Fear is Frustrating



Olivia Pietari-Posti

Eleanor Roosevelt told us to "Do one thing everyday that scares you."  But really, Eleanor? Everyday?
I'm stuck.  My creativity died about three years ago and honestly, I miss it.  It's very strange to be without it.  I've been waiting patiently for it to reappear but waiting is not working.  I am in need of a reincarnation. Should I have a seance?  Hmm, that might be fun.  A crystal ball, gypsy dresses and candlelight?  Maybe I will, after all, Halloween is this month.  Anyway, I digress.  I need to resussitate my creativity and being patient and gentle with myself isn't going to get the job done.  These are the things I've done so far, but I think its time to step up my game!

Blogging is the most creative thing I have done in the last few years.  When my youngest child started high school in August, I committed to writing on this blog five days a week.  The technical part of it drives me crazy!  It's getting easier, but only by showing up everyday and figuring it out.

I took the Blogging Your Way class, from Holly Becker of Decor8, to help me take my blog a little more seriously.  It is an amazing class!  It is incredibly thorough and jam-packed with good information.  There is a lot of work and the class pretty much consumed me for the entire month.  It felt more like therapy than a class.  However, what I learned was that if you don't know your voice as a blogger, your blog is not going to know it's voice either.  And yes, I feel like this blog is a little all over the place, just like I am right now; fashion, interiors, self-help, travel!  So now I have all the tools I need to make my blog look great when I have something to say.  I will, however, continue to blog my random thoughts until the more cohesive and directed ones are found.  Finding my voice is my intention.


I am currently taking Susannah Conway's Unraveling, Ways of Seeing Yourself class.  This class includes photo assignments that uncover where you are in the world, and who, and how and what is on the journey with you.  This is the third week of class and I am loving the photo assignments, but there are writing assignments too.  And for some reason, I keep avoiding these.  I finally did Week 2's writing last night, but I need to go back and do Week 1 today.  I am not getting to that place where I want to be though.  Susannah tells me "we have no writing assignment this week and not to stress because that is not what the class is about."  I am enjoying the photo assignments.  It's interesting to view my world with more intention, but  I am very impatient right now and super indecisive.


I have also signed up for 30 days of Yoga with Marianne Elliott.  My thinking is that if I get moving I can maybe unlock some stuff.  But the 30 days started last week and the first assignment was to choose my intention and I got stuck.  I don't know my intention and that is the whole reason I took the course! So this morning, I went ahead and sent her an email to help me figure it out.  But I feel kind of lame asking for help, even though I know it is the right thing to do.  My intention is to find my intention.

I am also doing a lot of reading of books and blogs.  Yesterday, on X blog, I watched a video about how to get whatever you want.  It was very well done and made perfect sense.  I believe everything she said would actually work.  The secret in the video was that the decision is everything.  Watch it yourself though, because there really is some very good information in what she says.  She talks about how once you decide to do something the universe, or the forces that be, whatever you want to call it, works with you to get it.  Once you decide you want something, opportunities start magically opening up for you.  I've read this often, heard Oprah say it, and actually experienced it myself.  I do believe that when you decide what you want and say it out loud it happens.  My problem is that I can't decide what I want! I'm reading Anne Lammott's Bird by Bird.  It's a book about how to write.  I like that from the very beginning she says there is no real secret and not much she can teach, you just have to do it. Writing a novel is not something I want to do.  I write for discovery and clarity.  So my answer is not found in this book, but I have a bit of inspiration.  Word by word, one clue at a time, I move closer to whatever it is I'm looking for.

And is it just me?  Or does Oprah always address exactly the issue your going through at exactly the right time?  It almost never fails, if I'm in an uncomfortable place in my life, I look at the newsstand and there she is asking me the questions I've been asking myself!  This month she wants to know "What's Your Calling?", and well...I don't know, Oprah!  Help me figure it out!  And she does, a little.  There's an article inside by Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray Love fabulous-ness.  She tells me that "If you have lost your life's true passion, don't sweat it.  Back off for a while.  But don't go idle.  Just try something different."  I think that's a piece of it.  I haven't been sweating it, but I did go idle.  And the idleness is now starting to make me sweat.  Okay, so I need to do something different.  But isn't that what I'm doing with the blogging and the unraveling and the yoga?

I've been married almost 25 years and therapy has kept us together more than once.  At one point, my husband was having trouble expressing his feelings and responding to mine. The therapist asked him how he felt about what I had just said and my husband's response was "I think she doesn't need to feel that way."  She ended up giving him a piece of paper with feeling words on it to help him out. It took him a while to get the hang of it, but he eventually mastered it!  And I feel loved, and grateful and very happy in my marriage.  Perhaps that's what I've been doing.  I think I may have been thinking too much and not paying attention to what I am feeling.  I feel afraid of living anymore of my life without passion and I feel frustrated that this process is so difficult. I feel support from my family and friends, but I know this is a journey that I take by myself.

I think I need to do something different if I'm going to feel different. I wish I could go to Italy, India and Indonesia for the next year to figure it out, just like Elizabeth Gilbert, but then that would be living her story, not mine, so that probably wouldn't work either.  I will follow her advice though, and back off a little.  I am deciding that I will find my calling, bird by bird, one day at a time, whatever it takes!

Okay, Eleanor!  I will do something that scares me. If I can decide what that thing is.