Julie Unplugged: Under Pressure: From "the last straw" to presence to service....

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January 02, 2014

Under Pressure: From "the last straw" to presence to service....

It is the "Straw that Breaks the Camels Back" sort of things that make me feel most under pressure!

I am most likely to feel pressured not about the big things, but about the minor things like... lost keys. Major or minor? Not sure, actually.

“I may bow down to pressure but I never succumb to it.”
― Saru Singhal

I have been called a "clutch player" - a person who can come in right before crisis hits and divert it with her presence. In my theater life I have taken roles in between weekends and pulled off a respectable performance. In my teaching life, I am reminded if I have a call a half hour before a class is due to begin, I will be poised and ready for the students. I am reminded of last New Year's Day 2013, driving to San Francisco to take my friend to visit her brand new Grandbaby.

I can feel the pressure, but I swim along with it, laughing all the way.

We choose to make pressure have meaning. I choose to look at pressure as challenge and yet another chance to enjoy the richness of life as it comes. Much of the time I am successful but even when I am not, I have grown to be intimate with detachment, so the outcome isn't what motivates me.

It is the presence under pressure that motivates me. It is the partnership under pressure that motivates me. It is serving other members of the human community that inspires me and nudges me into action.

I bow to pressure, as Sary Singhal said, but succumbing to it is for those who somehow label pressure as scary or bad or ugly or not for me.

What do you make pressure mean?

* This post was inspired via BlogHer's January NaBloPoMo

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday soon, when it is warmer in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.