out of the dumpster and into the daylight

Everyone should have a blog! Seriously. It is so nice to be able to say ‘I feel like shit’ and get a response. The act of revealing my true feelings was liberating in itself.  It was great to just confess to my downer, rather than slapping on a coat of white paint and an exaggerated smile like an angry clown at the circus. We should do this more – tell people how we are really feeling. Viva la Revolution!

Having said that, I don’t want to be spewing negativity all over the place (all the time) and expecting my friends and family to clean it up. Perhaps I was not so much complaining in my last blog post but I was definitely doing some of the negivomit elsewhere. Complaining brings others down too and I don’t want that.

Complaining continues to create the vibration of what you don’t want… Put all your love, energy, mental power and decision making towards what you want and do not entertain thoughts to the contrary. You are more responsible for the way you feel than your environment circumstances or relationships. Step towards love today, step towards the solution.

– Jackson Kiddard (author & polymath)

Being dissatisfied can propel us to change something about ourselves or our life (to step towards the solution), but no one else is responsible for how we feel. We have to help ourselves.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed wallowing in my mood for a while, I didn’t want to stay down in the dumpster forever. So there are many ways I have tried to help myself this past week :

1. I continued with my daily gratitude practice.

2. I started going outside more. The day after last week’s post, I went walking in the rain and it was beautiful. I had no umbrella and I explored a nearby hill, unearthing new parks and some of the best views in Luzern. I kind of love suburbia. I love looking at people’s gardens, smelling their roses and seeing the first evening lights on at home. This leads me onto my next point, which is…

3. I continued to admire beauty (even though I didn’t feel like it). I reminded myself to take photos and continue to post them in my Instagram scrapbook. Taking photos is one way I appreciate stuff.

4. I got more disciplined. I did things that I didn’t necessarily feel like but I knew would make me feel better, like walking before writing, and writing before German. And listening to that inner voice that said  ‘don’t open the browser right now – focus, focus.’

5. I took advice from the Goddesses. This may sound a little ‘woo woo’ (as they say in circles where no one bats an eyelash), but every morning I shuffle Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards and pick a card. They tell me things like ‘Go outside. This simple motion will do you a world of good in reawakening your sleeping, magical, spiritual nature’, and ‘Embrace your deepest emotions as a signal of your true human essence’, and ‘Gentleness is the strength behind true power and it comes from feeding yourself with nourishing words, thoughts, deeds, intentions and all forms of food.’ It’s like having a wise Sage for a friend and makes me feel guided and supported.

6. I read more because I love to get lost in language. However, this week I also read about Cycles and Rhythms, starting Miranda Gray’s Red Moon and finding Caroline Caine’s summary of the female cycles. This is the card I pulled this morning and last Wednesday too:

All of life is cyclical : the moon, the stars and the very universe. Life inhales and then exhales again. So why are you surprised or upset that you too have cycles? There are times when you feel energised, awake and alive. There are other times when you feel isolated and shy. Your body too, goes through pronounced cycles and changes. Celebrate theses rhythms, and embrace them as your essence of the lifeblood that courses through you!

7. I ate better. It’s amazing how much food affects our mood and I have read (and found) that what we eat today affects how we feel and perform tomorrow (literally meaning from one day to the next). It’s as easy as eating more green, brown, bright and fresh stuff and cutting down on the white goods. It’s as simple as going for high quality and keeping my blood sugar levels balanced. I baked these Oatmeal, Walnut and Plum cookies (from The Kind Life recipe book) twice in the last week (or was it three times?) and replaced the plum with 70% dark chocolate because that’s how I roll.

8. I turned to blogs. There are some that I always read like Hayley Lau’s and Tonya Leigh’s. Hayley wrote this week about creativity and feelings and blocks and cycles. I enjoy her words very much and she inspires me to be real in my writing. Tonya wrote this week about how to snap out of a bad mood. Perfect, right? She has said that she puts herself in a good mood before she writes and I can understand this since she is a life coach and advocating a french kiss the world attitude. I experiment between the two.

This week I did some intuitive exploring on the net too and was lead to three more mood-enhancing blogs :

Rachel MacDonald’s In Spaces Between led me to Alexander Franzen, which led me to the fantastical Gala Darling. Just the name is enough to put a smile upon my face. But then there’s her blog… and I’m not going to say anything cheesy about getting lost and finding myself. I promise you I won’t do that.

9. Sometimes I cried. Ugly, loud crying.  And it felt good.

10. I put on my iPod and sung aloud as I walked through town. I thought I might brighten someone else’s day by being a crazy singing lady or maybe just annoy the shit out of them. Anyway, it made me feel happy. I often want to write a post about music – how it is sometimes the ONLY thing that will lighten my mood or energise me. It makes me feel euphoric, sad and all things human.

11. I remembered that it was perhaps something in the stars. Or the moon. So many others have been writing about their low or ways of getting out of the hole that I can only assume that I was not alone in my down and dirty.

12. I got out amongst the real life people. It made me happy to go to work and to German class and the theatre group and forget my silly self. I sat on a bench by the lake and was a magnet for Australian tourists – older couples who chatted about not buying souvenirs and complained about the breakfast at their hotel (one man had drunk only three glasses of orange juice and they wanted rolls with ham and cheese so that they could take it for their lunch). There was something about the way they were eating their bakery roll sandwiches. I felt such kinship. This is what we do. One woman had no fingers and her husband straightened her pants for her when she stood up. This is what we do.

13. I booked a trip home. Because why the fuck not?

So that’s my thirteen. Just click on the green and blue words to be taken to all kinds of wonderful places. Maybe you’d like to write below what your thirteen are. Or just one. Or start a blog yourself. Or tell a friend.

How are you?

I’m good

The End.