Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash (cropped and color adjusted by Erin Penn)
Self-Sabotage
I have a confession to make. Every four or so years (matches up to my family moving around as a child and the school system cycle as well), I burn my life to the ground and restart. I’ve noticed a couple of my sisters have similar cycles. Maybe it’s in our DNA? We are a highly mobile family – moving, changing jobs, or just doing Something Else. I’ve managed to stay in North Carolina for 8 years – which is a record for me in one location other than my family home.
But the itch is back.
How do I not start from scratch yet again? How can I get the feeling of a “reset” without a restart?
Changing jobs usually works, but I really like my present lineup of jobs. Start a new relationship, but falling in love in your fifties is a lot of effort, plus the pandemic has destroyed nearly all meet-and-greet opportunities. I just don’t have the energy for that.
And speaking of self-sabotage mixed with the pandemic, I let my writing slide a lot. It was too much effort, too much creative juice. How do I forgive myself for taking a year and a half “off”? Yeah, I did editing and the like – but actual writing writing – well, truth to tell, not much different than the years before. Less flashes, but finished money-making published works? More of the same.
And thus starts the cycle of negative thoughts, which activates the want to change everything instead of one simple thing.
MJ Blehart, a good friend from when I lived in New Jersey, writes about mindfulness, and this month he wrote an article on “Do You Recognize and Acknowledge Self-Sabotage When You See it?” (The URL is: https://titaniumdon.com/do-you-recognize-and-acknowledge-self-sabotage-when-you-see-it/)
After reading the blog, I thought this is a good reminder to shake the internal branches to get the “comfortable” out of the tree so the fruit of labor can be harvested instead of eaten by the bugs of it’s-too-hard and the birds of not-today, and the deadfall of “I can’t do this or forgive myself for not doing it”. I want that fruit. I don’t want to be the editor who always talked about writing. I want to make a difference. So it’s time to forgive and think about the new path, focus on the path so that it creates that feeling of moving without needing to burn everything down. Restart in little steps.