Switching Gears. My Personal 365 Day Challenge.

Writing is therapeutic, it allows for accountability, it puts dreamy thoughts into a form that is tangible and recorded.
   As you may or may not know; the past seven months have been challenging for me in a variety of ways.  The over-riding challenge has been the fact that I'm in the dying embers of the divorce process with a women I am parenting three daughters with.  This idea is accompanied by every possible emotion, mostly of the blues hue.  There are moments of clarity and joy, but somehow grief always returns.  Though its power is diminishing, the song of sorrow is always playing in a small room somewhere in my mind.  It represents a lost dream, a lost vision, a failure, and/or the inability to foresee personal short-comings, preventing compassion and joy from being the main theme of the failed relationship.

   This dissolving of a partnership is compounded by the relenting of ownership of my house the the bank, and the loss of my job.  All of these things are happening right now.  My primary bank-account is negative five hundred something dollars last I checked a week ago.  My secondary account is negative two hundred last I checked.  I receive three hundred seventy or so from unemployment every week.  This is enough to buy food for my girls and I and support the ex.

I watch the girls every weekend.  Now I'm sitting here typing.  The older girls are at a friends house and the little one fell asleep for a nap.  It's not as if I'm always lazy, though particularly so today.  Spring is right around the corner, but it's too cold to fully relax with the breeze.
   This house is an anchor to a lost battle, it's a ghost town of lingering family unity.  Sounds depressing, I promise, I'm not always this glum.  In fact;
   The reason I'm writing this particular post is to flip the script.  I have approximatly a year before the bank actually takes the keys to my house.  There is a lot I want to accomplish before them.  The only task that really relates to the building that is currently my home, is to get all my stuff out in a strategic fashion.
  The remaining items are all about lifestyle design.  Yeah it's a buzz-word, but it's exactly what I need to do.  I need to figure out exactly what will provide me with some joy and money and get to it.
That's why I'm calling it My 365 Day Personal Challenge.

The effects of divorce on a man. The first three months

I can tell from experience that divorce has been the most terrifying, gut-wretching, yet amazing and liberating experience of my entire life.

Here is something I could speak to at great lengths, Mostly because I'm going through it right now. Obviously it consumes my thoughts many days, but I will tell you this;  IT GETS BETTER.

I imagine my experience to be similar to many men in the sense that.  WE NEVER SAW IT COMING.,
but actually, yes we did.  
Men will often ignore the needs of others because their sense of duty as been ingrained in them for so long.  I had the very real feeling that my wife and I would be married for ever and that I just needed to work hard and suffer through this part to get to the other side.   HA!
My wife tried to tell me that things weren't working for her, that she wasn't happy.  "just stick with the plan." I'd say.
Till one day she started seriously questioning my bravery, my worth, and my trust-ability.  Then one evening,  she turned to me and said, "I think we should separate"

I can't possibly explain all of the swirling emotions that I've gone through in the past three months.
Though The 5 Phases of Grief unfolded.

1. Denial and isolation
2.Anger
3.Bargaining
4.Depression
5.Acceptance.

   Of course when you're in the storm, nothing makes sense, there are moments of clarity though.  Somehow, I began to self-regulate.  I began to anticipate my low moments and accept them.
First it was every Monday and Tuesday when we would come back home after a weekend apart.  Due to routine, I would subconsciously assume or hope that everything was back to normal.  When I found out it wasn't, I would suffer and express myself in any numerous ways.
   Once I realized that Mondays weren't going to be like they have been for the past nine years,  my ups and downs took a different random sort of pattern.  I found comfort in knowing that I would have FIVE days of positive, forward motion resembling positive change.

Inner world travel 002 Time to meet your Spirit animal

Now that you have established your peaceful grove, clearing, area. What did we decide to call that? I always called it my garden even though there isn't usually a garden.  Things are growing though.
How about home grove?    sure.

found here (gotta add some picts to keep you interested.) :)

-So your home grove inhabites the middle world.  The middle world is vast.  From this level you can access the lower world and the upperworld.    Within this middle level there are portals that are all over.  Some come and go and others can be permenent.  Each of these levels have there purpose.  And they have portals too.  There is no end this space.

--So you want to meet your spirit animal?  Or one of them.  
Let's go.
Relax, build up some Chi or whatever you call it.  Enter your cave and notice the cave wall.  It is an indication of a variety of things.  perhaps.
Go in to your grove, look around

my latest shamanic journey

. It just struck me that I can post about my shamanic journeys here. I think I might post them all eventually and I'm not sure there will be any particular order to them. . I'm just going to dive in on the latest and we'll slow down and rewind later. . Just to note all of my visions are created without the use of drugs. All it takes is a lucid imagination and some practice. -On my way home from work a moth appeared. It fluttered about for a bit then chose to rest on a miniature, wooden, hand-carved, Rasta head that swings peacefully from my rear-view mirror.

Nas and Damian Patience

Patience Nas & Damian Marley

Winter wrap dye.

My wife amazes me. She will bang out a dye job on an expensive wrap. She loves it.