What you give your attention to that will be what you achieve. Where your treasure is, your heart is also. What you focus on will get the most attention. Obviously.

In thinking back over the past few months I must admit that I lost my focus and that my treasures were not going to bring about a sparkle as from a diamond or gold. In fact they would have been nothing more than hay and stubble. Many conversations have come coursing through my brain and has opened a dawning revelation of sorts.

With exercise, not that I do much of it, I tend to fall back on my old tried and trues as learning something new seems too much of a hassle. Thinking about learning new technology just has me yawn and prove to myself how fluent I am with the stuff I already have. Cooking brings about another level of marginality that if I did a little more research we would eat a much more varied menu. Instead, I just keep reworking the same tired foods that I have prepared for a very long time now. Oh sure, sometimes I give them a magical lift and add one or two new ingredients but for the most part it is still the same thing reheated.

It is called in the computer world as going back to the default setting. You know, the easy way of doing something so that it reverts back to how it was in the very beginning and is the safety net of all things new.

As a visually impaired person I can attest to the fact that sometimes it never occurred to me to stay current on things for my own self survival. Yet if I would have stayed involved in the very groups and organizations that I grew to despise for their mundane and self-promoting pomposity. Now I know that if I would have stayed attached instead of distancing myself I would have a lot more value to share. Instead now I am so far adrift from those groups and going back is not even an option any more. I have, due to my own self-righteousness and stubborn determination, cut the mooring rope from the groups in order to travel on my own.

This has been a pattern for my whole life. I want to do it my way and for the most part it looks so correct. Perfect, in fact.

Just before my ex-husband left me he said that he would end up on top of this situation. Years later he admitted to me that how wrong he was and that if he could have gone back he would have made way different choices. Too late.

Even in thinking about my son going off to college I had it in my mind how that whole scenario was going to go and I had fixed it in my head that if I manipulated things in such a way that it would all work out so gloriously. So, I set about to orchestrate that ending. Much like my ex-husband they did not go anywhere how I had anticipated. What happened? I imagined in my head how things would go so far in the future and tried to make the corrections when things veered off course. Then I over corrected and the car went off the road and we ended up wheels up in a ditch. Licking my wounds and trying to regain my equilibrium I forged on with a new set of blue prints in mind. Still, it did not work out like I had thought or hoped. Drat.

Now those are two examples where I had a part in the outcome but the other players had even bigger roles to play. I had forgotten that others were involved too and still tried to master mind the situation to my best resolve.

It was no different after I lost my vision. I had a problem, thought of a solution, set the plan in motion, then waited to see it all work out for my benefit. Again….it worked on some small level. It did not work exactly like I had hoped.

So many times I would start my conversation with someone with the same part of the story. This is what I always said, “I am still interested in working. I knew that if I lost my vision, it would be hard to get a job so I knew I would have to do something to keep my skills pertinent to a working forum. So I decided to go back to school to get a degree in the blindness and Low vision field in which I felt sure that it would offer me the safety of future employment. After all I did not want to end up being a greeter in a discount store” On paper it was brilliant and without flaw.

I failed to take into account how much additional work it would take over and above that two degreed pieces of paper had. Much more was required than I first anticipated. Like the groups cutting the mooring lines, the ex-husband walking off into the sunshine, my son not doing what I thought best at college and now my own realization that what I wanted did not happen at all like I thought it was going to.

Sitting here in my living room typing about what went wrong is painful but necessary so that I can claim the responsibility of my part in the whole series of events.

Now some good things happened from the events also. I started to understand what I wanted for myself outside of what I thought others should want for me. I grew the most when my son left for college. When he came home for breaks and he was shocked that we too had grown in the process of his departing. It was almost as if we were supposed to sit and turn to stone or petrified wood until he returned and then dropped magic water on us to reconstitute our lives.

I have asked one person to be my accountability coach. She has agreed and at first I told her to ask me about two specific things going on in my life so that if I was more accountable, it might lead me to do these things more frequently. In fact there are three things I need accountability for and with.

Time. Meditation. Writing my book, more specifically, re-writing the book I had already wrote.

Like hurdles to a runner, things came up and like excuses I tripped and was dashed to the track in mid stride even before I got going.

What do you do with that? Get yourself up, pick the gravel out of your sore and bleeding knees, and start all over again.

I love to read. Sometimes my love for reading is the default for not getting other things done that require more energy and fortitude.

I love to write but sometimes it is easier to bang out a few virtual pages of blog writings then it is to retell a story that is near and dear to my heart.

I have looked around and have decided that the wilderness has dried my bones enough and that Death Valley is not where I want to spend any more time.

As a visually impaired person I know that my dreams are just as important. The limitations have been the ones I have manufactured.

Instead of my vision loss being a hindrance I always thought of it as a privilege. Now I am going to take the opportunity to turn it into a new wind that has blown into my life. New fresh breath that now blows across my face to bring new prospective and chances for maturity.

Will I give up the bad habit I have of trying to orchestrate all things that is my life? HA! Don’t I wish? I will ratchet that back and just keep trusting I am where I belong.

So, stay focused; see which areas the default setting has become the fall-back in your life. Take a chance and spread the envelope with your elbows pressed against an uncomfortable force to see if a new you emerges from the pressure against the old norm.

Blessings Denise

From the writer of seeingdifferences.com

http://seeingdifferences.com/