Second item on my list after getting out of bed this morning was to check on the Dove family, and I had a prescient little sense that something would be different this time. My first look at the nest told me there wasn’t a parent bird in attendance, and when I peeked inside there were two little chicks, wing by wing, looking up at me totally unspooked by my presence. Kim got home from his walk in time to see the babies, and he pointed out that David and Darleen were on the next-door neighbors’ balcony railing, quietly keeping watch. Must be time for the little ones to start gaining a bit of bravado and independence – they’re in the nest for only two weeks before being booted out to make way for Round Two. Such a high-speed upbringing boggles my mind. Once again this is a stock photo, but Derek and Diane look just like this at the moment, and my mama heart wishes them every success. So now we know. Two babies. Two weeks (minus time served) to enjoy them. Expect flying lessons soon.
Answers to the things we wonder about. Answers to the things we care most about… those, too. Five of the people I cherish most in the world need answers to health crises, and that’s a wait that relentlessly saps strength and courage over time. Loving people means hurting with them, that’s just how it is. May their answers turn out to be as instinctive, timely, and real as fledglings taking off for the skies.
All things considered, the heavy-duty requirement at this stage of living might be PATIENCE. Life goes on, things happen, things change for better or worse, and, well… life goes on. If you’re reading this, you’ve lived through everything that’s happened to you, every second since you were born. Base your patience on that knowledge, and keep walking. Or, like me, DO something, right or wrong, and hope for the best. Your call.
Have a lovely weekend and a solemn Memorial Day observance. Summer’s almost here!
Just when we think it couldn’t get any greener here, or the grass and trees shine any brighter, it’s raining again. Its insistent tapping against the windows is soothing and full of ongoing promise. David’s home from hanging out with his friends all night and is tucked in under the ferns, sheltering the eggs. It’s possible that by the weekend we could see a couple of beaks attached to fuzzy little heads poking out of the nest. A couple more weeks of nurturing and the babies will earn their wings and go. That’s when we’ll be hoping David and Darleen decide to raise a second brood, same spot, same setup, because we’ll miss them if they go looking for swankier digs. Checking on the Dove family is second in order of business every morning, making sure somebody’s home with the incubates; that either David has once again survived the nighttime feeding wars, or Darleen is postponing breakfast ’til he gets back for his shift. The quiet drama. You see what it’s come to here.
I no sooner typed the word “quiet” than the din of the past few days resumed. Someone’s having tile, apparently acres of it, removed, and the resulting sound reverberates throughout the building for long minutes, during sometimes long days, with only brief pauses. Not a problem, simply a reminder that however organized we may be in our psychic innards, life intrudes on levels beyond our control. The noise of the planet creeps in subtly or it slaps us in the face, either way causing a blip in our focus. What to do, what to do. Whine a little to kindred spirits, find your industrial-strength Old Girl panties, and get on with whatever the day would have looked like without the obvious clamor.
Maybe a little like this…
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On the other hand, silence scares the bejebus outta some people, so to each his own. We’ll see how it goes, won’t we.
It’s past 9am and the streetlights are still on, best kind of morning . Rainy, drippy, dark, leading one to think the day holds nothing pressing so why hurry? The coffee too is dark and deep, breakfast was glad-making for the tummy, and Kim’s at home, ensconced at his computer, having declined to make the trek out west for PickleBall this morning. We have a couple of projects that might keep us occupied today every bit as much as we want to be, the kitchen’s fully supplied with foodstuffs, and there’s no chance of flooding between here and the liquor store, so all is well. Oldies like their evening aperitif. The Royals, who’ve had a good run lately, play again after lunch today unless it’s raining in Kansas City at game time, so that sounds cozy. And in case you thought I meant THOSE royals… nah, can’t get into it, it’s all kinda silly. “My blood’s bluer and far more inbred than yours, so I win.”
By choice I’ve had lots of at-home hours over the past couple of weeks, which sometimes affords too much time for overthinking, which leads to remembering stuff, which leads to all the feelings. Society continues to be ridiculous and the shenanigans can get to a person, know what I’m saying? A lot of people I once counted on to be the adults in the room can’t get a handle on this era for what it is, which is incredibly depressing and distressing, so my aim every day is to stay juuuuust tuned out enough to avoid the sturm und drang of the labyrinth itself. Some days are more successful than others.
Have you thought about this… the thrill of aging almost inevitably means our core support group grows ever smaller through natural attrition of every sort, which leaves us more and more out here on our own. It’s a shocking realization at first, until you understand that the total independence and personal freedom you’ve always craved is HERE now, so do something smart with all that. Do what you want, say what you mean, what can happen, they take away your birthday? The older of my two grandmas, my dad’s mom, kept up a correspondence with cousins her age, eight 2nd-generation German-American women who maintained a “Round Robin” notebook filled with news, updates, and photos, sending it around until everyone had written in it, at which time they started it around again. She read pieces of it to me over the years until finally it was just her and one cousin left to communicate… and then just Grandma, who at past 95 was the last to leave. She told me she was never so lonely as during those years when there was no one left who remembered who she’d been before she was old.
My mom, on the other side of my genealogical chart, was the third-eldest of nine siblings, so I grew up as part of that big family, taking for granted it would always be there. Oh, my sweet summer child, your naiveté is endlessly touching. The world doesn’t stay static for a second and neither do people. Notwithstanding things like bloodlines, DNA, identification with a tribe, and backup in a fight, families don’t remain static either. They grow, they morph, they move, they move on. I’m now the second-oldest family member of my generation, and from this vantage point the terrain looks entirely different than I might have imagined when I was one of the littles. I look around at who’s still here and see an assortment of people I don’t know, never actually DID know except in the context of being related to each other and thus somehow extra-connected to each other’s well-being. Now we’re mostly strangers, which was always going to be the outcome if we ever started being ourselves with each other. And now we’ve done what we unconsciously do out there in the general population… we’ve mostly reduced each other to our politics and drawn lines of separation, a phenomenon maybe none of us intended. We always were a diverse bunch, but that knowledge was obscured by loyalties and what we knew at the time as love. Since we grew up and away as a family entity, reality has reigned more and more supreme, and that’s no doubt a good thing since sentimental delusions take us precisely no where good.
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Life is simultaneously simpler and more complicated than we want it to be. A simple affirmation, or exhalation if you will, might go something like this:
I’m a breathing being on planet Earth, with the power to be kind and almost no other,
with especially no power to fix anyone but me.
My grandmas both lived past 95, a space of twenty years from where I am now. What will I do with those two decades should they be allotted to me?
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A sweet thing happened this morning… I saw David returning to the nest so I went out onto the balcony. Darleen must have just left, as he was still standing on the railing, so I spoke to him in soft tones and he didn’t move a feather while I peered over his shoulder. I’m happy to tell you that there are indeed TWO eggs in their barebones little nest and all seems well, even as they take turns hunkering under the ferns while the rain falls. These Dove people are cool.
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.
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.
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:
Drink far less coffee
MOVE the body
Less alcohol, so, you know, 2 or 3 evening Tequila shots instead of 4
Cut obvious sugar
Cut the clutter, which resides mostly on my desk and in the ever-looming closet
Drink more water
Get outside
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.
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.
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:
We’re all pedaling as fast as we can.
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.
Last day of March, boys and girls, and the Bradford Pear and Red Maple trees in our neighborhood are blooming and leafing and already showing off because they can. When Kim walked Mass Street this morning before sunup it was a balmy 65° and humid, so maybe spring’s sticking around a while this time. Hope so, I’m overdue for the attitude adjustment and everyone will benefit. Ready for the early mornings when you can pull on a minimum of clothing, lace up your Tevas, and get outside. Hmm. Guess this morning would have been one of those, huh. Oh well, my dance card is already punched twice for this 24-hour segment, so we’re good. Nice, though, to feel the friendly air that smells like rain.
WARNING: 90-degree left turn…
Do you have sensory input/overload issues? Have you ever tried to explain what that’s like to someone who cruises through life as if they own it? How’d that go for ya’? It makes me think of the game Ransom Notes, wherein players have to describe a given situation in abbreviated form. Clear as mud? My version would go something like this:
Assignment: DESCRIBE SENSORY OVERLOAD AND ITS ATTENDANT FEELINGS TO A NOVICE
Ransom Note:
ROAR
PIERCES
PORES AND ORIFICES
MAKES BRAIN CELLS WEEP
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Anxiety and excess sensory input are ever-present, as you’re well aware if you aren’t immune to such. And nobody outside it can feel it. Most people march entirely to their own drummer so they can’t imagine, for instance, what it’s like to hear and register every sound equally and be unable to instantly sort, assign, and selectively dampen the individual input in order to translate on the fly, keep sweet and quiet, and deal. All day, every day, until the hearing aids can be put to bed and the lights go out, the brain gets to rest (except for dreams, but that’s another day), and the tension drains from the body’s cells overnight. Being able to hear isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s crucial, but when you add all the other input a day holds, keeping it together can get dicey, a big muddy mess. There’s interaction with other people, weather, the abominable state of human existence in general, the ouchies of age, and being hangry, among an endless list of possible angst generators.
People with raging anxiety are ridiculous and we know it, but the harder we try to stay quiet and peaceful on the inside the worse it gets. Like… any day that contains an appointment outside the house (or ONLINE, for lort’s sake!) guarantees that I won’t forget it for a second until it’s over. Okay, it’s how many hours away? So that means I have time for… well, no, don’t want to start that NOW, I’m too distracted by these never-ending deadlines. If the appointment is for a pedi or massage, that means I have to leave enough time to shave my legs, and shampooing this silver thicket on top of my head takes another three minutes. And SO MUCH PEEING, ALL DAY, OMIGOD!! All of that, hour after hour, within the brain of a lifetime perfectionist who has likely never once actually gotten it right, isn’t that the shits? Ransom notes indeed… somebody should rescue me from myself before time’s up, maybe.
Anxiety feels mostly like fear of loss… loss of security, safety, competence, choice, independence, respect, love, credibility, control, connection, relationship, anything and everything we value. And bless the people who question none of it, live life on their terms, and go on winning. We hope they know how lucky they are, amirite?
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I know this much is true…
For the perpetually anxious, peace is all that matters finally.
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And because I always like to leave us smiling, if possible…
Feels like it’s time for a chummy conversation about what’s real… authentic, legitimate, valid… in the human realm. We spend so many brain cells and waste so many minutes either overthinking everything or actively ignoring obvious truths, we’d do ourselves a service by occasionally lifting the lid and airing out the ductwork. As a writer friend counseled me last week, “Let it out.” Sometimes we get so tied in knots by life, it’s tricky but crucial to get loose to the point of really seeing ourselves again.
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Female types the world over, except those who didn’t hear about it, held a celebration last week on Wednesday. We were allotted an entire day to remember and honor women, those incomprehensible creatures without whom the planet can’t survive. An International Women’s Day, think of it. It’s a reminder to stand where no one else will, and to reject the load of “NO” that was assigned to us somewhere along the line.
In order to be honest women, there are things that can’t be of prime importance to us. The same holds true for honest men, but we’ll talk about that on International Men’s Day. What’s that, you didn’t know? It is indeed a designated observance, but no organized celebrations issue forth from it, probably because it would look like unseemly overkill, but that’s just me. Whether you’re an acknowledged feminist or an incel, anyone who’s lived female-adjacent knows the world keeps a LIST, with which it stamps a big CANCELED across a lot of otherwise happy celebrations and personal objectives.
To which I say SCREW THAT and I’m thankful to be with a man who feeds all of me.
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We know that we are neither made nor broken by the things that happen to us, but rather by our response to each of those events; thus, there’s a truth in there that has to be looked in the eye: Sometimes the worst things that happen outside our control also come bearing gifts, and STAY WITH ME BECAUSE THAT SOUNDS LIKE BLASPHEMY. I’m no longer an “Everything happens for a reason” kinda girl, and I can’t suspend disbelief long enough to be thankful for bad, awful, heartbreaking things, please know that. Despite overwhelming odds, however, I’m still a Pollyanna who looks for a discarded pack of bar matches in every dark alley, and there’s usually a dry one left somewhere. Our most devastating and challenging times can contain hope if we keep our hearts open. They have the capacity to uncover ugliness we need to be aware of, in ourselves or other people. Bad times can reveal where change is long overdue, and sometimes provide the impetus to make those changes. We can’t be part of solving problems we don’t know about, so a little awareness in confusing times goes a long way. I could go on, but you know there are other ways of turning unfortunate circumstances to your good.
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A quiet thanks this morning to the men we live with, love, care for, befriend, exist among, for understanding as much as they can, and for wanting to even more.
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That’s a lot to celebrate, I don’t care who you are.
We’re nine days from spring and the rain we need for the greening of NE Kansas has been showing up. So sweet and benign, all the soft water from the sky, and we hope it stays this friendly since Kansas weather is nothing if not unpredictable.
Of course, tonight’s the big night… it’s time to spring forward an entire hour and spend the rest of the year searching for that lost jigger of salt. Don’t forget.
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The lost hour symbolizes every trauma, whether infinitesimal or overwhelming, we’ve sustained over the past however-many years now. We’ve lived through scary illnesses that had to be handled on our own because PANDEMIC. We lived through said pandemic… so far. We’ve survived cockamamie politics; over-the-top injustice; incomprehensible cruelty; the abject hatred of our fellow man; and every other thing that’s part of the human experience. Here we stand, damaged, wounded, but ever hopeful for better days. We’re pitiful but we’re all we’ve got, boys and girls, so hold hands and keep taking new territory. Trauma’s most powerful enemy is truth – use it at every opportunity.
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Speaking of trauma… my new friend Erica and I worked on rooting out some more of it yesterday in my second hour-long massage. Her amazing hands know where pain lurks and she’s fairly merciless already… hurts so good, can’t wait to go back.
Small psychic traumas are gradually resolving as well, including a sense of rootlessness and lack of purpose. At some point after the lifelong nerve pain disappeared, my brain started working on the problem of “Okay, who am I NOW? I can finally do pretty much what I want… what’s that going to look like?” After a few months’ rumination on that question, it came to me one day not long ago that at 75 I don’t have to go out and reinvent myself in order to pay my dues as a resident of the planet. I already HAVE a life, here in this smallish space, that requires my involvement and TLC, and could take up most of my time if I wanted it to. This is good. I’m home. Having said that, I’ll be branching out a teensy bit in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned.
Everything that happens to us feels like such a big deal at the time because we’re hothouse flowers with intense feelings, so it takes time and perspective for our personal traumas to start turning loose of us. Sometimes we like them too much, which complicates the whole thing. Those hurts and slights and terrifying wounds tend to validate our existence, so they feel like our buddies rather than the thoughts and memories that will eventually paralyze us and shorten our lucid days.
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I take Sir Winston to heart…
“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” (whomever/whatever you perceive that enemy to be)
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Above all, never lose sight of this befuddled truth, brought to you by the Society for the Proliferation of Crap Platitudes.
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.
For humans who feel everything, every tiniest thing, there are days on end too dark for words. And then the sun breaks out again and some of those humans feel a little sheepish about all the inner angst. Oh well. That’s just how it is, and hello sunshine. I’ll play nice if you will, world.
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Things you learn along the way:
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Staying childlike, that’s the trick…
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I rolled up on this during my coffee reflections this morning, and felt it deep. Just one would lend legitimacy to this steady stream-of-consciousness…
If you stop by and read me on any regular basis, you’re aware that my thoughts and words often focus on mortality. I would not, however, want there to be any misunderstanding about my trend in that direction, to wit: mortality and endings are the bailiwick of the Golden Age, and this girl simply prefers to know what she’s headed into, which ironically is yet another survival mechanism in operation. I hope to be fortunate enough to have inherited my grandmothers’ longevity, all of them seeing 95 or better, but it is not for me to know, nor do I really want to. Do you want to know the year of your demise? For my part, no thanks, it would color everything in different shades and ruin it all. I’m sorry, but if you read the ending of books before the beginning, we can’t be friends, get what I’m sayin’?
The alternative to morbid musings is to live ’til I die, in which case I intend to keep improving on my methods. Last year was full of heaviness and challenges, which has made it difficult to crawl out from under the pall, but dang, I am so ready to stop feeling whatever this is… and as I typed those words my brain said “It’s endings and beginnings, and you better deal, girlfriend, life is short.” The first step, for me… well, first step is always tears, whatever the situation. Second step is to decode the problem so I can break it down and handle it. Third step, cry some more. You know, the cycle of life. And because I need not only a vent-space but accountability, you get to eavesdrop on the process, and I hope it will prove helpful to you at some future date.
I’m ready for better, aren’t you?
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Welp, here’s a welcome bit of news then…
And I’m expecting a huge back-rush of energy any moment now, so we’re good.
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It’s called the Human Condition. Good luck getting out of it.
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From my friend Phil…
I felt very seen by this, so I stole it. My sense of humor was inherited from crazy Germans and rough-edged Black Irish, and it is decidedly not for everyone. Do the looks I get do anything to stop me? Rarely. Because I had great role models.
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Best coffee in town all up in here, made by Kim, so nobody has to suffer.He says the out-and-about coffee drinker looks like Jeff Lynne.
EDITED to say “Who IS this man I live with? He’d never seen any of the mashups, nor had I, but here ya’ go…
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Sharing because it might be the most astounding thing I’ll read all day:
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And finally, sharing because life and breath and love R us.
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Welcome to my weekly blog on life's happiness. We are all human and we all deserve to smile. Click a blog title or scroll down. Thanks for stopping by.
Creative humour, satire and other bad ideas by Ross Murray, an author living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Is it truth or fiction? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
Playing for Time 
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