Tuesday's Twists & Turns

 

Yeah, I know. I'm late to the party as usual. Being sick does that to you sometimes. And whether you like it or not there are times when being unreachable, unhooked and disconnected from everything except the most basic survival concepts really don't matter much. Here it is Tuesday, January 14th, the month is halfway gone and I haven't written anything on resolutions. Guess what?? It doesn't matter that I haven't, I don't do resolutions. At. ALL. I do however do some major cleansing of everything and every aspect of my life and throw the excess out with the rest of the trash. 

The Facebook friends list has gone through the first of the year decluttering, the blogroll has been trimmed and the email accounts have had the trivial removed as well. The decorations are down and packed away for another year, the windows have been opened wide letting the freshness wipe away the stale and the entire house has been cleansed and smudged to remove the negative and nasty. The wards have been recharged in the yard (however, I just found out today there is something nasty in the woods adjacent to our property. I need to work on banishing that), and all is at peace in my little corner of the world.

During the first 2 weeks of the new year, I've seen some pretty intense blogs on resolutions or the lack thereof, I've also seen where other bloggers have chosen to bare their soul so to speak. And I'm a bit confused as to why these actions are only considered worthwhile right after the beginning of the new calendar year? If I make a change in my life I want to shout about it no matter when it happens. Whether it be positive or negative (OK, I admit I'm not as vocal with the negative changes), I don't save them up and post about them once a year.

One of the first things that got me was where I've been seeing so many people doing blog makeovers, someone doesn't think their blog is working so it's getting a makeover for the billionth time. Why would you want to change your blog yet again? Look, I'm not talking about changing the design or color scheme. I'm saying some of these people are completely redoing their entire blog, theme, color scheme, name, everything. Why?? If it hasn't worked in the past with the hundred or so different changes why in the name of Hanna do you think it's going to work this time? Maybe it's just time to stop writing, blogging and obsessing about how things aren't working for you?? Yes, I have been guilty of changing the design of the blog as the seasons arrived, but this has been Aoibheal's Lair since day one. And the design did change when I moved to self-hosting, but I cannot for the life of me see what the benefit would be to change up everything each time you stub your toe. How are you going to develop a loyal reader base if you constantly change and move things??

Then there are those on Facebook and in the blogosphere who post about *being true to themselves*. To be true to yourself means to act in accordance with who you are and what you believe. This is all well and good IF you can follow through with it and stop following the crowd and trying to please everyone in your small circle of friends. Yep, I've been guilty of this too. So much so that in my obsession to *be true* I actually lost me. I became someone I didn't recognize and those around me thought I had lost my damn mind. You can only be true to yourself IF you can own up to your mistakes, correct those you can, apologize to those you honestly have wronged, and move on.  Be who you are! Have the courage to accept yourself as you really are, not as as someone else thinks you should be. Do not take action or pretend to be someone else for the sake of gaining acceptance of those around you. 


One more thing and then I'm finished for today. I've been thinking about this for a while and haven't addressed it yet, so today seems like the day for coming clean so to speak. In 2001, I met the most amazing man. He allowed and encouraged me to look deep inside of myself and see who I really was without being judgmental in any way toward the things I discovered and subsequently revealed about me. Our friendship grew, and grew and grew until we couldn't deny or change the way we felt about the other. Both of us ended up divorcing the people we had been married to, which led to more anger and animosity I never want to see again. After a year of being together, living together in the same house one of the ex's decided they were going to pay us back for *what we did to them*. (Insert each ex-left the respective marriage with much more than what they came into it with. They were just sore losers). Because of their vindictiveness, I lost my job and would have gone to jail for a very long time if I hadn't made a *rash* decision to leave Arizona.  Yes, I was that angry and wanted to retaliate myself, but chose to be the bigger person and move on away from the volatile situation.

Here's the point I'm trying to make even if it seems like I have no destination in mind. When you leave a life you had lived for many years and try to cover up the reason you packed up and left, not only are you lying to others, you are lying to yourself. Eventually, those lies are going to come out and you are going to look more foolish than if you had just been honest with everyone. We were honest, I lost my job through no fault of my own, but the cause and effect of the wronged spouses need to make my life miserable. Because I lost my job, we also had to move from the condo we were living in as it was part of my salary package. We were given 72 hours to vacate. We left Arizona for a myriad of reasons, the biggest being I was honestly tired of all the bullshit from former spouses who BTW had moved on and were in relationships with others by this time. And I was tired of being stifled,  living a lie and not being true to myself.

We didn't skulk around like a thief in the night, we didn't wait to tell people we were moving until after the act had been accomplished, and we didn't make excuses. However, there were and still are those who think we fled like criminals. That's OK. Our records are clean, we have no pending criminal charges, no evictions, and no wants or warrants. We left with a clear conscious and have never looked back. We have been true to ourselves, lived the life we wanted, made the choices that were right for us and have no regrets for the decisions we've made. And it's been 12 years, so if there was something pending, I think they would have caught up to us by now, LOL!

There is a parable here ... do you see it?