elainegrey

We are sick with some low grade respiratory unhappiness. Probably a cold. So out of practice in having colds. Wail. Still negative COVID.

I worked a bit in the yard Saturday and exhausted myself. Sunday the dog walk was sufficient to knock me out.

Over the weekend I've poked today at some decluttering of the papers collected in folders and clipboxes in the "portable office" book tote i keep near where i sit on the couch. The emotional disruption of doing so was nontrivial -- lots of correspondence over the past years to which i meant to reply, seeds i meant to record planting -- but then i processed the emotions using The Anti-Planner. I am better. Clearing out the past correspondence opens me to going forward with refreshed intentions.

I also chose some books to deaccession: that was less emotional, probably because the choices were driven by absence of emotional reaction. One of the books was The Spiral Dance, which meant so much to me years ago. Now, while i think i may want to return some seasonal observations more actively to my life, i trust my own intuition with that. I don't need to reference another's practice.

( Depressing extended family situations )

In preparation for spring, for my birthday, for my personal new year, i'm writing a description of my days and life. I know things change over time, but i don't have a good sense of how things that feel like i've been doing them forever actually change. So, i'm going to write up some mundanities.

If there's anything about my day to day life, particularly things to which i refer obliquely and that you would like cleared up, please feel to ask.

--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, i can't bear the thought of scheduling anything. Juggling Mom's care schedule and working on a retreat schedule have exhausted that bit of brain. Last night, my sister asked B-- to not come until 9 am this morning (instead of 7 am, when L-- needs to be relieved to get her kids to school). B-- wanted to know how long we'd like her to stay. L-- erupted to me with exasperation: i pointed out to L how she was giving a change to B-- and maybe B had plans for today. So, i'll go over a little later and stay later, and then tomorrow i will give B-- some time off for her birthday. And do something fun with mom. But what?

--== ∞ ==--

Last night i started reading a diary of Mom's. She recorded destroying all her previous journals to give herself a fresh start. She journaled a "fresh start" around Feb-March, then returned to journal again a year later. And then a year later. I am intrigued her timeline to get back to journaling was the time i am consider my new year. In one of those entries, she writes about realizing she has ADD. She did also assert my Dad has ADD: her usual pattern of projecting everything on my Dad. But it's fascinating to read her energy around recognizing herself.

Long day. There was the moment where i questioned why we bother doing the work we do when someone with a super powerful support account cc'd me on a e-mail saying, "I've been told not to make accounts for people so here is my username and password." Argh!

So then i had lunch and felt better.

But still, long day.

I did go lead midweek worship, which was a pleasure. I should volunteer to lead more often so i get in the habit of going.

I admit, my mind wanders to homesteading fantasies that blend into my meditation images. I have a meditation on "clearing the spring," but instead on meditating, i was imagining. I imagined building a springhouse, digging into the slope the spring emerged from, using the soil to make bermed walls, planting old fashioned roses around the spring house, imaging a weeping willow and cat tails outside the springhouse, imaging the scent of roses in the sun on a hot summer day and the cool in the springhouse, and redwing blackbirds singing in the cattails.

This is worship, i think, but i don't know i can explain it. Is it about an idea of Edenic peace and perfection? A sympathy with the act of creation?

The ginger ale and peach vodka says it's time to close my eyes.

I had another night of I-don'-wanna and spent it reading light science fiction/fantasy. (Young person on a quest learning to control special secret psi powers seems like a fantasy story even if spaceships are involved.) I trust that the lethargy that hit at around 2 pm yesterday was related to hormonal shifts. I reflect, too, that there was communication annoyance at work: a decision had been made in my division on Friday that i found out about when sitting in another division's management meeting. A colleague forwarded me the email, and i forwarded it to my team. I actually met with New Director later in the day and made clear that not receiving the communication was an issue.

Apparently New Director had food poisoning last week and spent time in the hospital. I don't feel guilty for speculating that he was "sick" and looking for a new job. However, listening to him whine about having to be present at the director level management meeting where he was to explain why he was asking for a schedule change, i realize he's clueless about why he should be looking for a new job.

All the politics of the day -- including the now-weekly meeting on one of the projects where we can't support them at the level they want to be supported -- were probably far more draining than they "felt." I wasn't upset or surprised, but instead recognized usual behavior. In some ways, i was delighted the un-communicated "decision" had finally been made, as it was an expectation the rest of the enterprise had had that New Director's division will FINALLY honor.

So work probably drained me more than i accept. I have Meeting responsibilities i'm neglecting. Correspondence seems a challenge. I'm glad i did use my energy on Sunday to brighten and tidy the household as i don't look around and see nags of tasks from every corner like i did last week.

It seems so strange to have shifted energy so quickly, just as the weekend's and Monday's energy to get things done seemed such an overflowing bounty.

One final joy: i feel like i am so much more clear these days. In the past year? I am able to see my ebb and flow of energy and accept it now. Perhaps it's the antidepressant, but i think it's more the trust i am developing that i don't need to will myself to have "more spoons." I am learning to trust during an ebb that my energy will return instead of having to Do Something to Make Myself Function. I find myself looking back on my old behaviors and feel like i was engaging in superstitious behavior. It's as if i was some coastal dweller who believed that she had to plea with the sea to return the water at every low tide and lived in fear that some day the sea would just decide to keep the tide out. I'm now able to trust that after an ebb, there will be a flow. Now it's a matter of being prepared for the different conditions.

I am thankful for the compassion for myself that i am learning. I think of how i was raised: in some sense we were constantly in preparation for catastrophe. "Don't rest", was the lesson, "because some day something horrible might be happening and you won't have time to rest. If you rest now, you won't be able to push through then." I suppose the military backgrounds both my parents brought and the trauma my dad experienced growing up fed their need to teach these lessons.

I now feel less like i have to exercise my will constantly, as i begin to realize that fighting the ebbs in my energy was not like building up muscle stamina but was the superstitious plea with the sea. I know even if my energy ebbs i can push through and get things done if it's important, but i don't need to create fake "importance" to practice the pushing through.

So now i begin my tidal observations: will i find a moon and sun that pull and push the tides?

The living room is quite chill, as the sliding deck doors allow for much air exchange overnight. The east rooms are pleasant, but not as cool as outside yet. The lowest temperature has been just in the past hour.

--==∞==--
Email to MS

Happy belated birthday! I'm feeling more and more resistant towards interacting on Facebook these days. I still love getting the news of folks' day to day lives (although i fail to know what to share, myself), but i distrust the business. There was another technology to communicate with folks -- smoke signals? no.... telegraph?... E-mail! It's not the same as the hand written letters we exchanged while you were in the Czech republic and i was studying for my quals, but my penmanship has gone south since spending so much time at a keyboard.

I have a peculiarly complete memory of the desk and room i wrote you from, the cool dim light in the narrow little room which was my space in the apartment i shared with the Greek-American woman and her Roman boyfriend. Thinking of writing you letters brings back a flood of sense-complete memories of that space. I tend to spend my mornings now journalling, pseudonymously on the web, tracking irritations to my flaky immune system and giving myself pep talks as i try to manage depression without meds. My spiritual life goes through shifts and turns, but the practice of Friends has been well suited for me. One year was filled with rich meditation with visions of healing as being broken: instead of scabbing and scarring over the wounds, letting the wounds heal in such a way that life and love stream through. I remain slightly uncomfortable with this understanding as i resist the notion that one needs to be wounded: it becomes a fulcrum on which oppressive theologies can be levered. Yet the truth of my experience, of opening those wounds up and letting myself feel more flow, is convincing. Christine and i were talking one day about my discomfort with the entire spectrum of labels: theist, deist, agnostic, atheist. She sees me acting as an experimentalist, testing practice to see how it affects my life.

Today's a Meeting for Business day, one of the practices that is core, and it will be a hot day to sit and be open. I'm off to North Carolina on the 19th, fortunate a work conference takes me to visit family, just as my brother's work had him in town so we could have dinner with him on Friday night.

I hope you are thriving, and do keep sharing the photos of your and A----'s adventures! I do appreciate them.

--==∞==--

I chose not to take the antihistamine last night,( itchy details )

I haven't been that hungry lately. While on vacation i started the day with a slice of toasted and buttered gluten free bread made by L. I'd have an egg, my usual breakfast, later in the day (and each day of vacation, i added more to it). Chips or nuts while hiking or out, and then a dinner. Essentially i was skipping a meal. I did that on Friday, and i think i essentially did that yesterday as well. I can't blame the heat while we were up the coast: i was often cold. I suppose there's something to be said about my stress eating.

Taking care of myself: work has some crazy-making parts. It is different from proDuctMan's crazy making: i don't think i'm having buttons pushed, but instead feel i've wandered down a high stress rabbit hole. This pill makes you bigger, this one makes you small, this one inflates peoplesoft numbers, this one means too few resources have been allocated. I will go for a walk after today's phone call and charge the crazy-making project for the time. My boss, whom i interrupted on his vacation, seemed to think it was a fine idea.

I really do think my boss is a wonderful person to work for and helps me unlearn some of the unhealthy work anti-patterns i learned from my parents and then had reinforced by my dissertation advisor.

So now i need to come up with a suitable penance-gift for interrupting him.

Fortunately, the call did not go in the crazy-making direction. I'm not sure why it didn't: i remain a little befuddled as to why the email brought up that issue.

I went on the walk anyhow: it was a bit warm and i was out in the sun in the heat of the day. Were i really taking care of myself, i would have remembered the floppy hat! But i brought the camera, and i indulged almost all my senses. There were ripe blackberries all along the trail: some honey sweet, some sharp, some fruity, some fermented, some even bland. I pinched the ripening fennel, crumbled peppercorns from the pepper trees, and enjoyed the resinous scents of the redwoods and eucalyptus in the sun. The light danced in the creek, fish flashed, and water bugs skated on the surface.

I flip through the video and photos i took: i enjoyed taking them (wishing that the microphone would pick up the water and wind sounds and not the cars on 101 and the camera sound itself). They're pleasant, but perhaps i should just delete them The experience of the summer day was the thing, not recreating it, capturing it.