Put on your own oxygen mask first.

I don’t speak about everything on my mind, don’t express aloud each thought, plan, activity. Those things live inside, an internal agenda of goals and intention setting, hopes and dreams. I struggle with creating and maintaining discipline to attend to those things I hold, that are desired.

Increasingly I am pulled from these, in large part it’s my own fault, I’ve allowed it to happen. Lately, it’s making me really angry. 

I am quiet, tend towards solitude and pleasure of my own thoughts, limited and select company. But I am not idle, am not without direction. As such, it seems perceived that I’m available at anyone’s whim. That while I’m around quietly going about my business, that I must need to be included, that I’m available to console, offer support, guidance at a moments’ notice. That nothing I’m amidst of of such importance, as the matter at hand. Thus, I’m drawn into the needs of others, the plans of others, while my own are subverted. The anger that rises screams within – I’m not some doll sitting in wait, I have my own stuff going on, a life of my own.

This leads to disappointment in myself, in not staying the course I set, not checking off my own lists of goals for the day, week, what ever timeline suits me.

It’s a late dawning but it has come, and I know I must sequester myself. Quell those tendencies to reach out, check in, be unquestioningly available to everyone, everywhere, and fragment my own being. I can’t solve it all, it’s not all on me.

I didn’t choose a life of service, am not a priest, a rabbi, a swami, anyone of that nature, not leading a life  of ministering to others. I’m a regular person in the world, working, living, dreaming, doing the best I can. My own well needs filling, being needs tending to.  And yes even I, the supposed strong one that seemingly has it all together, is always there, needs support.

I can’t cut off altogether, but boundaries are necessary, the discipline to start with saying No. To my own impulses to answer every ask that comes my way, to the guilt of feeling I’m not meeting others’ expectations. In continuing to over extend myself over all this time, I haven’t met my own expectations.

So a new day begins.

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