Checkpoint

This week's chapter from the "Resolved" book was about Financial Management.  I agree this is something important to work on, and I will mention that I have been tracking my daily spending to be used as the basis for an updated budget.  However, my focus this week was on completely different things.

As I mentioned last week, I feel that friendship is something that I could improve at.  As it happened, I had an opportunity to put a friendship through the test a couple days ago.  Toward the end of a normal phone conversation with a friend, I mentioned some thoughts and questions I had about the goals of one of her family members. I questioned whether she and her husband were taking realistic steps to see that one of their children was prepared to meet those goals.  Normally, my position is to let people run their families however they are inspired without comment, but in this case, I felt prompted to initiate the discussion.  By the end, she was crying, and although I still felt like I needed to do what I had, I didn't know how she felt about the conversation.  The next day I had a text from her that didn't make any sense, and the reply seemed a little terse to me.  Within half an hour I called just to see if I owed an apology for anything and to resolve whatever might have been happening related to the strange text.(Remember, I am someone who used to run from the hint of any confrontation. My old self would have ignored any further engagement until I had some sign from her that things were okay or not.)  The great thing is that she reassured me that we were still on good terms and she was just confused because I was referring to a text she hadn't sent anyone that morning.  This story  may seem like nothing important, however to me it represents growth and confidence I have gained.

As for my main goal, this week I finished a rough draft of my 8-part workshop.  It is currently in a Powerpoint type format, and I hope to have the first part recorded with the slides and a voice-over to send to people for review and comments.  Working toward this goal has pushed me out of my comfort zone, but the real challenge comes when I let my work be available for critique.  I feel like I have always been oversensitive to criticism, but perhaps, it will turn out as well as the situation with my friend did.  I also found a free presentation program that will take the project to a new level.  Unfortunately, I have to learn how to use it from scratch. I think that stage will come after I have had all the parts of the workshop reviewed.  Hopefully some time this summer.

If anyone reading this wants to be on the review committee (someone I send the rough draft presentations to), please let me know.  The purpose of this project is to educate interested people in a non-shaming, non-blaming perspective on addiction and trauma.  My initial interest was addiction based, but the information will be relevant to a much broader audience, including an understanding of how to develop the skills and resources that help people bounce back after adversity of many kinds.