Unfurling the tense tendrils of frustration
🎶 "I can't get no sa-tis-faction!" 🎶 (Yes, the Rolling Stones song is playing in my head right now...)
This morning, I was deeply frustrated.
My body didn’t want to wake up. Didn’t want to get up. Didn’t want to go to work.
Didn’t.
Want.
To.
Not only that, but last night it was the same thing.
Body did not want to get ready for bed (even though we were tired!) because that meant having to go to work the next day.
And the same thing happened the night before.
And last week.
And it’s REALLY started to grate at me.
Pushing through like this… trying to calm my stupid nervous system because it’s starting to rebel against the routine we’ve established… but not exactly being successful at calming anything at all.
The tension slowly mounting…
Frustration less-than-slowly mounting…
😑
I cried when I got home from work yesterday. ANGRY cried.
I can’t keep doing this bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the place where I work and the people there. (Thank goodness for small miracles!) At least it’s not all bad. And the company treats us employees really well. If I HAVE to force myself to be somewhere to “make a living,” at least this is a good place to be.
And I try to focus on that.
But oh god. Frustration still mounts upon frustration.
Each time I am sitting at my desk and my body feels unbelievably heavy and exhausted, and all I want to do is lay down and nap for a bit… but I can’t, so I have to override my body’s needs and PUSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH through… just make it a few more hours… get that paycheck… oh god, just a little bit longer…
Each time, the frustration mounts and mounts and snowballs and snowballs, more and more and more and more.
It keeps getting harder to make it through.
How much longer can I manage to soothe the frustration just to get by!?!?!
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore! I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!!!
The inner cacophony keeps getting louder and stronger.
I feel like I could burst.
And I just might.
…
Lines from a song by TOOL (The Patient) come to mind:
If there were no rewards to reap No loving embrace to see me through This tedious path I've chosen here I certainly would have walked away by now If there were no desire to heal The damaged and broken met along This tedious path I've chosen here I certainly would have walked away by now And I still may And I still may
It came to mind because I said, “And I just might”…
But then the rest of the chorus reminds me of the bigger picture and brings me back from my precipice of frustrated complaining… reminding me of what I am actually doing here…
The “rewards to reap” and the “desire to heal” that continue to lead me down the “tedious path I’ve chosen here”… god I love TOOL!! lol
There is more to this.
Yes, I have been frustrated. Yes, I have been choosing to continue forward in a way that has been feeling heavy to my body. However, there is something deeper and greater that keeps me doing what I am doing.
This morning, I had a realization
Like I already said, I didn’t want to get up this morning.
But I did.
Normally, I sit with my coffee and do one of three things; read something, listen to something, or sit just me with myself, feeling and allowing thoughts to surface.
However, this morning, I was tired and frustrated with the fact that I was going to have to go to work. I also had started to write a piece for a writing challenge that I really wanted to continue working on.
I said fuck it and sat to write. Even though I probably wasn’t going to have enough time to finish it in my normal period of morning-pre-work-time… I said fuck it, I’m gonna write it and I will take the time that I need. Whatever. (I don’t actually have a set time to get to work, so why not?!)
And I just let it pour out of me. I had already started to write a post for the challenge, but the way I was feeling, I decided to just start from scratch, and oh…
It felt good.
It felt REALLY good.
And I am happy with what came out.
👇👇 Check it out, btw…
"Make it happening!" (Let's talk about taking action)
Broken?!
Lazy. Procrastinator.
Words often thrown at me because I was not good at making myself move and take action. I preferred to be still and wait.
I’d get done what I needed to get done. But god, motivating myself to move was hard. There had to be fast-approaching deadlines for movement to happen.
It felt like I was broken from the get-go. Factory defects, nothing to be done.
Interestingly enough, writing about this… about taking action and how it works best for me… got me facing the very frustration I was feeling, but from a different perspective.
It reminded me that frustration is my “Not-Self Theme” and that means that in some way, shape, or form, I am out of touch with my truth.
It made me come to face to face with how I am actually railing against what is and mucking about in my desire transference.
I didn’t do anything with this realization, I just acknowledged it and proceeded with my day. Got ready and left for work. But it kept rolling around my brain.
Suddenly, it was like something unfolded within me.
I opened up to a really strong feeling of dissatisfaction.
Yet, in that moment, I wasn’t resisting it. I just saw how stupendously dissatisfied with my life I am right now. But I allowed it to just be a fact of my current existence and not something that needed to be different. Not something I needed to make any changes to. Just something I acknowledged as being a momentary truth.
And, in that, there was no frustration.
I am dissatisfied and that is ok. Things are not how I want them to be, and that is also ok. Doesn’t mean it will be like this forever, it just means it is like that right now.
And that’s ok, too!
As I sat with this perspective, the tension of the frustration I had been feeling began to dissolve… which gave way to a feeling of… void… a hole… in my chest.
It was painful… and sad… but calm.
It is now the day after I began writing this and much to my annoyance, I can’t seem to recapture the flow I had yesterday. My thoughts feel jagged and all over the place now… but it also feels like I never got to the point I wanted to get to in this writing!
Talk about frustrating!!! 😅😖😑
I think I need to leave what I have written so far be the whole of it for now.
I have so much more to say on dissatisfaction. I felt a deep breakthrough in my body with this experience… although maybe my mind may need a little time catching up lol… maybe that’s why continuing the subject has proven to be difficult.
So I’m just gonna honor that. I have re-read what I wrote (it is actually even more days later now!! lolol) and I feel that, although I am absolutely coming back to the subject… for now, it is complete.
💙
Thought you might enjoy this...
Looping thoughts running on the hamster wheels of my mind...
How I discovered the great I AM.
https://rachelvictorianna.substack.com/p/looping-thoughts-running-on-the-hamster
I can’t do it anymore and I’m not . The problem is I am now looking to get another crap job where I can be frustrated with in a different way . I was happy with what I did , but I’m also happy about not having to do what I did . Each day I worked there I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore not because the job was difficult. It was because an easy job was made difficult because of they way we were spoken to and treated by some , but not all