I'm not broken!

I must have a sign on my forehead that says "broken" or a crack running through me that I can't see...  In the last couple of weeks, I have had different people offer to "fix" me and I'm trying to understand why.  Yes, I still have parts of me that I would like to work on but they are things that I need need to work on.  It's not up to anyone else to fix me because I don't feel as if I am necessarily broken.  I guess one of the things that I need to decide for myself is if I'm going to continue to allow comments like this from other people to be something I find acceptable or not.  When someone made this particular comment to me yesterday, I actually let them know in the moment that I wasn't broken and even if I was, it's not up to them to feel like it's their responsibility to fix me.  I don't think they were expecting that type of a response from me.

I wasn't trying to be mean when I made my comment to them but I really felt the need to make my point.  I told the individual that I respected the personal journey they're on (because they kept bringing up their journey as what I should compare mine to) but they, in turn, needed to respect the journey that I'm on and to understand that it's up to me to decide who walks with me along my journey.  Now that I've said it, I need to make sure I stick to that.

Something that I realized this past week is that I've been throwing myself a lot of pity parties lately.  Yes, I've been tired and felt somewhat overworked but that doesn't make pity parties a necessity as well.  I just have to keep reminding myself that the occasional pity party may be fine but I don't have to let them go on and on.

I think one of the things that helped break me of the pity party mentality was my car.  As the weather has started to cool off, mornings have gotten colder.  The other morning when I went to head to work, my tire light was on.  Of course, I couldn't find my tire gauge so my plan was to pick one after work.  I ended up having to work late that night unexpectedly and only had about 15 minutes or so to run home and let the dogs out before having to be at choir practice.  Because I had a touch of laryngitis this past week, I went to hand bell choir rehearsal but ended up not staying for vocal choir.  During that time, I went and picked up a tire gauge.  I have a portable jump start/air compressor so I was able to put air in the tires myself.  While I was at it, I checked the oil in my car as well.  That was another process in and of itself...

In order to get to the dipstick to check the oil, I had to lift a carpet, lift a metal panel out of the way and then remove the dipstick.  I then had to put the metal panel back down, along with the carpet, to wipe the dipstick, lift everything out of the way again to put the stick back, remove it and check the oil.  After that was all said and done (and it was determined that my car did not need oil), I had to put the dipstick back, put the metal panel back in place and put the carpet back down.  Of course since I was attempting to do everything myself (since what other option did I have), the metal panel did not want to go back into place easily so I ended up having to hold the carpet out of the way with my head (since it couldn't be removed completely) and use two hands to replace the metal panel.  Once the panel was in place and the carpet was put back down, I felt a sense of accomplishment.  While some of the car ordeal was a pain, I was proud of myself for getting it done.  To place a icing on the cake, the next day when I got in the car to go to work, the tire light was still off so I did the job right!  =)

I think I need to go back to one of the things I wrote about back in Year One of Gypsy's Quest... That is, I need to celebrate some of my small accomplishments and not just wait for the big ones to happen.  Yes, that may seem a little silly but I know that it's a very important aspect along my personal journey.

Another bigger accomplishment came after my solo performance last night.  I danced my sword solo for a packed restaurant show last night and changed during the intermission to prepare for our group dance.  After I changed and was putting final touches on my costume in preparation, I was approached by a a fabulous local dancer and she asked if she could talk to me for a minute.  Once the initial shock wore off, she gave me another reason to be left speechless...  She told me that she could tell that I loved sword work and that she thinks she got a glimpse of my soul as I danced.  That was a huge compliment for me and I think it's going to continue to push me to continue to work on perfecting my skills as a sword dancer.  I also had another dancer (who was just an audience member last night) tell me that she didn't get out her phone for photos/videos until I started to dance.  That really meant a lot to me!

Since I'm still a little excited about the show from last night and from the AWESOME birthday surprise to look forward to from my Mom and Dad (more details to come....), I think I'm going to sign off for tonight in order to get mentally/physically prepared for the busy week ahead.  I'm hoping to have a week that is pity party free (and if a pity party must occur, I hope I'm able to have it not last very long...).