Diary of a Fifty Something Nobody – Listening

I am not the perfect listener but I do try. I have learned listening skills over the years and I try to listen actively and openly, although when my life is moving at a million miles an hour, I admit that I can be guilty of letting my mind race when I should be concentrating on what the deliverer of the message is saying. I even have a mantra which helps me to remember to ‘listen’ to everything and goes like this:

“As I create and listen, I will be led.”

 

However, I think the Universe is trying to tell me something at the moment but for the life of me, I can’t quite make the details out. I am struggling to see where I am being led however, hard I flap my ears! Yes, you are right, I am becoming exasperated with the constant blocks being thrown under my wheels. I am told that I can’t change blocks and I should welcome them in curiously but sometimes, it is hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I am positively doing the following:

• Planning, in order to help with focus (see Big Purple Book later)
• Thinking positively
• Letting my angst out in my journal every morning
• I am looking at how to get my own health heading in the right direction
• I remain up-beat – looking for the good things that are in mine and other’s lives
• Working on the skills I want to take forwards into the next 25 years of my life (I know a bus could mow me down way before then, but you see what I mean)
• Helping others where they need me
• Meditating and Breathing (although perhaps I need to get more strict with myself in this regards)

 

 

 

But, despite all of this, the sh**t keeps on coming. For example, in the past two weeks or so, the following has happened (some are little, some not). You may also want to note we are having a major rebuild at home so that Mum and Dad can move in:

 

• My current kitchen has been flooded by the man digging out my new kitchen
• Two friends/ neighbours have been diagnosed with a bad diseases from which they may not come back from (this is ‘some not’ category)
• I have to have two toe nails removed (next week) which will restrict my movements for a short while (not so big but inconvenient)
• Dad has had two falls but still claims he is fit to live on his own at home
• Dad is refusing to move home at least once a day, despite his dementia and asbestosis saying he can’t stay there
• Mum is waiting for Knee replacement surgery and they appear to have brought it all forward (please note the house is not ready for her to come out of hospital to for at least another 10 weeks). I thought there was serious waiting lists – clearly not at her hospital!

 

 

• The gas was cut off by another tradesperson and it took 24 hours for it to be reattached (brrr!)
• My house is now completely surrounded by scaffold and it feels like a jail – oh and did I mention I can no longer open most of my windows.
• Due to the said scaffold, I can no longer let my doggies out on the back lawn safely in the wee dark hours of the night
• Our former landlord (business) is doing everything they can to not pay us the compensation they owe us for throwing us out. This includes nastiness to us personally. Yes, solicitors are now involved which is a further stress (and cost) in itself.
• The Water Company is trying to say we owe them £4500 plus for our previous business premises. This is not true so I am ‘fighting’ this one
• The house in Scotland (belongs to my Auntie for whom I am Power of Attorney), has been assessed by the insurance company to need ‘ripping apart’ after 12 (yes 12!) pipes burst just before Christmas

 

 

 

• The market has dropped out of the paint industry which isn’t a comfortable feeling when you own a paint manufacturing business
• You may have picked up that we have had to move a whole factory (thanks to our loving previous landlord) and the new one (landlord) didn’t lag the pipes properly at our new ‘home’ so we have had numerous bursts and frozen episodes here too. This is not great for a. being able to go to the toilet whilst at work or for the fact that we need WATER for our WATER based paints
• My Mum is obsessed with the fact her car hasn’t been washed and Dad isn’t capable of doing it anymore. Clearly I need to add car washing to my skill set
• It would appear that my parents have a blocked pipe from one of their bathrooms (this related to one of Dad’s falls when he tried to go up a ladder last night to fix it)
• Meanwhile, we have no drains from our kitchen so we have to empty big buckets from outside when we wash clothes or pour our dishwashing water down the toilet
• My Auntie hasn’t had her medical notes sent from Scotland to England yet – she moved in August 2022. I now have the MP sorting this one out….I think. That is when he isn’t flying off to Norway to stare at our Army or having a planning meeting in Windsor with his boss

 

 

I could go on, but I won’t because I am sure you are getting the picture. I want to stress (forgive the pun), I don’t want sympathy and I don’t even want help. I cope by having a huge purple book with different coloured lists of things I must do in various parts of my life e.g. blue = paint company, red = parents (we have three over 80 and one over 90) etc, etc What I really need is for the Universe to be a bit clearer about what exactly it wants me to do!! I am clearly not listening to the messages because it keeps throwing blocks at me. Perhaps I need to go to a toilet ‘block’ at 4.00am to be told where to plant cabbages (see Eileen Cady of Findhorn fame and numerous books). The book I read about the cabbages was ‘Flight into Freedom and Beyond’ if you are interested.

 

 

 

Other than the toilet block option, which is on the cards when I take my caravan to the East Coast in a couple of weeks, I am looking for other ways to interpret, listen or learn ‘Universe Language’. Perhaps it is telling me to run headlong into the sunset without a forwarding address. Perhaps it is telling me to go to Plumber School so that I can fix all of these pipes (Mum has just come up with a new issue – a poorly draining sink in her en-suite….I know a bit of a first world thing)?

I refuse to give in though. If I do, I will be miserable all of the time and I am NOT (are you listening Universe!!) living in misery all of my life. This means that I perhaps need to find somewhere to go and rage for a few minutes each day….or perhaps each hour with the way things are at the moment……. But then return with my positive face on. I also need to get online and find a course about learning ‘Universe’ although I suspect it may be easier to learn Mandarin.