The takeaway from today’s therapy session is :

I need to nurture myself. Like, a lot.

It seems obvious in retrospect. The elements are all there in my personality. I have a very warm,. tender, caring, motherly side that has rarely seen the light of day even though I treasure it quite deeply. It’s full of warmth, sunshine, sympathy, affection, and everything else traditionally maternal.  And so far, this side of me has only been expressed in the form of caring for others.

But I know a very sad, scared, lonely little boy sitting all alone as he watches the other kids’ get picked up from school by their parents, and he sure could use all that tender loving care and affection.

So really, there is nothing stopping me (except base fear of change) from lavishing that inner child of mine with all the things he never got when he was the outer me. Attention, support, guidance, protection, understanding, wisdom… the whole care package.

See what I did there? Care package! I’m hilarious.

It’s a scary thought because giving myself all that I lacked in my childhood is a very big change. I have no idea where that kind of change would lead me. I might become a completely different person.

No big loss.

At this point in my life, I am willing to become damned near anything if it means I will be happy. I might even be willing to bend a little on being a super nice guy all the time.

A lot of that comes out of fear anyhow. Fear that if I am anything less than super nice all the time people will remember what a piece of shit I am and flee in droves.

And Ubers. Mostly Ubers.

It’s not all bullshit, of course, or fear. I really am a super sweet guy. But I wonder sometimes if even that can be taken too far. To the point where it is unhealthy. Bad for me and bad for others.

It’s bad when it keeps me from setting boundaries.

It’s bad when it makes me afraid of people because their problems are so real to me.

It’s bad when it comes across as pathetic and needy.

It’s bad when it hurts me.

Moving on. Here’s my first try at writing a letter to my inner child from a maternal point of view. Warning, this could get pretty weird.

My dear sweet boy, 

Don’t you worry. Don’t you fret. Everything is going to be all right now. 

Because Mama’s here, and Mama is going to fix everything. 

I know it’s been bad, sweet boy. I know it’s been very bad for a very long time. I know that it’s been bad for so long that you gave up on it ever being good again and that made you so sad that you got sick. 

But Mama is here now, sweet child, and she’s going to stick by you and take care of you till you get better, no matter how long it takes. 

I will never give up on you like those other people did. I will never leave you all alone again. Those people didn’t know how you handle someone like you. 

But I do. And I intend to do it. 

And I will not let you slip away, or fail out, or do anything else that would mean letting you go. I will always be there for you no matter what. 

In fact, I will always : 

1. have time for you
2. pay attention to you
3. listen to what you have to say and take it seriously
4. give you big warm soft hugs when the world gets too scary
5. look out for you and try to keep you from getting hurt
6. give you good advice when you get confused
7. take care of you
8. be interested in you and your life
9. give you all the warmth and caring you could ever want, and
10. be ready to growl my big mama cat growl and scare the bad things away. 

And I will never : 

1. make you feel like you are not even there
2. treat you like an unwelcome guest who has overstayed his welcome
3. tell you that you are useless
4. take tasks away from you and do them myself because I am too impatient to actually teach you to do them yourself
5. make you feel like you’re not even supposed to be alive
6. treat you like an unwelcome obligation
7. punish you for voicing your needs or your right to exist
8. exclude you from things due to your awkwardness
9. expect you to know things without being told, or
10. let you get away with thinking you do not deserve love. 

In short, my wonderful boy, I am going to take care of you the way that you have always deserved but never gotten, and from this point onward, things are going to be better. 

Your long wait is over. Mama is here to pick you up. 

You’re finally going home. 

Phew! That was some emotional heavy lifting. But it feels good. It feels right. I am going to right the ancient wrongs and give myself what I have needed for so very long.

Finally, the warmth will melt all the ice around my heart and I will finally feel the sunlight on my skin and know that I am valued and cherished and loved, and that everything is going to be okay after all.

Because here’s the thing.  You can survive anything life throws at you if you are wirh the right person. And I am going to be that person from myself.

And who knows, when the ice melts,. I might finally have room in my heart for a special someone else. Someone I don’t keep at arm’s length with my shiny bag of tricks.

Someone who gets to meet the real me.

I get the feeling that we’ll be meeting him together.

I don’t expect this to be the solution to all my problems.

I expect it to be the beginning of the solution.

I’m going to love myself as hard as I can.

And spring will finally come.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

 

Mental note : come back to that later.

But right now, I gotta do my homework!

Namely, writing the next episode of the show my client Nicole is making. She loved the first ep and wants to make it a weekly than.

Why, that’s almost like real work!

Here is a link to the first episode. Facebook Live doesn’t do embed, apparently. Grr.

I wrote the script upon which she based the video. Like me, she doesn’t like memorization and prefers to get the basic idea down in her head then wing it.

That might sound crazy, but it’s the only way to get a performance that sounds genuine, and I don’t know about her, but I put a very high value on being genuine and honest, so I get why she works off the script but not from the script.

If you know what I mean.

Anyhow, here’s the blurb she gave me for this week’s episode, due tomorrow morning :

“The client requests a basic package and then wants bells and whistles beyond what is reasonable. Basically, they are paying for a Chevy Cobalt but want a Corvette. We carefully work with these clients to let them know what is realistic on their budget, set things up as much as possible for future improvements and outline next steps for when they have more to invest in upgrading.”

Wow. I bet everyone who works in a client-based environment has a story like that. Hmm, that’s actually a pretty good opening.

“Now where was I? Right. Hi, and welcome to It’s a Solopreneur Life”, the show where I share  funny, inspiring stories from my life as a solopreneur in today’s digital world. This week, I have one I think a lot of solopreneurs can relate to.

Tell me if this starts to sound familiar.

You have a client who opted for the low-cost package of your services. No problem. Those packages are there for a reason.

But then they start asking you to do everything from your most expensive package!

Basically, they paid for a Chevy Cobalt and expected to get a Corvette.

I’d hate to be behind these people at McDonald’s.

“Hey, where’s my Big Mac, fries, and shake?”
“Sir, you ordered a small pop. ”
“Your point being….?”

And what you want to say is, ‘Hey pal, if you want more, pay more. That’s how this works. We’ve been through this. ‘

But of course, we’re professionals here at Virtual A-Team, so what we do is work with the client to make sure that they understand what they do and do not get with their package and give them some options for when they have more money to invest.

Crazy as it is, that’s just another day at work here at Virtual A-Team. ”

That will do for a rought draft for this week’s ep. If I have the time, I will work on it some more before I submit it tomorrow in the AM.

I am happy to get a regular gig. She pays me $35 per script. At the moment that is around $45 Canadian. But UpWork takes its 25 percent (hey, better 75 percent of something than 100 percent of nothing), and so I will be getting around USD $26.25 per script, which translates to around $35 Canadian.

Notice how that came full circle? The gains from the currency conversion are neatly canceled out by UpWork taking a cut.

It’s so efficient!

What else. Oh, Riders On The Storm.

I was listening to that song earler and for some reason, the couplet in the chorus got stuck in my head.

It’s the part that goes,

like a dog without a bone
or an actor all alone
riders on the storm

Why all lower case? Because it’s pretentious.

Anyhoo, when something gets stuck in my head I inevitably start playing with it, and I have been having so much fun that I thought I would call it a game and share it.

So we will call it the Riders On The Storm Game. The rules are simple : make up your own couplet then end it with “riders on the storm”.

Here are some examples fresh from my fervent imagination :

like an ancient mystic tome
made of purple styrofoam
riders on the storm

like when I blow a tone
on my chocolate saxophone
riders on the storm

like I just took out a loan
to buy the latest new iPone
riders on the storm

like a hot and dripping cone
of molten silicone
riders on the storm

like I’m always on the phone
with some stupid corporate drone
riders on the storm

like my car hit a stone
in a harbor loading zone
riders on the storm

I could go on and on. It’s just so much fun!

At least for me.

Look, I was a bored and lonely child and I learned to make my own fun, OK?

What else. I keep struggling with whether to sleep whenever I feel sleepy or force myself to stay awake at normal hours in hope of developing a healthier sleep schedule.

It’s a thorny nest of issues because on the one hand, the medical consensus is that I would sleep a lot better if I slept only when it is dark and stayed awake all the time the sun is up. Plus, a rigid and regular sleep schedule is healthy no matter when it happens becase our circadian rhythms will adjust accordingly.

And that sounds marvelously rational and sensible.

But it’s not that simple.

Because I already have a demon in my head that is constantly trying to force me to conform to its idea of how I “should” be doing thing and who I “should” be, and it’s one of my worst ones.

That means that this whole “sleep hygiene” trip is exactly the sort of ammo it needs to further persecute me on my failure to do things the “right” way.

From that point of view, I should simply accept that sometimes I will need to catch up on sleep so badly that all I do is sleep all day.

Sleep till I am not sleepy any more, basically.

But then again, I have a history of sleeping when I am not at all sleepy but I convince myself that I am because I want to hide from reality and not have to deal with anything.

Sleep is like death without the commitment, after all.

So honestly, I dunno.

Guess I’ll sleep on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.