Simply Bliss Life Journaling Challenge Day 1 - Are You At Peace?

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.”

~Peace Pilgrim Quote

Are you at peace with yourself? If yes, What did you do to get there? If not what’s preventing you from being at peace?

- Journaling Challenge Day 1

I'm answering these more in detail in a private journal on a different website, but I am comfortable enough with myself to explain the broad stroke details over here, so I'll be posting these type of broad stroke entries here as well.

At the moment, the short answer is no, but I'd like to be.

What's holding me back? Well, it's complicated, but I suppose my year-long time in dialectical behavioral therapy groups explains some semblance of the why in a very metaphysical manner.

I'm (over)willful and stubborn and my resistance is the problem. I'm stopping myself because I'm familiar with the not-peace with myself. I want to try to fix things, even if they're not things I can fix. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to balance the desire for change and newness with the unfamiliarity of it. The fact that my life right now seems like a bunch of question marks kind-of scares me.

I'm also afraid what other people will think of me. Even though I know I'm trying to do better for me, I know I intrinsically need people and sometimes I'm afraid of how much to tell the people in my life about who I am and what I feel like for fear that they'll think something's wrong with me, and sometimes I feel that's not very far off from the truth. It's hard to see past my limitations when I don't know how other people will react to them.

Smash 365: Talent

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads. ~Erica Jong

If we accept the fact that we have talent, we realize that all we need is the courage to dig deep within ourselves and let it thrive.

Today, make a list of your talents — both those that others have recognized in you and those that you know about yourself. Boast about those talents in your writing!

Don’t worry, that list is just between you and the page you write it on. Don’t hold back, and celebrate the talents that define who you are!

I'm a writer, I'm a dreamer, I'm intuitive. I'm a good teacher. I like dealing with little kids. I like helping people. I can see most sides to an issue.

I can pick up accents and speaking styles quite easily and am usually able to adapt my language to suit a situation based only on what I can hear around me. I'm enthusiastic.

Smash365: Dreams

If you are going to create anyway, if you cannot avoid dreaming, then why not create a beautiful dream? Why not dream well and really enjoy your dream? If you can believe in your limitations, then why not believe in the beauty and power of life that’s flowing through you? – Don Miguel Ruiz, The Fifth Agreement

What is a limitation you believe you have? What would happen if you believed the opposite? - Smash365

That quote is pretty much a good explanation OF my limitations. I tend to spend so much time dreaming that sometimes I lose sight of what exactly I do want to bring to reality.

I have a hard time figuring out how to create my dreams. And working past what my disabilities are. Living with severe anxiety and depression has made it very hard to figure out what my talents are when I lose steam with them.

I imagine if I could get past the disability, I might be happier rather than letting it define me.

It's just figuring out how.

Smash 365: Change

Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge. ~Eckhart Tolle

Change is inevitable in our lives. Think about recent changes in your life. How have they provided you with space for something new to emerge? Write for at least 10 to 15 minutes about change and see if new ideas emerge that were previously undiscovered… - Smash 365

A lot of changing coming up over the past few months and trying desperately to keep poking at them ever so slowly. Some of the changes is that I'm trying not to over pressure myself, but also pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

I've been taking swimming lessons which is something that's been in the back of my mind for awhile and I've just not had the motivation to do before.

LiveJournal's been down for the past few days, but I've been fairly active on one of my journals in a recovery community for people who like me struggle with emotion regulation. I like the fact that it's a community geared toward recovery, rather than commiseration.

My therapist is also trying to point me toward doing a Recovery Education Program at one of the local universities, though I'm not so sure about it. It could be really useful for me, though. I really want to talk to someone there about how the program works before I decide... On that front, I also have to make a lot of really tough phone calls really soon... It's one of the hard things about having an invisible disability.

I'm also trying to do these posts from Smash 365, even though they're somewhat hard topics for me to blog about.

And for August while I'm continuing with struggling with my Camp NaNoWriMo goal, I'm also going to be using this journal to do some self-awareness writing through SimplyBlissLife's blog.

Internship Day 17

It’s been a pretty neat day. I did some spine-reinforcement, re-taped the shelving labels for the W-Z shelf area, and then updated the library catalog and spreadsheet again. The library catalog is run on Destiny Quest, which had an update a few months ago, so I am updating my knowledge of the user-interface and where all the links are still.

On the downside, I realized I need to carefully check the books I’m labeling against the larger database. I had to undo some level labels because I learned that the title the book catalog referred to happened to be a different book.

I have found that with ambiguity in titles, I need references handy so I can double-check what I’m doing. At least I did that extra work and looked up said book.

Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating Women in Technology: Dreamwidth Women

To be honest, I deeply admire the women who help build-up Dreamwidth! It’s a long list, but I find each of them fill their roles amazingly well and well, I think the Dreamwidth community loves them for it… and well Dreamwidth Rocks for an up-and-coming social networking site.

I find I prefer Dreamwidth overall for its community — there’s a wonderful team of people working there [men and women alike] and it’s very much a user-centered environment. But a good portion of the staff is female, and I love admiring them for all that they do!

Most especially I admire these ladies: Denise, Afuna, Aveleh, Kat, Dom, and ChemicalLace.

Note: not all staff has their full names on this list. Most people on this list have been addressed by alias and journal name.

Denise Paolucci (denise): the co-founder and very wonderful advocate of this community! She’s also the business manager/marketer.

Afuna(afuna) and Aveleh(aveleh): Styles support! also Afuna does invite system too. Both of these are very important for a social networking site. Because a site’s only as good as the its users and its pretty AND accessible design.

ChemicalLace (chemicallace), Dom(domtheknight), and Kat (zarhooie): The Support Triumvirate! Well, can’t have a good webteam without the support techs. And I love these guys to pieces they’re fun and geeky and all kinds of helpful in both contributions and instruction.

There’s a ton more people that I love over at Dreamwidth, but these leading ladies get a lot of props from me. I might feature the rest of the team later on in a post over here.

If you wanna learn more about Dreamwidth:
Dreamwidth Studios
Dreamwidth Notes – The Dreamwidth Studios Wiki

If you’d like a code go hop over to: Dreamwidth Code Sharing

And since Dreamwidth’s anniversary is up and coming look out for The Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Project

Internship Day 16

Another late post.

I finished all the book-moving [or well most of it]. I also finished what I could figure out of the books from the catalog that needed to be re-leveled. Latest item learned this time around: If titles are ambiguous in a catalog, do not label the books titled as such — it is 98% likely that said the book the library has is an older edition compared to the one referenced.