March 9, 2016 by Amy

Occupied. Thanks!

Forgive me if this is rambley but my mind is jumping all the over the place and I can’t keep up with the thoughts and they’re starting to pile up and so I just need to get them out before they overflow and I have a big mess to clean up.

This Girl Scout stuff. It escalated terribly last Wednesday night and then early Thursday morning I caught the 6:05 to Chicago while feeling like I was going to throw up, simultaneously upset that I had to leave when I felt so bad and grateful that I had the distraction. I found the little bag in the seatback in front of me just in case, and I have never, ever had to find the little bag, so that freaked me out. And then when I was in Chicago for the day I spent the seminar breaks texting with my sister and calling the neurologist’s nurse because my mother’s tremors are escalating and clearly the meds aren’t helping and why the heck haven’t you called me back because I have left three messages in three days and my dad has called and my sister has called and this is my mother for Pete’s sake. Thursday was hard. Really hard.

Since then the Girl Scout issue has eased, because I made it ease, despite the near constant inquiries from people who know that this is devastating to me and who tell me that they, too, think it’s unjust and unfair. It’s nice to hear all the support. But I also need to move past it, because I can’t change anything about someone else’s decision, no matter how I feel about it. And I will move forward, because I figured out a plan years ago when all this stuff started surfacing and I knew, as we all know, that we can’t always get our way.

I realized today that I’ve moved back into that “hate the world” place that I was stuck in for so long last year. The first indication of this is when I get irrationally angry at every single driver I encounter on my very short commute to work, and am fuming by the time I park my car. I identified that in myself today, after screaming, “What the everloving %$#& are you doing?” at a car that came to a dead stop and blocked traffic because it needed to turn right but was in the left turn lane, and apparently didn’t want to go further down the road, turn around, and come back and so made the rest of us wait. I took a deep breath and told myself, “Dude. Calm down. The five-second delay is not worth the stroke you’re bound to have if you keep freaking out like this.” (Note: I drop Zoe off about five nano-seconds into my commute, so she does not witness my commuting freak-outs.) (Usually.)

I am becoming rather enamored of the musician Amanda Palmer. I read her book, The Art of Asking, and fell in love. With her. With her music. With the idea that to be successful and happy we need to get over ourselves already and ask for help from others. And give it, of course. It’s a whole circular thing. She released a new song today, and it’s incredible, and just listening to it I realized that I Am Bigger Than All The Stuff. I am bigger than the Girl Scout issue. I am bigger than the people in my community who think they make better decisions for my family than M and I. I am bigger, because I make things instead of destroying them. I need to let go of this petty stuff that takes up too much space in my brain and focus on the creating. The doing. The giving.

And with that realization, the weight lifted. Just like that. I wanted to run out and hug faculty members and apologize for scowling since last Wednesday. I wanted to create something right the heck now. I poured that energy into my work and cranked out some projects, and they turned out great, and it felt good. And now I’m pouring that energy into this. Writing. I also made a pretty picture today, so that counts, too.

We have a nursing mom on staff here and to help her out we stuck some furniture in the women’s restroom so she can pump. And by furniture I mean an old office chair and an even older student desk. Eh, it works. We’re not exactly the Taj Mahal anywhere in this place, and it’s endearing. We are small and scrappy, and we do really well with our sometimes-limited resources. It’s part of the reason I love the place so much. This makeshift pumping set-up is a perfect example.

The bathrooms here have a main door, and then inside a smaller metal door and panels surrounding the toilet. Even the tiny bathrooms have this arrangement. For those of us who want to use the restrooms to change into our workout clothes at the end of the day, this is annoying because we can’t lock the main door and instead have to cram ourselves in the tiny stall to change. We asked for a main door lock for months. When the nursing set-up was in place, we thought we had the perfect excuse. She needs privacy and can’t pump in the stall, so the main door needs a lock. Turns out that the main door can’t have a lock for safety reasons. That door is solid wood, a few inches thick. If it were locked and someone was in distress in the bathroom, it’d take a battering ram to get through the door. At an all-boys school, it’s not wise to have battering rams lying about. So, no lock. We determined that the easiest, most effective solution was to use a post-it note alerting people to not come in. Someone wrote, “Occupied. Thanks!” on a post-it and stuck it to the wall inside the door. The note is transferred to the outside of the door as needed. It eventually lost its sticky, so we’re on our second “Occupied. Thanks!” post-it.

I see this thing every day when I use the bathroom. Sometimes I see it on the wall inside. Sometimes I see it on the door outside, and I know my friend is in there doing her awesome mom-thing and it makes me happy. Today I figured out that I should use that post-it on the valuable real estate that consists of my head and my heart. There’s limited space in there, and I sure as heck don’t want to give it over to people who make me miserable. When some nasty person tries to spread their bad juju, I’m gonna try to say, “Occupied. Thanks!” and go create something instead. I think I’ll be happier for it, and my heart will be happier, and my brain will be put to much better use. I’ll use that valuable internal real estate to create, to affect others positively, instead of stewing in the vile poison someone else tries to share. So I had an idea this afternoon. A bit of guerilla art. Time to stop writing and start a different sort of creating. If it pans out, I’ll take a picture and report back here.

What’s occupying your head and heart today? Is it good? Does it make you bigger, fuller, happier? If not, boot it out the door. Reclaim your ground. Occupy your own space, and leave no room for outsiders who don’t fill you up with joy. You’re worth it.

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