Taking account…

30 Apr 2023 2 Comments

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Since you’re all so kind, I can’t get anyone here to hold me accountable to reach my goals; therefore, I’ve had to exercise over-the-top discipline in order to avoid making a liar of myself. Those projects I’ve mentioned? I have good news…

You remember my nemesis, the 12′ x 7′ x 14′ high closet lined with shelves on three sides, which has been the repository for a wide assortment of belongings since about 2015 when I started losing mobility… you recall my brave words, right? I’m thrilled to report that it now looks like springtime in that space – a breath of fresh air – and life in general, just like that, holds more promise and feels absolutely doable. It’s like turning on a floodlight in a dark cavern, except that the surroundings revealed are entirely friendly. As I stood back admiring my work yesterday I said a mental “up yours” to the Senior Surgeon who told me there was nothing that could be done about my back, so… I guess just go home and give up, which my brain did without informing me in advance, thus putting life on hold. That haphazardly-packed closet represents the biggest win I can think of in about that many years and I’m savoring it. There’s also this: over a ten-year period I helped empty six longtime homes of loved ones, and I made a solemn vow not to put John through that. It’s an educational, revelatory, emotional, gut-ripping experience, which he’s already done once singlehandedly, so the less Kim and I leave behind, the better. Best-case scenario would be to close things out like saints, with a fork apiece and some clean underwear, but simple living and a love for open spaces will at least keep us moving in that direction.

The biggest win of all is that now, in 2023, the more I move the better I feel. That’s worth sticking around for.

And now I’m ready to focus on something I love even more than re-homing things, which is to finish editing a friend’s manuscript. I’m fairly certain it’s the calling I missed in life, that of helping to fine-tune good writing while consuming it at the same time. Bossy, nitpicking girl loves books, win/win.

A glance up the page affirms that this year has been more about gains than losses, more about the wins in spite of how dark so many days have felt in their endless passage. That’s a good thing to know because of how it colors the rest of life… sometimes the wins are so hard-won we feel beat up by them instead of validated and encouraged. At this late date, I might be finally starting to understand the process through which we come to know and love ourselves. It’s never too late.

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Take your innate kindness and human understanding with you all week and spread that stuff all over everything. The world needs it so much.

Image by Judy Smith

Life aboard the Big Blue Marble…

29 Apr 2023 Leave a comment

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Big doin’s on a sunshiny Saturday. Last weekend a crew descended on our parking lot and ground it to a nubbin. This morning they were back at 7am to rough it up and lay asphalt, which so far is a much quieter process than the first round, and it should look pretty fine by evening. They’ll stripe it again tomorrow and we’ll be off and running for a few more years. A bit of distraction, along with Farmers Market down the block, where there’s been a steady line for the Slow Rise Sourdough Donuts. Their Nutella version just might get me over there next Saturday.

It’s our little corner on this beautiful planet hurtling through space, an incomprehensible thing that we take for granted nearly every second of our lives. I love what astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, planetary science guy Carl Sagan said…

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” -Carl Sagan

One of the last known images captured by Japan’s Hakuto-R lander before crashing into the moon shows a stunning ‘Earthrise,’ with the shadow of the moon creeping over Australia during a total solar eclipse. (Image credit: ispace)

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In our personal micro-worlds we make much of our hurts and slights, the slings and arrows of identifying as human, but life is both more and less than that. I stole the following from a friend years ago and its truth hasn’t faded in the interim…

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Happy spring. Thank you for being here…

Image by Judy Smith

How DID it get so late, anyway?

23 Apr 2023 2 Comments

***

I gave the blog a rest last week, it was time. Full disclosure, my muse is on indefinite vacay in South America and I’m fairly lost on my own. I’ve also been trying to cultivate the shockingly unAmerican habit of declining to speak in the absence of anything to say. Concurrently, I’ve been working my way through seasonal depression and I try to apply extra caution during those times, lest my “mouth” cancel my regular brain activity and add to the load of woe. But hey, it’s spring, it’s time to break out of the trap and feel ALL of life. If you deal with the sadz you know it isn’t so much ABOUT anything, it’s more of a hormonal/chemical shift that imposes a life of its own over how you’d rather feel, and it’s always a relief to emerge into real sunshine again. Sort of like…

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In actively working to move the Mood Meter to the plus side, I’ve saved things written by people who know, because somebody else’s experience and affirmation are always encouraging to me. Numero uno…

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Having to be phony around other people is what feels genuinely weird to me. Can’t do it anymore.

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On the accountability front, I’ve been putting my list of Anxiety Reducers in practice and can report that taken together they’re making a difference. They’re in the post preceding this one if you want to try a few.

Hang on, kids, we’re making a 90-degree turn here because I became aware last night of a pattern in our house, likely one of the biggest tip-offs that we aren’t young anymore. Kim has a sixth sense for picking random movies that we end up totally engaged in, and at some point or several during every film, one of us has to grab an iPad and find out WHO THAT ACTOR IS!! Remember, he was in that movie about, oh you know, and that blonde was in it, too, and… we learn a lot, like who’s still breathing and who isn’t. This morning I learned that this is 84-year-old Lee Majors, remember him? Boy hero, sorta? Wow, is it getting late in here or what.

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Or maybe it’s just me since I hold no firm concepts regarding the connections between people and time. It’s all of a piece somehow, and this could just as easily be 1970 as 2023. Absolutely everything has changed, while absolutely everything remains the same.

No worries, I still retain a firm connection to reality… on the good days.

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Image by Judy Smith

Sorting fact from fiction…

13 Apr 2023 Leave a comment

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Tell me if this happens to you sometimes… it’s only 8am and I’m already through with today, what’s up with that? I dipped my toe in the news pool and instantly regretted it. I looked for humor on social media and found snark. I sat here too long and started remembering every stupid regrettable thing I’ve ever said or done, an endless parade of self-accusation, and it’s ridiculous.

Okay, false alarm… turns out I just needed to eat something. And thus am I reminded, again, that we can complicate life beyond all reason just by examining it to death.

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We add difficulty to life by expecting it to conform to our plans and hopes, forgetting that it takes no notice of our existence at all. Plans? Hopes? Get real, little human, we’re rolling ON and you’re about to get flattened, better luck next round.

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Here’s a thing to know: Returning to life after long absence is anything but seamless. There’s a lot of catching up to do, and you begin to realize how much has changed since your whole world went off the rails. There are days when it’s a lot, and others when I make it a mountain on my own. These are affirmations that are helpful to me:

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I will always remember my mother-in-law, when I broached the subject of a move to the nursing home, pointing her finger and declaring adamantly “I need a MAN, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!” She knew that if my father-in-law or either of her two sons were still living she would have an advocate, but alas, here was her daughter-in-law of 35 years trying to tell her what to do. I understood her angst then and have experienced it many times for myself because we simply don’t tell life what’s going to happen. We persist in trying, but we eventually register the success rate and back off a little to keep our lack of power from becoming too overwhelming.

I do what I want. Right, life?

Turns out what I want to do today is to start getting a true handle on my closet-cleaning project. So far, there are a dozen empty tubs and containers stacked in a tower to show for my sorting and tossing, and I’m ready to add to that total. Kim found a perfect six-drawer chest that should go far in solving various “Where do I put THIS?” quandaries, thus letting me move forward. A goal. A purpose. My kingdom for a horse…

Yesterday I made a list of Anxiety Reducers which is now taped at the side of my monitor, and if followed it’s bound to help eventually:

  1. Drink far less coffee
  2. MOVE the body
  3. Less alcohol, so, you know, 2 or 3 evening Tequila shots instead of 4
  4. Cut obvious sugar
  5. Cut the clutter, which resides mostly on my desk and in the ever-looming closet
  6. Drink more water
  7. Get outside
  8. Spend a skosh less online time

Could work. Wish me luck. I hope the sun’s shining where you are as full-on as it is here, and I hope your Thursday will be all good stuff.

Image by Judy Smith

Post-Ishtar post…

10 Apr 2023 2 Comments

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I change my desktop wallpaper the way some people change underwear, which is to say at least once a week. I like interesting, energizing change, while generally hating change I didn’t ask for, and the scenery on my toys is an easy fix for boredom and ennui… sometimes. So there’s that.

Easter weekend was quiet here and was also the first Saturday for Farmers’ Market this spring. They always set up a half-block south of us and it was packed over there. I love to see it… the early-morning chatter below our windows, kids running ahead of parents, lots of happy interaction. It’s been going on every year since we moved here, spring through fall, and the stability represents something important to me.

We’ve all been living in a stop-and-start world for enough years now that some of us are almost getting used to the periodic upheaval. I’m in favor of flexibility and adjustment to circumstances, but there are things in life we can’t quietly acquiesce to and tell ourselves to “keep moving, nothing to see here.” The last five years before my spinal surgery in 2021 were almost a write-off, with me spending more than 99% of my time within these walls, so coming out of that I’ve been gung-ho to do a few things to celebrate and respect being able to get around on my own. My timing may be a little off… sometimes you get there too early or just a hair too late, dang the luck… but I’m used to two steps forward followed by one in reverse, so I know the drill. Life has the power to be deadly discouraging, but I hope all the lessons it’s taught me will prove helpful at some point in the imagined future. That would be super cool. I mean, I know the foregoing sounds obscure, but how much patience does an old crone like me really need? A hell of a lot as it turns out. Same with acceptance, serenity, and a lack of dependence on the outside world in general. Life does what it will and we mostly follow like lemmings because we aren’t particularly quick studies in that sense, and whaddaya gonna do? Full disclosure: What we’re gonna do is behave and do what LIFE says, because she’s in charge. (I pledged long ago to tell you the truth in all things.)

In my ongoing quest to learn something new every day that I can take with me, I’m liking this simple graphic. Seems helpful:

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Also this one, which reminds me there are lots of ways to be proactive:

I plead guilty on fully half of these, so okay, challenge accepted.

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Every day of my life so far has been a result of the positive outweighing the negative, and so has yours or you wouldn’t be here. It’s okay to keep believing that things will get better, because they do tend in that direction.

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Case in point:

Image by Judy Smith

Still springing…

06 Apr 2023 Leave a comment

***

As usual, fickle spring can’t make up her mind, and she will have it her way regardless. It looks perfectly lovely outside but when I opened the balcony door after sunrise, I was instantly made aware of the real-feel temp. Doesn’t matter, it’s just weather and we haven’t a particle of power to change it day to day, which would be easier to take if we had even a smidgen of influence on the rest of life. It’s part of my job to warn you that the aging process inevitably brings loss in most every direction, and far sooner than we’re led to believe: loss of influence, loss of credibility, of independence, of energy, strength, and power, among other attributes we formerly took for granted. Sooner than we could possibly anticipate, we start to sense that we’re next-in-line for increased outside input concerning our well-being and security. Lord, I was just there with six older family members! Facts say it’s been more than twenty years since I played the caregiver role, but in my economy it was only yesterday… and although we’re not there yet, I can feel it creeping up to scope us out. Oh, the places we’ll go, the realizations we’ll make along the way. Life is… weird. And a little anticlimactic. Is this all there is? Send in the clowns…

In retrospect, 2022 was a daunting challenge every day, and 2023 isn’t proving to be very inventive on its own because it’s more of the same. A person could worry.

Nevertheless, we press on…

I know this much is true:

  1. We’re all pedaling as fast as we can.
  2. As soon as we know better, we try to do better.

My old-lady gripe is that life moves a pinch too fast from womb to tomb. It never slows for us, and by the time we figure a couple of things out we’re, as my grandma said, “too soon old, too late shmart.” Pisses me off, that sense of powerlessness. But as a Teutonic realist, I see the dilemma for what it is… life’s current and coming challenge is to hang in and get better because the alternative creates even more righteous rage within. And silent rage is treacherous because it’s a gateway drug to depression, which is the opposite of living. We don’t wanna go there.

Image by Judy Smith

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