Weekly Check-in: Wedding and Guilt (Not What You’re Thinking)

Date Posted: May 14th, 2010

So my new favorite blog is Havi Brooks’ Fluent Self. (My favorite because she explores ways to break through mental blocks about mindful business and marketing, things I’m dealing with right now.) She does a weekly check-in as a form of therapy and a way to let readers get to know her better, and I’ve decided to go ahead and try it too. Basically in the Check-in I go through what I’m working on, how I’m doing on it, and any insights I’ve gotten (or may have gotten). Here’s what I’ve been working on/dealing with this week:

Wedding

Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:

• I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
• I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
• I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
• *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
• It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
• It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.

Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. Yay!

Guilt

I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:

• I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
• I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
• Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
• Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
  1. Figure out why I broke it.
  2. If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
  3. If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
  4. Then I do whatever I can to fix it.

  So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.

  Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.

So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).

Tags: Character-Development, Emotional Health, Family, Leadership.
Posted at 4:26 pm | No Comments »

Weddings: For the Couple or the Community?

Date Posted: April 9th, 2010

This post is a little bit off topic from what I’ve been writing about recently, but that’s because Aaron and I have been in wedding planning mode for the past few weeks and I’ve had weddings on the mind. (The big day is June 6th!) So bear with me and my rambling about weddings.

On The Simple Dollar the other day Trent talked about how using the average price for a weddings in the US or in your city as a gauge for your own wedding is a bad idea. It makes you think you have to spend that much because if you don’t you’re being cheap. You don’t care about your guests or something. Better to focus on the elements that are important to you and not get swayed by the people saying you must have six servers catering your buffet or it’s too difficult to sew your own dress. He also said the following.

If you spend all of your time comparing the major things in your life to others based on their cost or their perceived value, you’re saying that what others want is more important to you than what you want. Never let any important choice in your life be governed by what others want.

This is your life. Live it the way you want. Ignore what everyone else says you must have and says you must spend on it. This is about you, not them.

Our wedding certainly echoes this idea, what with the Tudor theme, vegan dinner, and non-religious ceremony, but I wonder… Are weddings really supposed to be about inflicting the beliefs of the couple on the guests? I don’t know.

At one point weddings were more about the community accepting a new family unit than about the family unit itself. The couple usually had the same background too, so in a sense it was about them too… but push come to shove it was still more about the community.

These days it’s common for couples to come from different backgrounds. If they’d like a truly traditional wedding then one person has to put aside their own heritage in favor of the other. (Not usually preferable.) The other option is to mix and match traditions. When couples mix and match traditions the wedding is transformed from this set in tone ritual to a reflection of who they are. Most of us prefer this route.

I feel like something gets lost with the non-traditional wedding, though. You aren’t tapping into a long history of tradition. You aren’t following the rights and rituals of a community. You’re just making stuff up.

But then there are plenty of people who merely “go through the motions” too. Ritual doesn’t necessarily imply meaning. It’s totally dependent on the individual. I like old traditions. I like that history, so such things have a lot of meaning for me. I know that isn’t the case for everyone.

And, just because it’s new and “made up” doesn’t mean ye modern wedding can’t be meaningful. In fact it’s hard for it not to be meaningful since you have to go through the effort of coming up with everything! It’s just a different kind of meaning. It’s more in the moment. It’s about you and your spouse-to-be showing your community who you are and that you’re committed to each other. But it’s more about you.

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So far all of the weddings I’ve been to have been for people I didn’t really know very well. Of those the more personal ones have been my favorites because I got to learn a little bit about the couple. I got to see why they’re together. I got to learn a little bit about their personality and what’s important to them. (Or not important.) With the generic wedding, there’s not a whole lot to remember….

Tags: Family, Relationships.
Posted at 7:00 am | 1 Comment »