{"id":1565,"date":"2012-10-15T07:28:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T11:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/sweetshore\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2012-10-15T07:28:07","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T11:28:07","slug":"its-gotta-be-my-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/sweetshore\/2012\/10\/its-gotta-be-my-fault.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s Gotta Be My Fault"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Before I get to my post, I have to give a disclaimer.\u00a0 As a contracted blogger with Beliefnet, I have no control over the ads they choose to surround my posts.\u00a0 Please understand that I have no political agenda in this blog, so any political ads you see are not put here by me. )<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

So, I’ve had a couple of things happen in the last few days that got me to thinkin’…\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first was last week:\u00a0 I was getting dressed for work and decided to wear socks because my shoes are too loose, so I pulled a pair of black socks out the drawer and put them on the bed. (I only have one pair of black socks since I hardly ever wear socks, so that will help give a little perspective).\u00a0 I finished dressing and doing my makeup and reached for my socks and they weren’t there!<\/em><\/p>\n

My first thought was that I hadn’t really pulled them out of the drawer–only thought about doing it.\u00a0 Don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that particular phenomenon, but it’s unnerving…so, I check the drawer–no socks.<\/p>\n

Next, I double-checked the bed, in case I just didn’t see them the first time because I was reasonably certain that I had put them there–no socks.<\/p>\n

Checked the floor around the bed in case they had fallen down…checked the bathroom in case I had taken them in there and set them down…checked the drawer one more time, the bed one more time…the bathroom one more time…gave up and wore a different pair of shoes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now understand that the whole time I was doing this I was giving myself negative talk about how absent-minded I was for not remembering what had happened to my socks.\u00a0 I spent at least 10 minutes looking for them and kicking myself.<\/p>\n

After I got dressed I went downstairs to leave and (as you may have already guessed), there was my pair of socks, unrolled in the middle of the floor–one more victim of my 95-lb. sneak-attack dog, Lucy.<\/p>\n

The next incident began early in the week and continue for several days:\u00a0 Rick’s church was having a Coffee House event on Friday night.\u00a0 Back in August, when we were in Prescott, I went into this candle shop I love and bought a bunch of special floating candles to be used in bowls on the tables.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve been on a huge reorganization, downsizing project for the past 3 or 4 months (I’ll write about that later), so I reorganized the bag with the candles in it and couldn’t find it anywhere.<\/p>\n

I spent lots of time everyday looking for them and by Thursday still hadn’t found them.\u00a0 Thursday, I had the day off, so determined that I was going to do an all out search for them until I found them.\u00a0 You might wonder why I cared so much, but I spent a fair amount of $$ on them, plus I didn’t want to have to admit that I didn’t know where they were.<\/p>\n

I went through boxes in my recently organized garage, shelves in my closet, my linen closet, my kitchen cabinets and all the storage boxes and drawers I have in various places in my house.\u00a0 I actually searched the garage a couple of times, and climbed on a stool to check the top shelves of the linen closet, all to no avail.\u00a0 I finally looked one more time on the top shelves of my kitchen cabinets…I don’t have a very big kitchen, but for some reason that kept resonating with me as the place I had stashed them.\u00a0 Sure enough, there they were, in a bag, in a bowl (space saving again) on the very top shelf.<\/p>\n

Such relief!<\/p>\n

Then I had to go to a doctor’s appointment and when I got there, my blood pressure was elevated.\u00a0 First I blamed it on the “white coat syndrome”, but then realized it was probably due to the stress I put myself under for two hours that morning looking for the candles and (yep–you guessed it), blaming myself for not being on top of where I had put them, telling myself that a lot of good all my recent organization had done if I couldn’t find a stupid bag full of important candle–basically bawling myslef out again.<\/p>\n

Why do I do this?\u00a0 I guess it’s in my DNA?\u00a0 I work in a department where if an error is found, practically everyone in the department starts suspecting that she made the mistake.\u00a0 (We do have one male in our department, and I don’t get the feeling that he participates in this self-blame all that much).<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m willing to beat myself up mentally and sometimes verbally (yes, I do talk to myself out loud) before I ever discover what really happened.<\/p>\n

In the case of the socks, I started my day with 10 minutes of negative self-talk about the socks and then another several minutes negative-talking myself about blaming myself for the missing socks when I should have suspected Lucy all along.\u00a0 I can’t win either way.<\/p>\n

As far as the candles go, I not only badmouthed myself for being so forgetful, I also tried to neutralize all the positive things I’ve accomplished in the last few months.<\/p>\n

What a waste of time!\u00a0 I’d like to blame it on Satan, but I think that’s a little too simplistic.<\/p>\n

Why is it that the first thing I do when something isn’t going right is blame myself?\u00a0 Do I actually expect perfection?<\/p>\n

I am going to try to turn over a new leaf and not blame myself first when things don’t go well.\u00a0 It’s going to be part of the new me–the organized, clear-thinking person living a simplified, focused life…<\/p>\n

Or I can always blame the dog!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Before I get to my post, I have to give a disclaimer.\u00a0 As a contracted blogger with Beliefnet, I have no control over the ads they choose to surround my posts.\u00a0 Please understand that I have no political agenda in this blog, so any political ads you see are not put here by me. )…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":424,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[485,75,5],"tags":[20,496,498,497],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-stories","category-life-and-death","category-personal-observations","tag-dog","tag-lucy","tag-negative-self-talk","tag-organization"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Gotta Be My Fault - Sweet Shore<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/sweetshore\/2012\/10\/its-gotta-be-my-fault.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's Gotta Be My Fault - 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