My Uncover Your Calling class continues to be way intense. Last week we each got 15 minutes to tell our “life story.” I was a mess. I saw my therapist earlier at 4p that day. I cried during our meeting: I lamented that I recently realized I was projecting my parents’ style of quasi-conditional love (tied to expectations) on to John– always being super critical and focused on things that should be done better… Basically, I was perpetuating a form of emotional abuse…

My therapist brought up self-acceptance and how I should learn to feel emotions without having to DO anything about them. I don’t really understand that concept. I feel like I have confidence in my strengths, but I’m always obsessing over my weaknesses, because I want to be better. I dunno: I just can’t seem to find that balance between self-acceptance and self-improvement. I have a fear of complacency and stagnation. Ultimately, I suppose the point of her statement is that I have to somehow find a way to let go of things or circumstances that I cannot change. So this whole debacle at work: rather than feeling anger and outrage and going on my whole tirade, I should consider just feeling sad at the loss of my manager and friend and sad about the demise of a once awesome workplace. But I dunno: why feel anything without tying it to action? Seems like just sitting and being aware of those emotions is not really useful. Shrug. Then again, I suppose trying to take action is equally useless.

So yeah, later that same day, I did my life story. What a strange thing to encapsulate 3+ decades into a few minutes of key moments/stories. I was super stressed about it, just because I wanted to well, select the right content to tell a story with essence, you know? Also, I knew I was going to lose my shit talking about my parents and my brother. It’s so lame and all day I kept trying to train myself to NOT cry, but fuck, no more than TEN seconds into my turn, and the waterworks just went on full blast. Truth be told, I always was a crybaby as a kid. Seriously, I cried A LOT– about everything and anything. And I was like 100x more serious than I am now. Imagine that.

Otherwise, the Uncover Your Calling class is insightful. It’s a shitload of work, but I am trying to believe in the process and hope that I will reach some clarity soon. I mean, the exercises are interesting and thought-provoking. My mind just feels tired. I’m sleeping a lot again on the weekends.

I did gain some perspective last weekend. My best mother friend called: she was talking about other things, but she kept saying, “Life is short.” And in my heart, I know that. So I’m going to stop pretending like I don’t have choices. (Practically everything John and I do is about creating a life with freedom and choice!) And this might just have to be a time when I stop trying to test/prove myself, and I step away and just get back to what’s good.

In other news, I’m going to start eating into that PTO stash soon enough. Seattle in mid-June and then Cowboy Country at the end of June!! John surprised me by suggesting a week in Jackson Hole, WY!! Yee haw! He actually says he needs a vacation. I am so excited. We’re going to check out Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. I am so stoked to live out my Legends of the Fall dream. United Air miles, baby! And I’m going to use my Lounge passes too.