Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family! As for us, we rang in the New Year with the stomach flu. It wasn't a very exciting evening except for the fact that 2011 faded away as 2012 waltzed in and took center stage. It has been a while since I have posted here and that is mostly due to the fact that 2011 was a year of major transition for us. One year ago at this time, I was pretty depressed, unemployed with no job prospects on the horizon. Trent was in his first week of a terrible delivery job that he hated and we had decided to move in with my mom as a precursor to losing our home as a result of our both having been unemployed for extended periods of time.

Today, I have a good job with a company that offers free tuition for employees, and I am enrolled in a Master's in Mental Health Counseling at Argosy University. Trent has a new job working as a mechanic for the Town of Gilbert, he works day shift, loves the work environment and to top it off, makes more money than he ever did at the City of Mesa. Delaney is excelling in school as a high school junior and is considering a wide variety of college majors before she heads off to college in a year and a half, Mia is doing a great job in kindergarten and Bodhi is adapting well to being in daycare full time. We are still living with my mom, but are working on building up our savings so we are well-prepared when we move out.

In short, we have experienced a lot in this past year and I am thrilled to see a new year come in and take over. I think we are in for a lot of change in 2012 but everything seems to be looking up for us and I couldn't be more excited!

Back Again . . . It's Been a While

It's been almost a year since I last posted a blog entry here. A lot was uncertain in my life then and as I re-read my postings I remember the helpeless and drowning feelings that consumed my every thought. And here I am, a year later, battling some of the same issues and faced with new ones as well.

To bring things up to speed, I ended up being very involved in the fitness studio and even taught a basic dance and GLEE class for several months. It was a blast and a time that I will never forget. I re-discovered my love for dance and fitness and learned that I could be a successful teacher as well as student. A couple months into teaching, I interviewed for and landed a job as an Academic Counselor for an online university. I have now been working for 5 months and I generally enjoy what I do. In addition, Trent was tipped off to a job posting for a fleet mechanic at the Town of Gilbert and he ended up landing the job through a phone interview, nonetheless! Both positions have been major blessings for us individually as well as for our family in general. For the first time in our 10 years together, Trent and I work on the same shift and in the same vicinity to one another. We are able to carpool to work and Mia goes to school in this area as well. When we get home at night, we cook dinner together, clean up together and get the kids ready for bed together. It's pretty awesome. We have time to talk about our days now.

We are still dealing with the financial "backlash" of me having been unemployed for 2 years and him for 6 plus 6 months of being severely underemployed. I am just looking forward now and trying not to get stuck in the woulda-shoulda-coulda game when thinking about the past. I plan on starting a Masters program soon and eventually things will balance back out again.

As I type, my lunch break is ending and I better get back. Hopefully I can use my lunch break to reconnect here and get back on track with writing as well. For now it feels good to be back.

Friendships and Gratitude

Trent and I bought our home six years ago, and when we did, I could not have fathomed that I would also inherit a best friend that is still an integral part of my life to this day. In fact, just this morning, Jen and I sat at Paradise Bakery and talked for 4 hours straight. And it felt like 30 minutes. We could have easily continued the conversation for another 4 hours only stopping to go to the ladies room or refill our drinks.

What a blessing friends like this are in our lives. People who are our number one advocates but will also call us on our shit, people who will lift us up when we are feeling down, and shed light on aspects of ourselves that only an outsider could see. I may not be blessed with monetary wealth, but someone was looking out for me when it came to doling out quality friends. Thank you Jen for being my friend - through thick and thin, close times and distant ones, and everything in between.

I hope we will continue to sit and share like we do now for the rest of our lives! I am blessed to have you in my life.

Big Fat Failure

A while back, I bought a Roku player. It cost about $80 and with this, we would have access to all of the Netflix instant library on our TV instead of having to watch shows on the computer. With our funds pretty low, Trent and I enjoy watching movies or documentaries after the kids go to sleep and we paid the inital $80 and then just $9 per month for Netflix. In short, we love it. No commercials, new stuff being added all the time, play/pause/skip forward functions and access to shows that we don't get on regular TV since we don't have cable.

It may sound funny, but it has changed our lives. We watched Food Inc. and were mortified by what we saw. We couldn't in good conscience continue eating the way we always had. Since then, we have been much more focused on the quality of the food we eat, the balance of nutrition in our meals and cooking more together. I have started a container garden with non-GMO seeds in our backyard and we eat a largely vegetarian diet now.

So, that's the backstory. The way it ties into the title of this post is that tonight we watched a couple episodes from a series called "Obsessed." It chronicles the struggle some people have with anxiety disorders - namely OCD. The first episode showed how a man with severe germaphobia was able to tackle his issues and lead a healthy life. The second episode we watched chronicled the struggle one woman faced with a condition called Trichotillomania. Also referred to as "trich" (pronounced "trick"), it's a disorder where sufferers compulsively pull their hair out.

This hit home for me. You see, as only a very select people know, I also suffer from Trichotillomania. I have probably had it since adolescence, but never really had it impact my life until this past year. There have been many stressors that have caused me a great deal of anxiety and one major manifestation of this stress is the noticeable and dramatic increase in my hair pulling. It was only a few short months ago when I revealed my problem to my husband and he saw the effects first-hand. It's a very tricky illness to treat because many of the typical therapy approaches that one would use for OCD don't work for trich. Because of this, I was highly interested to see what kinds of treatments the TV therapist would employ to help the hair-pulling woman.

At the end of the show, she was not cooperative with the therapist and ended up disregarding his advice. I felt let down! I had watched, sure that this guy would be able to help her and I could learn some cognitive behavioral tools to help myself. But to no avail.

One thing did stand out to me, however, in each of the cases. This was related to the people's fears which caused them the extreme and debilitating anxiety which led to their OCD. Each person was anxious about something - was afraid of something. Fear caused their anxiety. I racked my brain to pinpoint exactly what my biggest fear is. What is the root of all of my stress and anxiety? It's easy to pin the blame on our circumstantial situations but I knew that the situations only added to something that was already there, way down deep inside of me.

And then, as Trent and I were discussing the show, it hit me. My biggest fear is the fear of FAILURE. It always has been my greatest fear. I have not been able to get over being laid off more than a year ago because I see it as a "Big Fat Failure." When people tell me it wasn't my fault and I didn't fail, I don't believe them. I think they are just trying to be nice. I feel that losing our home, gaining weight, not being able to get another full-time job in more than a year, Trent losing his job, etc etc is all representative of me failing. And failing on a grand scale.

I have never been good at failing. I always excelled at school, was a very talented dancer, and more recently I have become a great cook, a loving mom, and I can create beautiful works of art, I can fix a toilet, mix copious amounts of epoxy and more. My problem is, I am so afraid to fail that I become scatter-brained and much less effective than I could be at any one thing I choose to put my mind to.

But for tonight, I have caught a glimpse at what I think is my biggest challenge to overcome and that is my intense fear of failing. I'm not sure how to tackle it, but I will head to bed feeling somewhat better knowing that once you know what the root of any problem, fixing it becomes much easier.

Unexpected Opportunity

Anyone who knows me knows that dance has always been my refuge, my strength, my best way to work out my emotions and stresses. Just before leaving for Idaho this summer, I found this amazing dance studio and danced my heart out during the 1 week New Girl Treat.

I was out of town for 2 months and although I wanted very badly to get a membership and start dancing my bootie off again, I could not justify the monthly expense when Trent and I are both unemployed. I quietly resigned myself to the idea that dance would have to wait. Although I knew it was not in our budget, I was bummed.

Then, last week, I happened to hop on Facebook at the perfect moment. The owner of the studio posted that she needed help with cleaning the studio once a week and there would be free stuff for helpers. I did not know what the "free" stuff entailed, but I promptly replied and sent her a message saying, "YES!!! I would love to help!" She responded right away that the office manager would be in touch with details. I secretly hoped I might be able to take a few free classes a week.

When Hannah contacted me, she informed me that if I cleaned the floors and mirrors in a few of the dance rooms, they would offer me an unlimited membership AND free pole classes!! I was in total shock. For spending 8-10 hrs a month, I get a $90/mo membership free as well as ongoing enrollment in the pole classes which are 90 min classes once a week for six weeks - a value of $150! This was an answer to my unspoken prayer to be able to dance again, and often.

I went tonight to learn about my cleaning duties and of course, since I was there, I took 2 classes before learning about the business end of things. I am sore, excited and was pouring sweat. What a release, what an opportunity, what a joy to be able to do this!

I just wish I knew how to dial my enthusiasm down a few notches so I can sleep . . .

**Disclaimer** Now, before you get freaked out by the pole part, you'll just have to trust me that it's a fun and sassy way to exercise and feel sexy about yourself, not a training ground for strippers. :)

Midnight Musings

Ebb and flow
Life and death
Beginnings and endings
Stop and go

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Pushing back the tide and pulling out my hair;
If I relent, I sink
If my fingers are still, I obsess

I dance in my mind, executing perfect pirouettes
The familiar fantasy foil to an improv performance spinning out of control

Where did this story begin and where does it end?

Swimming out to sea, black clouds are all I see, see, see;
If I let my arms rest, I'm sunk
If I release my fears, I'm swallowed

I, alone, author the Story of My Life; isn't that right?

Reading, praying, hoping, trying, crying, laughing, cleaning, eating;
If I read enough, I will find the Truth
If I pray enough, I will know my Path
If I hope enough, a job will come
If I try enough, I'll have done what could be done
If I cry enough, the sadness will disappear
If I laugh enough, my soul will find cheer
If I clean enough, everything will be under control
If I eat enough, I'll fill the empty hole

Empty and open wide, clean me out from the inside;
Starting fresh and feeling new,
My shell is cracked for all to view.

Ebb and flow
Life and death
Beginnings and endings
Stop and go

Mental Mush

Every night I find myself wanting to write. I want to blog, I want to start writing a children's book, a novel, a journal entry, poetry - anything. And the minute I sit dow to put my words onto paper or type my words on a blank screen, all I get is Mush. I have too much to say, I don't want to always sound like a whining broken record, everything I want to express is cliche. I don't have the energy to collect my thoughts, let alone put two ideas together. So instead of trying to do anything, here are some of the words that are floating around in my head:

tired

restless

sad

emotional

pulling

hungry

optimistic

pessimistic

magical

relaxed

peaceful

spiritual

secret

music

tactile

paper

envelopes

postage