Learning About Non-Linearity

 Up until now, I guess I've held within me the belief that if you put more work and effort into something, that you reap the rewards to match. 

  However, recently I have been having experiences which would suggest otherwise. I was recently hired to sign people up for donations for a charity. Whilst working this job, I discovered that I could put in 100% effort, and still not get any sign ups in a day. Other days I could put in 80% effort, and perhaps get one sign up. I was apparently good at the job according to team mates and team leader- putting in the right effort, in the right manner, and not letting it get to me. However, it did get to me. I have always been involved in work that shows the more effort you put in, the greater the results. That job was a huge turning point, and it was hard for me to swallow. What I had previously based my self- esteem upon, and what had bolstered my sense of achievement, was putting in a load of effort, and getting great results from it. I'm an illustrator. Needless to say, if you don't put in the effort of give it 100% of your heart, then your illustration just isn't going to sing in the way you want it to. 

  

  I really struggled with that job- for many other reasons, but another part of me could not understand why I wasn't getting any sign ups, even after a couple of weeks, and my self esteem was just getting lower and lower. What was frustrating me more was that I couldn't see where I needed to improve, or if there was anything I could actually do to improve that would have made any difference. I'm not the pushy kind of person, and if I see that someone doesn't want to donate, then I don't press it on them. I respect their choices, and let them be on their way. 

My point being, things aren't as linear as I once thought. 

This was shown to me again today. A prospective illustration client who wanted me to illustrate their book, and who seemed really positive, pulled out today because my fee was above their budget. I had been completely professional (as expected) and I had made the effort to provide her with in depth details of the process, what I would be doing etc. I had done all I could on my part to provide her with confidence in my work and my professional manner. However, I think that people severely miscalculate just how much they will have to pay for a book to be illustrated. You have to account for just how many hours of work, and ideas generation and effort that goes into each painting. It is a living, not a hobby. I am a professional illustrator, not someone who does it for fun. Although it is fun, and I love it. The prices I quote would most likely equal out to minimum wage, accounting for materials costs as well. I hope that people's attitudes to illustration change. I certainly need them to if I am to make a living from the work that I trained to do, and love. 

Life moves in waves. There are seasons in everything- we experience times of rest and times of increased activity. We have times where chapters in our life need to close so that new ones can begin. There is no formula that I know of that you can use to achieve certain results. It is not linear, it in not rational. It is both exciting and confusing at the same time. Whilst there are limitless possibilities, there is also the ensuing confusion and panic that comes from not knowing the rules of the game. I realised that I had bought into certain mindsets, that more effort = more reward. This is a lie in a lot of cases. 

Anxiety, Stress and all that other wonderful Stuff

I can swing from one to the other, mixing in the middle, an alchemist of unhappy moods. I can pick and choose which ones to wear, like a suit or a new pair of boots. More often they wear me, and jump out of the closet demanding I wear them. 

They seep into my conscious, tacked on from dreams that are filled with anxieties about work and lateness. I set alarms, only to still be anxious that I will be late. I get to work early so that I don't have to worry about being late, but still worry the entire journey. Sometimes I am late, and those are the times I try to just let it go completely- it is done, I am late and there was nothing I could do about it. Consequently, nothing much happens. It is all in my head, this daily battle of lateness, should do's and wish I could've dones. It is all just make believe, to keep myself in check. To 'discipline' myself where really no discipline is needed.

I can be a happy, engaging person. The flipside is the constant mental barrage of backchat to myself. It isn't that I am fake in my happiness, it isn't a facade that I put up to get through the day. Most of the time people know when I'm not feeling fantastic, and I kinda like it that way, as I feel I don't have to pretend to be happy just to make someone else feel ok. Work is another matter, and of course you have to be nice to the customers. When I am having a bad day, I keep chit chat to a minimum, as I feel like people can sense authenticity anyway, so whats the point in faking it. 

The anxiety- the anxiety over money, over needs I have constructed to keep me yearning for more, working for a purpose. None of it matters and it will all happen when it is meant to, and there is no way I can strain to make more money, there is no point in the anxiety and worrying. I have to enjoy myself in the now, or at least relax into it and surrender to what is happening. Yes we can choose to worry, and I use my worry to beat myself up. I can look at a situation from so many multifaceted angles that I send myself into a spin. What lesson do you learn from this situation if you look at it like this? What do you learn if you look at it like that and take action on it? All of the ways to beat myself up, and almost none of the ways to celebrate my new take on things, and to be more lighthearted about it. 

I dislike Christmas, I dislike receiving presents, as I feel like I am not deserving of them. I feel that my actions throughout the year, especially towards my parents completely negate any presents that I could deserve. This is exacerbated by my mother buying me more than she should. I used to only ask for practical presents- for my birthday I got shoes with a lifetime guarantee, for Christmas I asked for a scanner for my artwork. Then, a change of heart and I decided that I would ask for something frivolous, that would nevertheless last me a very long time, if not my whole life- a tiny teapot for brewing aged loose leaf teas. They are beautiful and I have wanted one for a while now. So I finally let myself receive one, instead of the scanner. Though I know that my mother decided to go out and buy the scanner as well. Which, no matter how much I appreciate it, I am battling with myself thinking that she is just trying to appease me, to make me happy through the buying of gifts. I don't really know what I want anymore, most of the time I am not open to affection from my parents. Most of the time I am not open to receiving from them, and if I am I beat myself up about being selfish and only out to gain from interactions with them.

At times I feel like a wrathful deity, in her sacred space. The present bearers bringing sacrifices and offerings, only to have me smite them down with my cutting words or glances, silences filled with angry negative energy. I know that mum wants to give me gifts, it is such a challenge to appreciate that she is happy when they are well received. My moods rage on, they debilitate and change my day. No matter if I have done something that would normally make me happy, they can cut through that. I end up feeling a big longing, a big sadness for connection that I do not allow myself. Rejection is often too painful when I am in a weak/weary state. When I am full of energy, I am more likely to put myself out there, but still not too much. 

So- trouble with receptivity and feelings of 'deserving' and 'worth'

Anxiety about making the wrong choices, which follows on to anxiety about money and having enough resources to do the things I want to, when I want to do them, when the opportunity arises.

Breakthroughs of appreciation for the situation I am in- living with parents rent free, bill free, free food. See this as an opportunity, a blessing, a gift instead of beating myself up and feeling guilty for not contributing or being independent. Trying to accept that whatever is given to me is not under duress, it is not because of obligation. It is the giver's responsibility to recognise their boundaries and not give more than they can because they feel guilt or whatever about a situation. It is my job to receive these gifts fully and with gratitude. No guilt about receiving.  

The anxiety of losing a job because I am too 'difficult'- I must be on time ALWAYS- despite that I often work at least 15 minutes more than I should when I do arrive on time, which is most of the time. Expectations of myself that I must follow orders or pander to my boss/manager's ego and do what they say, despite already knowing what to do. Letting that frustrate me. Holding a negative frequency towards someone at work, being unable to let go of it. Seeing it as a challenge to my respectability and an insult to my intelligence. 

I want to let go of it all. I want to be free of it, I want everyone around me to be free of it. But I don't just want to be this happy go lucky airy fairy rose-tinted kind of a person that I see a lot of spiritual new age people being. It is fake. We must embrace all facets of ourselves and suppress none of our emotions. Rather difficult in a society that sees truth and honesty often as a threat to power, and open communication as a threat to that power as well. Which makes me not know how to be diplomatic and able to express what I need to in a non-threatening, also non job threatening way. Jobs are so scarce and this is quite a cushy one, so I am loathe to rock the boat despite being stressed out for various reasons. I want to be able to express myself calmly, collectedly, without holding a vibration of anger, frustration or hostility. But it gets to the point where I see things as a direct insult, a direct taking away of respect and power. I feel helpless as I seem to be steam rolled. I try everything in my power to be diplomatic, to get to a resolution, however I feel the building frustration and despair within me that I even have to mention it or bring it up, which ultimately leads to me feeling even more powerless, and there is still no resolution.

Well, what a ramble. I could go on for days. I wish the mental chatter would just stop and go away without me being escapist about it all.

The Polarities

  And I realised that people came into my life this year, often in pairs.

  One was the way forward, and one was a mirror of my current self and state. I realised that often I chose to mingle with the negative side of myself, shown to me by the mirror, the person who embodied my negativity in their relationship to me. It hurt to know that that was what I was doing to myself. To see clearly that I was abusing myself that badly, putting myself down and making myself feel terrible. That person was me on my worst days. And I took the abuse for a while, thinking that I was just being a stick in the mud, and not seeing things objectively from different perspectives. I thought that there were lessons to learn within this interaction if only I could find out what they were. I persevered, I got sad and upset, I got confused and I got down on myself. My creativity started to wane, and I didn’t go to my work as joyfully as before. It seemed like I was being told that ‘you think you have come a long way… but you haven’t. In fact, you’re back at the beginning, or worse, even further back than the beginning.’ But this was not true. I have come a long long way in the past year, and I know that. I feel that within me. It cannot be taken away by anyone. It is internal development. And I know that I can never regress. It is just not possible unless I am sticking my head in the sand, and even then, that is only temporary leave. I know deep down that I cannot keep my head buried for very long at all. It is not possible. Therefore it is not possible for me to regress in that way.

  So what of the person that showed me how I could be if I was the positive me?

I am getting to know them. Finding out what makes them tick, and sharing with them what makes the passion inside me stir. They are showing me how to calm my mind and release the blockades within that I put up so very long ago. And repeatedly rebuilt when they were torn down. They are helping me more than they can know, by showing me ways to deal with things, sharing their short-comings and the obstacles they faced and overcame. I am grateful to have them in my life as a teacher, even if they do not know it. I knew from the feeling that I got around them, the raised vibration within me, that they would be significant. However I realise that it is all my work to do. They can only point out options and directions to me. I must walk my own path.

The Birthing of Dreams

  Some people have children so that they can work towards creating a better life for them instead of realising that they failed to create a better life for themselves. They relive their youth vicariously through their children. Relaxing into a job that they have to keep going at because their child depends on it, that is their main role in life now. To keep their child fed watered and happy. It isn’t about their own hopes and ambitions anymore. That’s why people break down and have a midlife crisis. By that point, their kids are grown and don’t need them anymore to support them day-to-day. Its back to figuring out what THEY want from life again. And most of them gave up on their dreams long ago. Most of them can’t remember anything but a faint glimmer of what their dreams were. Whether they still apply to what they want now is a completely different question. That’s why we see people buying motorbikes or fancy cars or some big object of desire- because all they’ve done is dust off the old dreams, and tried to apply it to themselves now. They haven’t developed their dreams since early adulthood, because that process was severed like the umbilical cord of the baby they bore. And if their child was lucky, only that.

  Live your life fully, and only when you feel it is truly the right time for you to bear a child, then do so. Do so because you have so much love and so much passion in you that you could not possibly get it all out, even if you worked all day and all night at what you love. Do it because you want to bring into the world an amazing human being. Not because you are lonely, or need a diversion from the truth that you may not have lived your life fully. Or that there are things you were unable to reach due to circumstance. I’m not saying that not achieving your dreams is your fault. Sometimes life really does get in the way.  But not living in the moment, appreciating the little things, not living for now, doing things that truly satisfy and feed your soul, is a crime. Because you deserve better. You deserve to have the sense of fulfillment, the joy, the passion and everything you could have hoped for. Even if it is not in the form that you had originally wished for.  Live life and feel everything that you are made to feel… whether it be abject sorrow, or deep joy. Lets face it, life comes with both of these in varying quantities. There is an abundance of feeling, both good and bad, and they all have their purpose. Sorrow so that you can heal, joy so that you can love and love so that you can experience joy. All feelings are integral to being human. They make us feel alive, even though sometimes that is the last thing we want to be.

  Don’t hope that your child will do all of that for you. Because if you don’t embody it, chances are, they will follow the same route as you in the end. Hoping that their child will live fuller than they ever dared. Know how to live life, and teach others. Enrich lives with your being, and your doing and your knowing that we are all here to create, in our own unique ways. We see so many people who hope that their children will do well, and are oh so proud when they do fantastically (and who wouldn’t? We must all hope for that.) But it is different when we put so much pressure on them to achieve, because we have not achieved ourselves. Happiness is not even dependent on achievement. You will not reach happiness if you keep on chasing it from one achievement to the next. You will only push it further away and work yourself into the ground trying to catch the sun on that horizon line. Happiness comes from taking joy in what you do, those everyday moments. For me, it is being in nature and marveling at all the wonderful unique creations, all the organically configured branches on a tree, and the decaying leaves in autumn. Nature teaches us that both beauty in the things that are full of vitality, and beauty in the dead and dying, are all present. Everything about nature has its own beauty. I love it because nature is no perfectionist, it celebrates each and every unique individual in its own way- the big, the small, the strong, the weak, the full of joy and the ones just making it through the days. You are not separate from nature, you are an intrinsic part of it.

  If we could learn to untie the irrational knots between happiness and achievement, weight and health, and a myriad of other ‘laws’ that we have in place in our society’s perception, then we would be all the better for it.  We would see acceptance of all body types, of all learning types, of all types of intelligence and ways of doing things that no one dare dream of because ‘it was a stupid idea.’ We would know that our assumptions are hardly ever true, and know that we could not pigeon hole someone because we have no idea of their journey, and where they are along their path. Almost no one fits into society’s wants of us. Because all the molds were built too narrow to hold us, too confining to allow us the freedom and creativity of our expression. Because we didn’t fit these molds at a young age, we were told we were stupid, or lazy, or never accomplished anything, or were to big or too tall or too white or too black to ever be found attractive by anyone else. We liked the wrong things, the wrong people, the wrong everything and society punished us for it, made us all outcasts in one way or another. 

 The people that did and still do try to conform to these norms are punished with the restraint of their own soul. They were domesticated and beaten into shape- for the most part, willingly. They wanted acceptance, and received a taste, but not really. Not for who they really are, not for who they wanted to be, the things they wanted to do, but for how they fit the mold. And if they didn’t fit it in all ways, they were still rejected. To domesticate yourself and to make yourself follow these rules that society put in place to take away our human power, is to give up the chance for long lasting and real acceptance of you as yourself. You can only be young and beautiful and successful for a very small window of your lifetime- at least by society’s standards. 

 Why not give up that ideal, work on being truly yourself, truly loved and accepted by others, even if only a few. That is a long lasting acceptance and love.  It will not fade when you get wrinkles. It will not disappear if you lose your job, it will not atrophy if your beauty turns into a different kind of beauty not commonly accepted. Wrinkles and warts and failings and all, and to still be accepted. That is true love. From friends, lovers, maybe even strangers. Foster kindness in your heart, and appreciate beauty in all forms, the beauty of the dead, the dying, the ‘ugly’ and the unacceptable truths. For there are lessons in all of them, beauty in all of them. To be narrow in all of your definitions is to trap yourself within them. You will never accept yourself with all your human imperfections if you allow this. 

 Have a big enough heart to accept yourself now, to accept that you are doing the best that you can possibly do, and that it is ok to not be the best, the brightest, the prettiest, the most successful. 

You are enough. 

 I would not wish to see a forest of trees as straight as a ruler, no blemishes, no branch or leaf differing from the next tree. It would be saddening to see. Variety is what we are all here to express, and to live and love. Love all of the imperfections in life and you will find happiness. You will find that everything is always new.