New job, new car, new employer, old friends, new friends, trips to Germany and the UK, car accidents, sciatica and other health stuff... and all this just within the first few months of 2012. It appears, frighteningly so that is a near repeat performance of last year....and the year before. It appears that I have a tendency to live my life in jam-packed increments of activity, followed by near collapse, only to repeat the process a week later.
Is this normal?
I recognize that some stuff is beyond my control, but other stuff...well... I do have a predisposition for movement and stasis that others don't seem to share. This is also evident not just in a week but in the course of a single day. Take today, for example. I've been orienting at my new job, and recognize that being ON TIME is crucial right now, but I have an extra 10 minutes so why not set up my juice machine, chop veggies, put them through the machine which I know I will have to take apart and clean, piece by piece before I leave? Why not, indeed.
Of course I was late. And of course this must be some kind of deeply rooted oppositional disorder, or... perhaps an inability to stay still and deal with the, well... the stillness of my life, which is different from the stasis I experience after big life decision or change.
Stasis simply means inactivity. Something was moving or working that now isn't. This is usually the state I find myself in after a big trip, a move, a new job, or the collapse of a relationship. It usually means I'm in supine somewhere in my house with a remote control in one hand and a diet ginger ale in the other trying desperately not to think because my brain is in overload.
It seems like my life is one big messy, interesting, abstract water color painting that accidentally got wet, allowing the colors to run into each other, no margins or white space or stillness anywhere. Not necessarily ugly, but not pretty, either. And definitely not easy to interpret.
Somewhere along the line, in my resolve to do all the stuff that I didn't think I could do, didn't think I should do or didn't think I deserved to do, I think I've lost a little perspective.
So what's lacking in this big, kinda messy, not necessarily ugly abstract watercolor rendition of my life is definitely some white space. I know this because I'm starting to actually notice that I'm missing stuff... not the usual stuff, like my keys, or my eyeglasses, the bottle of vanilla extract that I thought I bought at the store but didn't. No, I'm missing things that I don't pay attention to because of the missing white space. The postcard from a former patient in her 90's now fully recovered. The email from my cousin asking me if I got home from London okay. The fact that my basil plant is barely clinging to life from lack of watering, yet miraculously has survived my trips to Germany, London and Arizona and will survive this temporary dry spell, too.
And that's just the small stuff. I can't help but wonder what the big stuff was that has fallen off my radar. Somehow I think it's time to reel it in a little bit, and get back to basics.
I want to read that postcard and remember my patient who was in her 90's and fiercely independent and very, very wise. I want to email my cousin and tell him how much I appreciate that he flew to London from Germany to meet me and spend time with me. I want to use my basil to make bruchetta and sauce...and not in 10 minutes before I leave for work. I want to savor the moments of friendship and love I feel when I'm Newburyport with my friend Rebecca on the beach, laughing and riding around in a rickshaw.
Life is short. Life is fast in the slow lane after all...
