Fear is gripping me today and it sends me right into a General-Jane mode. This is when I try to take command over things that I can’t control. I get
bullish and think that we just need to work harder and so I push on everyone around me! That has been my solution to a lot of things in my life.
Years ago when I was working with a bunch of very strong-willed and stubborn people like myself, our director had to have someone external to the system come in to help us work more productively together. I learned that my mode of operation isn't to change what I do or how I do it, but to simply do more of what I do. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to state the obvious…running into the same brick wall, just makes me bruised, battered and bloody, and doesn't gain a thing.
Creativity isn’t easy to come by when a person is submerged in fear and panic. Nothing comes of that at all, no matter how hard a person tries. That is where I am at today and I toy with my options: go back to bed and get up on the other side; pray more; back away from a frustrating task and take on something more simple for the day?
I just wrote to a friend who is struggling with what she thinks is depression. What did I advise her to do, that I am not remembering now for our own life and my husband's looming unemployment? I must be some sort of charlatan for I can’t remember, and my boldness of thinking I know anything seems to have slipped away and disappeared in the night!
Perhaps my confidence is now submerged under all the snow outside? What happened to spring coming and with it, new life….it is still winter and I have the winter blues, although I was successful at getting my husband and daughter out the door as fast as they could run today. General Jane is tough and can drive anyone into a blizzard to get away from her!
Let me see….I think I will put on the corned beef that was on sale this week, and try for another cozy warm New England boiled dinner…but what do I do with myself? I still have that dreaded “eternal” comforter to work on…the one that has become a true Lenten chore. There is the basement studio to continue cleaning, the one where I gathered all the stuff that needs sorting. Isn't it bad enough that it is snowing outside AGAIN without wading through drifts inside? And suddenly I think of the plague and how people flogged themselves in penance to please God and make disease go away? Mm-mm it seems mid-evil to punish myself still further? Yet I am feeling equally as desperate!! Where did my old Pollyanna-self skip off to now when I need her most?
I have considered baking cupcakes and eating a whole batch…this no sugar, wheat or milk is just too hard…A nice cup of hot chocolate, a batch of cupcakes and curling up with an exciting book sounds like just the thing to turn me around right, or would that be “turn me ‘round wrong”, adding more pounds and compounding my inflammation…but I am on the right track…some sort of kindness is in order…this unemployment is NO fun and the worries are mounting up.
I need a triple dose of courage about now, and then face the day, and take it moment by moment. Likely sewing on the eternal comforter will make it “get done” and my sister will be so pleased and it will give me pleasure to “elevate her” at least.
So off my computer chair and take on what will make another day more open to the creativity I lack today. Some days are just “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day(s)"* to get through.
Mm-mm I might be cut out for drama after all? General Jane is a bit like Sarah Bernhardt only, in my case my dramatic flare has burst and my serious flare seems to take on an I-Love-Lucy twist…no matter my famous line to my children of “If I am not home when you get home from school, don’t worry about me, I will be at the factory!”
I am still here and I must see my antics for what they are, merely a good old fashioned pity-pot-party that no one wants to attend! My temper tantrum is subsiding…God has heard my complaint, and it is time I grew up NOW, “take 2 Motrin and buck up soldier” and carry on! I have regressed far enough for one day and what was it that my mother used to say and is still on my shoulder saying? “God helps those that help themselves!” It is time to shovel on and out (but being General Jane I will get my husband to instead of me)!
These pictures are real, but used fictitiously to tell about this dramatic day. Our snow storm this last week was only about five inches deep. It just felt this deep. And it is true that I used to dramatically threaten my children that I would be at the factory instead of being at home to mother them, only now they are not worried when I say it. These are pictures from a real factory in China that manufactured what my husband's company sells....the company that just laid him off. My sewing is serious but never this serious!
* from
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. A must read for anyone suffering with such a day!
(This blog is dedicated to my friend, CC who inspires me to write about about what most would not want to read about! Thank you CC, for writing such stuff makes even me laugh and I needed that today!)
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