Wherever You Go, You Go Too

I had a lot of direct and indirect commentary surrounding the ‘Starting Over’ blog. It’s still amazing to me how many people are waiting for an environment change for their lives to change. I giggled a lot only because that is totally what I was doing.

My biggest transition was five years ago coming from Ontario, Canada to Los Angeles. The biggest change I noticed was sun every single day with the exception of a few weeks in the year where it would rain. The landscape felt very different due to the surrounding hills. I grew up with flat country cornfields all around me.

It’s one thing to come from a small town to a big town. I noticed a big change driving from my small town to Toronto years ago. Toronto seemed a bit intimidating. I didn’t have my driver’s license very long and the 401 and Gardiner Distressway (I like to call it) scared me a lot! It was too fast, too many cars and too confusing. By the time I would get to my auditions, I was completely frazzled.

Then I did some music tour-y stuff in NY and I gotta tell ya, Toronto looked more like my small town. New Yorkers are upfront and loud, but super crazy in a good way too. I love NY so much. I like how dark people dress and I like how fast you can get around.

Los Angeles is way too spread out. You can spend most of your time driving somewhere or sitting in traffic. I find people here very tolerant of our differences and very open to creativity. There is a joke with Canadian artists that you only get recognized in Canada if Los Angeles recognizes you. I’m not sure where the saying comes from, but I suspect people can feel very free to be themselves here without judgment and I really like that.

The thing is this; I spent way too much time in all my transitions looking for the external changes. A fresh coat of paint in our living room can certainly make us feel better when we are in the room. I believe color has its place and I do understand the affects of sunshine and how great it can be.

Sometimes we need an environmental change just to give us some breathing room to figure it all out. My issue before moving here was that I lived in a very angry infected environment so I was always too mad or too sad or too constantly bombarded to just breathe. I go to the point where I couldn’t even catch my breath. I’ve always said I wasn’t running from a problem but running to a solution.

In looking back though, it wasn’t a solution I was looking for out in the world, I was looking for some stillness so I could just figure it out. You know, ‘Just let me think for second, wouldja?’ –That mentality.

The best part of my growth definitely came while living in the storm. I just didn’t know it then. I started off by being silent, withdrawing…then I would break out in anger and then retreat in sadness and silence. It was a horrible ritual of attack, retreat, attack, retreat. It was truly my fox hole.

That is massively tough on your emotions after a while. I started to look for solutions outside of that. I would try to say things differently and I would try every new angle possible. Once I felt like I had exhausted those angles in 20 different languages or dialects, I decided it was over. When I wanted to take my own life, I knew I had to get out.

I would hate to think people couldn’t get out of their unhealthy situations unless they reached that edge on the cliff. What I was able to do though was something from the Funeral Mute song, ‘bite my tongue & bide my time’. It’s part of having a game plan.

So I did everything I was supposed to do to change everything and it took a long time. My situation was clearly a case where MASSIVE change had to happen or I was simply going to die. The one thing I hated that I had to put on hold was working on my character. It wasn’t until I was surrounded by some very cool people who inspired me to want to improve myself did I attempt it. I realized that parts I didn’t like came along on the move. I wished I could have left those back there too!

As it turns out, there is no one dumping ground for the bad traits. They don’t stay at the last house or apartment you lived in. The newness of environment gave me a chance to breathe, but I still had to face the demons eventually.

The groovy part is I could breathe and think long and hard because I had nobody around me to clutter me up. That was a good thing. But over the years, the parts of my character that have been shaped the coolest in my mind (maybe others would disagree) happened during volatile conflict. If I could take a deep breath and listen to a hot-headed client instead of yelling back, I would mark a point in my mind. I would sometimes take a bathroom break and go look in the mirror and crack a smile and think, ‘You just pulled a Frank…nice one Karen.’ (I’ve told you guys before, Frank stays on point and never angry which I admire) I am most proud of myself for remaining calm, cool and collected when everyone is on fire around me. For anyone who is in the audio field, you will know that if you push up all the faders on a console, you won’t hear things better. Some faders have to come down. I find the same thing in heated discussions.

I know there are so many people facing big changes, but there is beauty in learning the calmer skills in the crazier storm. It’s a skill that truly will follow you wherever you go…and storms will come and go too.

Very proud to say I managed to NOT flip the bird in NYC, (That is a BIG point for anyone…lol)

Karen :)

“The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence.” ~Norman Vincent Peale

Is Starting Over Worse than Where You Are?

I often call the ‘comfort zone’ the ‘uncomfortable zone’ because I haven’t had much luck being comfortable there. I always looked at my comfort zone as being in a holding pattern. If you don’t make any sudden moves, it can’t get any worse, right?

Having been in a chain of terrible relationships and many cases of bad financial issues, I think it was more of a case that I could get used to just about anything if it was done over and over again in a pattern. A habit whether good or bad can sort of just keep going on its journey because we inch it along and those inches seem quite doable.

Starting from scratch might be the scariest concept for a person. It’s not that we don’t know how, we are usually just too invested up to that point or we are basically exhausted and aging in such a way that we can’t imagine where we would find the energy to move on. Then, couple that with the things that now come with us. We might have had children since or there is a heap of bills staring at us and taunting us to stay in its clutches.

I watched a clip of a girl who has a Ministry which helps gets prostitutes off the Vegas Strip. It’s pretty gut-wrenching to watch. I know people who have been in the porn/strip club/escort business and while it might seem easy to escape for those of us watching from the sidelines, it’s life-threatening to leave it. You seriously need a whole community to save them in order to accommodate their protection from the Pimp community.

The one clip which really tugged at my heart strings was when one of the ex-prostitutes got off the phone with a friend who seemed to easily transition back into her life in New York while this girl was struggling with therapy and a very shaky do-over. She began to cry at how unfair life was and you could tell she was overwhelmed with what to do next. She must have felt like her life had actually gone backwards by leaving the industry. I’ve seen this with that industry. Some people get back on their feet quickly while others struggle for years to get ahead.

A story like that can make our own situations feel pretty easy to fix or they can make us just feel grateful we aren’t going through that. Being grateful is one thing, but sometimes seeing the extreme stories can just cause us to do nothing about our own situation.

Going back to the mounting bills which could be keeping us in the trap; there are so many things which we are in bondage to. The oppression of owing money not only stops us from going new places and experiencing new things but it eats away at our character because we believe at the heart of it all, we are good people and we like to make good on our debts.

The one thing I got from this Vegas Story is the theory ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. The steps these girls have to go through to get their lives back doesn’t end with the hero scooping them up in a helicopter and escaping with them. It’s a really long road and it takes the love and assistance of the people in the Ministry for them to have a hope of not returning to the uncomfortable zone again.

In our own trying times, like mounting bills and joblessness, why do we think we can go it alone? I believe like these hookers on the Strip, they are mostly burdened by their shame and I believe that our shame is what keeps us locked up. It’s very embarrassing to ask family or friends for financial help especially if you have people in your family who work in finance. You might seem like a failure to them. You might not want to go to someone for help because they might say, ‘I told you so’ or maybe not quite as bad; they whisper about you in circles behind your back making you feel really imprudent. What I have learned over the years, people who love us really do want to help even if it’s just being an ear. If you can muster up enough courage to be completely honest about your situation to someone who truly loves you, you may be surprised how helpful that will be. They might not write you a check to pay off all your debt, but they might provide some focus and I’ve said before; just verbalizing or writing down something about our situation can put a lot of things into focus. Most financial planners will have you write down every debt you have on a bold list in front of you. You would be surprised how many people who are in debt don’t actually know what they owe because it’s too painful to look at. Maybe some personalities would crumble at the sight of it, but more often than not, the bold truth is what helps us make a change.

The bigger problem I have encountered with change is that I have almost always had to step back…sometimes many steps knowing things will then move forward. It’s an error to think we can smoothly transition out of something like prostitution into a high-paying job the next day. We just have to decide if the steps back are worth it. I believe they are; if we can simply find just one more ounce of strength to make the awkward elbow-turn.

If you are facing a big decision or need to make a large change, can you break it down on paper into something tangible even if it takes slightly longer?

Packing about one box per/week,

Karen :)

“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” ~Albert Einstein