Hobbled

There's a diffrence between a failure and a
fiasco. A failure is merely the absence of success. Any fool can
achieve failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of epic
propotions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to others to make other
people feel more alive because it didnt happen to them.

Im hobbled. Stuck on the couch unable to do much of anything, weighted down by a medieval torture device known as a surgical boot! How in the world did I get here? It occurred to me that I've been hobbled a lot longer than the past three weeks. To be honest, I've been hobbled for over a year and a half since the fiasco (see above quote) known as my social work career in June 2010. So here I am: a hobbled fiasco. And then...

And then it really came down to two options: saw off my offending foot (which believe me, I considered) or do something. ANYthing. It came down to the two questions I asked of my clients: what CAN you do, and what are you going to do instead. Remarkably, I didn't bury my head back under the covers but found some seated yoga stretches online and started to do them. I did some gentle ankle stretches for my foot. I started to post positive messages instead of the "I'm broken" ones. And while lying in Shava Asana this morning a voice said,"get up."
"uh, no I'm not getting up! I just started."
"GET up,"
"no" breathe...
"GET UP!!!"
That's when I realized that the universe was trying to tell me something and maybe I should listen. You know, get up.

So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.

And it occurs to me lying there in corpse pose that I have made a mistake. The failure wasn't in the job, it was in the leaving. I should have stayed and worked it out. I should have stood up for myself and insisted that I WAS a good social worker and I could do the job and not allow every comment made to me or about me to chip away at me until I was mere dust to be shaken off everyone's boots.

I gave up and that is the true fiasco. So in my best therapist voice: what CAN you? What can you do instead?