I'm Back!

For all my devotees, I am so SORRY that I took such a LONG break from blogging. I know you have all been crying into your pillows at night as you drift off to sleep, brokenhearted at not being able to catch up on the way-cool updates of MY life. I honestly don't have a good reason for going on sabbatical other than I didn't think I had anything interesting, useful, inspiring (no, not that!) or funny to write. Now that I am here, I still can't promise you any of the above, but I was assigned this blogging activity by my Life Coach, a sweet-sounding German woman named Edith, so I am obliged to do so.

Why a Life Coach? And why now? What the heck IS a Life Coach anyway? Well, my very good friend Mitzi, aka "Marty's Mom" (that's a whole other blog entry), is doing a year-long training with Accomplishment Coaching, and the coaching students need people on which to practice their coaching methods. I eagerly volunteered because I love to work on me, myself and I, especially if it doesn't cost me anything. I've been coached for a little more than a month now, and the word I hear the most out of sweet Edith's mouth is "empowerment". Like in, "Does this thought empower you or dis-empower you?" "Was there anything about this session that you found dis-empowering?", and on and on and on.

But I'm finally getting it. I think. As one who is being coached, I need to design projects to work on in order to move my life forward, where ever that may be. One area of my life which sticks out like a very sore thumb is the humongous MESS in my house. I'm usually a little messy, but over the summer things got really, REALLY messy. As in, it looks like college boys are in charge of keeping the place in order. ACK! Of COURSE I want this to be one of my main projects, but I am easily overwhelmed by "stuff". I am really good with most things in the world of energy, but physical matter often has me paralyzed.  Edith tried to make this easier on me by having me think of the overall goal I want to have regarding my house.  Was is that I just wanted it clean?  No.  Orderly?  Not exactly.  These things make me feel tight and constrained when I envision my house that way because I can imagine becoming OCD as I try to maintain this new cleanliness and orderliness.  No, it has to be something else.  Comfortable?  Yes yes yes!!!  So I started to write up my "Design from the Future" assignment that I called, "Project Comfortable Home", and I was really starting to get somewhere.  I could envision a couple of areas in my house being exactly the way I wanted it; I listed some milestones and even rewards I would like after meeting those milestones.  But still, the project wasn't gelling.  "To make my home more comfortable" felt and sounded very passive, hazy, and LAZY. I was starting to envision a house that made me sleepy because it was so comfortable, and that is NOT the effect I am after.  So what was missing?  I'm sure all you smarty-pants are already shouting the answer at your computer monitors.  Wait for it.......



I want to make my home "a place where I feel EMPOWERED."

Ta DA!  How easy is this?  Now I can go about the task of de-cluttering, rearranging, cleaning, and keeping/tossing while asking myself every step of the way, "Does keeping this pile of crap in the middle of the living room floor empower me or DIS-empower me?"  "Storing the backpacks and dance bags WHERE will make me feel most empowered?"  I don't have the answer to that one yet, but I can assure you that where they are now, in the dining area where I constantly trip on them, does not make me feel empowered.