March – 2014 – Styled Inside Out

This has been an albatross for me most of my life. As much as on the surface I seem to be very organized and together inside I am constantly fighting the battle of the inner voice saying, “Did you do it? Did you do it? When are you going to do it?”

In my professional life there are deadlines. Something HAS to be done by a certain time and if it isn’t I won’t have a job. Hundreds of people make up the fabric of getting a project shot whether it be film, TV, commercial or any other creative project. You are given a date and by God you better meet that deadline or else.

But life has a way of not really caring about when something is done or if it gets finished at all. The only person who suffers is you and you can be very hard on yourself. I am much harder on myself than any production. In the back of my mind I know that there are people expecting me to deliver and the task is very clear. But what direction I choose in my personal life is another story.

My son is going through a time right now where he thought he knew what he wanted, went to school for it, got a degree and was ready to take on the music world. I knew when he chose his profession it was going to be a hard road. Especially choosing being a jazz musician. But no matter how much you can express what you think they have to find their own way and discover for them what will work and what won’t. Have to say it’s hard to watch sometimes because you know how hard it was for you when you were their age. I keep telling myself the best gift I can give him is his independence.

But here I am going off on a tangent and procrastinating with what is really the root of why I do procrastinate. Someone once told me that if you don’t make a decision, you can’t be blamed. And God knows I love to blame myself for not having the insight as to what is my next step. Because if I take that step and it’s the wrong step (which I have done more times than I would like to admit) than the outcome may be too much to accept. When I was younger I had the time to fix my screw-ups but as I get older, time is going by very quickly and I feel like I am always trying to beat the clock. I try to look ahead for the next round in life and I’m not quite sure I have the chops for it.

I know whatever I choose I will survive but do I just want to survive or really live? I’m trying to figure out what it is I am willing to commit to for the next stage because when my time comes for it all to be over I don’t want any regrets.

I vowed I would write a blog every week and that it would be published on Thursday. That would force me to have a schedule and take the time to sit down and write. Once I start writing it flows. It’s the sitting down that I have a hard time with each week. I am on an intensive project right now which I have chosen to do so I feel the responsibility to give it my all. But in doing so it has also given me permission to procrastinate in my personal life. It frustrates me because the procrastination has not allowed me to meet that deadline. But when I do get that brief time to catch my breath something something says to me, “Enough.” And I finally sit down and write.

The most profound thing happens when I do write. My aha moments come rushing in and I don’t procrastinate on having those thoughts. And so I know that with all the energy I put into my professional life I will also continue to put into my writing every week. It will reassure me that even for a brief moment I will not be procrastinating in what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I am an information junkie. Much to my detriment I am a true information junkie. I love all kinds of facts and surveys and tidbits about pretty much everything. I could spend hours on the computer, reading magazines and looking at books scouring for information that I didn’t know before. Probably why I could be a student at a university everyday for the rest of my life.

I taught university for seven years before I became a full time makeup artist and I would have stayed in it had it not been for the salary that was paid to professors at the time I was teaching. I know had I stuck it out I would have increased my earnings but I was young and restless and jumped at the opportunity to work with a high profile client. In hindsight I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do but it was the right thing to do for me at the time.

I always feel alive and young when walking on a campus. I took a french course at the local university a few years back and found myself sitting in the library reading, not necessarily french, but just whatever caught my eye. I am surrounded now by constant sound stimulation so whenever I can I welcome the quiet of a library or for that matter, anywhere.

Now for someone with ADD tendencies wanting to constantly cloud my head with countless reams of information can get overwhelming. They say that as you get older it’s good to challenge your memory so as to exercise that muscle in your brain that has a tendency to go to sleep at the most inopportune time. So, of course, I have to push that theory as much as possible. And so it leads to sometimes too much information.

In digging deeper into why I have this fascination for having all of this swirling in my head I recently had an aha moment. (Yet more information!) But I think it may have something to do with the fact that if I fill my head with a lot of facts about stuff I won’t have to focus on the information that’s not so easy to focus on. That is, where I am in my life and what I need to face to make my life fuller and richer. All of the facts I have stored in my head have gotten me through parties where I can talk about a lot of things and that helps me to try to fit in when I don’t feel like I’m worthy of being there. The witty, idle chit chat (and a nice glass of wine) helps to put me at ease and not feel so uncomfortable.

I also find myself having a harder time grasping all this information quicker and easier then when I was younger. And now when I can’t effortlessly rattle off a date or a name I am reminded that I am getting older. Doesn’t wisdom come with age? Doesn’t all these years of learning all of this information ease the inevitable? And then I realize the information I need to seek is the way to accept, embrace and enjoy. Important information. Not from a book or a computer or a library but from a good life.

Being overwhelmed is different than being exhausted or anxious. Overwhelmed is being…well, overwhelmed. It’s when you feel like you can’t quite get a handle on what you are going to do next. It’s when the lists are constant and yet there always seems to be one more thing to do before a certain date. It’s when even finding your keys in your purse can send you over the edge.

I’ve been trying to keep from being overwhelmed in every aspect of my life. I’m learning to say no to things when I always use to say yes for fear I wouldn’t be liked if I didn’t do what was asked of me. I have recently been saying no more often and the reaction is a bit jarring. I am realizing that when I take people out of their comfort zone of what they expect of me in my behavior they are not very happy. In fact they become defensive. They feel like I am being unreasonable. I am not acting in the way they are accustomed. It’s not business as usual.

The hardest thing of being overwhelmed is that I don’t have the strength to put up the armor and pretend everything is all right. I am making decisions on my own without asking permission and that’s the first time in forever that I have let that happen. On one hand it feels like I’m gaining more ground in my personal freedom but in another way I feel like I’m drowning. I so want to be open and vulnerable. I don’t want to feel so out of control that anger seeps in out of fear. I am not strong enough to keep my guard up to say and behave in a way to keep the peace. Peace for who?

Why do we allow ourselves to get in these situations? What is it about the world today that has robbed us of our freedom to choose how we live our lives? Yes, we do have choices and nine times out of ten they are not the choices we are making. But how do we get out of the rat race we have created? And how did we let ourselves get into it so deep in the first place? I don’t know sometimes. I’m too overwhelmed to find an answer!

And then the drama of it all makes me shake my head and realize that at least I am trying to be aware of the fact that I am drowning! That my only refuge is to quiet my mind, take a deep breath and slowly try to prioritize what I really need in oppose to want I think I need. And that’s when I really have to go deep and ask myself the overwhelming questions of life…Who am I? What do I want?

And the overwhelming answer is happiness and joy in me. In me. If I take responsibility of just that right now then maybe all of it won’t be so overwhelming.

Month: March 2014

Procrastination

Information

Overwhelmed