Maybe February is the time for endings

Dear Bloggers,

The bus company I work for has offered me a steady contract for 32 hours per week. I am happy and on the other hand I feel a bit sad. I have been living my life on the wild side if I may say so. I have never been a regular Joe if it comes to jobs. All the jobs that I have done in my past are not all the best paid ones in the world. At least I had fun and saw an awful lot of our planet. And now it’s the last day of February the last day as a Temp. Tomorrow it is the first of March and my contract is activated. It gives me the shivers.

Maybe February is the time for endings. Some of the worst things in my life have happened in February. No, that’s untrue- they just feel like they all happened in February.  Endings tend to have a similar quality: a slowness that’s not the same as a bleak, cold, February morning. 

Then your blood seems like it will never be warm again, sluggish through your veins, now, it just feels like it’s gone underground. It’s not the slackness feeling of a hot, humid, summer, with the sun merciless on your face, turning your skin from brown to a burning and glowing sensation, when you can’t make the effort to even reach out to that cool glass of beer that your wife has placed on your table. No, this is the hushed, sticky quality of the air before the rain suddenly falls in a sheet, and you’re soaked from head to toe; your umbrella dripping uselessly onto your shoes, as the “road” that you walked underneath turns to a muddy river in two minutes flat.

What just happened, you ask yourself, even as you sigh and think “February”. Snow has gone, Winter just packed it’s suitcases and springtime has not arrived yet. Afterward, you try to pick it apart: And loop the past on a scratchy rewind, like those tapes you played over and over until they became scratching, static bursts between the snatches of that so familiar love song. Where the hell  is it, you think, just that one moment, the turning point when it all started there were you found the right one, the moment that you found love is coming undone.

You’re looking for the sign, that one dark cloud in the distance, the flash of lightning, but sometimes all you’re left with is the clear sky ahead and the thickening air, that is taking your breath.

One morning I woke up and found a baby spider that  has crawled into the folds of my fading grey lounging set that sits outside the deck in our garden. It has been unexpectedly cold the last few nights and the little rascal had probably sought out the warmth of the couch cushion.

I flap my hands at the furry resinous intruder: unsurprisingly, it moves not an inch. “I’m giving you ten minutes while I brew the coffee for myself and the tea for my wife”, I tell it solemnly: “after that, you’re out”.  When I step out again, my hands slowly warmed by my steaming mug of coffee, it’s gone. I feel both smug and guilty; like I’ve won a battle and lost a more important war; like I’ve missed the forest for the trees, like I have once again, failed to read the signs.

How are you feeling, my wife asks me. “Okay”, I say and she accepts it for what it is: a barefaced lie. We are, neither of us, strangers to this; when all the stuff inside is so tangled that the only possible answer is just a simple “Okay”.

There’s a dissonance that leaves me tongue tied; the inexplicable chasm between what I know I should feel, and what I do feel; akin to letting yourself in with the key and just finding yourself in a stranger’s house. This is familiar territory, I remind myself. You’ve been here before, you know how this goes.

Endings are not an undiscovered land. And yet. I look up The 5 steps that I learned in the past years again; try to see what I’ve missed. Everything, it looks like; there is no progression, no gradual climb down. I’m just here. But there must be, I think, increasingly desperate for something, anything that feels familiar.  But no, this is the fun house mirror version of myself, everything in its place and just that bit distorted, rendered unrecognizable.

I imagine what a therapist would ask me: how are you sleeping, are you eating regularly, do you shower, do you make the bed, do you change your clothes, do you exercise? Answer: Well, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, but I never did, it’s not unusual. I still hate work for the usual amount, not more or less.

You should be happy mate, a colleague  tells me, I’m not saying who had some rough times in his past. I tell him a long and involved story about how I have lost many people on my way that kept me company. This is not a problem but having a contract is also having some obligations towards my job before it was easier to get a day off as there were no strings attached, to me life is like a friendly cow a huge white-and-black speckled beast. It moos at odd times and reminds me that life goes on; that February, in fact, can be great for some species: plentiful green grass, the fresh air that comes with some springtime smells; outside it’s getting more and more pleasant, of course with slightly unpredictable weather and cool nights.

I lie in bed and listen to the night sounds the squeaking of the roof, the occasional drunken song from two houses away, the rain showers that bash into the windows, a faint siren in the distance from a firetruck, some kind of chirping sound.

That gives me exactly that feeling that you’ve got during the long lazy summer nights. That moment your sitting at the kitchen table and a moth wanders in, flirts with the dazzling white light and then wanders out. It’s not hard to fall asleep on these days, when my thoughts seem to have no particular direction. When I wake up, I don’t remember my dreams.

Fact: time moves forward and I am getting old.

Fact: February seems to last forever.

It’s cold at night, during the day it shifts rapidly from sunny spells to bashing rain showers. Running around in winter jackets and sunglasses on. I’m doing my job for the last day as a Temp. Tomorrow I am one of the guys with a steady job. It feels like a new episode in my life, is this the final destination to my pension.

How are you feeling?, I used to ask others; and now I ask myself: How are you feeling?, the answer is that It feels pretty double and even a bit emotional. Although inside of me the salty blood is still flowing through my veins. I will be an Old Sailor forever.

The Old Sailor,

What if you became the victim of a manipulator

Dear Bloggers,

What if you became the victim of a manipulator on your job. If your manager is one of those kind of bosses what would you do if he picked you as his victim.

Loads of people would flea and others will pick up the fight. But fighting is difficult and it might take more than you ever could imagine. My wife has always been someone who wasn't scared to tell you if there was something wrong work wise and you had a tough time when she was sure that she was right.

She could be pretty much point out were the problem was. She lost the three year long battle against two managers and has ended up with a mental state of mind as the last one did every thing in his power to make the kill and that she would leave without any hassle. I am pretty impressed that these people get that much freedom from the higher management to do that much damage to a happy personality (I've seen people that were that much destroyed as they had been captured and tortured by kidnapping something that you could expect.)

 

I am often asked how a person can get to each other through the process of picking up the pieces and overcoming the scars of an abusive or manipulative workplace once they finally found the courage to end it.

In fact, I’ve been asked several times to consider writing a book, on this topic alone. It seems that dysfunctional work relationship survivors often experience some unique kinds of emotional and mental turmoil. And although I’ve written about the fundamental ways these individuals can empower themselves and start over, I haven’t written very much on the kinds of things they typically experience as they’re trying to heal their wounds and put their lives back together. 

Most families fall apart after the abuse as the partners can't cope anymore. The one that has been victimized has trouble to trust people including their own spouse and children. It is a bumpy road to get your life back on track. 

Many people have told me about how hard it was for them to stop blaming themselves and engaging in a lot of self-doubt and reproach. ”How could I have been so blind…. or so stupid, or why didn't I walk away from this?” they ask themselves. It’s difficult for them to reconcile the way they saw things in the days before their toxic relationship and the way they have come to view things since their painful experience. They sometimes question their rationality as well as their sanity. 

 
But the truth of the matter is that while they might indeed have had some personality characteristics of their own that made them particularly naive and vulnerable (most of us do), the fact is that covert-aggressors are generally quite skilled at what they do, and the more seriously character disturbed social predators among us (i.e. the psychopaths/sociopaths) are extremely astute and talented when it comes to the “art of the con.” And in their very nature, manipulation tactics are often hard to see until after the fact. 

Besides, it’s relatively pointless to play the self-blame game. Lovingly reckoning with your vulnerabilities and vowing to become a stronger, better person in the aftermath of a troubled workrelationship is one thing, but doing an emotional hatchet-job on yourself just because you happened to fall prey to a good con artist is quite another.

And after years of being manipulated it’s easy to get into the habit of doubting yourself. This can be an even bigger problem if you tried counseling the manipulator at some point and the disturbed character who is wanting the ultimate power managed to con the therapist as well. Still, as hard as it might be, the one of the most important tasks for any “recovering” person has before them is to end the destructive cycle of self-doubt and blame.

Some folks have a lot of anger to deal with after their abusive relationship is finally over. They can harbor resentment that their former abuser seemed to “get away with” being such a Son of a gun while they (and perhaps their children as well) had to pay all the prices involved. To make matters worse, some possessive controllers as in my spouse her case do their best to make the ordeal of manipulating their husband as well which might lead to separation or divorce and make their live like a living hell on those who have finally had enough and found the courage to walk away. And the collateral damage that can be done to otherwise healthy relationships with others who might possibly have been sources of support can also make a survivor angry, bitter, and resentful.

For the reasons mentioned above as well as some very important others, especially for purposes of healthy information-sharing, I’d like to invite all of the readers who can identify themselves with these issues to comment on the various things they might have gone through when ending a job or even worse a relationship with a manipulator or other character-disturbed person and trying to start a new life. 

And I’ll might be writing some more on this topic in the coming months.

The Old Sailor,

My way of dealing with a burn out

Dear Bloggers,

My wife is suffering from a burn out and we are working slowly on her recovery. Let me tell you it is a long way but here I have some tips to make your life a bit easier. Whenever in doubt, humans all across this huge, people-filled planet resort to bending out of shape instead of empowering ourselves to get up and pick ourselves up! Although it is not very healthy for you, it's just what we do! Men and women all alike do this, too, so you have nothing to be ashamed of. Now, you have the power to conquer emotions and inner negativity! This guide will suggest ways in which you gain control of your life again. I got my life back in order, and you can get yours back too.

Steps

Get rid of the negativity in your life. Put family and friends which bring too much negativity toward you on freeze for now. Don't start any trouble with them, but be less reliant on them. Also, cut back on negativity yourself! Whenever you think something negative, say to yourself, "That's negative and unnecessary." Keep saying that to yourself until your brain stops completely.

Cut back on unnecessary activities to free up time. Any activity that does not produce a tangible result or lead you to success you can put on freeze. For example, cutting back on a movie or going on the computer to go on aim half as often would suffice. But be careful about choosing which things in your life are important to you and which are not. To avoid common errors, first make a list of things (on paper!) that you normally do on a daily and/or weekly basis and put how much time you spend on each activity. Then, take the items on that list and lightly cross off the things that are useless in your life and you spend too much time on. For example, if you watch TV for 5 hours a day, you're definitely wasting some time in your life. If it has something to do with another person, specifically family, do not cross it off as doing this could affect the other person badly. Next, look at all of the things you crossed off and then at the things you still have on your other list. Does this seem reasonable? Could you live without the things you crossed out? Our main goal is to get you to stop spending too much time on useless things.

Create a weekly goal list using three colors.

·      A black priority would be something that has to be done at a certain date and time, without any exceptions.

·      A red priority would be something that has to be done by the end of the day.

·      An orange priority would be something that has to be done within less than one-seven hours. Don't look past 7 days until the priorities are met.

Buy a few hundred index cards, or 2-3 packs. Keep at least a half of a pack with you at all times. They are valuable in social events and allow you to capture ideas onto paper, so you will never forget anything. Knowing that all of your problems are in your pocket will take away stress because you can stop thinking about them and start thinking about other important things.

Organize most of your computer files into 5-15 folders to make sure you have your digital priorities straight. Example folders: Work, School, Research/Reading, Personal Writings, Weekly Goals, Music, Photos, Reminders. Also important to get your mailbox in order there are a lot of unnecessary items in your inbox

Write down 10 strengths you have and how you can use them to your advantage. Write down 10 weaknesses you have and how you can improve them. Try to improve yourself a little bit everyday but at the same time keep this quote in mind: "Complete perfection is bliss, but when perfection is met with humanity, it's useless." Never use the word "perfect." Use "improved" instead. The process of improvement is slow, but if you try to improve yourself everyday, in 6 months, the next list you write will be very different.

Build self-esteem. Don't compare yourself to other people and do not limit yourself to the standards of the consensus. To a certain extent, forget judgmental strangers and give yourself enough room to grow.

Real Self Confidence and Esteem is based in emotion, not a self-image
to build self-confidence and overcome low self-esteem is to change how we feel emotionally about ourselves. To change our emotion requires changing two different core beliefs about self-image. The first core belief is obvious. It is the belief that we are not good enough. It may have a more specific association to how we look, how smart we are, money, or lack of confidence sexually. The second core belief to change is the image of success that we feel we should be. Changing this belief is contrary to logic, but is a must if we are to overcome insecurity and raise our self-esteem.  

False Self Image of Perfection Cause of Low Self Esteem and Lack of Confidence
When your mind has an image of success that you "should be" it associates happy emotions with that picture. I call that the image of perfection in our mind. The mind does a comparison between the image of perfection and how you see your self-image currently. The comparison results in judgment and self-rejection for not meeting the image of perfection. The self-rejection results in feeling unworthy and of low self esteem

While the image of perfection appears to be a way for us to feel good about ourselves, it is actually causing us to reject ourselves which creates feelings of "not being good enough." If you were to dissolve the belief that you should fit into the image of perfection you would eliminate the self-rejection and feelings of unworthiness that result.

Finding and breaking my own “I’m not good enough story.”

Feelings of confidence and security mean no self-rejection.
The approach of dissolving our image of perfection sounds contrary to our sense of logic about building confidence and esteem. This is because we have the belief that achieving the image of perfection will result in positive happy emotions and feeling confident with our success. Our mind has actually been programmed to have these emotional associations. We desire to feel these feelings and chase the image of perfection we have attached to them.

What we may not be aware of is that achieving our image of success doesn’t effectively change our emotional state. It doesn't do anything to permanently change the way the voice in our head speaks to us or what we believe about ourselves. Many times people have achieved their goals only to find themselves still unfulfilled. Your emotional state may briefly change in the euphoria if the immediate success. But the core belief of not being good enough and your long term habit of self-rejection in the mind hasn’t been altered. The critical voice in our head is more likely to put a higher goal in front of us to achieve. It’s okay to have high goals, but you don’t have to make your love and self-acceptance dependent on them.

Change What You Believe and You Change How You Feel Emotionally
The second belief to dissolve is that we are inadequate and somehow not good enough. These are the beliefs that create emotions of insecurity and fear. The emotions are not the problem they are just the resulting symptom of negative core beliefs. The "not good enough" image is a construct of our imagination. It is a belief about ourselves created by the mind concluding that we are "not good enough to meet the image of perfection." A step to changing this belief is to recognize that we the one observing the "self" image. We cannot be the “self” image we are looking at. We are the one doing the looking. This means the “self-image we create is really a “non self” image. With awareness we can decide to believe in the “non self” image or not believe in the “non self” image. Having this awareness helps shift our point of view and is a beginning step that will help us change a belief.

Changing the “not good enough” image is much easier once you have broken your belief in the image of perfection. Without the image of perfection you no longer have the comparison reinforcing the unworthy "self” image.

Make physical changes to remind yourself that you are a new person. A haircut and new clothing would suffice. Also, cleanse yourself spiritually and mentally to begin a lasting new lifestyle. Meditation is a good way to do this.

Breaking down The Elements: Setting Your Head Right

There are some general points to consider to set your expectations of change correctly.

1.                  I can get better at this.

2.                  The journey, not the destination.

3.                  Don’t pretend you have a different life.

4.                  Start now.

5.                  Expect disruption.

6.                  Expect failure.

7.                  Remove guilt.

8.                  Be patient.

9.                  Live through the seasons.

10.              You are Superman/ woman.

I can get better at this.

This is the fundamental belief you need to start changing. It’s not the same as thinking – “I can change” – which might actually work against you. It’s the mindset that whatever you’re going for, the goal is progress, not perfection.

The journey, not the destination.

When people think about change, they think about intervention.

You’ll eat less, lose 15 kilos, then that’s the end of it.

But it doesn’t happen like that, because change is a constant process. You’re always going to be changing something. And when you get done with changing one thing, there’s going to be something else that emerges, some other change that you’ll need to work on. Expecting this up front saves a lot of disappointment down the track.

Don’t pretend you have a different life.

This ties in to the earlier point – whatever you’re struggling with today – making a decision to change it doesn’t remove any of the elements in your life that make that thing a struggle today. You are always going to revert to the mean when it comes to motivation or optimism and you can’t expect that to change.

Picture yourself making changes in the course of normal life, not in some idealized world in which you have more time, energy and motivation. That place doesn’t exist.

As I would say: “Your future self doesn’t exist. As long as there is no future you. All that exists is a series of present selves, all shirking responsibility and assuming versions of themselves that don’t exist will solve their problems. “Start now.

Equally, the best time to start the process was yesterday. The next best time is now. It won’t be easier after your vacation, or when you move to the new house, or when you get the new job… it will be just as hard and you will have less time to make the change.

So start now, no matter how inconvenient the circumstances might be.

Expect disruption.

Every month, you should expect that 1 in every 4 days will be impacted by sickness, injury, travel for work, personal travel, or an intervening event like a hangover, a soccer championship, a wedding or a hen’s night.

The most under-rated change skill you can develop is the ability to plan in and around those constraints.

Expect failure.

You have to be ready to fail multiple times as you try to make something stick. Failing isn’t a sign to stop; it’s a sign to try again. This time with more information about what works and what doesn’t.

That’s not how it works when it comes to change. In changing, you will encounter so much ‘do not’ that the only thing that matters is ‘try’.

Remove guilt.

Remove the guilt from change. If you fail, start again. Guilt and shame are HUGE wastes of energy. Remove all your negative emotions around change, forget all past failures and just try again. Every other approach is inefficient.

Be patient.

You will grossly overestimate your ability to change. Really. You want to underestimate and then over deliver. Not the reverse.

That’s a really good proxy for how most change happens. It takes much longer than we want to admit.

Live through the seasons.

Your changes will come in seasons. It’s rare they’ll last for more than 3 months without starting to feel stale… So you’ll want to keep this in mind you’re not changing forever, just for a short time and then you will get focused on something else.

Note, this isn’t the case for the ones that are fully breaking down and who are too stubborn to change they will fall back into bad habits and old addictions like smoking and drinking.

\You are Superman or woman.

You are Superman. You have endless lives. You get reborn every time you decide to try again. So don’t be afraid to try and fail.

 The Old Sailor,

Growing Older

Dear Bloggers,


When I was young, 21 was the official age of adulthood. Yes, you could get married before then and young men had to join the military when they reached the age of 18, but that 21st birthday was when the world accepted and recognized you as a grownup.

And I desperately wanted to be a grownup. As I've mentioned here in the past, I was deeply disappointed when I woke on my 21st birthday in 1989, and did not suddenly know the answers to all life's existential questions.
Equally discouraging that day was that I felt no more like an adult than I had the day before.

Although I'd had my own banking account for four years by then, I was angry with myself for still being secretly proud that I knew how to write a check and balance the account each month. By then, I thought, I should be so practiced that it would be no more a big deal than dialing a telephone number.

And even though I had been working all those same four years, I was unhappy that I was afraid of my boss as I had been terrified of my dad all of my younger life. I know that haven't been the sweetest young lad. Grownups didn't feel that way, at least that was what I believed then.

At about that time, when I was buying several drinks one day because having a party was still fun at that age, the cashier held up the vodka I had selected and said, “Honey, you are way too young for this.”

I could feel myself blush, embarrassed because I so wanted to be a grownup and a real grownup had called me out. I still believed then that grownups were always right and I ached for it to be my turn to be right.

It irritated me that whenever I accomplished something new, something real adults seemed to do as a matter of course, my pride in myself overflowed. Booking an airplane trip the first time. Getting my first credit card (very hard for regular “folks” in those days). Registering to vote and then not having a clue what to vote for on election day.

It shouldn't be that way, I thought. I should be as comfortable with myself now, as an adult, as I was with being a child. I never thought then that I was faking being a kid; I just was.

But even getting married when I was 29 seem too grownup for how I felt yet - that I was still pretending to be grown up. But by the time I left my wife for going to sea again a few years later, believe me, I felt plenty grown up.
And that is my point. However much I wished to be an adult at a certain age, it doesn't happen that way. The transition from teenager to adult takes growing into over a period of time.

And now I'm pretty sure that at the other end of life, time is required again to become comfortable in one's old age.
Even if we accept that we've reached the beginning of old age, by 60 or so, many of us are not able anymore to make the internal transition to it than the days we felt like grownups at 21.

I became 45 last year when I first realized I was decades older than everyone, I worked with and translated that into knowing that yes, I really do get old, in fact I already am doing so. And I wondered what it would feel like just as 25 or 30 years earlier I had wondered what being a grownup felt like.

It's taken people around me that have retired nearly 20 years to settle into old age and I'll do it with as many fits and starts as growing into adulthood.
What I first noticed, in the youth of my old age, was that people treated me differently. It probably wasn't but it seemed sudden that at work, I was no longer automatically included when groups of colleagues, all younger now went out for drinks at the end of the day. They somehow forgot to invite the “old”guy.

I knew it was something age-related as, I could no longer keep up with the youngsters. At about the same time, a friend arranged for me to meet a certain women that I admired during the days that I was also single. I was surprised when I talked to her how old he looked; But she was only three years older than me.

More and more frequently, I was happy to stay home on Friday and Saturday evenings. It hadn't been so long before then that I had thought of myself as a social failure without a party on a weekend.



And as I was so angry at age 21 to feel a secret pride in little accomplishments that I believed adults handled with aplomb, now I was annoyed with myself for feeling superior to a couple of older men in my neighborhood who “behaved” much older than I did even though we were born within two or three years of one another. But they had trouble with handling things on a computer. Nowadays I'll ask my daughter to help me with the unknown worlds behind facebook and smart phones.

Curious about what was happening to me and how my life would be different as I got older, I began researching aging. Back then, before the boomers began turning 60, there was almost no popular media about aging that was positive. Mostly they ignored everything about life after 55 or 60.

The amount of information about old age has improved since then (although not necessarily the negative attitudes) I've settled into being older in a way that is similar to having gradually grown into adulthood so long ago.
It took me a very long time to understand that it's a journey getting to old age just as it was getting from childhood to adulthood.

A piece of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, can never be analyzed because

”...for every time it is read it speaks with a different voice to each individual reader. Indeed, on that same reader it's impact changes with each new reading – and particularly at different phases of his growth into maturity and old age.

“This of course is true only for those who continue to grow old and do not merely sink into the aging process or attempt to delay it.”

I'm working on it, I'm trying.

The Old Sailor,