trustno1

So I haven’t posted for a while, been writing them but not uploading.

I wrote this last week when I had the intention of uploading:

So I’ve been writing my journal but not posting. Lazy ass syndrome I guess…

After therapy this Saturday, I now think I hadn’t posted because I needed to read them again. Tx Seb =)

Putting myself out there

The first thing is listening to myself. On Sunday I went on a field trip with the family and got mayor sick, at first I thought it was dehydration but by Monday night it was clear it wasn’t (mayor stomach infection instead, really). So Monday through Wednesday went by in a haze, Thursday I finally went to the doctor.

That same day I got a lead on a potential transfer possibility for me, and here comes the part where I learned something:

I gotta build some networking capabilities!!!

Job and personal wise

I’ve known this for a while, even before Gloria brought it up in therapy last week, but I always related it to the XGuy = lonely thing. Now I see how it can help in other aspects like selling my worth at work and getting my nerve up to flirt back J

This week I learned  how much farther I have to go.

This week started off great! I was like a well oiled machine, got my proposals done, got my presentations for next week done and looked over by a friend that has a lot of experience in the field. I was grooving!

Wednesday my work friend took me to lunch for my Bday; this was sooo uplifting, people from different areas came and it just made me feel appreciated. It was great, Thursday I got the afternoon off, blah, blah, blah.

Saturday I went to my therapy session and couldn’t hide my glee… then my therapist asks if I want to start peeling off another layer of what is my life.

I said yes and automatically a wall came up and started acting as if I was being interrogated, ( I even took one of the sofa pillows and put it infront of me! Like armour almost! (now it just seems ridiculous))

I mean I know I have to do this, and want to, but…

It’s been more or less 20 years, I never talk about my feelings and the truth is that being anti-social is much easier and hurts a hell less.

So I know I nedd to do this, and I want to, but breaking old habits, breaking my anchors…  in truth that’s crazy and I will do it but I’ve just realized how much farther I still have to go.

Revindication takes work from the inside

This week I learned how harm can be undone, and how much I rely on what others think of me. Just because one person says or thinks something it doesn’t mean everyone thinks the same.

So even though last week was good because my new boss is a boss (not a wakko) , I still felt insecure, mostly  because when he said people complained  about the department (not just about me) it was a blow to my ego and just made me sort of insecure and resentful in my everyday creative paranoid mind, I just heard EVERYONE THINKS YOU’RE RUDE AND STINK AT YOU’RE JOB.

But this week I learned how this is just as real as you let it be, and it’s not.

That I get depressed out of nowhere (nothing big just having a pity party right now), and at the sametime I learned that the drama in my life is just that which I will allow in other words, it depends on how I react to things which makes them big or not.

For instance I had two situations happen that at any other point would've caused fireworks and when they happened.. no biggy.

Today I'm tired and nervous because tommorow is like a whole new start, I have a meeting with someone who tried to take me down once and I hate confrontation... I guess I'll just stick to the task at hand... but still I'm nervous.

I've also had to admit to myself (notice didn't say I learned, I've known this for a while but it's easier to fake) that when I get insecure I run, I run like the wind... I have even changed states, but that was a long long time ago and a diffrent me altogether.

It's just that today that old insecurity and the new ways I am trying to deal with things are at conflict, over not knowing what is going to happen next week... guess I'm just overwhelmed, and after all the worst that can happen is not that mayor. I always say that the worst is death I will certainly not die from whatever happens, so... what's the big deal!

nothing much, just a pity party

So I guess what I learned this week, is that what ever happens... it's no biggy  =)

So, I read my horoscope this morning and it said something along the lines of rest up and recover your energy and your inner child, you’ll need it in order to get ready for your emancipation.

Emancipate – 1 free from restraint, esp. legal, social or political.

Emancipation indeed!

Finally a light at the end of the tunnel! This week my standing in boss left for her pregnancy leave-vacation time, 4 months!

And now the real work begins, without going into much detail I will just say that working with this woman was hell, she did everything on her own – usually wrong because she never asked any of the people “below her” (the ones that had the real info and experience) for assistance, help or even an opinion. This situation built up for over a year (I think almost to the day!) and of the 10 people that reported to her, 3 of us for sure where on the verge of quitting.

Well back to my story (that was just background) so this last week was her last and now we are reporting to another manager who used to report to her and yes… he knows what’s going on.

This situation had me depressed, unmotivated and completely exhausted. This woman was evil, she looked for ways to get into your head, she’d mop the floor with one of the guys that reported to her at every staff meeting. With me it was more on the grounds of making me doubt myself saying people thought I was rude, that the information I gave her was wrong, blah, blah, blah. Fortunately I have therapy so she only got me once, the other times she tried it wasn’t so bad, but still she planted seeds of doubt in my head and this culminated this Thursday when she did our performance evaluations, where once again she started telling me I was viewed as a hardass, crackwhiping supervisor, rude when tense, yadah, yadah, yadah but this time I made sure not to take it in and show emotion, not to let it affect me.

Sad really, but for now at least she’s gone and emancipation (or clearing of my rep) has begun but most of all, what I learned this week is that the words of one person shouldn’t set me in a downward spiral where I was just passing time at work, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for them to fire me, instead of just doing my professional (and human) best. I just gave in to what she said and dug myself into a hole thinking that what she said was the truth or at least a general impression.

This is not fair, to anyone and most of all it’s not real. The words of one person can only hit you if you let them and when you have other experiences that show the complete opposite! Well, I just laugh now (well smile, maybe in a week or so I will be laughing).

Now when I see how I let my head get so anxious by the words of one person who clearly has as one of her hobbies to put down those around her…

This week I learned that even if a seed is planted, it still needs other things to grow, and it’s up to me not to let them.

So I’ve been noticing a lot of stress around me for some time, at work I don’t know if I’m getting transferred, fired of staying in a position I have recently had to admit to myself I don’t like anymore.

In relationships (all be it work relationships) it´s like  you can’t say anything contradictory to people because they’ll just want to cut you down and see you as a threat because you “found” a weak spot (be it emotional or strictly job related).

This oversensitivity or survival mode we are all in, don’t know if it’s new or not but its disturbing (or at least annoying) and in my search to evolve from my troubled, scarred phase I’ve come upon a book: The New Earth (yes I’m an Oprah fan) and in it found this which I’m quoting (btw my book is in Spanish so this quote is straight from webring):

… What is an argument? Two or more persons express their opinions and those opinions differ. Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. In other words: Identity and thought merge. Once this has happened, when I defend my opinions (thoughts), I feel and act as if I were defending my very self. Unconsciously, I feel and act as if I were fighting for survival and so my emotions will reflect this unconscious belief. They become turbulent. I am upset, angry, defensive, or aggressive. I need to win at all cost lest I become annihilated. …

And this made me understand how it is up to each one of us to really just not let this drama get to us and make it bigger than it is and how even though words scar for life it is up to each one of us to let them.

SO DON´T

Well 2007 is over, and all in all I have to say it was a year of closing circles for me. I finally rejoined therapy and it`s made me see that not every comment and glare is aimed at me, and also not everything I do has to be 100% perfect in order to be a success.

I`ve always pushed myself but it was just getting out of hand. My parents where always strict and since I don`t live at home anymore seems like I took it upon myself to keep it up, but in a harsher way. Also a few years back I got involved with a guy who was just plain wrong (gorgeous to a fault, a womanizing, mentally abusive fault) and that just sent me into some weird paranoid selfdeprecating spiral. I stopped going out, lost touch with most of my friends and so on.

When I first left him it was thanks to therapy, but I now know I quit therapy to soon; I didn`t go back to him, but I was still not ready to face the world alone.

This year I got a new job that I really want to keep, but the standards are just not what I`m used to in a way they`re lower but the expectation of being constant in your delivery is something I`ve never done.

I sort of have a short attention span and get bored with routine, so it was hard to keep up with a standard, so hard it made me realize how hard I can be on myself. Fortunately! `cause that made me go bach to therapy.

now I`m learning to adapt.

This year I started getting my hair straightened permanently, but this meant having to get it proffesionaly dyed. It`s just to expensive and the truth is I preffer to dye it and I guess I`ll just have to make time in the morning or at night to straighten it the old-fashioned way.

I guess it`s vanity, `cause I don`t like looking at my grayhairs. Also I realized I`m getting older, my cholesterol level has very high at the start of the year, that made me excercise voluntarily for the first time ever!

Now the big decision is if I still want to live in the Big City (Mexico City), being backhome for the past two weeks has just made me think alot. People say Tijuana is not a safe town, but it sure feels peaceful compared to Mexico City. But then again it is vacation time so maybe it isn`t this peaceful all the time.

I guess this year I have to take a good look at what I have and whether or not I have to move in order to keep growing...

All in all a rough year but fortunately there was some meaning behind it all.

Hope I can keep it going for 2008  =)

Evolution gone mad

Shaping of Hooks in New Caledonian Crows
A. A. S. Weir, J. Chappell, A. Kacelnik
Science 297, 981 (2002)

In the Brevia section of the 9 August 2002 issue of Science, Weir et al. report a remarkable observation: The toolmaking behavior of New Caledonian crows. In the experiments, a captive female crow, confronted with a task that required a curved tool (retrieving a food-containing bucket from a vertical pipe), spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hooked shape -- and then repeated the behavior in nine out of ten subsequent trials. Though these crows are known to employ tools in the wild using natural materials, this bird had no prior training with the use of pliant materials such as wire -- a fact that makes its apparently spontaneous, highly specific problem-solving all the more interesting, and raises intriguing questions about the evolutionary preconditions for complex cognition. The crow's behavior was captured on an unusual video clip, available on Science Online.

I'm aware this is old, but this is the kind of thing I'm interested in.

Monkey walks like human