Happy New Year!!!

Happy New year to you and yours! Wishing you a 2015 filled with joy, healing, peace and justice!

Warning: Incoherent free write/journal entry posing as a blog post

My final post for 2014 is a strained one. I suppose the easiest thing is to reflect on my year using the checklist method. The joys and the pains. marathons. travel. new professional collaborations. family achievements and intimate moments. joys. check. global injustices, inequity and unrest. strained and toxic work relationships. time off from teaching disappeared. my love of carbs and disgust with gyms. no publications. pains. check. 

 I struggle with this format, though. Highlighting the joys, which have been plentiful, feels like I’m minimizing the real struggles that I face day to day. feeling my actions toward righting the world are not transformative/impactful enough. insecurity. self doubt. feelings of incompetence. fear of failure. fear of rejection if I share my real shit. Yet, noting my pains makes me feel trivial, whiny, privileged. Not saying anything leaves a gaping hole of silence. So I sit here unsure of what direction to go in. Maybe listing is the best strategy. But I can feel myself also wanting to make sure the good and bads of 2014  are balanced. But life is messy and uneven. there is no balance. I keep trying to impose structure and order on this mess. I attribute my lack of discipline as failure. I struggle with following tasks  that don’t feel good in the moment. I am not sure if that is an inability to delay gratification or if it has become my survival strategy. If it doesn't feel good, i stop. I usually do what feels good as long as it feels good, when it feels good and for however long it feels good. i steer away from pain and struggle, especially the kinds i have cannot see as part of a longer journey towards joy.

I feel so much pressure as the year ends. Such a sense of failure although I have been successful on many fronts…especially in the eyes of others. Yet, there are other others who I have given power over my fate. This has produced a level of anxiety that seems to be consuming me. sucking the joy out of my life. I fight it daily, ordering myself to not let it/them/the game/the matrix consume me, shape my sense of worth. It works momentarily but it is an active and exhausting practice of holding my head up. I quiver at the thought of them judging me. Also of me having to figure out the what next. To be cast out of a play I don’t really feel a part of anyway.

********* blog post is becoming sidetracked*******other thoughts and emotions are surfacing. am i  journaling?

I need a safe space to speak. to share my darkest secrets. To have long  sustained conversation with. I feel like I am living such an inauthentic life. A life that I have crafted. One that others would be proud of. I feel like a hypocrite. A fake. I don’t belong here. How did I get here? Why do I stay? When will I exhale and get free? Who will be hurt by my actions? Yup, I’m coming undone as 2014 winds down. I have a lot to meditate on. 

I hope that being still will bring me relief though I fear it will just put me back together until the next pity party/break down. I seem to live from break down to break down. I need better self care practices in place. Key Ray read me way back in 1996. I hold it together and melt down at the end of each semester. Like clockwork. 

I need to take my 5 good minutes. I need a once a week phone call with my girls. A monthly massage.  A regular journal session to share these thoughts, feelings, haunts, and dreams. A committed exercise routine. I need to establish a healthy relationship with myself. All of this needs to be on the calendar. A mentor of mine charged me with an important task. She suggested that whenI began developing a semester plan, document what professional supports I need in place given the semester I have ahead of me. I am going to craft a plan of general self care and supports that extend beyond my professional reality. I say loudly and quite frequently that I will not let my career be my center yet it continues to be a key source of my stress and anxiety. Impostor syndrome alive and well. black. woman. working class. first generation. spousal hire. you name it. I also need to acknowledge that its demands are not the only sources of my inner turmoil. The things that make my hands tremble the most are buried deep inside, they are the struggles that I cannot yet document. Until I am ready, I will at least find respite in building time for myself for release and regrouping…for my world is a stage and I am performing to keep the peace.  

Depression and anxiety are real. I’m swimming as fast upstream as possible to not let is consume me right now. Karen, I hope you are resting well. Although I did not know you, I feel your pain and joys. I feel connected to you as a black woman. So many of us struggle even as we make others smile. I get you. I feel you. I will wear red lipstick on NYE in your honor. Praying 2015 helps me to break off another piece of this mask so I can get a little more free.