Gazing in the Mirror

November 14 - Volcano Debbie Erupting

When angry, count to four.
When very angry, swear.
~ Mark Twain

And if in our ignorance we
have misused the Creative
Power within us, all we have
to do is reverse the process
and cooperate with It. In
doing this one of the first
lessons we learn is to bless
everything, to be grateful for
everything, to gladly acknowledge
the Divine Presence which
directs them – the very Power
that created them.
~ Ernest Holmes

True Confession – I am not perfect and very, very human. I smile at how appropriate it was yesterday that I was wearing the "Volcano" T-shirt I bought for myself at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. On the front it offers "Advice from a Volcano" – "Stay active, Keep your inner fire burning, It's OK to let off steam, Go with the flow, Be uplifting, It's all a matter of time, and Have a blast !". For me yesterday it was OK to let off steam and not a little steam, a LOT of steam. "Go with the flow" was also operational in my life. I will admit that I was MAXED OUT STRESSED !!. At times I was actually yelling in sheer frustration.

After years of being under the pressures of serious overwhelm, now that my life is quieter and has settled down, I really don't mind having that space in my life. I like the calm peacefulness of my life now as long as our business is able to deliver "enough" revenue to easily pay the bills and supply the basics to my family. And I will admit that filling our basic needs even minimally has not been easy in recent years since the economic contractions that started in 2008. In fact it has been very, very hard at times with the scale of that contraction being global. It certainly has had a very real impact on us. For awhile we even had fraying pjs and holes in our blue jeans to prove the economic pain we were feeling was not our imaginations. We have had to cut back to almost the barest of necessities just to survive these times including a cut in our salaries. Even so it has been consistently easy for me to be grateful even if it is a kind of "it could be worse" recognition.

We bought a new Xbox 360 (the best they were offering at the time and expensive considering our finances). Our boys had become quite fond of the game known as Minecraft. There are certainly less desirable video games they could be attracted to. It is mostly a creative "building" game with rules and survival challenges. The game is a lot like real Life. As parents it is easy for us to approve of this game and our sons current passion and obsession with it. Originally my husband was willing to do what I was not. He let the boys get this game on HIS personal computer. Honestly his computer is the most robust computer in our household – and the game has pushed his computer right up to the boundaries of what it can handle. However my husband did come to regret his decision because the boys were monopolizing his computer. Their obsession was such that my husband couldn't even access the news online as he likes to do when "unwinding" from his day.

The boys became frustrated with the "lags" they were experiencing on his PC. In self defense we finally gave in to the alternative and purchased a gaming console that is designed to handle the video, processing and memory requirements of video games. My husband was as ready as the boys were to make that change. And my husband helped with a lot of the wiring and initial setup. My task was initializing the software. Though we had spent many hundreds of dollars to get everything in a hardware sense that we could possibly need (thanks to some good advice from a sales associate who was also a "gamer") we still ended up stymied at 2am over a simple $20 purchase.

However the next day I had more complications. Our half-day, twice a month, housekeeper was in our home to do the cleaning. Once a month we also clean the aquarium and it did need that BADLY. Piling onto everything else, I needed to call our bank but they were unable to explain why I could not purchase Minecraft for the Xbox from Microsoft using my debit card. So I spent another 2 hrs seeking tech support via online chat with the Xbox Microsoft help person. Unfortunately, BOTH us were Geminis within a 2012 Mercury Retrograde New Moon Solar Eclipse day – oh my !! Could the Universe have added any more complications to my own personal mix that day ? My housekeeper needed for me to get my share of the aquarium work done so that she could finish up her work and LEAVE. My young sons were relentless because they needed me to get that game operating. Finally the tech support person admitted to me that I could get the "game points" that I needed to purchase the game that we wanted at Amazon.com.  

Oh did I forget mention also that my husband had left me instructions on unlocking the padlock at the location where some rented equipment (a log splitter) needed to be picked up and yet did NOT leave the key with me? Oh yes, later he said to me – "You don't have a key?" Or that I mistakenly thought at 2:30pm that we needed to rush out the door to get to town with a load of refuse for the transfer station because they close at 3pm. Instead I found out after we were already on our way that we did not have any landfill trash and had only recyclables with us and that the recycling facility stays open later? On and on it went for me that day, vexing complication after vexing complication. Truly the only thing that got me through that day were the words "this too will pass". Fortunately I have learned and so truly believe that it all does finally "work itself out" in the end. And that did happen. Some days I do feel just like a Volcano – with so much pressure upon me that exploding seems like the only way to let off "steam".

~ perspective

Life is full of experiences and
no one said that we live in a
world with only one type of
experience.
I do the best that I can to
live in harmony with what is
for the ease and comfort that
comes from living in cooperation
with the unfolding of Life,
sometimes Life is difficult and
I get frustrated and I become
very humanly vexed.
I forgive myself for not
expressing myself in the kind
of way I think I should.
I accept that sometimes
circumstances that are
uncomfortable may be birthing
something better into existence
and so the difficulties are like
the birthing pains that many
mothers have experienced.
I am happy that no matter
how unpleasant things are,
nothing stays the same and
everything does constantly change.

#children #computers #finances #frustration #glitches #gratitude #minecraft #peace #stress #truth