Mental Maintenance
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Day in review July 29, 2015
We are finally into the heat of summer. I am sitting on my final train grateful that it is air conditioned. Biking to work has been easy simply because I get a breeze. Workouts have been erratic. I had headaches that kept me home from work and doctors appointments that have kept me home other days. I’m just getting back into it. I bought a knee brace with the intention to try running again. And I have an ankle cuff that will allow me to use the weight tower instead of the machines for my inner/outer legs. This mornings workout, the first with the ankle cuff, is probably the reason…
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Tired
I’m going on day for of five of a headache. The medication dose has been intermittent. Most times I need to take a couple of doses in a row, maybe a few hours extra in between. But then it comes back. Last night it was at 2:30 in the morning. I’m extremely tired. I think my goal for the day will be to go to the chiro, eat dinner, and retire to bed. That is all.
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The edge of comparison
I find myself frustrated. I am becoming dissatisfied with my life again. I was calm and a little more centered after reading Cameron, but that has faded. I have identified it a little earlier than usual this time. Because I am tired, comparison becomes easier than work. I want to have an amazing life, full of quirks and opportunity. From the inside it looks like work and drudgery. But it looks that way because I have compared it to other lives. I have not focused on the things that I have done. Nor have I been gentle with myself. I have bought into the culture of scarcity that says because…
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Monday morning
I’m thinking I’m stressed this morning. My jaw keeps clenching even though there was nothing this morning to set me off. I slept reasonable well with strange dreams that I don’t remember. To add to that, the train is 15 minutes late and rapidly becoming crowded. And there is a group of people on the upper deck that won’t stop talking in the quiet car. It’s just irritating and other than putting in head phones, there’s nothing to be done until the conductor comes by assuming he does. They usually skip it on days it’s this crowded. Overall, it isn’t just irritation. There is also an underlying current of emotion…
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Gentleness
One of the things that I have gained by reading a book on creativity is the idea of being gentle. Yesterday I wrote of the larger picture of creativity. Inevitably, there comes a period where creativity is absent. I like that she puts these periods as droughts rather than blocks. She goes on to explain that crativity exists in cycles and with gentle action, the cycle will progress and work can begin again. I had a hard time identifying with this at first because I don’t consider myself a working artist. Even as a hobbist, another label I don’t quite attach to, I am not producing art and I have…
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Building creativity
I’m always amazed at how restorative reading is to me. I have a few writers that I turn to regularly or stories that I go back to. Each of these times, I’m looking for their work to recreate a feeling I had the first time I read it. That is easy enough to do for fiction–just get carried away in the story. But there is a selection of non-fiction that I have slowly accumulated that also does this for me. For those works, the experience is more intimate. These works are not self help, but revolve around living an authentic self. Roughly psychological, I identify with aspects and use these…
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Emotional wish list
I’m feeling better today. In addition to the moodiness I was working on a headache for the latter half of the day. I went to bed, slept poorly, and went to gym this morning anyway. But I started to change during the gym session. It started with me giving myself permission to not do anything strenuous. I still had the headache. I wasn’t my best. The point was not to worry about whether or not I was getting my money’s worth or putting in a gold star performance. Because of this little change in attitude, I was able to see that I’ve been hard on myself and I need to…
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Moodiness and self care
I wish I had an explanation for my mood today. General moodiness started to creep in last night and has settled in for a bit. The feeling is a combination of ennui and dissatisfaction. I look at my life and I find it lacking. There is no joy, only a grouchiness at the world around me stemming from a vague sense of unfairness and inequality. My personal demons are rampaging as well. I’m getting fatter. I’m not a patient parent. I am losing the ability to be nice to children and small animals. Not good. I used to be a more optomistic person. I didn’t suffer from these bouts of…
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An earful
Today was an earful. I tried to speak to my son this morning about his beligerant and direspectful attitude. What he told me was that he wasn’t accountable to me. I went to work and heard our new chancellor speak about how we need to keep student focused and that our success will depend on new ideas and focused direction. What he told us was that there are going to be budget cuts and they are going to hurt. I called my sister to discuss travel arrangements for our uncles funeral next week. What I heard was the story of my grandmother in the final phases of her life, and…
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Back to work
March has been erratic. I only spent 11 days in office. Five were in Maryland, and five more were on vacation. Now I’m at the end of March and I am getting ready for the end of the semester and preparing for more classes and workshops. I had hoped to come back from vacation and all of this concentrated training with a sense of purpose and calm. I partially achieved each. I am more calm because I didn’t have endless work emails and things to try and get done. I have part of a sense of purpose in that I see work ahead of me. But I will set aside…