I told that beezy!

I've been mulling over this week's GBE2 Prompt, Confrontation, for a couple of days now. After reading a few of the other bloggers' posts, I see that many of us had the same basic interpretation of this topic. Our minds zeroed in on the unhappy task of confronting another person. It's something that most people dread, but sooner or later we have to face the music. Like a bandaid, it's best to just rip it off quickly b/c the more you try to drag it out, the worse it ends up hurting.

When I first saw the prompt, I started going back through all the instances when I had to face-off with someone. When I was younger, I was terrified of talking through issues with anyone. I always thought they'd be angry with me, so I would bottle it all up until I burst. You can imagine how far that got me! With age comes wisdom and some measure of confidence, so I've learned to tell the difference between things that need to be addressed and things that are better left unsaid.

I had considered writing about a situation that I feel will need to be confronted very soon, but I have to give this one time to see where it is going. Shooting off at the mouth is my specialty, however in this case, it could be disastrous. Fear not, my fellow nosy-parkers, I will divulge everything when it's appropriate to do so. I don't like being cryptic any more than I like when other people are cryptic about things, but it's necessary this time.

As tends to be the case, my real life threaded nicely into the topic of confrontation, just in a different manner of speaking. Rather than confronting someone else, I faced myself boldly and unflinchingly. I gave myself a good, strong internal bitch slap, and rolled up my sleeves to make shit happen. My last several posts have been exclusively surrounding this list of goals I made for myself and how I was trying to accomplish them. While in the midst of all this self-improvement mumbo-jumbo, I couldn't help but feel as if I was missing something. Here I was, working steadily toward my goals, but I didn't feel a hell of a lot better about myself. Last week's topic was simplicity and while writing that post, it finally clicked: it was time to get back to basics.

I have a tendency to look all the way forward to where I want to end up without giving much thought to the short-term checkpoints I need to reach first. So I let go of the future to just be present for awhile. I looked long & hard at myself, metaphorically speaking, and said "you need to pull your shit together, girl!" Which is exactly what I did. I'm starting with little things, like putting out more effort to be patient with my family & friends. I'm waking up 10 minutes earlier to give myself time to fix my hair before work. I'm washing my dishes every evening before I sit down to relax, rather than letting them pile up for a couple days (or more). I am putting away the laundry as each load finishes, rather than waiting until 6 loads are spilling all over my bedroom floor, or "floordrobe" as I call it. I stopped into the Rogue Book Exchange & reminded them that I'm interested in volunteering rather than waiting for them to contact me. I even spent an entire afternoon organizing my bedroom after literally months of ignoring the hoarder-style accumulation. (Our bedroom tends to become a catch-all for things we want to put away, but are too lazy to find a proper place for. Eventually, we get overrun.)

I'm starting to see just how much these trivial tasks can impact my demeanor when I'm not taking care of them. As I'm clearing these little hurdles that were becoming insurmountable, I'm making way for myself to move onto the bigger things. It feels like I'm brushing away cobwebs & clearing space for something greater. In that respect, confrontation can be a positive thing. Sometimes we have to confront the person who is sabotaging us the most (ourselves) and firmly but lovingly tell them to back the truck up!