Welcome

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog.

I will be blogging under the pseudonym of 'The Eternal Optimist' so that I can and will write openly and honestly about what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present and my hopes for the future.


xx


Tuesday 22 November 2011

Back without a bang.

"Go ahead, push your luck
Find out how much love the world can hold
Once upon a time I had control
And reigned my soul in tight

Well the whole truth
Is like the story of a wave unfurled
But I held the evil of the world
So I stopped the tide
Froze it up from inside

And it felt like a winter machine
That you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound

And when I chose to live
There was no joy - it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found

And if I was to sleep
I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I traveled down a whispering well
To know myself through them

Growing up, my Mom had a room full of books
And hid away in there
Her father raging down a spiral stair
'Til he found someone
Most days his son

And sometimes I think
My father, too, was a refugee
I know they tried to keep their pain from me
They could not see what it was for

But now I'm sleeping fine
Sometimes the truth is like a second chance
I am the daughter of a great romance
And they are the children of the war

Well the sun rose with so many colors
It nearly broke my heart
And worked me over like a work of art
And I was a part of all that

So go ahead, push your luck
Say what it is you've got to say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it'll push right back
And there are worse things than that

'Cause for every price
And every penance that I could think of
It's better to have fallen in love
Than never to have fallen at all

'Cause when you live in a world
Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be
And now I laugh at how the world changed me
I think life chose me after all"



Dar Williams ~ After All. Sums it up perfectly.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Stormy Weathers

Like a big dark cloud it looms over me, masking the sunshine
There is no escape
I know it's coming
At best I'll find an umbrella, and wait for it to pass.


Stiffled

Work and everyone else are encouraging me not to hand in my notice until I am "well enough".... it seems that "the new chapter" is on pause.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

A lesson learned - The Journey is the Reward

I heard something today that struck a cord. It was around the idea that goal setting like anything else can become destructive if not used in the correct way as subconsciously alongside setting a goal comes the expectation that the goal will equate to happiness.

This concept rang very true to me. So many times I've said "it'll be better when" or "it'll be OK if I just" or "Once I've completed xyz" and I could go on. I have set goal upon goal of where I want to be, who I want to be and have even put time frames on it. You'll even find an earlier post dedicated to some of my goals! 

The question I am now asking myself is, if I have been so busy focussing on the future how could I have had time to focus on the present?! I have been constantly looking forward and striving to better myself. Whilst I still believe it is important to set goals (I cant change overnight!), once again I am realising that I have been negating to strike a balance, in this case between the present and the future. 

I'm feeling like the common theme emerging from my thoughts is balance.... just trying to work out to to reach that.


Monday 5 September 2011

Untitled.

I am at the bottom of a dark damp hole
Dark from my thoughts, damp from my tears

In the distance I see a stream of light
I will claw my way into the light once again.

Saturday 3 September 2011

New chapter

So that it. I've taken the plunge and quit my job. Scary stuff. Even more so as I don't have another job to go to... brave? Stupid? We shall see. All I know is that something needed to change and that my life was running away with me at a faster pace than I could cope with. 

I always had a plan. I wanted to be the director of the department. If I had continued to the standard I had set myself I am confident that I could have achieved this by the time I was mid 30's. That to me then was success. But not now.

During the last year I have continuously pushed myself. I've worked 60+ hours per week, covering three roles and have been exhausted at the end of it. I have cancelled plans to see friends, instead staying behind to finish off work.... often. I've lost money by signing up to classes and courses that I can never complete and thought about work constantly. Slowly I began to feel like I had lost the essence of me. 

The last few months have been the worst. I'd wake up crying unable to face the day. I'd force myself out of bed to take the miserable tube journey to the 'soulless city'. I'd see carriages full of tired unhappy faces on my way in and the seemingly the same tired, unhappy faces on the way home. It was draining. The work was demanding but even more so as I pressurised myself in the high performance culture to the 'the best'. I'd come home in tears from both tiredness and the feeling of emptiness. 

This cycle continued for months until one day I could take no more. I couldn't go in. I had no more to give. I was a mess. The doctor diagnosed depression and I was signed off. Something that was previously unimaginable to me. 

It's been a tough month. The feeling of being completely and utterly lost is at times exasperating. There's no more plan. No more direction. No more work to disguise everything else that I need to work on. Its honestly frightening.

I realised that I needed to change my life in order to find myself again. I remembered what was important to me - family, friends, travel, helping others and decided that I need more balance. After talking it out with family and friends I have handed in my notice choosing to lose status and money for the sake of my sanity. Of course I will work and I'm not sure where this journey will take me but so it begins my new chapter - with a balanced view.

Wish me luck.