Fibro

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I Close My Eyes…

I notice I close my eyes a lot these days…

When I am in physical pain.

I close my eyes.

When I am hurt emotionally.

I close my eyes.

When I am mad.

I close my eyes.

When I am sad.

I close my eyes.

When I am frustrated.

I close my eyes.

When I am tired… exhausted.

I close my eyes.

When I need to think.

I close my eyes.

When my heart is feeling scratched and torn.

I close my eyes.

When I feel disrespected and I am about to lose my mind.

I close my eyes.

When I am talking and I’m not being heard.

I close my eyes.

When I need to take a mental break.

I close my eyes.

I find myself thinking what it must feel like to be blind…. memorizing my surroundings and taking mental note of what I want to remember. Visualizing in my mind the environment I want to keep in my memory if I am not able to see.

What is this about? I have no idea. I have just noticed that more and more in the last six months, it is a physical response that I have started to use. It was not something intentional, but also not something I decided I didn’t like. I like it. I like that it makes me stop and take a moment to close the world out and take a break. It tells me… “don’t lose control…. just take a moment and get it together.” This life or any life is not easy. God did not put us on earth for “easy”, we are all here for different reasons. If we accept that and stop fighting it, then life becomes easi-“er”.

I believe I know why I am here. I am put in situations and I help out where I am needed. In the end I am definitely rewarded. God is good to me. As long as I look at the big picture and don’t just think about “ME”, I do well. This life is not about me.

It’s interesting, I got up this morning, to write about something completely different. God certainly does work in mysterious ways.

I hope you enjoyed this post, please leave your comments.

Stay cool and have a happy Easter!

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Turn Up the Music!

I can remember when I was a teenager blasting music as loud as I could to tune the world out. It worked then and it works now. If I turn the music up to just the right decibel I swear it makes everything in the world seem juuussstttt fine. I remember waiting until my parents would leave the house and turning the stereo up REALLY loud, closing my eyes and just laying on the floor or writing in my journal or chillaxin’…

These days I have to remember, I’m the parent now. I’m the one who’s supposed to be saying “TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN!!!”. Sometimes, like right now, I want to turn the music up so loud the roads shake and the cars jump up and down. I want this damn pain to go away. I am so very tired. I am so frustrated. This pain makes everything so much harder. I hate that people feel bad for me. I never know what to say when my friends ask how I’m doing… I mean, I know I’m not doing fine, but I don’t want to sound like Wendy Whiner so I say “I’m alright”.  Sometimes I just want to say “I feel like shit, I feel like I just got a ‘beat in’ initiation into a gang… the fibro gang. What a fucked up gang that would be. I feel like I’m black and blue all over. I feel like my bones are broken. You can’t see any of this on the outside. I can feel it though. This fibro shit is crazy. I gotta tell you… you gotta have faith in your God to get through this shit. Excuse my language. I’m a little out of control tonight. Just feel the need to vent a little.

It’s difficult to keep all the things in life balanced and working. Life. Marriage. Work. Family. Personal. Health. Throw these things up in the air… which one do you catch first and which ones get dropped? I tell you, I roll out of bed in the morning and start working and I probably work a good 10-12 hours a day these days. I am actually pretty darn focused. Would I actually “catch” work though or would it fall slowly to the floor… interesting question. Scary proposition. Is it possible to catch all of them? It is impossible to multi-task, so something has to give. One can only focus on one thing at a time. Given there’s only 24 hours in a day (now you understand why most of my posts go out after midnight!) if 10-12 are spent working, 5-6 are sleeping, there’s roughly 6 hours left to focus on everything else. Hmmmmmmm. I better take a look at my Maintenance Plan I came up with from my Level II Pain class. I definitely have a problem of “pacing” myself. I can’t seem to work just a “little” bit.

I think I better turn up the music and think about this for a while…

Thank you so much for reading and please leave me a note. I love to hear from you!

Stay cool!

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Nothing like a little ADHD to go with your morning coffee!

I don’t have enough change in my life so once again I decided to change the theme of my blog. There aren’t a whole lot of WordPress themes to choose from, which is probably a good thing for me since I like to change these types of things,  I am still obsessing about the look/feel of this blog. I am crazy woman. I am the person that decides to move the furniture… RIGHT NOW. I am the person who decides that I want to be organized and need a new planner… RIGHT NOW. I need to get organized, therefore, I need to figure out a new file system, which requires new files, which requires a trip to the store…  I need to find a way to track my actions, so I need a new binder or a new planner or a new system or a new spiral notebook or a new ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! WAKE ME UP OUT OF THIS CRAZY ASS NIGHTMARE!!!!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!!! Yes indeedy, I have ADHD… I have told you this before. Nothing like a little ADHD to go with your morning coffee. Or how about a little ADHD to go with your morning review of actions… it goes a little something like this:

Me…. reading email, drinking coffee… getting my brain engaged and ready for the day.

My ADHD: “hmmmm so much to do, how are you going to figure out how to prioritize all this stuff… I mean where do you even start?  You should start by prioritizing! You should figure out where to start… You can’t start until you prioritize. You have to prioritize before you start!”

Me: “Don’t do it.”

My ADHD:  “What do you mean don’t do it! You KNOW if you prioritize you’ll be organized.”

Me: “Don’t do it. IT’s A TRAP!”

My ADHD: “Puh-lease. A trap? I wouldn’t do that to you. I am here to help. WE are a TEAM. You need to prioritize. How are you going to prioritize?”

Me:  “Shit how am I going to prioritize? I gotta figure out how I’m going to prioritize! I gotta get a system.”

My ADHD: (whispers) “WINNER!”

Me an hour later…  “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! I did it again!!!! Oh man I gotta stop getting distracted and focus.”

I have a system for capturing my actions. I just have to keep using it and getting off-track and letting myself get  distracted. It’s just another way of bringing me down and creating pain.

Tonight changing the theme on my blog was a nice distraction after a very long and painful day. My work has been very challenging since transitioning to my new job. It’s difficult to work the long hours and manage the pain.  So after a long day, the time I took to look at the themes and find and edit one of my photos for the header and put a new picture up of Tani… well, it was worth it.

This is the thing… if I can do one pleasurable activity a day, my depression should stay manageable. That’s the hope anyway. I think it’s working for the most part. I have learned this in my pain class. If I can manage the depression, it’s just one more way of helping to manage my pain. Once again, there’s always a connection.

I can manage through the pain. For me, this is my life. In other words, if I accept this is my life, then I will continue to LIVE. I won’t let the pain take me away from living. If I wait until I feel good and there’s no pain to do anything… I may never be able to leave my house! It’s easier said than done… but we all work on this every day, right?

So this post is kind of all over the place, but sometimes it’s just like that! I can’t help how my brain works. I mean you just get to read this… I’m livin’ it 24/7! :) I started writing and I honestly thought I was going to write about something completely different and ended up, well… here.

I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading! I hope you leave a comment, I really appreciate hearing from you!

Stay super cool!

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You are responsible for your happiness and your health

I had a breakthrough today… I believe that’s what it’s called. It’s personal so I won’t share it with all of you, but I felt I needed to just put it out there. Why say it at all? It was a big day for me, I wanted to mark the day as a historic moment in time. March 2nd, 2010. Done.

This life is a trip. No matter what happens good or bad, the sun still comes up in the morning and goes down at night… and let’s be honest NOONE wants that to change, right? Drama happens in everyone’s “world”, but do you ever stop and look around? Do you ever really stop and just take a good look around? I, personally, can’t take my life too seriously. I would be a real basket case if I did. I used to take my life too seriously and trust me… ALL I THOUGHT ABOUT WAS TRAGEDY.  (I bet you wish you were my friend in those days!) I was Ms. Negative about everything. I try really hard to think positive about things. I may not get it right all the time, but I do try.

Look around these days… earthquake in Haiti, earthquake in Chile, homeless people everywhere you look, you must know countless people looking for jobs, friends who have lost their spouses/children/parents… these are rough times people!! Why do you think we have chronic pain?? It is not a coincidence!!

You need to look at your life and figure out if there is a link between how you live your life and your pain.

  • Do you hang out with positive or negative people?
  • Do you have a positive or negative outlook on life?
  • Do you believe you will get better?
  • Do you believe you can be happy?

You are responsible for your happiness and your health. You have to make life choices toward happiness and good health. I have to do the same. Trust me, it’s not easy. There are days I prefer to stick my head in the sand and stay in the dark… but those are the days I need my husband to push me to get up and come outside and play.

What I’m trying to say is… your attitude about life plays a big role on how you feel and your pain level. We have so much pain already, anything that will reduce our pain … well … it helps, right?

Thanks for reading! Look forward to your comments… stay cool!

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Fibromyalgia and Doing “IT ALL”… What Do You Think?

Okay… here’s the thing. I’m just going to say it. I don’t get how people with chronic pain manage to do “IT ALL”. I am sitting in the kitchen that I made a mess; because I don’t want to sit at the desk that I left a mess; because I don’t want to sit in my bedroom that I left a mess. Honestly, there are not that many rooms left in the house. My son’s room smells like something or God forbid someone died in. My daughter has friends jumping around, hopefully not breaking the furniture in her room, and it is extremely loud in there so I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. My one sanctuary room, “the living room” in a very deep booming voice), I kind of have not allowed myself to go in so I don’t ruin it… you know the room I’m talking about. When you were growing up, it was the room that had the plastic covered furniture in it. The room no one was allowed to actually enjoy themselves in. Only grown ups were allowed in there, and only on special occasions. Sooooooo, when I grow up, I will let myself go in there! Until then, it’s just for special occasions… and I haven’t yet forced the plastic over the furniture… don’t push me, I might just go there! (if I was reading this out loud to you I would say “

Back to my topic… I can’t even stay on topic, much less do “IT ALL”, which of course IS my topic! whew! This is starting to confuse me (which as you know is not too difficult to do…). So! Since the holidays, I have had one hell of a time finding time to

  • tweet,
  • blog,
  • work my full-time+ job,
  • eat right,
  • spend time with my family,
  • exercise/ do my physical therapy,
  • read,
  • research fibro,
  • spend time with God (which should be #1),
  • spend time with family/ friends
  • paper craft

Obviously the must do’s always get done because they have to. Once prioritized, I thought it looked like this:

  1. work

Then I sat here for a while… and I decided I would rearrange things a bit. One priority just sucks… and it’s selfish and stupid, not to mention it’s not much of a life and I refuse to make that my life (did you say that in one breath?)! At one point in my life, that is actually how I lived… yes, I know, it is very sad, but true. I refuse to let that be the case now!

So, here’s what I will work on… AGAIN (because I keep forgetting and hopefully this time I will pay attention!): IN THIS ORDER…

  1. God
  2. My health
  3. My family
  4. My job
  5. My papercrafting

In between those things, I will tweet and blog. I will do my best and I will accept I can’t do it all. If I’m successful, I will get less and less of those looks from my husband where he’s shaking his head like I’m crazy because I’ve just taken on the world. If I’m successful… I. Will. Be. Content. Because I am content, I will have less flare ups… you see? I do get “IT”, I just have to accept that I am not Wonder Woman and I can’t do “IT ALL”. Those are two totally different things. But seriously, if I was Wonder Woman… I would totally dig that plane she had.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading. Stay cool!

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Don’t let chronic pain steal your joy… My challenge to you: Enjoy life in 2010

I have started and stopped this blog at least fifteen times now. I have deleted four or five blogs completely, for this blog you are reading now I have erased sentences, paragraphs and entire pages before getting to the point of actually posting this one. I’m not sure what my problem is, I just have not been feeling the writing mojo in 2010… until now.

I cannot believe it is 2010… two-thousand-ten or twenty-ten or two-thousand AND ten or however the heck you want to say it! First, let’s get the awkwardness out of the way… YES I changed my look on my blog! Whew! I am one of those people that has to change things. I move the furniture (in the middle of the night I might add), I want to change the paint colors on the walls, I change my desk around, I always want something different! here again, easily distracted… now you know why! I love the feel of “brand new”. I thought, “new year” => “new look” to my blog. now that that is out of the way! Oh and before I forget… I also think I better start using my capital letters the right way. I am going to work for a “new” company soon, so I better think of it as a “new” job. I should start getting used to typing better in case I really really have to get a “NEW” job if you get my drift!!

So! There is a lot of newness going on in 2010. To be honest with you, and I feel I can be honest since you are all my virtual friends and family, I don’t like change. I like tradition. I like “brand new” added to tradition. I. don’t. like. change. Funny, I always thought I liked change, but now I realize I like “brand new” which is not the same thing as “change”. I will say this. I adapt well and I can be pretty darn flexible. I just fear the unknown. I said it. I don’t like change. I can move on now. It will take awhile to accept that, but at least I know.

I am still working on what I want my goals to be for 2010. The last couple years, in fact, the last three to five years have been tough ones for me. I have lost many loved ones and my health has not been great (understatement). I know one of the areas I really want to work on is just living above all the sadness and really getting into life and making 2010 all about living life at the fullest! I haven’t gardened in years, I haven’t done things just to have fun in a long time. I want to laugh and have fun and remember those people that have passed on in a fun/ loving way and be done being sad. I want to enjoy scrapbooking again. I want to enjoy working and enjoy living. I want to learn how to “LIVE” again. I don’t want fibromyalgia to take over my life. I don’t want chronic depression or any other medical condition to rule how I live. I understand this will not be easy, but I will take one day at a time and know that there will be days when things won’t go so good and on those days… doing something fun will be the most important part of my day!!

It’s interesting, in my Level II Chronic Pain program this past week, one of the homework assignments we received was to do something we enjoy every day… one of the people in the class said “everyday?” as she read the list that was provided as an example… we just seem to forget what it’s like to enjoy life when we are in pain.

Can you do something everyday that you enjoy? It can be something as simple as having coffee in the morning while you read the morning paper or playing games on facebook or something that requires more energy like going for a walk or seeing a movie… whatever you want! This is all about Y-O-U!

I have my homework that I’d like to make a habit instead of just homework… that’s my challenge to you!

Thanks for reading. Stay cool!