How to NOT Wait by the Phone

We've all played the waiting game at one time or another, staring at a land line or cell phone willing it to ring or vibrate. Be it for the doctor calling with test results, the verdict on the job you interviewed for or the fulfillment of the "I'll call you" promise, it's downright uncomfortable.

I've been in each of these scenarios, but the most frequently occurring for me is waiting to see what a guy meant when he said he'd be in touch.

I have come to conclude (without criticism), that often a guy will say "I'll call you"  when he really means "please get out of my car, now." This seems to be the simplest way to get me to go away. I can't say that I fault the men-folk who have promised a call in the past and not honored it. I wonder if they thought I would burst into tears or refused to get out if they had simply said the truth, which is: "Yeah, let's never do this again. Ever." All this translates to is that I never know what will happen after stepping out of the car.

Often I catch myself creating elaborate stories to explain the silence. I try them on one after another like I'm shoe shopping.
Maybe he was caught in a hold up at the bank and is the only hostage still inside.
Perhaps there was a family emergency and he is fine, but grandma? Well...
He's somehow dramatically injured and whispers to a friend that they need to make a call to a girl, but they don't understand his gibberish.
After trying out a few of these scenarios, I know I have gone a bit batty. Perhaps it's a bit romantic to kill off a potential leading man or to put him in harms way, but also it's really morose and twisted.  Essentially this line of thought says, "I like you enough to fantasize your death as a plausible reason for you not contacting me; this collateral damage is superior to thinking you were lying."
Not good.

What I do know is the waiting game is full of wasted time, emotional energy and fantastical deadly stories, and I'd rather just re-channel all of it.

Here's what I've come up to do instead of waiting for technology to beckon me to converse... or not.
You should try some.

1.) Do something you typically put off.

For me that means either painting my nails and or shaving my legs.
How do girls do these things consistently?
Both take way too much time. And wet nails are essentially a prison sentence. I can't not use my hands, so it's always a mess.

2.) Go on a walk and find things.

While on a long ramble, I found this rock. It told me to turn it over,

and I was in a listening mood, so I did,

and I gave it some relief.


3.) Begin a series of hilarious pranks.
This is Yolanda the pregnant (and formally naked) paper mache yogi. I discovered her after she'd been kicked out of her home. Perhaps she was banished for being with child. Since the time I found her, she's been outfitted and passed along from friend to friend.

 

This week she baked cookies for a friend and delivered them in person.

I plan to write Yolanda a genesis story sometime in the near future.


4.) Write a blog post about not waiting by the phone. 

See what I did here? Yeah? Enough said.



5.) Put your phone somewhere where you can't see it and dance.

Really dance. And shoot, sing too. No one will see or hear and you'll feel better because that's how we were wired.

Be who you are, singing and dancing on the earth. When you do that, a phone, ringing or silent is of little importance.

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.” 

― Rumi

A Brave and Beautiful "No"

I tell myself I live frugally.  At times meagerly.  Truthfully, my income is less than many of my peers but I con myself into thinking, often thinking, I am deserving of more.
And in this entitled state I buy what I need or want.  Granted, I buy the cheaper version of whatever it is, be it a generic, on clearance, previously owned, etc.  Never-the-less I consume and create a large cache.

I've become aware of this trend.  It's a stealthy mindset, being deserving, craving more.   I spot it in my heart on occasion, seeing it like spotting something in my preferential vision.

But I have a trick to spotting it full on, to freeze, and to examine it empirically.

How?
I have started strategically, in the bathroom, where so  many of my days wind up and down.

Here, in the bathroom, I take stock of things.  Not in a compulsive sort of way, but as a way to push back on my voice when it says, "I need," because this voice can be true, and it can be false.

"I need face wash," it might say.

"Oh really?  Let's go see."

And this is what I found.  (Three other bottles didn't make it into the frame).

Clearly my "need" vanished facing this.

"I need nail polish" it might say.

"Do you need that?  Let's take a look."

And then I look at my inventory of goods.
"Nope.  You  have 20 bottles of nail polish.  You don't need more."

This line of inquiry and resistance is productive and real.
It also gets to the very real question of "why."  Why do I say I need when I clearly don't?
What is consuming and commercialism hiding?

More often than not, my need masks a desire to change without working; instead I varnish the surface and neglect the core of who I am, which is ultimately cowardice.

And bit by bit I know what I have and don't and enact voluntary embargoes with myself.  Like no buying new face wash for 30 days.  I'm 1.5 months into this one and still quite well stocked.

So I spy on myself, catch the thoughts with sidelong glances, test my motives, and finally, say a brave and beautiful no.
Saying no can nourish.

“Most of the time nowadays we human beings are referred to as consumers. What does the consumer think? What does the consumer want? How ugly. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes. I want us to be nourishers.” ~Madeline L'Engle

Last Day of School (with kids)

It is here.  Delayed  a week by Snowpocalypse, the last day of school with students is here.
Not to be confused with the last day of the school year, which is on Monday, the last day of school with students is the sad one.

Every year, no matter what day it falls on, after the day, I feel a wide space open up.
I think this is typically called free time, but it is more than that.  Because I am in a helping profession, it is not just freedom from busyness, but is also a freeing of emotions.
And that can feel sad.

So I wrote a list.
I brainstormed things I am looking forward to doing after today.

I hung it in the living room so when I wander there aimlessly (this happens when acclimating to summer break) I see exactly what I am anticipating doing. 

This is my incomplete list for June, July and 12 days of August.
What are you looking forward to?

Adding Beauty

I woke up feeling brittle today.
Sad is a better easily defined feeling word, but brittle, able to break easily says it better.

I wandered around my apartment, read, moved one strange thing: a single bead, a paperclip, a glove, a power drill, from one unlikely spot to another.

And then I heard my good friend's voice in my head.  It's what she says to me after I've been dumped.  Yes, she's developed a line for that.

How will you put beauty into the world today?

Indeed.  How?
I wandered around more and out onto my back porch and spied my wall.
It's been heavily pooped on lately, because some black birds have nested and are in a family way there.

Sadness. Determining to end, halt, delete, or bypass it typically doesn't work.  It leaves a void.  And sadness is a kind of void, so the antidote isn't in cessation.

What seems to have a lasting impact is the manner I address sadness.
Shifting my thoughts toward beauty means then that I can add and contribute.
It assumes I am worthy and capable.
It says, you can do this.

But how?
The poop gave me an idea of what to do.


It also reminded me Madeline L'Engle's book A Two Part Invention.  In it she writes:

I come across four lines of Yeats and copy them down:
But love has pitched her mansion in 
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not be rent.

The place of excrement...How do we walk through excrement and keep clean in the heart?  How do we become whole by being rent?

I had a thought on how, found my flower pot sidewalk chalk, and set to work.

A flower pot of sidewalk chalk?  Yes.
Again, I have unlikely things in unlikely spots all over my apartment.

I set to work and clearly I am not able to do Mary Poppin's worthy sidewalk art, but the exercise broke into some of my thoughts, which was the point.

Here is my wall of doodles.  My chalk is at the ready and is now stationed outside for the next time.


Now, dear readers,
How will you put beauty into the world today?"

How do you "keep clean in the heart?"