Blog Challenge Day 20 - Where I want to be in 10 years & A Difficult Time in my Life.

We'll be two-thirds of the way through this challenge by the end of this post, so hang on, folks. This might be a little long'ish (blame my inner story-teller, okay?). Looking forward and backward today as I talk about where I want to be in 10 years and a difficult time in my life.

Let's talk tough, shall we (and save the feel-goods for the end)...

"Be kind - everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." (Ian McLaren) While your life may have been easier or more difficult than mine, the question relates specifically to a difficult time [for me] in my life, so I ask for a little space for this, dear reader.

My life hasn't been easy, for starters, but I could spend an entire book on that. Narrowing it down to a single, difficult time, is not easy, but I would pinpoint a few years ago, a trip to the hospital, and a serious health scare as the most difficult.

See, I get migraines. Not just a headache, but blinding, mind-bending, personality altering migraines. If you've never had one, well... Think of having a cold, the worst flu ever, a sinus infection and having your wisdom teeth pulled without anesthetic, all at the same time. Thinking hurts. Light hurts. Hearing your kids laugh... hurts.  Without medication to manage them, I get migraines daily.

Every. Single. Day. 

Most migraine medicines knock you out. Yes, there are a few out there that don't, but there are serious health risks (like serious fatigue and death) to taking those every single day. So, I'm on a medication to control them, and it works pretty well. I now get only 2 or 3 a month, versus 28-30 a month.

The first management medication I was on worked GREAT! For about 2 years. But because of that period when I was taking the short-acting migraine pills 3 or 4 times a day, every day, I would have these little periods of time where I'd just zone out. Poof. I'd be talking, and would just stop. Wasn't responding, couldn't move. My doc decided that these appeared to be a form of seizure, and since my migraine control med was also an anti-seizure medicine, she upped my dose very, very slightly while we waited for my neurology referral to go through and for my appointment to come up. 

The seizures got worse. 

My lovely little dog, Freedom, who had already taught himself to alert to my fibromyalgia flare ups and anxiety attacks, started learning to notice the seizures, and my doctor got more worried. I was still taking a much, much lower dose than even the lowest dose for seizures (the dose for migraines is a fraction of the dose for seizures), so she upped me to a slightly higher dose, and put in a call to the neurologist to get me seen sooner. 

The seizures got even worse.

I was no longer just freezing up. I was trembling. I couldn't talk after the episodes. They were getting substantially longer. But I was still a week away from my appointment. So, up went the dose to the minimum therapeutic dose for seizures. 

They got even worse.

The night before my neuro appointment, I ended up in the ER by ambulance. My seizures were happening every hour, and I was out for 10-15 minutes at a time. Since I was going to the neuro the next day for testing, the ER discharged me without doing any further tests, and I went home with my mom, instead of going home with my husband. At this point, hubby decided it was time to surrender me to someone with some actual medical training until we figured out what was going on. I'd lost about 10 pounds in this last week before my appointment, just from not being able to get through a meal, and from the severe shaking during each episode.

I never made it to my neuro appointment...

The entire trip into the city for my appointment is totally lost to me. I apparently spent most of the trip going from one seizure to another, and we ended up in the ER, then admitted from there for emergency tests. To this day, I can't remember exactly how many days I spent in the hospital, hooked up to machines measuring my brain activity. 

As out of it as I was, I still hadn't hit the bottom.

I had spent some of the weeks leading up to all this, discussing plans with my mom. We didn't know what was going on, and even though I'd been dealing with these migraines for almost 3 years, no one had bothered doing an MRI (mind you, every doc I saw wanted to know if one had been done), so there were still a lot of possibilities out there. When I say we were discussing plans, I'm talking things like burial and my youngest daughter's education, dealing with my ex and talking to my older kids; all that fun stuff that goes along with the "what if's". Hubby wouldn't go there with me, and I needed to make sure these things were worked out with someone.

And then, I hit bottom...

I'm guessing I'd been in the hospital for about a day and a half when I hit the scariest moment of my life (considering that I've had cancer biopsies twice and this scared me more.. that's saying something). 

My sister had come to visit with her little ones, as she was in the city for something else. My hubby was there with me, as was Mom. I'm pretty sure that Mom never left my bedside the whole time I was there, and I'm pretty sure she never even left to use the restroom (credit 40 years of practice as an RN). Hubby went home nightly, and he was looking pretty haggard, even though he pretended he was okay. Thankfully, our daughter was not there at this moment in my life. 

I woke up from a particularly nasty episode, and was clueless about where I was, when it was, and was truly confused about the people around me. When had my mom gotten so gray? And who was the guy standing beside her? And when the hell did my little sister grow up and have kids? I was missing 20 years of my life. 

Here's where I plug my two biggest heroes: my mom and my husband. They've always been my heroes, but this was a moment when they both stepped up and rose to the occasion. Neither freaked out, just talked quietly with me to help me reorient to the time and place, and over the next few hours, we managed to piece together parts of my life that were most important.

There is absolutely nothing worse than the feeling a mom has when she can't remember her husband or kids.

After a few days of tests it was decided that I do not in fact have epilepsy. And weeks later, we ruled out anything fatal via MRI. It was determined that the seizure-like episodes I have are an extreme form of anxiety attack, and that the migraine med I had been on became toxic in my system. Both are fairly easy fixes, though almost 5 years later, I still have episodes and we get through them. Meds were changed, and maintaining a low-stress lifestyle has cut them down drastically to every few months rather than every few minutes. I still have gaps in my memory, though no particular explanation for the memory loss can be found. I figure that I've got the important stuff sifted back out of the dim recesses, and the details of years of abuse can just stay lost in the dark.

It took me months to get fully back on my feet. As in, I had to use a walker to get around, because my body had gotten so weak from those weeks of wasted energy. I'd lost almost 40 pounds to the tremors and lack of eating (those had no problem finding their way back to me, by the way). 

Again, my husband and mom totally rocked in helping me meet my own goals for walking and being able to get around on my own. I still can't drive, but that's not a huge loss to me if I have any say in the matter.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger...

I've been on a bit of a search in the years since that time in my life. And I've found a path that works well for me, even if not everyone in my life likes it. They're free to follow their own path, and I'll stay on mine, thank you very much.

My life has led me to look forward in the moments that I look up from "now" to plan where I'm going. So...

Where do I want to be in 10 years?

In our own home, with our own book shop, and my own Reiki practice. We've come a long way since my husband was discharged from the Army in 2007, and it's not been an easy road.

But all those difficult times in our life together has led us to a place of greater compassion for those with less, and a greater understanding of those with more. We've got a plan for where we want to be, including having our own home and business. 

In 10 years, I'd like to have written and published at least a few books, and have our physical book store open and thriving. I'll have completed my Reiki master level, and would love to see that aspect of my business thriving alongside our bookstore. And we'd like to have a little bit of land up in the mountains for when we retire, someday. Though, I'm not sure that I'll ever completely retire from writing and Reiki. Some thing are a life-long calling that shouldn't be ignored.

I'm headed there. Little by little, things are falling into place. And they will continue to do so, as long as I stay on target and focused on those things in front of me, not the things behind me. 

How about you? Where do you want to be in 10 years? Have those difficult moments in your life led you to who and where you are in this moment? Feel free to hop in the comments below and share, or jump over to my Facebook page and share them there. 

Are you enjoying this series? I sure am. I'm finding that I have to think a lot deeper than I do on an average day, and it's a great way to find my writer's voice here in the blog. If you'd like to read the whole series from the beginning, click over here and check out the Intro. You can grab the list from there if you'd like to do this for your own blog, I just ask that you practice ethically and cite your sources, please. Then head over to the Facebook page and let us all know that you're doing this challenge, too, so we can follow along!

Until next time, Live Large, Lovelies!

Look Up! Hang Up Your Phone to Connect with Your World

Put down your phone for a few minutes.
(Unless of course you're reading this, then finish and then put down the phone)

Really.

I mean it.

We spend way too much energy and attention on our little hand-held life-lines to the greater world. And it's robbing us of our moment-to-moment richness of the life around you.

We hurry and stress and work ourselves into the ground to afford the "latest and greatest" devices. And for what? At the end of the day, that phone or tablet doesn't keep you company. It can't love you in return.

It can keep you connected to those you love when they're away from you, but there's a time and a place for that, and a time and a place to put the phone down.

Look around you.

It's really kind of sad when you look around the restaurant and see people glued to their phones instead of talking to the people they're sitting with.

It's even more sad when we walk to the beach, and I see kids playing in the sand, their guardians sitting nearby with a phone or tablet in their hands.

Heck, I've even watched people walk down the street, eyeballs glued to the screen of their phone, thumbs bouncing off the surface as they scramble another text, tweet, Instagram, or some other social media post.

I watch this, and I wonder, "Is this what our lives boil down to now? Memes, jokes, selfies? And the world outside of social media is just so miserable that all we do is work and sleep in it?"

Not all that long ago, this was me. On the computer, working on something, with my phone beside me, bouncing back and forth between computer and phone, managing 6 tasks at once, and getting nothing done.

I resolved to set down the phone. (The Universe helped some with this.. not long after I resolved to set it down and leave it alone, the darn thing up and died completely on me. Now it's just a brick, and I'm not in a huge rush to get a new one, as I don't have a dire need for it.)

There's a TON of stuff to see!

When I resolved to put my phone down, I started noticing stuff (and started getting a heck of a lot done around the house and in my business).

I started noticing how my daughter fidgets with her pencil when her school work is starting to stress her out.

I started noticing when my dog gets restless.

I started noticing when my body feels good, and when it doesn't feel so good, especially when I put the wrong foods into it.

I started noticing how I was wasting time, and how much more I got done in short bursts of really focused attention. And I started noticing where I had gaps I could fill with stuff that revolves around my values and what's important to me.

Have you noticed lately...

It's well into April now, and unless you live someplace like Colorado, it definitely looks like spring outside. My dahlias are starting to come up, my primroses are dying back. The Christmas cacti in my window and sacred space are blooming. Again. For the 3rd time in 12 months.

Have you set your phone down long enough to notice what's going on in and around your home?

Have you looked up from that little screen to notice how tall your son or daughter is getting?

Have you slowed down long enough to really enjoy your meals?

Have you taken 5 minutes to really look yourself in the eye and...

Since I set my phone down, I've started taking the time to look myself in the eye there in the bathroom mirror, and telling myself that it's okay not to go with the latest rage in social media, and spend all my time there, as I'm prone to do, because I'm loving myself enough to take care of me.

I'm taking care of myself. And for me, that's huge in ways you can't imagine. Of course, it means I spend less time trolling Facebook and Twitter, but you know.. I have an appointment with myself every day to get there, post something, catch up on what friends and family are doing, and let them know I'm thinking about them.

It's okay to let go some. And it's okay to love yourself enough to leave the phone in your purse and really enjoy the fresh air while you walk around the neighborhood. And it's really okay to make some face-to-face connections while you're doing it!

Is your life really better because of the phone?

There's a time and a place for the phone; I absolutely agree. It's nice to have it with me when I'm out and about. But that's not the same as being a slave to it! For a long, long time, I really stressed about how I'd manage my life if my phone died or broke (it finally did, and I'm still here, hallelujah).

I had my schedule on it, reminders of appointments and to-do lists. My email for 3 different accounts and 2 businesses came to it, all in one handy little spot so I didn't have to log in and out of each several times a day to check it.

It was great for keeping track of my budget, my family, my Facebook, my friends... my... life.

But it was also a huge distraction for me. And I learned that I could life just fine (maybe even more productively and more happily) without it. I have less drama in my life, because I no longer spend hours on social media stressing about what is going on with this friend or upset about what that family member said about my post.

I can breathe again.

Stop and Connect.

It doesn't mean I no longer spend any time on social media. I'm there two or three times a day, for 15-30 minutes at a time. That's still a pretty significant block of time! And it's just long enough to look for the significant news, touch base with friends, get some content out for the businesses and have a great laugh.

What it does mean, is that when I'm spending time with my hubby, I'm not distracted by someone's funny photo. I'm not asking my daughter to wait with her math question because I want to finish writing a snarky reply to someone's meme that offends me (I do ask her to wait a moment sometimes when I'm writing and need to finish a thought before it flies off, but I give her the same courtesy when she's busy with Minecraft or school work, too).

Thanks to my phone dying, I'm learning to really stop and connect with those around me.

My computer is still a distraction, and I'm not perfect, but I'm no longer splitting my attention between phone and computer, either.

Are you spending your time in line with what you value?

So.. what do you value? I sat down one day, and challenged myself to figure out what was really important to me, and what I valued, and discovered that I was spending almost no time on the stuff I value! I was spending--no, wasting-- time on stuff that, in the end, means little to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

What do you value, anyway? When the end comes for you, as it will for us all, will you look back and see all the stuff that you didn't get done, and wish you'd had more time for it? Take 5 minutes (the minimum length of time you'd spend distracted by cute kitten videos) and write down the things that are meaningful to you. Do you value your health, your creativity? How about being available for your kids and teaching them how to live a meaningful and productive life? Or maybe you value community and humor--both are great support systems for healthy living, by the way.

I dare you to...

Now that you know what you value (and you can add to this list, subtract from it, as you go), can you trim some of your phone face-time and set it aside to use those moments to do something that supports the values in your life?

If you can't get away for a media free vacation, take 4 minutes and enjoy this gorgeous video of Yosemite National Park from the folks at Greater Good Science Center. Let yourself fully focus and absorb the incredible beauty of nature.

If you have a few more minutes you can kill... Hop over to Youtube and check out one of my all-time favorite videos. It's a parody of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and everyone in our house cracks up for hours after we watch it.