Fractious 40

This is my favorite pool player.  Doesn't he look like he means business?  And he does!  He is rather good at the game.  I, on the the other hand, am not so much.  The imbalance is okay.  I go as a middle aged cheerleader with a Diet Pepsi in one hand and my fascination for people watching in the other.

I would like to get better at the game.  I think it is good that we have things in common we like to do, and I could get better at the game if I applied myself a bit more.  I just don't apply myself.  That is unlike me.  Generally when I invest in doing something I do it the best I can, but I find the predominant emotion I experience lately, doing most anything, is frustration.  And that impedes my ability to enjoy.  It's too hot, there are too many people, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm too full...You name it and it's what I'm heralding as a reason for my frustration.

True, I have bipolar, and it would naive of me to think I have gone through all the changes I have undergone of late without any noise from the insanity section of my world.  I don't know, maybe I am just this fractious person who can't seem to settle, to find any comfort, and who cannot focus long enough to play a game of friggin' pool!

The new 8 Ball season starts this fall, and I am wanted on a team, thanks to my hubby's cousin, who is more like a brother in law than a cousin to me.  But as things go, I know there are balls on the table, that they are supposed to STAY on the table or go into the holes.  I know how to hold the cue stick, though my chest seems to impede good form, and I'm supposed to always hit the white ball first.  I cannot say that I have smoothly transitioned through all those prerequisites with any level of success, really.


So, I have to ask myself what it is that I'm really wanting to do.  I have always been a hobby person.  I take after my dad in that I have to produce.  I like to work with my hands, so in theory, pool should be right up my alley (pardon the bowling metaphor...I do know the difference between the two games).  Time (and practice) will tell if I am able to learn enough to be on a team.  My big concern through all of this is that I don't seem to want to do anything much, and I'm really bitchy a majority of the time so I can't blame it on pms...Well I can, but is that really fair?


I am off to the chiropractor who I'm hopeful will eliminate some of the chronic pain I experience with a ruptured disc and a neck that tends to bend the wrong direction due to too much time working on the computer.  On the way home I shall stop to see if my new glasses are ready so I can see where I am going and who exactly I am going with.  Maybe as I am collecting pieces for improved health there is something I can attach that will help me play pool better...Or maybe the glasses will help.  Either way, this 40 thing is not bringing out the graceful aspects of my nature...See how I did that...I just blamed it all on 40...Perfect!


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The List Thing

One of the things I have noticed about turning 40 is that people take stock.  Then they make "to do" lists.  While I appreciate the concept, I confess I have never been a big resolution person.  Some people are good at such things, even center blogs around their lists.  But while I am a list person (going to Walmart without a list means becoming lost for hours in commercial hell, only to emerge several hours later with four carts of junk and a yak), I do not find it helpful to create life lists.  For one thing stuff happens.  Invariably, the moment I have myself psychologically primed to lose some weight, I am invited to a five star dinner with chocolate as the main course.

I have discovered over the years that I must look at change in my life with baby steps in mind and with a long term view.  Once I decided I wanted to begin losing weight I realized I had to make a life change that incorporated a new way of living, not an achievement I would cross off a list and move on.  So, over the past ten years I have lost 90 pounds.  It has been very slow, and there have been steps back, but I have learned about my body, mind, and how it all fits together in terms of being healthy.  I would have liked to have achieved my desired weight goal by 40 but that isn't happening.  Instead I gained (along with 5 pounds) a husband, two boys, two dogs, a house, and a new car.  So, I just remind myself that I'm a work in process and I move forward.

I'm a big fan of positive psychology.  I have done a lot of work with it over the years, and I have seen how taking a situation an reframing it by looking at it from a different angle helps make it more manageable and more positive.  I think that if one is bent on making lists there needs to be an element of the reframe involved, so that when that goal isn't achieved and nothing can be crossed off the list, there isn't a total derail.  Often what happens when a person makes a "to do" life list, they end up focusing so much on getting it done they forget why they are doing it in the first place.  The need to accomplish the list is often overshadowed by the failure to do so, and there is no connection to why it was being done in the first place. 

John C.  Maxwell wrote a book called "Failing Forward".  I have become a big fan of the ideology.  Life is not about not failing.  Everyone fails.  It's about knowing you will fail and choosing to fail forward so that failure creates successes.  When I fail, rather than look at it as my screwing things up again, I must look at the situation as part of a journey to becoming a better me.  Sounds like a pat answer I know, so here is an example:

I have decided I need to not be so direct when dealing with my husband.  I know that when I do I can say things that hurt his feelings, pinpoint assumptions that are inaccurate, and create issue that might simply dissipate if I were to keep my mouth shut instead.  I fail on this every day.  I continue to spew when I should contain.  That last sentence provides the logistics of my failure, but I have found something interesting through the process, a benefit to continually failing.  I am getting better at saying those three little works..."I am sorry."  I am learning to say them more quickly too.  I have, in the past, taken much time to work up to that short little sentence.  I am failing forward.  I am procuring something good from what seems like continual failure. 

Now don't get me wrong...I would love to not fail at anything...Seriously?  That's just not realistic, and the truth be known, I don't make lists because I can get hung up on one thing for quite some time.  I don't need the pressure of a list of things that herald my lack of accomplish and my continual failures to accommodate...failing forward or not. 

So, to kick off my forties, there will be no lists.  There will be life modifications that exist for the sole purpose of improving me as a human being.  There will be failures that cause me to move forward in all areas, because if I'm gonna fail, I'd rather it be forward.  There will be maintaining of that which benefits, an exit of that which does not benefit, and additions that edify.

Hmmm....Looks a bit like a list...
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