It's in your head...

I know, it's been two months since I last posted a new blog.

Have you ever heard the Cranberries song "Zombie"? The chorus repeats over and over and over "it's in your head...it's in your head...Zombie Zombie Zombie..." Well for the past few months that could have been my theme song. I have been stuck in my head since late March. Big things and little things all added up to throw me for a bit of a loop and I sort of got stuck. I say sort of because as you all know life does not stop and wait for you to catch up and figure out what you want to do. It keeps moving and if you don't move with it you die. Figuratively for some, literally for others. I am not one to not move so by all outward appearances I have kept moving. Ah but the soundtrack kept playing...Zombie...zombie...zombie...

Being stuck in your own head is not a good thing. Even if your head is filled with wonderful ideas and thoughts and everything great it would still be just your head. And let's face it, when most of us get stuck in our own heads the thoughts we are stuck on aren't the ones telling us how wonderful life is, are they? But either way, it's like swimming in a stagnant pool. You keep going through the same stuff, over and over and over...zombie zombie zombie...

Even if you get some "rain" it only adds a little new to the pool for a little while then you are back swimming through the same murk. The only way to truly get new fresh insights is to either leave your little stagnant pool or invite other people in who can show you new ways of looking at your little pool. But you have to ask yourself, do I like it in my little stale pool? Why am I staying here if I don't? What am I gaining by sitting in the murk contemplating that rock for the 3000th time? Zombie...zombie...zombie...

I am going to be honest. I needed the time in my head. I needed to look at things over and over. I needed to look at my pool (the same one I have had all my life) with my new vision. I needed to see what everything meant now that I had new life experiences. Did it change my pool? It sure seemed like it for awhile. It was like waking up one morning thinking I was swimming in the ocean to find I had been in a kiddie pool all along. It was that sort of dramatic shift. And if you are hit by something big sometimes it doesn't take much to set you back again. So as I would reach the decision that I was done contemplating my little stagnant pool and was ready to find fresher waters something would happen and I would dive right back into the murk. Because stale, stagnant, murky or not it was my pool and at least I knew what to expect there. It's in your head....it's in your head....

But then a funny thing happened. I realized that a day would pass and I wouldn't have gone back to the murkiest of the corners of my pool. I had gone right past them without even stopping to contemplate what might be there under that rock...again...even though I knew there was nothing there but over active imagination run rampant and as we all know when imagination goes bad it can bite...I just went right past it. Of course when I would realize it I would be tempted to run back and turn it over...but I didn't...mostly... Then a few days would pass and I wasn't even looking back at the murk. Then I realized I was sitting on the edge of my pool and ready to go look for that ocean again. This had to happen a few times before I was ready to walk away from my little murky pool. And to lift the flood gate and let the river flow into the pool...wash the murk out...clean it up and start over again. Wash all of the stale out in the wide ocean and fill my pool back up with new fresher water. Clearer ideas and thoughts and things to contemplate...it's in your head...it's in your head...

Once I realized that staying in the same rut, doing the same things, seeing the same patterns (even if none existed) were all things that I was choosing to do. That I still was the one in charge...it's my head after all...stagnant pool, open waters, flowing rivers, vast oceans, it's all my head... well it gave me the power again. Not that I ever really lost it (oh did you happen to find a pair of ruby slippers at the bottom of the pool?) I had just forgotten it for awhile. So now it's all up to me to keep refreshing that pool. To keep flushing out the old ideas that don't work anymore. The things that want to keep me stuck in the same patterns. Those thoughts that drag you down instead of lift you up. You know the ones...I bet you have a few in your own murky pools. Is it going to be easy? No, I don't think it always will be. I think human nature sometimes leads us astray. I think we all tend to take negative feedback much more to heart than positive. What's the saying? It takes 10 atta' boys to counteract one you messed up? So I am working on giving myself a lot of atta' girls to make up for a few months of the other. It will take awhile to get back to even, but I will get there. I can decide how to handle it. It's in my head after all.