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Not asking for help

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I will tell you now. I have a horrible time asking for help. Chris can back me up on this – I rarely ask for help. Part of it has to do with how I grew up, where I had to balance life, school, homework, being an awkward teen, taking care of my mom and all the household items that connected to that (paying the bills, groceries, cleaning, etc.). Due to all of those crazy tasks added to my plate from the age of twelve, I am used to juggling many balls, sometimes balls of fire. I am used to it, and it means that even to this day I have a hard time saying: “Can you help me?”

I recently found this article called: “Why Are We So Afraid of Asking for Help?” on the Daily Worth website. The funny part is that the article talks about not asking for help in the context of being a woman. Sure, that does not help my strange childhood upbringing. Yes, I am also a hardcore woman, and I want to be able to do anything. You know the line from: Annie Get Your Gun: “Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you.” That was always the mantra in my life. As the youngest of three, I wanted to make sure I could keep up, so if my sister and brother could play a board game, I would try to figure out how to play it so I can be included, and then I would concentrate, watch, and figure out how to beat everyone. To my disadvantage, eventually they did not want to play with me because I would kick their butt.

In any case, needing help. I never really learned how to ask for help. Generally, as a kid when I would ask for help, it would not come through, so I would just figure it out on my own and not expect anything from anyone. Sad, but true. I still have a hard time. The thought: ‘you could ask for help to do this’ rarely crosses my mind. Except for with Chris. Somehow he has me whooped, and I usually have no problem asking him for help. Maybe he wishes I was not so addicted to his help, but I think he should feel enamored. I have wholeheartedly given him my heart, and my ability to ask for help.

I am learning to ask for help, but the road is slow. Be patient with me.

eunoia

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I am a lover of words. I never was able to take Latin in high school or college, but somehow throughout the years I became addicted to words and their meaning. I always remember the saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It is not true. Words hurt. They infiltrate our minds sometimes, and never leave us. We go over and over them in our thoughts when they hurt. We never forget the first time someone tells us they love us, or the last time.

Recently, I came across a new word:

eunoia (n). beautiful thinking, a well mind

I love the word. Somehow a word rolls off your tongue, or makes you think what does that word mean? eunoia is Greek, and is the shortest English word that contains all vowels. I think of all the people in my life that inspire me with their eunoia. Maybe it is a bit harder to put into a sentence, nevertheless, I like the word. Who in your life has eunoia?

Ah words. Somehow on most days, I make up my own words. I cannot tell you how often I have woken up in the middle of the night and not so gracefully and illegibly written down my own words. When I wake up in the morning, I would try to make out the newest word that oozed out of my half coherent brain. When I am not sleeping, and my mind is going a mile a minute I still make up my own words. They always make sense to me. Somehow over the years, they now mostly make sense to Chris. When I asked him for an example, he said: “That is so hard, because you do it all the time. It is hard to remember them all. I mean, you say it and I repeat the word to you, and you say, ‘Go !&@%&!$’.” Usually he is laughing so hard he does not hear me.

Ah, maybe I do not alway have eunoia. I can dream.

Tardypants

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We are not always the same people all our life. We change, life changes, and sometimes we end up doing things so differently than what we remember. I never remember being the kid that was late. I think I was actually fairly punctual. Somehow over time (as I discuss in the blog “Savor Every Conversation Bite“) I have turned into that person that is late. My colleagues jokingly call me Tardypants. On Monday I started reading the book “Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged” by Dianne DeLonzor. What is interesting is that I have checked out this book from the library a few times. Each time I never read it. There are always more interesting ones in my stack. Eventually, when I see a book continue to make its way to the end of the stack, I pull it out and decide if it interests me and I read past the first few pages. If it does, then I commit to finishing it, return it, and not check it out again.

Over the weekend, there was a hefty stack that made its way back to the library in the category of “not interested.” Somehow, “Never Be Late Again” found me at the right moment. After multiple check-outs, this moment in time seems to be just what I needed to read and absorb. Fast forward to Tuesday morning. Chris has an early morning meeting. By early I mean 8:30 (which I think is early). I am not a morning person. It is my zen/quiet time and I do not like to be rushed. I like to get a lot of personal things done in the morning and I do not like to wake up early. Not an easy dilemma to solve… sleep longer and get less time to myself or get up earlier and have more time to get things done for me. Alas, it means I am often rushing (or Chris is often rushing me) out the door.

An hour later at work and I was already behind. Each meeting of my day went long which meant I was late to my next meeting. It was like a domino effect for the rest of the day. Does this bother me? Should it bother me? Yes. On the one hand it is the situation I am in and, on the other, I feel like it might make others that interact with me frustrated and feel like I am being disrespectful. Yet none of my intentions are malicious. I focus my entire self in the meeting I am in. I care about each individual. Sometimes that means I go over time with the person and that trickles into being late for the next person.

My dilemma is how do I fix this? How do I get back on track, keep the respect of those around me, continue to care in the way I do, yet be timely? Maybe this is an easy answer, but it does not feel so simple for me. I am hoping as I continue to read “Never Be Late Again” it will shed some light and give me some aha moments. Do any of you struggle with this? What ideas would you share?

#yesiamlateagain

The Rise of Online Quizzes

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I admit it, I am coming clean. I have recently become addicted to the plethora of online quizzes asking what tarot card would you be, what city are you meant to live in, or are you a narcissist?

Buzzfeed even has ones like: “What Kind of Bitch Are You?” or “What Does Your Engagement Ring Say About You?” The list is endless. Why do we care? Why do we click and spend 5-10 minutes to find out our fate? It is almost like we want a free visit to an astrologer, and if the results of the quiz are exemplary to who we think we are, then we might try another, and if they slander us we move on to other things. What is it about the online voyeuristic habits that make us even stop and take the quiz? I admit I even coerce Chris to take one or two here or there to compare to my results. Why, oh why do we even care?

Is it that we want validation? We want to know what someone else thinks of our future destiny? We do not really believe in the answer, but like being at the state fair we are willing to give the palm reader a small amount to read our hands and see what the future might behold for us. These quizzes have to be filled with bullshit algorithms. For example, one quiz (I cannot remember the topic) that I had Chris fill out, gave us the same result, yet it was male and female specific. Definitely something wrong with the results of that (all I remember is that we both got Zelda – go figure).

So is it a fad? Why have we become so addicted, and why do we even care? My Facebook feed is often full of friends who seem to fill their days with quizzes that they share with others (no judgement from me). Are we bored? Do they tell us something about ourselves that we do not know? What is it that has made us so addicted?

“Clean out the sewers and replace the pipes”

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I have to admit I am utterly exhausted as this week nears to a close. It is Friday, and I am ready for the weekend. A lot has been accomplished this week, a lot of progress has happened, but I still often feel like I am in a hamster cage saying: “Can I get out for a small break? Please can I stop spinning around this wheel?”

A work colleague shared an interesting idea in a meeting last week. She said: “We need to clean out the sewers and replace the pipes.” Maybe that sounds completely random to you, or maybe it resonates completely. How often do we stop, take an assessment for how things are really going and fix what needs to be fixed? If we were better about maintenance and checking up on our life, we might find that we do not need to clean sewers, and replace pipes because we were fixing and keeping up with life all along. How often does that really happen though? Do we fix the drip, or wait until it is a hole pouring water into our ceiling?

On Monday, I wrote about the mole infestation in our yard. It had been a trickle of random mole holes for months and months. We did nothing about it until this week when it wrecked havoc on our entire yard. I can only imagine the tunnels that have been dug a few feet down all around our yard and even under our house. Maybe sink holes are really the manifestation of a colony of moles over time? In any case, my colleague’s comment continues to make me think about work, home, and life projects that might be better handled by stopping and getting rid of the excess, the stuff that has built up (whether it be problems or a backlog) and focus on building a better infrastructure (replacing the pipes) so that there is a longer life to the foundation of a project or life situation.

I can think of a list of things at work and home where I need to gut and replace. I will leave you with this great quote:

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when are you going to have time to re-do it? -Bill Hosket [Basketball National Champion, World Champion, Gold Medalist]