SPAMMED!

If you have ever participated in a community clean-up project, you - like me - have probably been amazed at the amount of trash people throw out of their vehicles when they drive down the road. Soda and beer cans, McDonald's bags crammed with greasy sandwich boxes and crumpled napkins, soggy disposable diapers, empty cigarette packages, whole bags of household garbage, discarded tires, broken furniture, abandoned trailers...you name it, and it's probably lying in a roadside ditch somewhere.

Well, think of a blog like a house standing on the side of a busy [internet] highway. You'd be amazed at the trash that gets tossed into my little front yard by passers-by.

Several years ago, when I was writing more and posting much more frequently, way back before nursing school ate my soul and effectively shut down all writing, traffic here at the blog was considerably higher. It had grown from a handful of weekly visitors, most of whom I knew personally, to several hundred visitors a day. I loved writing here at the blog, and I especially loved interacting with people who left comments: it made me feel connected to a much bigger world than my tiny corner of a hayfield.

But then something dreadful happened. An Unknown Visitor stopped by and effectively emptied a small landfill's worth of garbage onto my tiny little blog.

I was stunned. Dismayed. Bewildered. Hurt. Who on earth did this? And, WHY?!

I also felt ever-so-slightly flattered, like I had made it one step closer to the big leagues of blogging.

I learned a great deal from that early spamming experience and felt stronger for it.

(You can read about my first ever spam-dump experience here: BLOG ON!)

But in the craziness of raising and launching kids and getting my first steady paying job and going back to school and diving headlong into the life-consuming world of healthcare in modern America and a several-years break from writing, I forgot all about that long-ago introduction to blog spamming.

Until last week.

Thankfully, this time, I already had safe-guards in place to make cleanup easier. After an initial flush of dismay, I had the blog tidied and back up running within minutes.

And now, I would like to write a few words to my Unknown and unfriendly visitor:

Thank you. As I type this post today, I am smiling - because of you - because your attempt at hijacking my humble little blog is confirmation that I. AM. BACK. And it sure feels good.

Your spam-a-wham also let's me know the blog is getting out, and people are reading it. This is so incredibly encouraging.

Sad guest, I am sorry that you don't know how to play nicely. You obviously have issues you need to work through. Maybe you should considering counseling, or perhaps start a blog of your own.

In the meantime, I'll be over here writing.

BLOG ON!

BOUNDARIES

Good fences make good neighbors.

According to dictionary.com, this familiar saying means: "Good neighbors respect one another's property. Good farmers, for example, maintain their fences in order to keep their livestock from wandering onto neighboring farms."

Perhaps a contemporary rendition of the above adage would be: Healthy boundaries make healthy relationships.

I am really crappy at setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. I frequently feel torn between two options: taking care of the people around me or taking care of myself. I know in my head that I need to take care of myself in order to be able to take care of  others, but I often feel like I'm in an either-or, crisis situation, like choosing to help one must come at the cost of harming the other.

I hate conflict. 

I hate lose-lose situations.

I hate making decisions when choosing A comes at the expense of not choosing B.

Among the various assignments my therapist has given me over the past couple of months, two in particular are: (1) look for opportunities to practice being more assertive and (2) determine what your boundaries are and try to stick to them.

"I know this is going to be really hard for you at first," she acknowledged, "but it will get easier with practice. I promise."

I am a people pleaser. I want to make everyone happy.

Sometimes, that simply isn't possible.

I was put in the difficult position recently of having to choose between honoring my personal boundaries - boundaries essential for my own physical and mental well-being - or compromising my boundaries for someone else's benefit. To be more precise, I wasn't just "put in a difficult position" - I was actively pressured to violate my boundaries. To make things even more challenging and stressful, the other person involved was someone I truly care for. I felt like I was forced into a choice between hurting myself or hurting a friend.

* * *

We are going to pause here to take a detour. Before I tell you the outcome of my dilemma - and the choice I made - I want to describe the tumult of emotions this situation elicited in me.

I felt anxious, stressed, frustrated. Do I choose A or do I choose B? A or B? What's it gonna be, Camille? Make a decision, Camille. You need to decide what you're going to do, NOW!

I felt sad and I felt guilty. Sad because either choice would result in hurting someone I cared about. Guilty because no matter what I decided, it would be WRONG.

I felt afraid. Whatever I decided, what would others think? Would they be critical? Would they talk bad about me? Would there be negative push-back?

I felt angry. I was angry that I been put in this situation at all, angry that I was being forced to make a decision that should have never been put to me in the first place. Angry that phrases like "team player" and "it's part of the job" and "Well, somebody's gotta do it!" had been carelessly lobbed my direction and impacted like nuclear warheads.

I appealed for an outside opinion, for a hearing from an impartial court. I messaged my therapist. I messaged three women whose wisdom I deeply respect.

No response.

I cried. Had a full-blown, snot-nosed fall-apart.

Please, God, what am I supposed to do?!

Still no replies.

God was going to make me fight this battle on my own.

* * *

Detour over.

I chose A.

I chose to honor my personal boundaries.

I chose to say, "No, I will not ----. I am truly sorry this makes things harder for ----, but, as much as I want to help, that is not my problem."

And then, I threw up.

* * *

The Rest of the Story

Afterward, I felt emotionally and physically like a limp, dirty, stinking dishrag.

But I also felt incredibly calm.

And - I don't really know how to put this - I felt strangely solid. Like I was more of a real person than I had been in a long, long time.

Ding!

Too late to influence my decision, I received a reply from one of the Wise Women I had texted. I touched the screen on my car's console, and Siri read aloud:

"Hold your boundaries. Have the humility to respect your boundaries and needs and recognize when you can't fix an insufficient system even though its failures have real impact. Self sacrifice to the point of burnout may make today easier for ---, but it's a pattern that is just gonna feed into and prolong an unhealthy situation...the more you do to [make up for deficiencies in the system], the more it helps push the need for actual change down the road."

God had not left me to fight that battle alone at all. He had been there the whole time, watching his frail child struggle to use new muscles, like a father watching a toddler take her very first legs-trembling steps. Once that scary first step had been taken, He rushed in to say, "You did it! Good work!"

I took a deep breath. I could truly say, "It is well with my soul."

My therapist assures me this will get easier with practice. I sure hope she's right.

TRADING "TO DO" FOR "DONE"

Cave kayaking was on my friend Margo's To-Do list. Mark it Done!

Okay, I am one of those people who likes making lists of things I need or want to do (because lists help me to actually remember what it is I need/want to do) and then marking things off said list.

Laundry. Groceries. Pay bills. Strikethroughs make me ridiculously happy.

A completed To-Do list gives me a sense of accomplishment. Chronic to-do lists -  lists of things that never get done, like clean out the attic, thin the daylilies, finish upstairs bedrooms - make me feel discouraged and incompetent.

One of my daughters recently reminded me of the value of taking time to reflect on meaningful accomplishments that never even make the to-do list, things like: I bathed and fed all my kids today. I made eye contact with each of my children and listened to them info-dump. I refilled my prescription on time.

This got me to thinking: What if instead of starting each day with a To-Do list, I waited until the end of each day and made a Done list? There are a bazillion things I did NOT do today - and I could feel bad about that - or I could focus instead of what I DID do.

Today's DONE List:

• I ate a healthy breakfast.
• I drank plenty of water.
• I made a pitcher of fruit tea for my mom's dominoes group tomorrow.
• I deleted a bunch of junk from email.
• I listened attentively as a dementia patient discussed recent health issues.
• I hauled a bag of trash to the bin out next to the highway.
• I put away my laundry.
• I listened to a podcast while driving between home visits.
• I taught a caregiver how to change a dressing.
• I sat on the porch swing and fed the mosquitos.

I kind of like the positive twist of reflecting at the end of the day on what I did do, instead of what I did not do.

What about you? What is something on your Done List today?