Tuning by Ear.

March 25, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Because I’ve begun a round of work with a new mentor recently, we’re talking a lot about “god.”

Specifically, this past Saturday, I read to her my current conception of this ineffable “power”:

“My Higher Power is in all things. It lives & comes from a place inside me where I’ve never been scared & where there is always calm wisdom. This place doesn’t give me instructions or guidance, it simply can reinforce or reassure my own decisions. (Though I wish it did give guidance & instructions!)

This force is impersonal in some ways, because it belongs to everybody, and because it also doesn’t act out of reward or punishment because it is not human or personified. But the force works toward health & wholeness. It is the source of wholeness & would be satisfied for all to connect to it & recognize it. This power is one of divine flow and order; it is unrushed. It is often seen in nature, because it is in the natural cycle of life & death, but it is bigger than that.

When I feel in touch with this power, I feel calm, energized/alive, unrushed, wise & accepting — accepting of myself & of the outside world & circumstances. When I feel in touch with this power, I feel a stable ground to stand on, and I don’t have racing questions about my life. I feel at peace.

I sometimes get impatient with this power because it is so slow/calm & not clear w/instructions or answers to my questions.”

My friend/mentor listened to this. I anticipated we’ve move on but she said gently that it sounded like there was a bit of conflict there. Did I agree? Hell yes! It makes me mad that I can’t get answers, but I don’t believe that I’m supposed to. That’s not what this power is about.

Then she sagely suggested something: “You have a belief that makes you unhappy.”

But, what can I do about that, I asked? Am I supposed to reconceive my higher power, or just come to accept that I don’t get answers? I like this conception of a higher power.

She agreed it’s a good one, but … she has an alternate belief, which I don’t have to subscribe to, but she wanted to propose her own experience: She does get answers. She believes she does get information and guidance and instructions. (Not like, crazy woo-woo hearing voices.)

As we spoke, I posed my own question: Is it possible that I am receiving answers, but I’m simply not hearing them? My ear isn’t attuned to them?

She said she doesn’t believe in a working toward whatever is “God’s will” kind of spiritual world, but rather toward whatever is for the “Highest Good.” Which makes a lot more sense to me. Because this whole “God’s will” vs. my will thing is a real bitch to suss out.

And then she said something radical for folks among my kind: The Highest Good often is what I want. Where I get f’ed up is where I believe that “G-d” doesn’t want me to have what I want.

She said that our desires and impulses and intuitions are often calls and pulls from that deepest place within us. (Surely, that doesn’t mean Ice Cream for Dinner, but you get the point, I hope!)

So, I gave myself the assignment this week of trying to attune my ear to hear the guidance that I feel I’ve been deprived of.

And this morning, I had an odd experience of noticing.

I’ve been doing the Deepak/Oprah 21-day meditation challenge, as I tend to do when they come around. 20 minutes, free, a good start to the day (no matter what may be happening in the news about them personally, thank you).

This morning, the “centering thought” was: “I receive the wisdom of life.”

So I tried out my friend’s theory. A bit frustrated and tangled up in my own thoughts: “Alright, “God,” Should I try to go to school this Fall or not?”

I’ve been waffling on whether to go to grad school for my teaching certificate without having the proper knowledge foundation at the moment. There are 3 more exams to be certified, 2 to get entry into the grad program. One of these tests, I believe I can pass; one will need a LOT of studying; and the third, I’ve signed up for a summer Physics course at the local city college, because I need all the help I can get.

Do I float another year? Do I try to push myself to do it this year? There’s still room in the program, and my acceptance is contingent on passing the 1st two tests before school begins.

What do I do?

What happened this morning (in aggro-meditation!) was this: I had a simple thought that sounded exactly like all my other thoughts do: “You can try for anything you want, Molly.”

There was no magic bell or deep baritone indicating whether this was the “Voice Of The Universe;” it sounded like most of my other swirling thoughts. But it held my attention differently, because this is not a thought that I usually have.

I do not usually believe that I can have or try for anything I want. I am usually talking myself out of things. Flaking on social engagements. Procrastinating with Netflix. I am used to believing that the road to abundance is a scrappy struggle against myself, where I wind up exhausted and often, not having even left my apartment!

You can try for anything you want, Molly.

But it sounds so impulsive to just “try”! It sounds to ungrounded, and I don’t want to take developmentally unrealistic steps and then simply get disheartened. I don’t want to charge into something half-cocked and half-prepared because I want to stop waiting on my life!

But I believe the point of what that thought was saying was that I can try, and I can fail. I can try, and not fail. I can wait for next year. Or not.

Seems like it’s back to my original idea of not getting clear instructions, doesn’t it???

Yes. And.

I think what I heard was that the road of life is less narrow and forsaking than I imagine it to be. That the road is wide, and forgiving, and will get me where I want to go.

The point is to make a decision. To try, however falteringly, to believe that I can have what I want. That the road will be there to support me. That abundance is for me, too.

I don’t know what I will do yet. This is all very new, as of about 30 minutes ago. But, I’d kinda like to try — and see what happens.

abundance · compassion · deprivation · family · love · motherhood · recovery

Maybe Baby 2

March 15, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I have been looking at porn.

This porn comes in the form of a Facebook page for local moms who are selling or giving away baby stuff.

I’m on this page because one of my best friends is pregnant, and I have hopped so far aboard her baby-train, I’m surprised I’m not morning-sick myself!

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun reading a book on pregnancy that she read and loved (The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy), crocheting baby bibs, buying scrap fabric for burp clothes, and practically stalking her to ask if she wants a breast pump I found online.

As I spoke of in my 2014 blog post “Maybe Baby,” I am not sure whether I want children.

As then, I am not in a serious relationship, and I still am not willing to go the motherhood route alone, so there’s no real reason to question if I do or do not. But, reasonable or not, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it.

With every article on our drought, the cost of living, the planet’s imminent demise, the expansion of the stupid class — I am convinced for a few moments never to bring children into this hateful world.

And with every true breath of fresh air, every warm hug, every belly laugh — I am convinced for a few moments that I want another human to bear witness to this world’s incandescent beauty.

I am the age my mom was when she carried me (33), and then my brother at 36. I have been emailing and asking her all kinds of questions about her pregnancies since I began reading the pregnancy book — what was your morning sickness like? what does pregnancy feel like? did you have food aversions? stretch marks? hemorrhoids? (god help us, she did not!)

I have had the liberty and the luxury of asking my mom these questions, and too, my friend who is pregnant, does not. And I am very aware of this fact, and I think it has spurred my devoted interest in her pregnancy — I want to be there as much as I can, because I want to make up for any absence she might be feeling (real or imagined, to me, since I haven’t spoken to her about it yet).

I was on the phone with my mom this morning, telling her that I feel my heightened interest in my friend’s impending mommy-hood is also that she’s my first local BFF to be pregnant. One of my other best friends in Long Island had a baby last year, and I was able to be there for a few days when the baby was a month old, but that’s all. There wasn’t the same imminent babyhood.

I told my mom that I’d been thinking about my very best friend from childhood, a woman I’ve known since we were 3 years old, and how I can’t imagine what it will be like if and when she gets pregnant across the country from me. And I began to cry.

Of course, it’s about her, my New Jersey friend, and it’s also about me. About how I’ll feel, if and when I also choose to have a family — assuming I’m able — so far from her and my own family.

This is big business. This mommy stuff.

And I am wanting to prepare to make that decision in a realistic way — so I have doubled-down on my work around intimacy and relationships (or in my case, habitual lack thereof). This morning, I told the woman I’d been working on these issues with by phone for about 6 weeks (a stranger whose name was passed along to me from a woman I admire) that I have reached out to someone local to work the rest of this stuff with.

And I have. I will continue this relationship work with this local woman who has known me for nearly 8 years, who has seen me at my best and worst, who can call me out, see patterns, and provide so much space for my feelings and vulnerability that I can practically swim in them and still feel safe.

Yesterday morning, this same woman (as we were talking about what my issues were and what I wanted to work out) said that she’d always felt for me that my issue was around deprivation.

…

She’s very astute.

And it’s also funny to me because it’s one of those things that doesn’t come into focus about yourself until someone else (who knows you well) reflects it back.

I am very aware of this time in the generation of women around me. My friends who are certain they don’t want kids, ones who know they do, the ones who can’t, and ones who, like me, are unsure.

It’s a particular, cordoned off time in our lives. And I’m holding the space for that, leaning into the grief of potentially not seeing friends change their whole lives, them not seeing me do the same. I’m aware this is “future-tripping,” but it’s fair to acknowledge my feelings around it, anyway.

I’m allowed to not know what will happen (for me or for my friends), and I’m allowed to have feelings either way.

Today, what that looks like is picking up a bitchin’ breast pump for my best friend. Continuing to do the work toward an intimate relationship with a man. And letting myself be both sad and happy for and with my peers.

action · change · community · deprivation · excitement · expansion · faith · fear · work

Undocking is not the same as Unmoored.

October 2, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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A friend of mine was a CPA working in the corporate world.
She was making good money and working long hours. And was not happy.

She gave up her apartment, put her purged belongings in
storage, and moved to India for 6 months, studying at an ashram, with no need
for income or work, except inner work.

Then she came back to the States.

You can’t pay your bills with enlightenment.

She found that she had to create a middle-ground, and now, 10
years later, runs a private practice counseling others toward their own
financial/spiritual balance.

I have a feeling I’m about to embark on a similar journey of
finding my middle-ground between financial independence and creative
expression.

Well, I guess I can’t really say embark, when what I mean is
“continue” to simply push the boat out of the harbor. A boat isn’t meant to
stay moored, and you’ll never find out what its strengths or weaknesses are, or
what your skills as a sailor are if you don’t leave the safety of the dock.

To be concrete: I have informed my job that October 31 will
be my last day there.

And the options that I have before me are less than
concrete!

I’ve known for a while that it’s time to move on. In support
of that notion, earlier this year, I not only put in for my own promotion at my
job, but when I was told, “No resources for that,” I went on an active job search,
engaging the help of friends to revamp my resume, made networking dates, and
went on many interviews.

I was even offered a few jobs. Jobs, that perhaps before, I
would have taken.

But the jobs offered, I came to realize continued marching
me up a ladder and on a path that didn’t feel like where I wanted to go.

Despite my “big realization” many months ago about wanting to
move in the direction of an executive director or program director position… I
began to find out more about what that kind of job and life would mean. And it
would mean more hours of my life than I want a job to be.

I found, through that job search, that I don’t want a bigger title with a mildly bigger salary.
That the trajectory on which I am positioned and was looking to be headed was
not one that ended in work-life balance. In a non-profit, there is rarely such
a thing!

So, in came the notion of the “fulcrum,” endeavoring toward
a job or jobs that generated more income with fewer hours. Leaving me the time I
need to create.

When was the last time I picked up a paint brush, or even a
pencil? Have I worked on that essay my aunt suggested I submit to publications?
When was the last time I could really call myself a poet, despite my Master’s
degree in it?

Time. I discovered I wanted to literally buy myself time.

And so, I began to vaguely think about career paths or jobs
that would be in that direction. Then came the High Holidays at work… and the
play… and a halt to any developmental thinking.

But, the holidays are nearly over. It was finalized that
there can’t be a different place for me where I’m at, and after too many days
crying at or after or on the way to work, I am making a leap … not of faith,
but of action.

With the faith that my action will lead me to something
different.

For the past 16 years, since I was 16 years old, I’ve been a
secretary. I’ve adjusted more margins and input more data than there are guidos
in Jersey.

And so I am doing what conventional wisdom says never to
ever do. I am quitting without a job lined up.

I have had a professional-direction conversation nearly
every day since my decision, am having and have had coffee with people to
bounce ideas off of and to network with. I have closed the browser window when
I find myself looking again at jobs that say “Administrative” anywhere in the
title.

I have been in a rut, and the only way to un-rut yourself is
to lean into the discomfort and the growing edge of change. To watch when I’m
teetering into despair, into habitual job search words, … into a Netflix binge,
and to push myself onto the high ground again.

Another email, a sudden “crazy” idea, a phone call for some
more information.

The experience I find most different about this job search
than all my previous “quit with no plan” moves, is that I feel supported by my
current office and all the people I’ve met there. This doesn’t feel impulsive, even though there’s “no plan;”
everyone at my work supports my move, and though they’re sad to see me go, they
have every faith in me that I can do whatever it is that feeds me.

I am reaching out to so many people I’ve met there. This
isn’t a “here’s my two-weeks’ notice” email, as I’ve done a dozen times prior.
This is actually slow and supported in many ways, and I feel it that way.

I am nervous, of course, but I am excited. I feel glad to
notice that my brain is coming up with ideas that might be viable that would
have been totally out of the box, and therefore dismissed, before. I’m not
looking for another 40 hour a week desk job. I am finally willing to look at a
patchwork living.

This is my own “move to India” move, though maybe it’s
closer to the center of rational than I know. I’ve never been willing to have a
few jobs and put them together for a living, because I thought it was too hard,
or too undisciplined, or too “artist.”

I’ve been afraid of judgment: my own, my family’s, my peers’.
I’ve been afraid to try to cobble together a living, because that “sounds” so
hard.

But for 16 years, I’ve worked the 40 hour job. I’ve had the
regular pay-stub with the paid-time off and the health insurance. I’ve had the
computer log-in and the number to the copy machine guy memorized.

I’ve done “normal.”

But, dears, I’ve never exactly been normal.

Here’s to Voltaire’s Candide-cum-internet meme:

“If we do not find something pleasant, at least we will
find something new.”

authenticity · career · community · dating · deprivation · family · fear · love · self-care · self-worth · support · truth

Phone a Friend.

June 27, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I was invited back for a second interview. And I politely
declined.

If there’s anything I learned from my awkward dating experience recently, it’s that saying yes to something you’re sure you don’t
want is lying and wasting both people’s time.

Therefore, when I was passed up for the job I’d applied for in this organization and my resume got handed from one branch to another, I did my due diligence: I showed up,
made a good impression, and knew that this newly offered position was not a
fit. But I got the callback anyway.

So on Wednesday, when I got the “want to see you again” email, I called my mom. Not always the paragon of rational decisions, but someone who here I felt could be, I told my mom about the parallel metaphor between my career and my lackluster first date. And it’s strange and
uncomfortable follow-up.

A friend earlier that morning suggested I just go to the
second interview. “You never know.” But, see, I think you do. When you’ve given a fair and first chance at
something a worthy go, I think at that point you get to say whether you’re
interested to go further.

As a mentor once told me, A first date is just an interview
for the second.

We do get the chance to say no at some point, yes?

I felt so, and I just needed a little corroboration. Not
always a co-signer of my machinations, either, mom was the right call. She
listened, and then she asked what advantages this job could have over my
current one. They were few.

One, I told her, was suggested by my friend earlier that
morning: You could meet a nice Jewish guy.

After
hearing this very short list, she replied, “First of all, you are [insert some
really nice and positive characteristics, like, smart, beautiful, brave and
wonderful] and you don’t need to take a job you don’t want to meet a
hypothetical guy.”

Or something like that.

It was really the only enticing reason of the bunch I gave to her. If the job I’d actually applied for in the first place was still
available, I’d still be interested in that, and I do know it’s still open. But
this offered job would be a lateral move, adding a 3 hour commute for what I imagine is
similar pay and responsibilities that don’t really align with my values or my
career goals.

So… she said it sounded like I already knew what I wanted to
do. But what I could do was be honest about my goals, tell them that I was still interested in the first job, be very
flattering and kind about their
organization and say if other opportunities came up there, I’d be interested to
have that conversation.

Unfortunately, in the dating world, it’s not as easy or
accepted to say, “Hey, I’m not interested in you, but if you have any friends
you think’d be good for me, let me know!”

But, Romance and Finance don’t always overlap.

In the end, that’s what I did. Called the woman who’d
interviewed me for the second position, got her voicemail, and told her exactly
what my mom coached me in saying.

What my mom really did was help me to feel comfortable owning
my truth.

This is not always easy. And sometimes I need someone
outside of my own limiting self-beliefs and self-sabotage to coax me and just
sort of shuffle me along on the path I know I want to follow.

In the pre-school in the building where I work, some of the
students have a cute ritual when their parents drop them off in the morning:
Push on the Tush.

It is exactly how it sounds. Having been deposited in their
classroom, feeling safe in their surroundings, the child is ready for their
parent to leave, and wants to have a ritual for that separation. So, the parent
stands in the doorway, and the kid gives him a push on the tush. And out the
parent goes.

For me, that’s what my mom did. Having come to a conclusion,
but needing a little encouragement, I reached out to a person I knew could hold
and support me, and then give me a little push.

authenticity · awareness · career · dating · deprivation · faith · fear · integrity · internet dating · jobs · perseverance · self-abandonment · self-esteem

Broken Algorithms

June 15, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Someone asks you out.
You’re pretty sure it’s not a match, but “you never know” and you have nothing better to do, so you
say sure. The date is uneventful, confirms that you’re not a match, and ends
with a nice awkward hug, and one of those vague promises to meet up again soon.

Perhaps there are follow-up texts, that you politely reply
to, but are vague and friendly. Perhaps there are then more follow-up texts
that you begin to ignore in an attempt to give a hint as to your lack of
interest and intention. And, finally, perhaps there’s the passive-aggressive
texts you begin to receive that a) reconfirm this wasn’t a match, and b) lead you
to hide them from your newsfeed!

What’s wrong with this picture? – as the back of the Highlights magazine asked you to spot.

Well, first and foremost is the fact that you abandoned your
own good judgment, values, and integrity by agreeing to go out in the first
place. “Pretty sure it’s not a match” is usually good enough. Enough of these
situations have proved that your gut is usually correct.

This self-abandonment is the seed of the whole problem.
It’s not the dude; it’s not his persistence; it’s not his disappointment masked
as passive-aggression. – It’s you.

I’ve finished reading the history of online dating/how-to
memoir entitled Data, A Love Story: How I Cracked the Online Dating Code to
Meet My Match. In it, the author describes
that the problem with online dating is not the sites; it’s us. It’s us answering questions as our aspirational
self, instead of as we are. It’s us, chatting with people we only have vague
interest in. It’s us, abandoning our integrity in order to have crappy
connections with people.

I’ve been thinking about this process in relation to my job
search. I’ve realized that I do the same thing in dating that I do in job
searching: I lie. I let jobs that hold little to no interest for me get a bulk
of my attention, and then when I get the interview, I find that,
indeed, I’m not interested, but in order to be “nice” or liked or wanted or
hired, I will feign that interest. I will more often than not land that job,
and then I will become resentful that I have it. This suitor that I didn’t
want, I’m now trying to delete from my Facebook, or in this case, my LinkedIn.

Again, what’s broken here is not these jobs – it’s my
willingness to abandon my values. It’s my willingness to say to myself,
Something is better than nothing; what else have you got to do? It’s my
willingness to waste my time and theirs, so that I can put off and deny what it
is I really want.

My willingness to waste my own time … my threshold for the pain that causes is astronomically high.

But because I have a belief that this is easier than the
pain of making truer statements, of sticking close to my integrity, my
intentions, my values, and my wants, I choose the rockier path every time.

Because the alternative is to stick with myself. To be the
friend I want to be to myself. To be my
own cheerleader and ally, and to let myself know that I’m here to support
myself on the unknown path of self-esteem.

I said on the phone to a friend two weeks ago: “I’m having
trouble mustering the low self-esteem required to apply for jobs I don’t want.” Ha!

I think we call that progress; insight; growth. (Although, I am still finding myself browsing those job descriptions.)

I have to muster a whole silo filled with negative beliefs
in order to go toward jobs I don’t want. These include: I don’t know what I
want, so I don’t deserve anything better. I will only abandon myself
eventually, so I may as well do it now. There’re no happy endings in this world,
so what makes you think you deserve one.

To name a few.

And I have to bombard and drown myself in these beliefs
(false beliefs) in order to “muster the low self-esteem” necessary to undersell
myself.

The same, I’m sure, is true for me in the dating world.

So, again, what is the solution, here?

I know that it’s to not abandon myself, to continue working
on my self-esteem, to wipe away the corroded mirror I use to judge myself so
that I can get a clearer view, one that reflects esteem, joy, confidence, and
courage. One that reflects someone fun, engaged, lively, warm, and worthy. I
know that the work is to trust that if I walk away from that silo of low
self-esteem, I will be led toward a healthier source of sustenance.

And that trust… That is the hard part. That tiny sapling of
faith that I will have to hold onto as the storm of negativity swirls around
me, raging only harder the longer I resist. I will have to hold on to that sapling,
until it becomes a redwood, until the storm recedes into memory. I will have to
have faith that if I hold on long enough to my self-worth and my self-esteem,
the clouds will give way to the sun.

Here’s hoping.

authenticity · children · deprivation · friends · fun · laughter · self-love

Dive In

May 27, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I never actually go in
the pool. For years, 6 of them, my friend and her family and our friends’
families go out to the east East Bay for Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day
weekend.

There is a pool there. I attend by the side. Perhaps I’ve gone in the
hottub, but I can’t even remember doing that. I lay on my towel or a pool
chair, slathering in sunblock, catching up, chatting, sharing with these women
I see only occasionally, and it’s wonderful, this catching up chatting and sharing, but I never go in the
pool.

On Saturday, before I left for the weekend, I made a
commitment to a friend that I would actually go in the pool. I made a
commitment to let myself have fun. To enjoy what was being presented to me, to
not literally be on the sidelines of my own life.

It’s hard – or it has
been – to let myself take part. I’ve been so reserved, analytical, watching,
the consummate wall-flower, when in fact I feel anything but.

And so, at some point soon after the sun had soaked far
enough into my skin to want relief, I walked into the water.

I’m a slow pool-acclimator, as I am a slow band-aid puller.
Later that night, the women-folk stayed up to play a board game, and my
strategy was to move slowly but eventually around the board. I admitted, laughingly,
that it’s the same way I play chess with my brother: I move pawn after pawn.
One little square at a time.

After my first timid entrance into the water, and a few laps
across the pool, my heart rate up, the water refreshing, my second entré was
different. I was inspired by my friend’s daughter, who lay over an inner
tube, head back, dousing her hair in the water. Only nine, I watched her
luxuriate in the tactile and sensory pleasure, the instinctual joy of just
letting the water carry her hair out into the water. Of soaking the top of her
head, running her fingers into her scalp to get each follicle up and satisfied,
eyes closed, in the moment, in the sensation, in the freedom of doing what felt
wonderful just for its own sake.

My second time in, all the others were under the shade by
the house, and I waded in. About half-way wet, I just dove in. I let my body be
strong and carry me to the bottom. I borrowed some goggles, and played the same
game of fetch I’d watched the kids play, throwing plastic sharks to the bottom,
and diving down to retrieve them. Seeing under water, holding my breath in that
suspended moment, moving quickly and gauging the time I had left before I had
to surface. Running my hands along the bottom, and pushing against it with my feet to
shoot up through the clear water. I laughed.

It was invigorating. It was fun. It was entertaining and
special and out of my ordinary. And on my way out of the water, I lay back into
it, soaked the top of my head, however briefly, and luxuriated too.

action · debt · deprivation · health · perseverance · recovery · self-care · theater

Work It.

May 13, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I’m up at what I would
call atrociously early, if I hadn’t just signed up to be the desk person at my
gym at 5:30 am on Mondays starting June. That will be hellaciously early. This is only moderate.

I do a work-trade at my workout studio so I can get free
unlimited classes. Last time I was on the trade staff, I barely took advantage
of it; since I could go whenever I wanted for free, there didn’t feel like any
urgency. Now. … Well, I started back on staff just before my Boston trip, so I felt
a bit urgent in “lifting my seat”! And in hoping not to wheeze like a rhino during
any strenuous activity!

Now that the trip is well over, and schedules are back on
track, I’m trying to get back a few times a week again. It’s good for me. Mentally, mostly. Though, yes, when I go
regularly, I see and feel changes that I like. It’s nice to feel strong, capable. It’s nice to push myself
because sometimes the class is peopled with 60 year olds (along with the 20, 30
and 40 somethings who are straight out of a Marina postcard) – and if they, a
sexagenarian, if you will, can do it, can hang for an hour, then so can I.
Moderately!

I also asked a friend to meet up and do our writing together
yesterday evening, since we’re both in the study group that’s doing all this together. It
was good to see her, and we got a lot accomplished. I can already see that this
work is a lot deeper and more meaningful than the last time I did this, so I
can hope for change because of it.

It has already shown, in just the 15 timered-minute increments,
that there are some messed up ideas
around self-worth, what I can expect in this world, and what I think I deserve.
So… it’ll be nice to get them out of my reflexes and onto the page.

Also, I did show up
to an audition for a staged reading this past weekend, and in fact, actually got the
part. Like, in writing. In an email saying, “I’d like to offer you the role
of…” and then the follow-up email entitled, “Welcome to the cast.”

So, I’m now Various Roles! Ha! Yay for me. Goes on my resume.

Speaking of, I did a little more work last night – or action,
rather, and sent something out. I still have loads to wade through following my
info interview with my former boss last week, which was awesome, but I can try to take a small action every day.
In fact, I took that action last night after all that writing during which my
fears and beliefs tell me that no matter what I do or accrue or amass, it’ll be
taken from me because I can’t handle it properly, because I don’t deserve it.

SO, I told that thought and belief to screw itself and got
online to follow-up on something I’d seen earlier last week.

I also replied to the Volunteer Usher group I belong to who’d put
out feelers to see who’d be interested in ushering the Sir Paul show at Candlestick in
August. UH. ME. We won’t find out if we’re “chosen” until August, but I’m throwing my hat in the ring.

I continue to throw my hat in the ring. It’s kinda one of
the things about me. I can have all these creeping, sodden beliefs and habits
and reflexes that undermine what I do and want to do in this life, and I seem to continue to do this stuff anyway. I don’t
know what or where that came from, that same impulse that told cancer to fuck
itself, that knows this work is worth it, that isn’t satisfied accepting less than I deserve because of
reasons I learned long ago about only deserving a second rate life, job,
relationship, since it’ll be taken from me anyway or I’ll screw it up anyway.

I seem to have some bloody impulse that impels me to keep
trying. I squawk a lot about dilly-dallying at the cross-roads of my life, and
that’s true in many regards, and makes sense if I believe the above is true. But
despite my procrastination, my self-sabotage, and my self-judgment, I’m awake
at 5:30 this morning to do something that’s good for me. And my ass.

abundance · addiction · alcoholism · balance · community · compassion · deprivation · equanimity · finances · humility · recovery · scarcity · the middle way

The B Word.

April 29, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Balance. Without it, I tend to become the other B word.

Someone asked me how the whole, “I need friends who don’t live hand-to-mouth,” blog
went over, if there was any push-back from it. I said, not that I know of, but
that I’d spoken to some other folks over the weekend, and was reminded of
something very important in life: Things are not black and white.

When I stopped drinking, it was because I was an alcoholic.
I put the bottle down, looked around, and declared everyone close to me
alcoholic, too. Whether they were or not, I was on a crusade of reform, and
they all were alcoholics who needed to
stop as I did.

Well… two things: a) yes, most of the people I was
associated with “at the end” were in fact drinking alcoholically, but b) that
didn’t mean they or anyone who drank were alcoholics. In the beginning, I
needed that kind of black and white thinking, because being close-ish to people
who were drinking was too difficult a gray line when my line had to be
crystal clear.

But, just because that was the way for me, I came to realize
that wasn’t the way for everyone. And after some time passed, and indeed the
folks who were hopeless sops like me faded from the foreground of my life, I got to see that some people (god bless them) can drink normally.

There’s one friend who stuck through my own transition. She described this “normal” drinking to me: she
literally says to herself, “Hmm, I’m beginning to feel buzzed, I should switch
to water.” Uh… I didn’t get that memo. “I’m beginning to feel buzzed,” was always followed by, “A few more will get it done right,” or if I was feeling temperate, “I should switch to beer.”

So, my friend does not react to alcohol how I do. And I have to come to see that there is a world between sauced and tight-ass.

In the same way, I recognize that as I begin to assess my
behavior and extremism around money, scarcity, and deprivation, I am being
called to allow others their own experience, even as I diagnose and address my
own.

Just because a friend opened a new credit card, doesn’t mean I have
to stop hanging out with them. Just because a friend is earning less than I
think they deserve in the world, doesn’t mean they’re addicted to deprivation.
Just because other people behave differently than me, doesn’t mean my way is
the right way, and most importantly, doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to learn from them.

As with getting sober, I do have to admit that some
of the folks around me may indeed have trouble in this area – water seeks its
own level, after all. But, that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole about it.

And, that’s what I’ve gotten to see these past few days I’ve
been declaring myself needing to “move on” from friends and communities who have
what I’d declared a “faulty, diseased, and only rectifiable by a spiritual
solution” relationship to money, and thereby the world.

It’s a good thing people don’t take me that seriously!

And it’s a good thing I can remember to not take myself too
seriously, too. If I’d stuck to every declaration about myself… by this point I
would have been:

Vegetarian

Israeli

A prostitute

A suicide victim

A daily exerciser

T.V.-less

Caffeine-less

An organic farmer

and a truck driver.

The thing is, I can’t make blanket declarations for myself
or anyone else. I have no idea what my
path contains or eliminates, thereby no idea what others’ do.

There is some truth to wanting to learn from and be around
people whose relationship to money can model my own. But that’s because I have
a problem with it. Not everyone does, and if they do, it’s really none of my
business.

It comes to equanimity, and allowing others and myself our
experience without judgment. It means having openness, compassion, and respect toward all people on all paths. It does certainly include me getting help for a
pattern of beliefs and behaviors that have led me to despair and insanity, but
it also includes me being more generous in my assessments of life. Allowing for
the gray, for the middle-ground, for difference, for balance.

Because, solvent or not, nobody likes
a bitch.

abundance · change · clarity · deprivation · despair · family · finances · hope · recovery

Cleaning House.

April 27, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There’s a phrase in Al-Anon: Let it begin with me.

I’m in the process (or supposed to be) of looking back
through my life and writing down where underearning/underbeing/debting has
affected my life, and eventually caused it to be unmanageable.

I’ve often and easily thought about my dad’s parents and his
half-brother when I think about the history of this “disease” in my family.
It’s easy to do. They are the ones who hoarded, let the dog go to
the bathroom in the house, and despite brains that cognitively thought at high
levels, lived like people who were under a crushing weight of despair, which
looked on the outside like the crushing weight of filth.

These folks, my kin, would have been the people who Hoarders would have descended upon, who would have reluctantly
and silently allowed their belongings to be sorted, sifted, and discarded. And
after the cameras left, would have as quickly as possible returned their home
to the state of dishevelment and insurmountable disarray. The familiar state of
it. The state in which they felt most comfortable, even if not comfortable at
all.

After my parents’ divorce when I was 20, my dad let our
childhood home fall into much the same state, with the dead bugs on the hood of
the oven, the flies belly-up on the window sill, and the tree that shaded our
home, that stood sentry in our front yard, so long-neglected it had to
come down. And though it’s easy to see these patterns of neglect, hopelessness,
resignation, and simple denial in that side of the family, through my inventory work, I’m also getting to see a different strain of ideas around money,
belongings, worthiness crops up from my mom, too.

I spent some time with my brother last year in his apartment
he rented alone. The same silt of neglect, of using half-broken items, of
allowing the home you live in to be in a state of disrepair lay over his home,
too. But, from the same familial miasma, his attitude toward money became very different than mine.

At some point, I brought up money and my not knowing how to manage it, to save it, to “make
it work for me” (whatever that means!), and he admitted, surprising me, that he
is a miser with it. He hoards and saves his money, and is virulently opposed to being indebted to anyone.

He hoards money. I hemorrhage it.

In the end, though, the result for us both is the same (and
I recognize that my assessment and diagnosis is unfair to him, simply in that I
am not him, so please forgive my
hubris). But the result is that neither of us have money to spend on fun
things, nice things, things that make our lives fun and easy and worth living.
If he’s loathe to spend anything, even if he has it, then life becomes smaller
than it needs to be. If I simply spend whatever I make without thought to
long-term or significant goals, my bank balance becomes zero, and my life shrinks
with it.

I may not do my dishes as regularly as I should (though I am better now!), and my
fridge may house food that is unidentifiable with mold, but my home is
neat, clean, organized. It feels light, despite its size, and I endeavor to make it so. But there’s an article I read recently on home
decoration that said, “Do it: Clean, organize, make pretty, and then GET OUT.” Get out and into and on with your life. There’s more to life than decoration.

So, as I tally my numbers each month, calculate my income & expenditures, as I put money into a savings account and a vacation account, I
have to remember it’s not just so that I can have a neat and orderly
spreadsheet. That, in fact, even if there were a million dollars in my account,
I’d have to remember, like my brother, that it’s there for me to enjoy thoughtfully. That
it’s there for me to live, to support a life worth living. I have to remember that I do all this work so that I
can go out in the world as my family was unable to do.

I let it begin with me.

abundance · community · debt · deprivation · finances · growth · integrity · recovery · self-care · self-support

No Soup For You.

April 8, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It’s astonishing, the lengths I’ll go to deprive myself.

The thick pattern of deprivation, living small, quietly,
unobtrusively, knocks on the door of all my actions and insists on being
allowed in.

Luckily, my latest personal recipe is: Me + G-d + Friends +
Action.

I was on the phone with a friend the other day discussing
the fact that I needed a spending plan for my upcoming trip to Seattle and
Boston this Saturday. I told her that I’d already “found” $235 in my usual
monthly spending plan, which means whittling funds from other line items, like
entertainment, personal care, household purchases–line items that
fluctuate anyway, so I consider them “fundgable” when they’re really not. (I’ve
learned.)

This isn’t to say that my spending plan is a monthly set of
10 Commandments, chiseled in stone and fatal when not adhered to. It’s an
ideal, a goal, a guideline, and the actuals that I tally at the end of each
month tell me the story as it happened, instead of how I thought it would.
Usually they’re pretty close these days.

However, when my friend and I were speaking about my trip,
and we calculated aloud bus fare, BART fare, coffee&food at 4 airports in
10 days, groceries, eating out, incidentals, tchotckes, gas money… well, we
figured it out to about $400, a number I’m supposed to double check before I
leave.

Immediately, I begin mentally looking at those fundgable
categories, which I’ve already cut thick slices from this month to support the
trip. And I start to get panicked and fearful about the trip and how much I can
spend, and try to pre-manipulate how I can spend less than I actually know
I’ll need.

This, friends, is the compulsion. How can I whittle down my
needs, how can I deny what is actually true about my needs, hide them, dismiss
them, and discard them, so that I can live in a way that I misguidedly think
will support me?

Luckily, I was on the phone with my friend as we spoke all
this out, and I admitted to her that I have nearly a grand in my vacation
savings account… but, I told her like a child revealing they’ve stolen a
Snickers, I’m “supposed to” be saving it for my hypothetical trip to Paris with
my mom next Summer.

I don’t want to give up my Snickers. I don’t want to break
part of it off to eat now, because I believe I just need to save it for later,
or there will never be enough.

This is preposterous. And where voices that don’t live
inside my own head are so valuable.

She didn’t even have to say anything, as I admitted my
vacation savings money could easily provide the additional $200 that I’ll actually need for this trip. I just talked myself through it,
admitting it, accepting it, saying that I see the fallacy and the deprivation
in that kind of save it ALL for some unknown date and live in fear
right now thinking. And I told her I would
move that money over this week, so that I could use it in today, for the
intended purpose: vacation.

It’s not actually called “Paris Vacation with Mom” savings
account: It’s just called Vacation. And if this isn’t the time to use those
funds, when I need them, when I’m plotting to slice myself and my funds even
thinner than they already are this month, then I haven’t learned a thing.

Yesterday, I did move that money. It felt illicit, illegal almost. I felt
nervous and anxious and excited and proud to know that I was supporting a
vision for myself without putting myself in deprivation.

The ridiculous part is that I will easily replenish that money in the vacation account over the next few months. “Vacation savings” is a
line item in my spending plan every single month. It’s not like I’ll never get to go
on a vacation again because I’m using this money now.

But my addiction to deprivation and fear continues to knock
on my door and insist entry into my life and my decisions. So, luckily, today I have
an antidote: Me + G-d + Friends + Action.