Adventure / Add Venture

I am changing my ordinary life, exchanging it for more satisfaction on different levels. In the parlance of the day, I am shifting timelines.

I am deciding this ordinary life isn’t enough; it must become extraordinary. I’m bored. I have a boss who says “think positive” but is full of phrases like, “You made a mistake here (pointing an index finger at something I did & then at my nose) Why did you do that?”

Sadly she is right. Why indeed? It’s because I have a kind of innate, well, contempt is too strong word but if you can lever two degrees off it — disrespect? And why that? Because my inner child (think your own description here, but I was a weird kid from inception) is on a pout. As soon as I see the raised finger – traumatized remains of the nuns, the priests, the neighbors, Mom & so many more that I am… I blend in my own catholic guilt, feeling so inadequate that I did not get it right. A mistake is bad enough but being made to examine the reasons I made it can be intolerable in the moment.

Little Carol yearns for that smile that says, “you did this right” at the same time she fiercely resents it because she no longer trusts it. (Not that the boss is going to go there anytime soon anyway. Praise is not in her vocabulary, thank you running a close second to invisible.)

Where am I left? Why am I bereft? I am so much older, wiser than that inner child. But there’s this scriptural advice of achieving the mindset of a child to pass into the kingdom – a word which a child loves best. Until I do ‘perfect’, it isn’t done. This must happen a lot more.

I can do better than I do. It’s an unconscious choice somehow, to choose the road that lands me in emo-pain. What sympathy/empathy exists for me I don’t lay a claim to anyway. I do what I do & it’s obvious. I don’t expect commentary. I can’t handle criticism either tho. Critical commentary curdles my brain.

Having shared all this, I move on. It seems daily I shed one thing or another, wittingly or no.

I have made a bold decision this morning. I’m reading a book about a woman warrior whose specialty is ridding the world of gods, traveling with a young girl who hosts a god. Of course they are forced into unhappy alliance: this works out the best plot. So goes my life.

I’m all the characters at once. I often speak of carrying a sword (a damned nuisance). I know I carry my own gods inside & out, privy to strange divinity & ordinary whims; I am a god of my own nature which is what it is to be human. I am the noble’s child, forced to commonality by circumstance & intrigue.

I have had my bites of adventure. I’ve driven into the dawn on journeys spanning the tamed remains of wilderness. I’ve made strangers laugh. I’ve experienced & practice kindness. None of this is over & some of it must be re-adapted to current circumstances. Well, all of it.

I have decided to be a swashbuckler. I have decided to dive into every day as though I make the biggest difference possible. I will do my job as well as I can do it & stop letting details roll off the table. Even if it fans this tinny spark (sic) of separation I seem to cultivate when wanting the most closeness. (I am too short to hug.) I find other ways. I advance my individuality with a lick of the surly which (must?) be eliminated. I no longer have the energy to sustain accusation. I’ll take off into every day like I’m boarding the ship for a continent of legend. I will learn to look at even more than I see by widening horizons of perception & paying more attention. My experience carries me only so far – after which it becomes effort.

I appreciate the clarity. I will to refine my focus. Defusing means decelerating, going for the universe in every moment, treating every encounter as it it’s my favorite one ever.

May the good Lord mercy me, I walk on by the grace of God.