Feline Focus

Feline Focus
My latest puma, July 2016

Carra

Carra
Beloved companion to Sarah, Nov 2015

Window To The Soul

Window To The Soul
Watercolour Horse, June 2015

Sleeping Beauties

Sleeping Beauties
Watercolour Lionesses, Nov 2012

QUOTES QUOTA

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Groucho Marx




Snow Stalker

Snow Stalker
Another snow leopard - my latest watercolour offering - July 2013

31 October 2016

Inconsistency, Thy Name Is Lisa

Hello.  It’s the end of October (which I’m sure you’ve probably noticed).  I haven’t posted since the beginning of the month (which you might also have noticed, if you follow my blog at all).  So, setting myself a weekly calendar ‘prompt’ went well, then, didn’t it?

Am I surprised that it hasn’t worked to help me be consistent?  Yes.  Kind of.  More disappointed, I guess.  I was hoping that this time I’d really found something that would work (given that it did seem to be doing so for about a month - which is longer than a lot of the ideas I’ve tried, most of which don’t get beyond the first day of conception.  Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t actually my idea at all this time).  

As readers of the AA Big Book might recognise the phrase, I was hoping that “this time it would be different”: the same way that, as an active alcoholic, I’d hope that, with each new attempt, I would be able to control my drinking.  Only to find that nothing I did to change the way I drank made any difference.  I still got drunk.  And I still persisted in believing that there was some way that I could alter the outcome, by sheer force of will.  

Of course, due to the obsession that had taken hold of my mind, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t; and, therefore, the only logical answer was to stop drinking entirely.  Too simple.  Too scary.  Too logical.  Too extreme.  Too rigidly black or white.  (I know.  How bloody ironic for one whose nature it is to bounce wildly from one extreme to the other, and views everything as a choice between either/or.  An opportunity for some of my autistic personality traits to come in useful, and I decide I’m going to wander in the world of grey. *rolls eyes*). 

So, here’s my dilemma - I keep trying to apply the same principles of the AA programme to things like my inconsistency, because that’s the language and the philosophy that is familiar to me, and with which I have been imbued for nearly thirty years now.  Except that it doesn’t quite work.  

Or, at least, due to the way my autism affects me, I am not able to adapt it and get it to work (and, by God, I’ve tried!)  All that keeps happening is that I confuse myself (even more than normal), and cement the feeling of failure I have about my inability to manage what I’ve come to view as my ‘failings’.  So, that’s a double whammy of failure to get in a pickle about.  Jolly good.

How do I accept that I am inconsistent, and give up trying to enforce it in myself?  

Don’t you sometimes feel as if the world is set up to defeat you, when it appears as if you come up short, or are outright deficient, in everything the world tells you that you need in order to be a thriving, successful, happy, healthy human being?  

Everything feels like such a bloody battle at times, like being in the trenches, never making any headway at all. *heavy sigh*  What would happen if I waved the metaphorical white flag, do you think?  Would someone shoot me?  (Yes, if I was lucky.  Put me out of my misery of having to listen to all of this tediously repetitious and woeful thinking.  Actually, I’d probably shoot myself.  Probably by mistake.)

So, just to maintain the ‘war’ metaphor, a full frontal attack doesn’t work.  Has to be a sneak attack.  So, back to the battle plan.  Or the non-battle plan.  Or the non-plan (given that plans don’t work for me either).  How to surrender, that’s my dilemma.  When I figure it out I’ll let you know.  (We could be waiting a long time, then.)

I hope you find peace with yourself.

Śanti

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard
An experiment in watercolour and gouache

Quotes Quota

"Do you believe in Magic?" asked Colin.

"That I do, lad," she answered. "I never knowed it by that name, but what does th' name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i' France an' a different one i' Germany. Th' same thing as set th' seeds swellin' an' th' sun shinin' made thee well lad an' it's th' Good Thing. It isn't like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th' Big Good Thing doesn't stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin' worlds by th' million - worlds like us. Never thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it - an call it what tha' likes. Eh! lad, lad - what's names to th' Joy Maker."

From 'The Secret Garden', by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Love

Love
Copied from photograph of the same name by Roberto Dutesco

Quotes Quota

"There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way."
The Dalai Lama

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

Malcolm X

On The Prowl

On The Prowl
Watercolour tiger

Quotes Quota

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."

"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind."

C S Lewis