My soap came in!

So I am all excited, the shampoo bar samples I ordered from Chagrin Valley Soap and Craft came in the mail. It's all very plain, plant-oil based hand-made soap. It smells nice, not perfumed but just really "clean." It's hard to describe. I used it immediately and it seems to be okay on my hair. I'm still having a little itch here and there on my scalp every now and then, but nothing like it was. My back is still itchy, but I'm hoping that the new soap plus vinegar rinses will help it to calm down. If my skin does well with the soap, I may see about ordering some lotion. I'm not going to spend a lot of money in any case, but I am willing to spend a little right now because I am sick of my skin. It's been a crawly, burning misery and I am tired of it. I can take action and try to take care of it rather than sitting inertly and suffering with it.

Somewhere I picked up the bad habit of inertia, so that even when I can do something about a situation, I often don't. I think it is akin to learned helplessness. Maybe even willful helplessness. It's not being tough in a situation or bearing up with patience, it's pre-surrendering and wallowing. To heck with that! I will not do that any more!

Actually, I will. Because I know me, and habits are hard to break. But now that I am aware of it, I have made a post-it that says "helpless" and "surrender" in a circle with a line through it and stuck it on my computer monitor. I can use my desire for change in my life and that post-it to do new things. I can motivate myself to start daily physical activity if I can see that post-it and remember this feeling. That's also why I am blogging about it, because I want to be able to read back over this and regain this sense of impatience with the status quo and the sudden reasonableness of taking action.

I have another post-it stuck up there with lines taken from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters : It is about THIS that I am to say "Thy Will be Done" and the daily task of dealing with THIS. The "THIS" is supposed to be whatever I am having trouble with, not the huge big upheavals (when it's easy to holler for God) but the slow grinding monotony of dealing with each day. That's where I need so much help. I'm overwhelmed with trying to make such big changes in my life, and I am making them as fast as I can. At the same time, I feel despair sometimes, a quiet desperation, because it seems like it's impossible to actually change anything. There is so much that I want to do, but I have so little energy. At least I am aware of things that I was numb to before, so there is hope. It just feels as though I were moving through molasses all the time. So I am going to remember that I have the option of asking for spiritual help. Believing that there is spiritual help to be had might be foolish, but it would be even more foolish to turn it away if there were any hope of it existing. I have come to start having that hope, the hope that is just at the tips of my fingers.

I'm hoping that I can carry that attitude over into my work. It is not getting any easier or any less stifling. I have to remind myself over and over that I should be grateful to have a job, that I am putting my best into this job, and that this job is giving me the dignity of work. If I can handle this job, then maybe I can see about getting a real job, one that I can engage in fully. At least this job is going to pay for us to buy my brother-in-law's car, so there is that to be grateful for.

Well again, it is 9:40 and past the time I wanted to be in bed. I leave you to it, world.