Aug 30 2021

Tracey Jackson

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Behavior, Choices, Communication

Where Have We Been and Why Are We Back?

Where Have We Been and Why Are We Back?

In keeping with what Paul and I started with, the basic principles of Gratitude and Trust, the six affirmations, there are three that explain why we have suddenly reappeared in your inbox.

  1. I will make right the wrongs I’ve done wherever possible.
  2. I will continue to examine my behavior on a daily basis.
  3. I will live my life in love and service and gratitude and trust.

 

By telling you where we’ve been and why we left, I am trying to right a rather oversized wrong, which is abandonment without explanation.

When I go back and read the last blogs we wrote, there is no information there. None that would indicate we were on our way out. We just kind of evaporated.  First went the blogs. Then to my horror I see the last affirmation I posted was October 20, 2019.

Four months before COVID really took off.

We both examine our behavior, some days more in depth than others.

Speaking for myself, there is no question, I have thought this was not a good time to cease sending positve messages into the world.  But good thoughts followed by good deeds is not always the first route we take.

And then of course, I will live my life in love and service….we made a commitment, this website was part of our service.  While independently we may have been serving and giving back, at a certain point we split off from doing it together.

Yesterday, I had just had enough. The world is pulling at us in so many directions.  There has been no let up and it’s a very stressful time.  I had had it with myself for not showing up here.

I will explain to you where I have been and why, and as we say it’s an explanation not an excuse.

So, I called Paul and I said,  “Look, I want to do this and do you want to come along?” It’s kind of what I said, he will give you his version at another time.  But that is the gist of it. And he had also been feeling what I call the “pull of purpose” in regard to Gratitude and Trust. But our habit had become to not do this anymore.  Something needed to change, and it was us.

But to get to the end you must start at the beginning.

What happened?

I can’t believe it was 2018 when we last blogged. My time flies when you are in lockdown.  But that was two years before all that’s transpired in the last eighteen months.

To be honest, the problems were with us. I devoted four years from the day we decided to write the book to the day I drifted away from posting on this site. My entire working life was Gratitude and Trust.

And Paul would be the first to tell you, I did a lot of the heavy lifting.

He was kicking butt with the Twitter. He loves Twitter. I hate it.  I love writing 2000 words.

He started blogging less and less. People missed him. They were left with me. Eventually, I didn’t feel put upon but let’s say – underappreciated.

I would say things and people would say how brilliant he was, and my ego would step in and yell, wait a minute. So, there was a bit of that in our dynamic and that bled into our enthusiasm.

He wanted and needed to focus on ASCAP, his writing and at a certain point, I needed to go off and see who I was without Paul.  Who I was before I started writing with and sometimes for him?  Who was I without Gratitude and Trust?

So, I went off and I wrote a pilot about the two least likely people on the planet who end up running a self-help empire.

Wonder where the seed of that started.

I started writing this pilot and I remembered how much I loved that kind of work. I missed it.

I found my separate working self in that piece of work.

The pilot sold. After sixteen months of working with a production company, it didn’t go to series and I remembered why I left the world of writing for TV and film.  They buy your voice then they kill it.

But I had fun and I made some money and I proved I still had it in me.

This of course left G and T in the dust. I would toss up. affirmations, when and if I remembered – until October of 2019.

Pouf – we were gone.

Then in January 2020 the world started coming unhinged.

At that point, we probably should have dove back in, at least with affirmations. At least letting you all know we were still there. Following through on our commitment to maybe making your hard days a little easier. But I don’t think we had it in us.

And did we sign on to do this for life?

Fact, Paul and I have seen each other twice in two years.

Fact we have gone months without being in touch.  He hasn’t been able to travel. And we have all dealt with COVID in our own unique ways.  It’s hard to run a joint enterprise when you are disjointed independently and collectively.

Another fact, two years before COVID hit, both my girls left. One moved 3000 miles away, the other went to college. This sent me into a yearlong depression.

I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t a mother. And I stopped working and just sort of wallowed in my misery.

Showing up to G and T during that period would have been therapeutic, but I figured how do I help others, if I can’t help myself.

I was just coming out of this and started work on a new book when COVID hit.  The book is a self-help book. It’s a good idea. Had COVID not happened it would have been completed within nine months.

But COVID did hit, and we were locked in our apartment in New York from March until June of 2020.

At this time both my parents were in California, and both were declining at a rapid pace.

There was a tiny window in June of 2020, and we left New York. Gave back our apartment, rented out our house and moved to LA so I could take care of my mom and be around for my dad.

Short story shorter, my mother died two months after I got there. My father died four weeks to the day after my mother.  I lost both of them in a four-week period.  Not to COVID, but to old age and I think they both gave up.

Then I was faced with dealing with all the things one must deal with when a parent dies.

Not just the grief, but the details of closing the door of their lives.

My father I didn’t have many obligations.  My mother I had all of them.  There was room for little else.

Once that was all taken care of, Gratitude and Trust was a book we had written five years before, a podcast we had loved, the years of blogs and affirmations became inactive and archival.

One day I thought why are we spending money to send out blogs we never write?

So, for me, it’s been a time of all sorts of loss.  I left my home, NYC. I lost both my parents.  I lost other relatives too and too many friends.  I was not working. I no longer had my swell office, my daily routine. The things that tethered me to my life had all come unhinged. Not all, I had my husband and my wonderful girls.  But it was a big time of change in so many ways.

I am sure many of you reading this can relate.  We have all lost a lot in the last two years.

What I do know is when I am lost, I have always found myself in service of some sort.

While dealing with mom’s estate I was serving her memory and legacy.    I think I was serving my family by just getting us all through this mess in one piece.

Of course, with COVID it’s been hard to go out into the community and be hands on. So, one does what one can from afar.  I didn’t think to pop back on here and share and care.

When I’ve been lost love and service and gratitude are the lights that lead me back to a place of contentment and purpose.

So, yesterday I made the commitment to open this up again.  I know I will be doing the lion’s share of the work.

Paul and I were much younger when we started this. I am now 63 and he is 80.

He has a lot of other things pulling his attention. I have some as well, so you won’t hear from us everyday. And you will hear more from me.  But he will be a part of it.

And trust us when I say we have both felt badly, not every day, or we would have moved sooner.  But it gnawed at me.

“You made a commitment to try and bring a little light into people’s lives and you totally dropped the ball.”

Then I would think, well, I have my own problems. I can’t be beholden to the world.

But we are. We are all in this together. And you guys stuck with us, and I get a lot out of knowing maybe something we post will make just a few people’s day’s a little easier.

And it call circles back to what we based our book and all our other joint work on…We live our lives in love and service gratitude and trust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tracey Jackson

Tracey Jackson is a screenwriter and blogger at traceyjacksononline.com. Her book Gratitude and Trust is now available.