Ysiad

todo::
* 30 minutes on the programming tutorial
* Day Three of journaling about Apathy/Helplessness/Hopeless
* Meeting about nonprofit

habits::
* Meditation – Day 676
* Journaling – Day 19
* Yoga – Day 18

Reflections:: 9:06am. I woke up at 6am, checked my emails, and saw a number of things I needed to respond to. Got started on meditating and yoga at about 8am. Went downstairs, started making soup for lunch, and realized I hadn’t journaled yet. So my routine is a bit off today. I have a few things to celebrate and give myself positive feedback around. Namely: a) My habits are ingrained enough that deviating feels odd. b) When I notice that I’m deviating, I actually recover. c) I did over 30 minutes on the programming tutorial yesterday, after having it on my todo list without doing it for over a week. So I can create good feelings around returning to each of those habits. I’m doing that by smiling very widely and imagining that I’m a little kid on a playground who just stood up to get back on the monkey bars after falling off. And switching between visualizing myself being that kid and being a sibling or parent who’s encouraging the kid to try.

As I think about today, and allowing myself to feel like things are hopeless/ helpless, it’s really about getting good at feeling those feelings and acknowledging them. From taking in various sources including a great conversation recently with my brother in law, I know that if I follow my feelings and really feel them, that the feelings change. And if I don’t really feel them, then they don’t have a chance to move and they stay. Even as an undercurrent. So when I ask myself which situations have been most stagnant and my stories around them, they are:
* My tax situation (that I know from my accountants it actually is helpless to attempt to do anything about given how backed up the IRS is, and that it will disappear in November)
* My relationship with my father and the feelings around it. I just assumed I had to hate him for the longest time. But that’s an option and just means I hate myself. Then there’s a whole theme around establishing a relationship with him. At first glance that seems likely to be a horrible idea, but I’m wondering why that’s a knee jerk reaction. I’m also wondering why that’s something I even ask about. If I think about how I want to be, looking back on the situation and saying “Yeah, I went and met him” feels more to me like it’s aligned with how I’d like to view myself than, “I did a bunch of journaling and processing about things where he featured prominently, but I haven’t seen him in person or spoken with him since I was 12.” That said, I should probably confirm he was even my father. I didn’t even think to ask questions about it, but some serious clarity might come from one of my sisters or my mother doing a 23andme test – or him doing it if my sisters and mom refuse to. Would create more questions than it answers either way. Is he not my biological father? If so, was he adopted? Or… did his whole family lie about their heritage? If not, who was? What’s the real story that my mom’s been so ashamed or scared of telling me?
* My situation with the old employer. The next step there was just getting an attorney. And a friend was willing to make an introduction to one that he used to successfully handle a similar situation. I just needed to make the email introduction. I can write the email introduction for him to send right now, and get that one unblocked. OK. I just sent that email. Unblocked.
Makes me think about what I can do to take action around getting unblocked on the father stuff, now that I acknowledge that I was in a state of apathy.