Playing for Time

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It’s a Day in the Doldrums, silent outside, fog hanging in the trees, everything a little drippy and chill. This is the kind of day that lifts me right out of the muck because its expectations are clearly bottom-basement, causing me to feel no pressure to meet anybody’s standards but my own. So, inspiration having been recognized, we’ll see how it all plays out today. As a precautionary measure, a hint to any and all who wander into my space:

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Simple perfection, is that too much to ask?

As the planet continues to be a cockamamie place to live, my intention every day, after that first savory taste of coffee, is to de-stress in all the ways open to me. To allot the first hours of the day to positive thoughts and a mental list of “foment progress” bullet points. To let the day’s headlines, good, bad, or ridiculous, stew in their own juices for a few hours before trying to sort truth from fiction. There are a lot of big stories I’ll probably never read or absorb in any detail… the Murdaugh murders, the Iowa campus killer, the Theranos thing, countless others… because it’s a lot of stuff I don’t need to know about. It’s extraneous angst… it isn’t that I don’t care, I care too much about things I have no power over. At some point we have to be afforded the means to bring about change, or else bury the compulsion and stop looking at it. These days I opt for peace in most situations, perhaps more than my share, because the “pick your battles” admonition means nothing to a feeler… they’re ALL ours, unless we turn them over to someone better equipped to win. You can’t win ’em all, and that’s a lesson straight from life.

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For old and young alike, the world just IS a crazy place… unpredictable, unfriendly, uncontrollable… and the inherent frustrations are very efficient at producing anger, the monster that destroys us. Anger is self-feeding because it draws from an endless array of sources and is a master of disguises. Sometimes we think the heaviness of anger in our spirit is depression, but no, not yet, it’s still a simmering cauldron and needs to be dealt with STAT. Very destructive, that simmering rage… soothe it with honesty, love, and understanding, ASAP.

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A big challenge as the years and experiences accumulate, is that of keeping our hearts soft in the face of an uncaring environment. Feelers rack up every event until we’re full of shards on the inside and sheathed in tungsten on the outside. Fortunately, life marches through on the regular and plows everything up for us, no crustiness allowed, get back in the game, keep that heart tender in spite of the odds, and insist on being your own weird self every damn day, including this one.

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I only share these things with you because they’re vitally important and it’s taking me a lifetime to learn them. The simplest facts about being human are the hardest to master, so hints are good, right? I share stream-of-consciousness because I know there are other people out there… and some of you are dear friends… who experience all of life on a personal first-hand feel-everything basis and don’t always know what to do with that… just like me. It’s a colossally lonely feeling, so maybe we should stick together… you know, inasmuch as angsty introverts are capable of doing. I know you’re there… I feel your heart.