sixteen number one hit songs before she was thirty! And she still felt like she’d “like to quit” and that “nothing ever seems to fit.” That same self-doubt even resulted in her own untimely death.

We see it all the time, right? People who, in our eyes anyway, seem fantastically successful, with every reason to be happy, and who self-destruct. Look at Anna Nicole Smith. Ok, so we may not all want to look up to her as a role model for success, but she’s a good example of how fame and fortune just aren’t enough.

But we know that, you must be thinking!

What is enough?

That was the topic of my rainy Monday argument with myself. I became flustered with the nagging coming from the school marm specter in my mind’s eye. She tapped her wristwatch and said, “It’s after ten a.m. and you are still fooling around on the internet. What are you going to do today? Tomorrow? With the rest of your life?” I physically waved her out of my sight and spoke aloud to the cat, the dog, the walls, the mess in the living room, and said, “I don’t have to do anything if I don’t want to! Nothing. Nothing more than what I am already doing. I don’t HAVE to be productive to be worthwhile! It’s my time to explore!”

And that’s the part that is so difficult for me. The process. The journey. The taste testing of all that life has to offer until the thing I want most becomes clear to me. I have to keep telling that other part of me to RELAX! Just because I quit my job doesn’t mean I will miraculously and instantaneously know what to do next. Some people might, but how could I? I’ve been avoiding myself for years. That part of myself that wanted things and was always told “NO!” is not going to come running right out, especially if the school marm is still hanging around telling her to “hurry along now; it’s about time you got going.”

Who wants that?

Sometimes, quitting can be a beginning. It took me a year to decide that quitting my job was better than keeping it for the sake of appearing productive. I was finally able to see what I didn’t want and convince myself that the better way to find what I did want was to give myself the time to find it. The time to play and to explore. It’s been a tough transition so far because I’ve been judging myself harshly about it. Almost every day I’ve said, “Maybe I should just go find another job.”

It’s difficult to believe that my job is to take care of myself first. It’s so much easier to take care of other people and blame them for my lack of time to discover what I want for myself. And it’s so difficult to believe that doing the thing that doesn’t reward with a paycheck is the best thing. But I guess I need to believe in the spiritual paycheck more than the monetary one. The bottom line is that it’s difficult for the woman who likes (ok, loves) control, to feel so out of control. I’m uncomfortable, but that’s a sure sign that growth is possible, right?

Hopefully, these rainy Mondays that “get me down” now, will soon turn into the sunny, blossoming days of the spring of my soul.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

*Karen Carpenter died the day after my 13th birthday; she was almost 33 years old.

Something to Think About: Three Finger Rule

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Do this: point away from yourself like you are scolding someone. Does your thumb naturally grab onto those three extra fingers and hold them back so that they point right back at you? Mine too.

Did you try it?

Come on, play along.

Do it again!

What I love about the three finger rule is that I can see it! In truth, it is just a modification of Jesus’ lesson to refrain from judging others.

The New American Standard Bible says: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Other translations speak of a “mote,” “grain of dust,” or “splinter” in another’s eye as compared to the much larger “beam,” “bit of wood,” or “plank” found in one’s own eye.

I am so often humbled by remembering this passage; however, I didn’t always remember it at the right time! Because I tend to be a pointer when I am judging someone’s behavior (for instance: husband, children), the three finger rule is perfect for me. The passage now comes to mind immediately, and always, much to my dismay.

I see one finger pointing at the other person and THREE pointing at me. Uh-oh. Does that mean that I’m at least three times as guilty as the person I’m pointing at? Is there a log in my eye? Quick, hand me a mirror!

I won’t lie to you. This rule has made me furious at times.

I AM NOT like them! I’m just angry, disappointed, frustrated, appalled, fill-in-the-blank at their behavior! How could they be so careless, reckless, unthinking, unfeeling, fill-in-the-blank towards me and/or all of humanity (I’m thinking specifically of Houston drivers at the moment!)?? I mean, can’t a person just be upset when someone else doesn’t behave properly without it having anything to do with the person who is upset? I mean really!

The answer is no.

Honestly.

I know. It’s not easy to hear. Especially when we think we really, really get it.

We know this one by heart, right? It’s cliché for crying out loud! Let’s see….there’s: “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.” And, “People in glass houses should NOT throw stones.”
And, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We get it!

And still, I couldn’t see how being upset with someone else had anything to do with me. I had to start asking myself some tough questions.

One of my pet peeves (besides disobeying traffic rules) was lying. I seethed if I discovered that someone had lied to me—at all. My self-righteous anger welled up and I thought, “It can’t possibly mean anything about me because I tell the truth!!!” So what did my three fingers have to tell me when I pointed out a liar? Turns out, quite a lot.

I don’t think anyone has lived an entire lifetime without bending the truth at some point, especially in the name of tact or politeness, and I certainly knew that I had not lived a life of perfect honesty. But I knew that I was honest to a fault because people would tell me how amazed they were at my honesty with them. In fact, I’m afraid I had a bit of a reputation. (Uh-huh, you hear it coming don’t you!)

Well, at this point in my life, when I felt surrounded by liars, I was desperately trying to find a spiritual way out of the pain. Once I learned about the three-finger rule, I was determined to understand it. For what seemed like a long time though, I just couldn’t.

I wanted to know why, the more I kept pointing out the liars, the more those three fingers kept pointing back at me!

Dear readers, one day I discovered I had been lying to myself. I finally heard those voices in my head that told me I wasn’t good enough, attractive enough, smart enough, fill-in-the-blank enough. I also started to see that people lied to me because I didn’t want to hear the truth. I expected too much from myself and so I expected too much from others, and when they “messed up,” the last thing they wanted to hear was me reminding them, so they lied.

The fact is, being upset with others is a choice we make because we want to control in others the faults that we often don’t recognize in ourselves. So, if you find yourself pointing your finger at someone else, remember that there are always three pointing back at you.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

A Whole Lot of Something

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When my sister gave me Anne Wilson Schaef’s Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, I didn’t really believe that I was a woman who did “too much.” Sure I tried to tick off several items on my daily list, but those were “normal” things that wives and mothers and teachers had to do every day for heaven’s sake!

So I asked myself, “How does someone who doesn’t have a job but does have commitment issues (me) fall into the ‘workaholic’ category? What do I do so much of anyway?” The answer skewered me to the spot immediately. I do A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING! I do so much nothing that I never get the great big SOMEthing(s) done!

In fact, my ability to avoid and shirk and dance around big projects with little nuisance-y things has been what has kept me from balancing my life and my time. The little nothings of my average life have been consuming me and keeping me from getting ahead: in my career, in my writing, in my reading, even in my parenting…in everything I say I want to do with my life.

Now, I already knew that 2007 was going to be the do-or-die year for focusing on me and what I want and how to get it. I had my tag words “Discipline” and “Commitment” looming in front of me. What I didn’t see was that there was “nothing” standing in my way. All those obstacles I saw between me and what I want for me were just a mirage, and I was creating all of them. I thought that the journey had to be long and difficult in order to be real, but here I was, presented with this “beam me up” reality.

The life I want is just a moment away.

And one decision is all it takes. Sure, I may have to make that decision repeatedly because it’s an idea that challenges my ingrained habits, but it’s a decision that gets easier and easier to make. Nothing and something are completely subject to our perception, and all that truly matters is that we choose to create the somethings that we want and not waste our time making somethings out of nothings.

For example, it is true that my family needs to eat and that I am the person who hunts and gathers (and cooks) in the family, so grocery shopping is, indeed, something that I must do; however, in light of the reading and writing that I want to do, shopping is much lower on the significance spectrum than I tend to make it out to be. So, if I expand shopping to the point that it interferes with reading and writing, then I am letting nothing become something and thus have nothing of substance to show for my dream pursuits.

(This made me think, Oh, the laundry needs to be changed out and I almost stood up! Like I said, I just had this Shazam! moment a couple of hours ago, so it may take more than a day for it to sink in!)

So in other words, if, at the end of the day, my goal is to have “something to show for” my dreams, then I must continually make decisions about what is “nothing” to me and what is “something” to me—or else change my dreams!

But that’s part of what this year, especially, is all about for me: taking the time and doing what’s necessary to find out exactly what my dreams are. And that’s what this blog is here for—to chronicle the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the overs and unders of my journey to becoming what Allyn Evans means when she says “Queen.” I am learning to establish dominion over my own life and to fill it with fabulous somethings, all of my own divining. So…

I hereby crown myself a “Queen-in-Training” (QT) and banish the somethings that are actually nothing! Please do join me on my journey into and around the Queendom!!!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved