When we lived in New Orleans, I learned that Carnival is more than just a couple of weeks of parades. The season actually begins on Twelfth Night with the small parade thrown by the Phunny Phorty Phellows. The season runs all the way until Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday. While Twelfth Night is always on January 6, and Mardi Gras is always on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the actual date of that Fat Tuesday changes. It’s based on the date of Easter, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox – a date ranging from 22 March to 25 April. This means that Mardi Gras falls between 3 February and 9 March, which means that Carnival can be as few as 28 days or as many as 62 days. (Clear as mud?)

I tell you all of this because I think that the giant pity party I just threw was kind of a Reverse Carnival – Lavinrac. I’d say that it easily lasted 28 days; however, it didn’t go on as long as 62 days.

Mardi Gras is a period of Big Time Celebrations, followed by Lent – a period of Big Time Introspective Repentance. Mine was backwards. My Carnival was dark, morose, introspective – more buzz kill than party. If we’d had parades, cries of, “Throw me something, mister!” would have resulted in showers of prozac, wellbutrin, and cymbalta rather than doubloons, beads and plastic dog poop. Happily, I seem to have reached my equivalent of Ash Wednesday, ending the Morticia Addams themed holiday.

Thank goodness.

Now, where’s that King Cake?

Hi, everyone. It’s been a couple of weeks since I visited with you. The short story is that the wheels have come off of my life again and, frankly, I’ve been pouting about it.

I’ve been angry and pouting with nothing positive to say; so, I’ve been quiet.

Remember last month when I differentiated between incompatibility and failure? Or maybe at the first of this month when I talked about acknowledging, accepting and solving? I believed all of that when I wrote it and, in my brain, I still do.  The big problem with that whole thought process is that the brain, the logical brain, is not the only thing involved.  The emotional brain is also in the process and my emotional brain has been telling me that I’m full of it for the last couple of weeks.

For the umpteenth time (it seems) I’m back at square one.  I’m disheartened, frustrated and angry about it. I’ve always tried to teach my son to work hard and to play fair.  My emotional brain still believes that; however, my logical brain is questioning all of that in a big way. I’ve watched people who are incompetent and lazy – but who are great at selling themselves (and abilities they don’t have) – be promoted where the talented worker bees get stuck. I’ve watched the unethical rise to the top while the ethical are either stuck or released.

I wonder if I’ve done my son a disservice – as far as professional success goes, anyway.

For years, I have worked hard, given my best efforts to make the whole enterprise successful. I’ve watched the self-serving and parasitic cash larger checks and receive promotions all while the people giving the most are patted on their heads and sent on their way. (See? I told you I was angry.) This is not how the wheels came off this time, but it’s happened before. This latest nightmare has just rekindled anger from past injustices.

That’s how it often is, I think. Life punches me in the throat and I get angry – about that punch and about ones I thought I wasn’t angry about anymore. Clearly, I am.

I know that I’m not the only one struggling with anger, disappointment and the depression (and bad food cravings) that always ride shotgun. I’m trying very hard to reestablish a solution-oriented attitude.

I could use any tips you guys have to offer.

My life situation today is pretty much exactly as it was yesterday; however, my mental situation is miles away from where it was.  I believe the difference is acceptance.

I fought admitting that my difficulties were the result of a bad fit. As I said yesterday, I believed that I was failing and had failed. The struggle to avoid or solve that failure caused a tremendous amount of stress. While I am certainly still adjusting to the new direction, I feel better about taking it.

When discussing yesterday’s blog with my friend Gavin, she reminded me of how much time we spend trying to make something fit. I don’t put those pinchy shoes back on the rack – they’re cute! I’ll MAKE them fit. Then I end up with blisters on my blisters. I pin that tight blouse closed. I spend all day adjusting poor fitting garments trying to hide the fact that they don’t fit. Still, I know and so does anyone else who’s looking. It’s so much easier when I wear things that fit. Which is why I feel better today.

I’m not wearing pinchy shoes.

I have a long row to hoe yet, to be sure; however, I’ve taken the first steps. I’ve acknowledged the poor fit, accepted it and am solving it.

Those steps are necessary for any corrective change, I think. Like when I changed my eating habits. First I had to acknowledge that I was unhealthy and needed to change. I mean, on the one hand, I obviously knew that I was overweight, but I made excuses. When my blood pressure was up, I had to stop making those excuses and acknowledge that I had a problem.

After I acknowledged it, I had to accept it or change it.  I chose to change it. Then, I chose to solve it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if finding a viable solution was just that easy? In terms of losing weight and getting healthier, it kind of was. I stopped eating processed foods, ate more veggies, more fruit, more whole foods, more lean meats and less wheat. I watched my portions. I walked. I started doing all of those unglamorous things that I’d heard for years. And it worked.

So, I’ve acknowledged the need to make some changes in my personal and professional life. I’ve accepted the need to change. Now, I’m effecting a solution.

Here’s to finding the perfect fit.

When my son was younger and was forced into being my stylist went shopping with me, he would often comment on the outfits I chose. He would tell me that they looked good, that they looked bad, or that they “looked okay, but not great.”

We’ve all done it, right? Tried on a dress, skirt, slacks, jacket, whatever, and found that no matter how much we liked the item, it just didn’t fit right. It was too tight across the shoulders, too loose in the waist, too short, too tight in the hips or just plain didn’t look as good on our bodies as it had on the hangar. Depending on the cuteness factor of the item, we might mope about it for a bit, then we put it back and move on. We didn’t fail and we didn’t feel like we did – the thing just didn’t fit.

Jobs and relationships can be just as ill-fitting; however, it’s much easier to view those instances as failures of effort or character rather than just failures of compatibility.  So what makes incompatibility feel like failure for me?

I think that it is the amount of time, energy and/or expectation I have invested in it.

I have written repeatedly about my job, about its difficulty and about how much I believe in its value proposition. I have worked ridiculously hard educating myself, meeting people, talking about what I do and how it could benefit them. I’m not getting anywhere. For weeks, I have heard the “Failure Chorus” in my head non-stop. (For those of you unfamiliar, it’s similar to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” but in a minor key and sounding more like something by James MacMillan.) My colleagues have told me time and again that the industry is not for everyone. They’ve also told me what a great personality I have (I pay them handsomely) and how I’m sure to be a success. It’s not happening and I feel like I’m failing all of their expectations as well as my own. I am having a very hard time accepting that my failure may be the result of a gaping waistband – it’s a bad fit.

During this same period of time, my romantic relationship has come apart. (At this point, the “Failure Chorus” is performed in a round, a lugubrious campfire song.) I’ve been hurting and wanting someone to blame. First I blamed him. Then, I blamed myself. Then, I went back to blaming him on account of it’s more fun than blaming myself. I’m not a complete loser who’s more trouble than she’s worth. He’s not a bad man. The shoulders are a little too tight – it’s another bad fit.

Still, I have invested a great deal of my heart into both ventures and their simultaneous demise has thrown me for a loop – or (more accurately) into a tailspin, as you might have gathered from several recent articles. Given my lifetime of negative mental recordings and the elephantine amounts of head trash I carry around, I’ve taken both failures to be the result of some deficiency in my own character rather than what they really are – poor fits. I must put them back on the rack, let them go and find things that fit.

I hate shopping.

Remember that book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (And It’s All Small Stuff)”? I heard that author speak once at a convention and I thought that he was completely out of touch. Seriously. I was a believer in “God is in the details.” “If you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves.”

Then came Hurricane Katrina and my perspective was irrevocably altered.

You hear victims of disaster say, “At least we’re safe. That’s the important thing.” And, you know what? It really is the important thing. The rest of it is just stuff. The event changed how I viewed the world, my place in it, myself, my possessions, my friends and my family. It changed what I viewed as important. Waiting in line five minutes at the bank became less of a hassle.  Having a lot of things wasn’t as important.

However (you knew that was coming) in spite of my perspective shift, I do sweat the small stuff. A colleague recently told me that I put too much pressure on myself. I acknowledge that her statement is probably true; but, who else can I put that pressure on? My son? He’s off at college doing his own thing, becoming his own man (and choosing to become a pretty fabulous one, if I may say so). I tried putting pressure on the dog, but he’s a Labrador. The only time Labs feel pressure is when you’re holding a ball but not throwing it. I tried putting the pressure on my cats; but, well, they’re cats. They don’t do pressure. So that leaves me.

I’m the breadwinner, the repairman, the gardener, the mother, the cook, the laundress, the maid, etc., etc. As adults, we all wear lots of hats and shoulder great responsibility. It’s part of being an adult, isn’t it? Somebody puh-leeeze tell me if it’s not, b’cause I’d love to drop some of this stuff like a bad habit!

I believe that it’s the small stuff that either makes us or breaks us.  A chain of small bad things, a streak of bad luck are like Chinese water torture. They erode our humor and ability to cope until we are raw. Likewise, a chain of good things or a streak of good luck can put us on top of the world. Lately, I’ve felt like I was dealing with a million small bad things that were just eating away at me. They have stolen my sense of humor.

As you know, I don’t believe that happiness is always a choice, but I do believe that what I choose to focus on is a choice. I can choose to focus on the negative or I can focus on the positive. For the last few weeks, focusing on the positive has been well nigh impossible; but, I’ve continued to try. I’ve kept turning my mind towards good things rather than bad ones.

And it’s beginning to work.

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It’s my favorite season. While I still struggle through the emotional swamp I’m in right now, I’m going to focus on pretty things. Pretty things like these.