Officially half way there – It’s Thursday treat day:
Oh, there’s a lot to say. Well, like always, just the truth:
I smoked a cigarette. I did. I just got the hell home from work and was like YEP. So I bummed one from my Coober Pedy Bestie who took a lot of convincing to give me one. The thing is. Is. I just had one of those days where I only got 3 hours of sleep because I was so happy last night and my heart was so light and full of love I just couldn’t say goodbye to that feeling. Instead, I tossed and turned in bed for over 6 hours until I heard the day beginand I hadn’t ended my night.
Today was good and bad. Started the day off rough going into work exhausted and craving a bacon and egg sandwich. The chef made a creepy sex joke about the meatball he was eating tasting as good as having sex without a condom feels and I just sort of didn’t know where to go from there.
Today was one of those days. Novemeber 27th – my mother’s birthday and Thanksgiving and yes, it’s hard. I’m doing this challenging challenge during one of the biggest food and family holidays from my home country and I walk into work to creepy meat-n-sex jokes. What?
The good news about today is one of my managers is going on holiday for 6 weeks and leaving this weekend. So as she wraps up all her loose ends I get put in charge of Christmas decorations tomorrow, instead of housekeeping SCORE! Plus, it makes me feel a little more connected to the commercial, consumerist world I’m not feeling here in the desolated desert.
Staying 30 minutes late at work tonight because of late check ins and getting home and really just wanting some meat, cheese, chocolate or a cigarette – I picked a cigarette to go for. And honestly and truthfully, I’m really not even mad at myself or embarrassed that I “broke” the challenge.
In fact, I actually feel quite strong minded at the moment. I haven’t smoked in 15 days. I’m seriously trying to work through some pretty intense personal stuff. Yes, there are times when we reach for substances to help ease the pain of this or that. That’s why I drank and did drugs for several years. That’s why I’ve overeaten most of my life. One cigarette isn’t a going to spiral me down into a pit of heroin and twinkies.
The point of THIS challenge is NOT to actually do the things in the challenge. The point of this challenge and any challenge is what comes from making conscious efforts to make a change. Even if it’s temporary. I’ve already told people I can’t wait until the day after the challenge I am going to go to town on animal foods and cigarettes. However, look at how far I’ve come in only 15 days of living with a different intention and perspective.
It truly is incredible. I do feel good about myself and I am trying so hard to deal with my issues and figure them out to potentially change them. I want to be a better person. I want people to like me, sure, but I want to like me by always doing what I know is right and best for me – which will naturally spill out for others and ideally the games will stop.
I feel like I have things in a really good place right now. Having given my FINAL notice to this job and making plans to indeed stay through Christmas to then be up and out and back in the big city by New Year’s Eve, I feel the next month is going to be great. I’ll have a set schedule, my manager will be gone so it should just be breezy.
I have a good head on my shoulders and am feeling strong going into this holiday season. The holidays can go either way for me. With a father who chose to tap out on Christmas morning 4 years ago, each year since has been one extreme or the other. Either I’m Miss Christmas or The Grinch.
This year, I already feel like I’m leaning towards Miss Chrsitmas. I feel relatively care free now that a few things feel sorted. I always forget how when we get wrapped up in ourselves, our lives, our faults, our bullshit, our downfalls we close our worlds and cut off. We crop the picture to just a pixel of reality. Then, we pound ourselves down trying to make out the million piece puzzle of kittens in a basket by one hair on one kittens ear.
It’s not fair! To us… And to others. A facebook friend wrote something about how when dropping one of her kids off at school there were a few cars in the preschool line to drop off preschoolers, but apparently preschoolers had that week off. So on facebook she writes this and makes fun of the parents in line. My first thought was – why wouldn’t you drive on over to the cars and let the parents know?
No one likes to feel stupid and we all, so often, are so afraid to feel stupid we freeze so we don’t do anything “wrong.” In that particular case I would have gone over, laughing, and explained “they’re off this week!” The parents would have appreciated not looking foolish and being made fun of – plus what if they were a single parent who relied on school as a form of daycare and had a big presentation that day and couldn’t be late to work and then they had their baby with them and didn’t know what to do.
You never know. I have silent power sturggles with people all the time – I work in hospitality. For instance when a a guest walks in a says “I want a room” and I’m thinking in my head “No shit, dipshit, for what? A zoo? Yourself? Who do you need a room for and how long?” Everytime this conversation happens (daily) they are taken back by my prodding nature by inquiring about how many beds are needed. And I just wanna be like dude, shit, they’re fucking different prices, asshole.
Yep. 14 years of customer service right there folks. If you’ve read previous blogs you’ve read that I am often times humbled by guests who come on really strong or aggressive only to find out their en route to a loved ones funeral, in the middle of a divorce and custody battle or just unhappy their trip didn’t go as planned. At the big corporate hotel I worked at in Chicago one of my managers used to say “treat every guest like they’ve been constipated for a week and just wanna take a poop.”
It was so funny, but so true. You just never know what a person is going through and I feel it, see it and do it so many times myself that I cause ripples for others instead of calming the waters. No, it’s not going to kill me to use my voice more (as exhausting and annoying as it is for me) to explain to guests the different options of rooms as they stand in front of me wanting to check in.
Like my challenge has proven – you can’t change over night. Old habits and cravings will still emerge but when you make an effort stop them they do subside. The world isn’t going to change over night, we’re not going to wake up tomorrow to world peace. However, we could wake up tomorrow with the intention of doing A GOOD ONE or, like my mother would say A-GOOD-N. Do a good’n, be a good’n. Just do one good thing for someone else. Not for the glory of coffee shop fame if your good’n is going to be paying for the coffee of the person behind you. Try something a little harder.
OH. Let me tell you what happened two days ago as an example. I was walking back from the store and this drunken “local” comes sauntering up to me “HEEEEYYYY!” and I was thinking ‘oh no, here we go’ but replied “hey, how ya goin?’ and out of nowhere this indigenous man I don’t think I’ve ever met or spoken to goes “You look like you’ve lost weight!” and I stopped. Dead in my tracks. Smiled. Said “I have lost weight!” high fived him and kept walking. Brilliant.
That made me think of strangers just going up to people and saying things we all secretly want to hear. Someone looks like they put a lot of effort into their outfit – don’t care if you like it or not say “You look really nice today!” The young person at the counter gets yelled at by a vegan customer who’s mad because they don’t have non-soy, soy* and the young person handles it well say “Wow, you handled that really well. Nicely done, bud!” Acknowledge people for the human things they do. Encourage them for the good, positive human things they do and see that positivity break down the dam of anger, hatred and fear.
The more alike we see ourselves, the more powerful we become as a whole. And we’re a whole. A whole lot of sexy, sexy!
Happy Thanksgiving Americans! Happy Friday Australia!
I woke up at 11:38 to start work at 11:45. Luckily I live upstairs and ate breakfast at work. Peach and then avo on toast with tomato. I looked pretty cool walking into work with an avocado in my hand.
*Non-soy soy isn’t a thing. I’m just taking challenge-liberty and taking the piss. =D
Adventures of the untoward 
What a wonderful T-day post! Friends and I were just talking about how just a smile or a touch can turn a person’s day around. While touching a stranger is probably not recommended (though Scott Bakula is a stranger and i did squeeze his arm w/o permission), smiling at people is simple. Smiling at people who don’t get many smiles, for example, the elderly who are so “invisible” to others. Or as you said, Duffy, commenting on something they are wearing. We have so much power to change the world in small ways and we don’t use it. This morning I said, “Thank you for working today” to the barista at Starbucks. We just expect people in food service to be there. But it is Thanksgiving for them as well.