Taming the Inner Control Freak

I am a control freak. There, I've said it. It's out there for all to diseminate, masticate and digest. I, Pandora T. Behr, have that most annoying of modern conditions, that being the need to control everything.

This is something that I am learning to deal with, sometimes well, other times completely unsuccessfully. I am aware that there are times that I have to relinquish control, and I can say "Okay, you take the reigns for a bit. Go for it. I will let you have your will. I have stated my preferences, you make the decisions, there will be no reprisals for bad judgement. I trust you."

Other times, there's such a nagging hatred of having no control. I feel like this about the nagging pain in my stomach. I am having another ultrasound the week after next. After that it's back to my doctor, then off to a specialist, then who knows what. I just want this fixed NOW! I'm over being woken by the dull ache in my side at four a.m..I'm angry that I can't run because it makes the pain worse. At least all the blood tests have come back negative - something to be very thankful for.

The opposite of this is the sabbatical. I'm taking six months off from my normal work - I have no idea what I will be doing, where I will be working, how much money I will be making or when this will occur. And I love this feeling. I have control over how I look for work, the rest is up to the universe - and this I love. I have the confidence I can get work. It's all a bit of an adventure and I very much have the control over how I go looking for work, making plans etc. I also have enough money in the bank to know that I can survive six months very, very frugally if I have to - but it will not come to that.

It was pointed out to me rather bluntly on Wednesday night at Dream Group that I have not been enjoying the journey so far, expecially with the gifts the universe has bestowed on me over the last few months. Who else wins a competition that gives you two tickets to anywhere in the world? Who else works for a company that gives you paid sabbaticals? Who else do you know can travel around the world and have a bed in every contintent?

Okay, well my cousin Mal won a trip to Europe about fifteen years ago - never a more deserving person won that trip. Mal currently works in a hospice and she's been working the cancer wards of Canberra as a nurse for nearly twenty years. Hats off to that one. And I know lots of people who have mates all over the world. One of the joys of living overseas and working for international companies and people an expat for a long time is you have friends all over the globe. As for the paid sabbaticals - yeah, well that one is a bit of a find.

It was a bit hard to hear. It was my dream that we picked over on Wednesday. Here I am, standing at a crossroad, watching Ngaire Dixon-Smythe run around in her underwear, moving house in a complete strop. Ngaire Dixon-Smythe was somebody I went to high school with. She's now a QC with three kids living the life amazing in an ultra posh Adelaide suburb. Anyway, Ngaire Dixon-Smythe was in the moving house competition in which she stood to win a million dollars. There I was sitting with some wise friends having coffee, watching the world go by. In the end, the moving competition ended in a tie and both the movers, and a rather stroppy Ngaire both won a million. Finally I sit in my third floor flat watching the sun go down and the sunset is AMAZING. The other dream I was playing the piano, freestyle, no music. It sounded incredible.

I don't play the piano. I've never had a lesson. I can pick out scales and a tune at a basic level, but that is it. I did music in my leaving year at high school - you can do things like this - but as I kept stressing to dream group, I did the composition and theory option, not the practical one. They scoffed at me.

Dream group put it too me that what ever happens now, it's going to be amazing, incredible - and I have to start enjoying these blessings, rather than running around like Ngaire in my dream and just pissing myself and others off. It was time to slow down and enjoy. Stop fretting. Stop trying to control everything.

I suppose they're right.

I'm trying to keep my "Let's control the world" moments to fifteen minutes a day. In that time I can send my CV off to job agencies, plan my railway journeys through Spain, organise my week, plan the shopping list, wonder what I will do for my birthday....

And then, after this, I can sit back, relax, and try to let the universe do what it has to do.

Well this is the theory.

All I can say is that I know the universe is supporting me. And I also know now, as it was also pointed out to me on Wednesday night, that just because things were one way in the past, doesn't mean they have to be like that in the future - and for this I am truly, truly, overwhelmingly grateful.

Watch this space.

Pand