After working for nine days, in a row, I was ready for these last two days off!! My boss is going on vacation soon and so I expect that I will be working a good deal more AND not having two days off in a row!! Something that I consider a luxury. Nothing gives you a better mental health break than to have two days to putz around, read, write and whatever the hell you feel like doing. That, my friends, is exactly what I have been doing.
Obviously I am devoting time today to blogging. Something that I greatly enjoy and also consider part of mental health routine care. How outstanding is it that I do not even need to use my insurance or pay any kind of co-pay to reap the benefits.
I sometimes feel negligent when I do not have anything current to write about, but I know that I am busy as well as the good folks that I co-write with. Mixter is making a big move and I can not even imagine moving at this time in my life with all the STUFF that has accumulated in said time! All the best to Mixter as she makes this journey!! Hopefully you have a strapping lad to lend a hand or two!!
Naturally there are issues, like health care , to be discussed and our often continuous religious debates. I must say that I did watch Obama the other night and I am glad that I did and he did make me feel better about the direction that the health care issues are heading. I may not always feel that way, but for now I am not fretting.
I have gotten myself to chapter five in my book. Which, for someone who did not think that they had much to say, seems to be a good deal. I went back and read what I had written in the first three and it made me laugh so I think that I am heading in the direction that I intended. My best friend from high school has given me much good input as to possible topics and it has greatly increased my creative juices.
I do feel as though I have jumped around, topic wise, and I believe that this is why people have editors! A few people have offered and I am thinking about who I will have proof read etc.
I have also discovered, thanks to a friend at work, the Showtime series "Weeds". Always a bit behind the times and trends AND we have never had Showtime, I am watching it on Netflix on my laptop. It is an excellent show. If you have not heard or ever seen this show it is about a suburban housewife whose husband drops dead and she begins to sell pot to make ends meet. There is a plethora of neighbors and people that live in their development that are crazy characters. I sit with my earbuds in and laugh and laugh. I know my neighbors must think I am crazy as I sit out there in the early mornings watching season one laughing out loud.
The other thing that is continuously drawing me into this show is the cast of strong women characters. None of them are delicate little flowers, but strong and in your face women. Just my kind of folks! I love it when people introduce me to something that I end up really enjoying and now....I do it for you all.
It is often interesting to me how Mixter and I are often moving in similar directions. She will mention, or blog, about something that I am either doing or thinking or have been preparing to do. Recently she mentioned that she has been in "goof off" mode..... and I am just getting back in to a very similar mode.
For weeks I was in a very high stress mode, which does not serve one well, and not very functional or happy. One of those things that we do to ourselves, self-sabotage if you will, and I was in to it full steam ahead!! I was doing the full menu of self criticism, bad-talking and just letting myself get very down on myself. As if life is not hard enough without beating yourself up!
Then, my very good friend from high school, said some things to me that made me stop and think. I also got up and started to work out again. I have also been very lax about this since my 8 week bout of bronchitis and my few weeks of bursitis in my knee. The knee issue has made it almost impossible for me to run and so I am left to walk and use the elliptical at the gym. It really does make a difference in my mental state when I am outside doing things. Walking the dog or just putzing in my gardens. I have just come to understand that the knee will never change so I had better get in to a different mind set.
I have also gotten back to journaling and writing. Several months ago I started a little project that I like to refer to as my book. Yes, you hear correctly....I am writing a book. My class reunion was really the first time that I began to actually say it outloud and tell people. Now it's real. John told me one night that the reason he gave me this laptop was not so I could just sit and do e-mail and blog, but he thought that I would one day write a book. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather! I had never given it any thought....EVER!
He thinks that I have stories to tell and that I am pretty funny. I began to think about this.......hmmmmmm, what stories do I have to tell? Then he began to mention parts of my life and/or things that I have told him and that was when I realized....I do have some stories and they can be pretty funny. So one night I was feeling full of thoughts and I pulled an all nighter. I had to be up at 5:00 the next morning for work, but I was on fire! Jotting down chapter ideas and just typing like I was out of control. I got in to my third chapter.
I let it go for a few weeks, while I was in my slump, all the while worrying that I was wasting a good thing. This week I got them out and read them again, they are pretty funny, and got to typing again.
My job is just a means to an end. I was beginning to hate my job, but have decided that it is what allows me the freedom to write! If I had an every day 9-5 again I would not have such freedom. If I was still teaching I might have my summers off, but I would have so many daily/weekly demands that I would still be too tired during the week. No, this job is so easy and undemanding, most times or as much or as little as I make it, that it is the right place for me to be right now.
I can be pretty hard headed, but I know that it is only when I open up and listen to the good folks around me, as well as myself and my own body, am I really able to see and hear what are the right choices and decisions for me. It is truly interesting how much less we want to be concerned with the trappings of life, as we get older, but rather more with how happy our own little corner of the world might be.
Listening is a good skill. Responding to yourself......even better!
