What up everyone! Things are definitely starting to pick up here at the office. Had a pretty busy week last week and it is looking to be even busier this week. Last week I went and spoke at San Tan Elementary School. They were a pretty good group. I spoke on bullying and then Rachel did her “Rachel thing”. If you know Rachel, then you know what I’m talking about. If not, then you’ll just have to wait to meet her. She is just too wonderfully hard to describe. Anyhow, San Tan had a bunch of interesting questions for me that I am so glad they asked. Oddly enough, I also thought they had a pretty cool principal. Usually I don’t like principals. They kinda give me the heebie-jeebies, just because I used to always be in trouble.
Later that day I got to go see Justin do his first presentation at Vista Verde Middle School. Oh man, he was so happy to be doing it. He was a little scared of course too, but he was really glad that he had this opportunity to go speak and share his story with others. Speaking of being scared, I was glad I got to see him. Justin used to work for Anasazi as a Trail Walker in their wilderness program. Anasazi is a wilderness program for teens that are having a difficult time with life. To be really brief, basically a teen spends about 42 days out in the wilderness with other teens and a Trail Walker (guide). This gives them time to kind of sort things out for themselves and learn a little bit about themselves and life away from their normal life. This past weekend, the Not My Kid coordinators went up to their wilderness program so see what it was all about for ourselves. I was a little scared cuz I did not know what to expect. I wasn’t sure if they were going to have beds for us or if they were just going to hand me knife and then tell me they would pick me back up in 2 days. Turns out I had a bed. But I was glad to be able to talk to Justin a little bit before I went. I think they got a good deal going over there at Anasazi.
Sometimes I can just get overwhelmed by fear, nervousness, anxiety, or worry. Instead of saying scared, I like to say concerned. It makes me sound like less of a wuss! I have the same feeling on the inside though. What I try to do in those moments is to try to get back to the reality of the situation. Usually I am blowing something completely out of proportion. An acronym I like is F.E.A.R, Forgetting Everything About Reality. It brings my expectations back within a normal range of what may or may not happen. At that point, I figure out what, if any action I can take, do that and then try to let it go. Once I have done everything I can, there is nothing left for me to do but wait. My worrying about it or getting or staying upset does me no good except make me feel lousy at that point. So I let it go. I will repeat, this is what I try to do. I am not always able to do this unfortunately, but I do strive for it.

Gentle Mountain Sage has spoken

When I was a kid I played tennis and soccer, and I loved both…and hated both. I never liked tennis lessons but I loved playing matches for fun. Soccer was similar, I loved playing in our Saturday games, but never liking the drills we did in practice. Then, when I got into cycling as a teenager the same pattern existed; I hated training, but loved racing!
People used to tell me “practice makes perfect”. And I believe that to some degree: if you want to improve you need to put in the effort and practice. But I have a problem with the word “perfect” because the idea of it makes me go a little nutty. I start to think that perfection exists, and I need to be perfect; and then when I’m not perfect that means I’m a failure (you see, a little nutty, right?). Maybe that’s why I always hated practice, because I thought I was a lost cause. There is no way I can’t be perfect so what’s the point?
Today, I’m training for a triathlon and I don’t hate it, and honestly I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my goal is not to be perfect, my goal is only to finish the race. That kind of takes away the pressure of it all. I am no longer trying to become a superwoman that can accomplish the impossible. I am not trying to become something “better” than myself by morphing myself into someone I’m not. I’m just Carley. I am training to improve my endurance to help me accomplish my goal: finish the race. And maybe I will finish or maybe I won’t, but I have learned enough in my recovery to know that the result won’t define me. Whether I cross the finish line or not I’m still Carley.

I realized recently that most of my life is seen as black and white; good and bad. There is no grey…or better yet there is no color at all. The words I heard the most growing up were “never” and “should”.

“You should have said this…”

“You should have done that…”

“You never take out the trash.”

“You never make your bed.”
That means what I said was wrong. What I did was wrong. It negates every time I took out the trash or made my bed.

These are words that made me see my life as good and bad (I was bad, everyone else was good). These are words I don’t want to use anymore. My brain is naturally trained to think this way, but I’m working to reprogram it to think in terms of grey; in terms of a rainbow. I have been working on this for a while, and seeing some progress. Maybe not as much as I would like, but I’ll get there someday… little by little, right?

I might not automatically think in this positive, peace-love-rainbow way, but I when I catch myself thinking in that right-wrong, black-white way I try to redirect my thinking. For example, this weekend I was training for the triathlon I’m doing in a few months. I finished a 20 mile bike ride and then went for a run right away, to get my body used to running right after biking. So I was running, actually more like jogging…a very slow jog (I bet an old lady walking could have passed me)…anyway, I was jogging and I was in pain. Bad pain, like what-am-I-doing-running-at-11-am-in-the-Arizona-summer-sun-I-don’t
-think-I-will-ever-be-able-to-finish-the-triathlon-I-WANT-TO-DIE kind of pain.
But I kept thinking I have to run two miles at least, I would be a failure if I didn’t. Luckily I caught myself. Thinking that way would make all the work I did as “not good enough”. And I’m sick of viewing myself as “not good enough”. Instead, I decided it didn’t matter the distance, it was the effort that counted.

I ended up running about a mile and a half and I’m not upset about it. Instead, because I’m learning to live life in the peace-love-rainbow way, I’m proud of myself.