“Everyday is Saturday for us!”
It’s the truth. Nearly everyone I’ve interviewed on Hunts Point says that everyday feels like a Saturday. How wonderful would that be? (Personally, I think it depends on how you usually spend your Saturdays…but we get the point.)
I found out yesterday that I didn’t get the job at Boeing. Bummer. But it’s ‘aight. I figure that just means that God has something better stacked up for me in the future. Until then, it’s book time.
On a brighter note, I have furniture! Woo hoo! My apartment is starting to look like a home. Awww. But seriously, my roommate and I picked up some really super nice black leather furniture for $600 last night. A couch, loveseat and recliner from craigslist. How sweet is that! (Thank the Lord for craigslist.) And they were all in really nice condition. It took a lot of prayer and muscle to get it all home and moved in, but we made it! (My boyfriend is pretty sweet like that…the prayer and muscle part.) 😉
INVITATION: Ladies…my roommate and I are having a candle party at our place Wed at 7pm. Let me know ASAP if you’d like to join us! It’ll be fun!
“Here I am, once again…I pour out my heart for I know that you hear every…cry, you are listening. No matter what state my heart is in…you are faithful, to answer…”
What a good song. I haven’t heard it in a long time, but it’s always been one of my favorites and it comes to mind when I think about the things floating in my head right now.
Being a writer I have this insane impulse to always want to record crucial moments in my life with the perfect words. There are several problems that come with that impulse. Number one, who am I to say what moments in life are crucial? Isn’t the fact that we were miraculously created by a great and mighty God reason enough to believe that every moment of life is important and worth remembering? Okay, so maybe that’s an overstatement, but you understand where I’m going with it. Number two, there is one word in that sentence that is, and has always been, the bane of my existence. If you know me you probably already know which word it is. PERFECT. It’s amazing how one can strive endlessly for something so completely unattainable.
It’s important to note also that since early October until now, I had hardly written anything in my personal journals (yes, journal’s’ – plural. I have two going at any given time). Although I’d still been reading my Bible and praying feverishly like an innocent woman on death row, the fact that I hadn’t been journaling is a major red flag. Something is not right.
He told me some things he’s noticed that have been crippling my progress on the book and stressing me out to the point where it’s painful to watch. I have problems, we all do, but here’s a run down of mine.
I question EVERYTHING, but most importantly myself. And I have this paralyzing fear of doing things wrong, or, more accurately, not doing them perfectly. I suppose you could consider this problem to be a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I think my case goes deeper than that. My issues extend to a fear of being inconsiderate. I’m afraid I’m not thinking of every possible angle. I have this voice floating in my head the entire time saying, “Well, you should have thought of that.” Or “You never think of these things!” after listing off dates, timelines, people, details, etc, that I had overlooked. I have this deep-seeded conviction that if I’m going to do something, I need to do it right (and to the best of my ability) the first time. And, in the process, I need to be ultra-considerate of whomever and whatever is going on around me…at all times. I’d never thought of my hyper-questioning tendencies to be a bad thing and I’d never considered it unhealthy to always put others before myself. But what Kyle pointed out to me that night was that I am so focused on these things that I overlook myself. When he said that I thought about the safety measures on airplanes, “If you are flying with a child or other person who may need your assistance; put your own mask on first before assisting them.” I always wondered why the policy was set like that. Why not help your child with his/her oxygen mask first? Then I realized that it’s because you won’t be much help to them if you are incapacitated. And if you don’t survive, who will take care of them later? The point is, I’m learning how to see the line that determines when I need to stop and take care of myself, because I need to maintain my capability to help others. Whew, there it is. I’ll admit right now that I do have a problem with thinking of myself. I fear being selfish or self-centered to the point where it’s really frustrating to friends and family. I can’t tell you how much of a task it is to be writing about myself right now.
So, that’s the skinny of it. I know I didn’t cover everything and I understand I may not have written my confession as clearly as I could have…but…I need to eat. So there you have it…my first step towards taking care of myself. You can all sit in a dazed state of confusion; perhaps wondering what I really meant with that airplane safety analogy. Tough! I’m going to eat. Yay!
P.S. But seriously, if anything needs clarification just let me know. I crave understanding. 🙂
I don’t think the question about whether you are too selfish or not is relevant. All human beings are completely self-serving. If they are not, then they are just being self-destructive in the worst way. Your dilemma lies in finding the correct balance between helping yourself directly and helping yourself indirectly (by helping others). If you accept that you are always self-serving in one form or another, then your fear of possibly being too selfish becomes irrational and can be easily overcome.
Getting past your fear would in turn allow you to see the problem for what it really is: a resource and order of operations optimization problem. You have a finite amount of resources (time, money, whatever) and an optimal order and amount by which to apply these to yourself and to others to achieve the greatest amount of good.
The illustration of the oxygen masks on airplanes is a perfect example of why both a good distribution of resources (oxygen) in the proper order (parent then child) brings about the best amount of good for everyone involved. At first it seems selfish and wrong but upon thinking about it, doesn’t it seem silly to go any other way?
In short, there is no reason to worry about being too selfish because you already are and always have been. Just worry about the problems at hand and the best way to solve them. In the end, that’s all you can really do.
Wow. Everyone needs somebody that can tell them the things that they either don’t know or won’t admit. And luckily enough, God has a tendency to bring these people around and put them into good positions to speak if we’re willing to hear. You came, you saw, you moved furniture, you heard what you needed to hear, next is accepting and moving on.
We are all the protagonists of our own stories, so sometimes it’s hard to step back and see just what Jungian archtype we fit in someone else’s story, but if you can, that’s actually kinda fun, too. And just so you know, the tragic flaw of focusing too much on others? It could be a lot worse. Cocaine addiction, for instance.
I would be willing to bet that Mother Theresa hurt someone’s feelings. Probably someone that didn’t want to hear what they needed to hear. And that never ever happened to Christ in the Gospels, he never hurt anybody’s feelings. Hmmmmn.
Here’s the thing: the most basic need for the book is first for the town, and then for the people. And since it’s for all of the people, you can’t just focus on one. So whenever you’re analyzing one profile, don’t worry overmuch about what they want said about themselves as much as what the other folks would want to read about them. Or maybe you’ve already got that taken care of; I don’t know. The point is, you can make that book great, and you will.
Tell Kyle that I forgive him for not being manly and butch enough to muscle all of you stuff in and get you two to Movie Night on time. [malicious grin] Apparently, your time was needed for something else more, understandable. You did, however, miss out on The Man Who Knew Too Little, and Groundhogs Day. Bill Murray Night. TMWKTL is a great movie, funny, cute in a way that I can say and still feel masculine, and all around greatly entertaining. I have never met someone that hasn’t loved it. So tsk, tsk, to you two. Not. Anyway, next time is in two weeks, with a new actor. I think we’ll try to mimic last time and have several options for people to vote on, we just won’t do as many options as alphabet night. There’s democracy, and then there’s anarchy. I don’t know how those girls do it.
Also: I work twelve hours each Saturday. If each day was Saturday… I would give myself about a week and a half before my first psychotic break, in which much violence would probably ensue towards the first person that gets annoyed for having to sit in the back after arriving late.
Whenever you read this, I hope you just enjoyed a good meal.