All is well... ?

So the mantra goes, all is well, all is well. Marriage is a tough nut to crack aint it? There are times when you feel as though everything is going to work out and you are happy and life is grand, and then there are times when you feel like why do I even try, it's hopeless. Right now I am on the knifes edge trying to figure out which side to fall down on, and which side is true.

I know those are extreme opposite ends of the spectrum but it is also kinda like weather in that way. Do you ever feel on a sunny day like all is right with the world, and then on a rainy one that you can't see very far past your current woes?

I guess the hard part is discerning which side of that coin is real, or if in fact, maybe, your marriage, and life is both, it is the WHOLE coin, it is ALL weather, even tsunami's, and 'kids jumping off a bridge into the river in the middle of dublin hot' all in one 24 hour period.

From the sounds of a metaphor sure, it's the coin right, all weather etc, the planet survives the weather, and the coin does not discriminate when tossed? Well... while metaphors are kinda great for explaining complex situations, they are also great at distorting reality and missing the oh so important granular stuff.

I don't know how I should feel and whether the weather is changing for the worse (global warming) and I should take drastic measures, like moving further inland, or if it's just one of those bad days, not as bad as it seems, just hunker down and wait it out.

Today is kind of a trial for me, obviously I lost the proverbial coin toss today, it's raining, can't  you tell from the tone? I wanted to write about it not to b*tch and moan, but rather to wonder aloud if this is something I can change, if I struggle against it, and do something major about it, does that just make things worse, should I just stand still while the glass is broken on the floor around me (in that metaphor obviously the answer is yes, but who will clean up the glass)? My biggest fear if I do this is that I will just stand still and still and still, until I have lost more time to a situation that isn't good.

I promise, to write a post on one of those sunny days in our marriage, so that I can temper this bad day with that good one, maybe all is not as bad as it seems, maybe I do take life too seriously. I can temper that too, if needed, if that is all that's wrong.

Onwards and upwards though, time to work the day away, and get home to my precious daughter, and maybe dip my toes in the water, to see what the temperature is.

The Bear Necessities

Bear necessities, those simple bear necessities, forget about your worries and your strife! (Yeah man!) I need those bear necessities!

This blog post is about getting back to what's important, and figuring out what I care about most.

Part of the problem was that I never believed I was able to be singleminded enough to be really great at anything.

I always wondered why I couldn't stick to one pursuit and be a great singer, poet/songwriter or dancer. Just to do any of my favorite things as well as I would have liked. I accepted that I was a jack of all trades for many years and that was my excuse for never really dedicating myself to any of it. I never realized that all along I actually was dedicated with a dogged determination to the one thing that mattered the most to me.

For the last 8 years the dream and goal I have been pursuing was to return to Ireland without doing so foolishly. I wanted to still live a full life, keep advancing in my career, and not have to give up true love. Basically it had to make sense, and it hasn't until now. So I can forgive myself for not doing those other things because i have just reached the goal i had for 8 years and can even be proud of what I have achieved in getting here where I am now at a cross roads.

Getting here involved seizing the right opportunity at the right time, and having patience, both of these are difficult and things were harder than they needed to be thanks to the pace I set myself. All the 'milestones of life' I have rushed and pushed, I forgot to enjoy the journey, figure out what I truly wanted and take my time, to enjoy the journey.  It is sheer luck maybe that I actually have been truly blessed in what and who I have.

I don't know what the rush was though, it is one piece of advice I was given that I would try to give to my children, but I did not heed it when it was given to me. Don't be in such a hurry to do everything, especially grow up. Live a little, have some fun. I don't know how I will communicate how important this is to my kids, but I have a little time to figure that out.

but it's time to de clutter my life now. Take my time. Before I could only graze the surface of things that weren't part of getting here, but now that I have, I feel freed and fired up to see what's next. So the real question is,

What do you do when you finally achieve everything you thought you ever wanted?

I am committing myself to the pursuit of happiness, allowing myself to be present in the journey. The first step in the happiness project by Gretchen Rubin is simple, get enough rest, so you can have energy to use. Another is to de clutter your life, and so I will de clutter my goals, to accomodate my new status as a parent. With this in mind in mind, and some soul searching these are my four areas of focus. None matter without the others.

Resting... taking care of me - Stick to doing this, to enjoying the journey, taking my time, and being sure I have the energy to be at my best, so i can give my best. Making myself a priority is a challenge but doing it means I wont let others down.

Family - There is nothing more important than taking care of the most important people in my life. My daughter, husband, pets and family and friends all over the world. I am not doing this the way I want, and being able to love people and make room for them in my life is very important to me. Parenting is the biggest chunk of this next to falling in love with my husband every day, rediscovering all our love and joy, our reasons for being together, daily.

Career - Spending time developing my expertise and keeping current, being sharp and organized while at work, taking it to the next level, owning and taking pride in my work appearance and professional persona.

Self Expression - Song writing, blogging, getting to 'know thyself' (see my professional blog on using technology to do this and why it's important).

Anything else, I don't have room for right now, and will just take away from my ability to enjoy this phase of my life. I'm excited, and not anxious and thats a first, so bring it on, Carpe Diem.

OMG my first blog!

Wow so this is exciting stuff eh? hopefully only those who know me can find me here, (or those that don't but who have things in common with me) will find this vaguely interesting.

What inspired me to finally start one of these? Well its not as if I don't have reason. I have so far attempted to live in 5 different countries and so far am still not sure where I want to be, but of course along the way I have connected with people of all molds, and I don't think there is any other way to ramble on about my life and get heard by the people I want to actually listen to me :)

Plus although people who know me would probably snigger at me describing myself as 'direct' (verbally at least) I just needed a way to express myself, so many reasons, like cultural differences and expectations, its hard being a 'nomadic puzzle piece' (not that I am complaining really, things are more interesting this way) but I had an epiphany of sorts in the car on the way to work this morning, and that was that I am really a puzzle piece, (go with the metaphor here) that used to fit somewhere, but I have changed colors so much and shaved off pieces of myself and stuck other pieces on all in the name of fitting in with the current puzzle that now I could probably not fit with my original puzzle anymore. 

BUT the real epiphany (I already knew the before part quite well and had felt badly about it many times) was that the point of a puzzle piece is not just to 'fit' even though thats what we try to do with them, but its to represent and fill in part of a picture, to display itself and be complimentary to the puzzle that it is a part of. So that is the longwinding and rambling explanation for the name of my blog, I hope you could follow, if not its my writing not your reading so don't worry about it.

I do have a rambling style of writing, I have been much maligned for it in school and college/university and even today, in my career, I always have to consciously reign in my writing style, I think of too many things and tangents and possibilities at once that what i end up producing is little pieces of each path, which by itself is mostly nonsense. 

And thats another reason to write this blog in the vein of expressing myself to improve, by writing more, and to write in the words that I think in. The reason this is important to me is twofold (I warned you!) 1) i like to use big words sometimes and some people don't like it, and i always find myself trying to think of a smaller word. I don't want to have to do that here. AND 2nd I learned, IRISH English, NEW ZEALAND English and now AMERICAN English (replete with new spellings) which means I am forever thinking... what is the american word for this? This situation is both frustrating and humorous but that is info for another blog post, suffice it to say this is getting rather longish and I just wanted to explain why I write a blog in the first place. And now I have. Phew. (pardon the bad grammar, its for effect)

So thanks whoever you are for reading this :) and I guess lets see how diligent I really am with this sort of thing! Wish me luck!