Another week gone by...


I am starting my day a little differently today. It is Saturday morning at 6:40 am. My work day has just begun and I have decided to blog first thing and see how that sets the mood for the day. I am not wanting to be here today... really I am not wanting to be here any day... but today especially. We have been having our whole office repainted (the interior) and it looks like today is the day they are going to be doing more work on the room I work in.... yeah for 12 hours breathing in paint fumes! This place is such a hole it's unbelievable, really. What little consideration is given to the health of the employees blows my mind. Anyhoo. I do not want to spend my whole blogging time bitching about the job you all know that I hate. I would rather catch you up on the events of the week.

This has been a pretty intense week for me. I applied for two more direct care jobs. One at Spurwink and one at Creative Works. My goal is to find and apply for 2 appropriate jobs a week until I am out of here. It makes me feel good and productive when I have actions to take on a weekly basis. Makes it a little easier to spend the time I have to here in the interum.
I had therapy on Wednesday and we talked a lot about my issues with body image, sexuality and intimacy. Very intense. What I think I have discovered is that I never really developed on a emotional level when it comes to sex. I spent my adolecent years trying to fill a role and please everyone and find the place that I fit that I never accepted myself just as I was and never had the chance to explore sexuality in a safe way. Now here I am at 27 and married and competely out of touch with my body. SO I am going back! My husband and I are going back to the teen years with our physical relationship so that I can explore and become comfortable and learn more about myself. I never had the high school boyfriend or the giggling sexual exploration. My experiences were all very intense and alot of them traumatic. I am very excited about this! On the other front in dealing with my self esteem and body image issues I am working on a mixed media painting to express acceptance of my body as it is right now. All the curves and roundness and beauty of the body I am blessed with. It is going to be a long process pulling all the images out of my head and getting them on the canvas but I spent 2 days this week working on the background and I am really pleased with it thus far. The other thing that I am doing in this arena is next week my dear friend Miranda is going to help me to update my wardrobe with clothing that really fits my body now and makes me feel good. I have avoided purchasing new clothes because of my deep desire to be smaller and now all of my clothing is ill fitting and ratty and i done care for much of any of it. Clothes shopping has always been challenging for me... not one of my favorite hobbies and I am so fortunate to have Miranda who is a master shopper not to mention fashion expert to help me on this part of my journey! So that is where the healing is at this week.

I also saw a chiropractor for the first time this week which was very enlighteneing. I have alot of upper back and neck pain which I have attributed to job stress and working at the computer. However it looks as though it can be more attributed to the way I walk and breathe. My body still functions in the "fight or flight" response because of my PTSD. I knew that my emotions were ruled by the PTSD and my hormones but had no idea that my physical movements were as well. SOOO I have 4 excercises to work with daily: deep belly breathing, tummy tucks (sucking in my tummy) Kegal excercises and striding (walking with elongated strides for 1/4 mile per day) These 4 excercises should improve my core stability and support my spine in proper alignment as well as retraining my body out of fight or flight. Very Intense!~ I go back to the chiropractor twice a week for the next two weeks and am pretty excited about all the syronicities... cool.

SO we are also finishing up the AW pretty quick here. I have been doing my morning pages on my work days, which does help with the work stress. I have pretty much abandoned the artist dates and have been using the time in my studio instead. I have stayed up on the reading every week and have done proably 50% of the tasks the past few weeks. I have gained a lot from the process and am glad that I stuck with it. I am sad that I havent been able to stay up with the blogs that I origionally did but most of my computer time was at work on the weekends and now that we are in busy season I do not have that oppurtunity as much. AND once I change jobs I won't have that opportunity at all... ah well I am doing the best that I can to keep all the balls in the air!

OKay blog time for the week is now over. I apologise for any spelling errors, I am not in the mood to go back and re read all this I just hope it is coherent. I hope yall have a wonderful week and I look forward to sharing with you again next weekend!

In love and light,
Jocelyn

Hello..... I think I am done neglecting my poor blog now. Things have just been so crazy scince the surgery that it has been hard to reconnect with blogger world. I have made it a priority to update my blog today so here I am at 6:39 am here to share with all of you lovlies. SO this is what has been happening: I am still hating my job, actually I think I am hating it even more now. I find ever minute that I spend in this building depleting my internal resources to a dangerosly low level. I am still waiting to hear back from the guy at Residential Resources. I applied a week ago and then emailed him a couple of days ago. I will give him until Tuesday and then follow up by phone. If I still get nothing then I am going to make it a priority this week to go through the job listings and find 2 suitable positions to apply for. Keep moving slow but sure to get myself out of this hell hole. IN the meantime I am fighting to keep my spirit open to new job opportunities. SO, that's the job front.

I met with my surgeon for my post-op on Wednesday. Eveything came back ok from the lab and looked normal. She did not find any endometirosis and just removed a small piece of fibrous tissue which could be the cause of my pain. We will have to wait and see. If my pain has not subsided then we know that the problem is more the vulva vestibulitis which sucks because there are not a lot of treatment options for that. I am beginning to fear that there is going to be a lot more of the mind-body connection involved in this physical part of my healing than I thought. One of the ideas that has been presented to me is to see a sex therapist in conjunction with my regular therapy process and do some deeper work with my emotional and energetic connections to my womb. ANYWAY this week I have been feeling a bit fragile, frustrated and sad. I had really hoped that after the surgery things would be much more setteled than they actually are.

As a treat to myself I went back to the massage school I graduated from and got a massage from a student yesterday. She was an amazing deep tissue practicioner and really worked a lot of the knots and problem areas out of my neck and upper back which is exactly what I went there for and thought I needed most. Physically I think it is what I needed most. But, emotionally I think I could have benefited more from a nice relaxing nuturing full body swedish massage. Perhaps in a couple of weeks I will need to go back and try for that. It is just so difficult for me to relax most of the time. Even when I am just hanging out doing nothing I feel like I am running a marathon on the inside. It just gets so exhausting and frustrating being me sometimes.

As far as the Artist's Way goes, I have been somewhat recommited to the process. I have definitley been staying up on the reading and doing about half of the tasks. I managed my morning pages 4 days this week and I did not even think of the artist's date but that is okay. I am not going to allow myself to feel guilt for that. It has fit as much as it can in my process for the moment and it has lent to a tremendous amount of work and healing. I plan to stick with this same level of commitment for the last two weeks of the process and finish it out with pride.

Well, I beleive that is all for today. I hope all is well out there with my blogy friends and family. I do sincerly love all of your feedback and I do apologise if I have been out of touch with your blogs I hope to get back into it at some point, when the time is right.

In love and light,
Jocelyn

This is my very first altered matchbook shrine!

OKay folks I am back and I survived! The surgery went well. They found some scar tissue nodule thingy behind my uterus which has been removed and I did have an unplesant allergic reaction to the pain medicine which sucked but I made it through and now I am bored out of my MIND! My husband has my car this week as his is in the shop so I am stuck at home and going stir crazy. You know when you are so bored you don't want to do anything? yeah, that's where I am at. I still have to take it easy. Yesterday I did some crazy cleaning and wore myself out (I was sick of my apartment smelling like a sick person!) and ended up in bed at like 5:30 and in quite a bit of pain SO I am trying to honor my body and my healing today and continue to take it easy but I will tell you it is not an easy thing for me! I have febrezed everything within reach and my cat is now avoiding me... hmmm I don't really have anything else exciting to share. I have taken a hiatis from the Artist's Way due to the surgery buisness and don't feel ready to recommit quite yet. I have been working on some different artistic projects and some nice treats for my new pen pals and I will share a bit with you all shortly. I have finally uploaded pics of my altered matchbox that I did for my cloth paper studio competition and am oh so proud of so I suppose I will share those with you in the next post above you lucky dogs :) Okay I got nothin!

In love and light,
Jocelyn