Keepin' on Keepin' On

Red sky in the morning means... time to get stuff done!

This is nothing new, but it seems to be a lesson I have to learn time and time again: it's a lot easier [for me] to deal with heavy schtuff when I've got something kind of menial and not very mentally taxing to do, rather than sitting around lamenting the sorry state of my place in this world.

Last week was a heckin' dark, rough one.  I'm not going to lie.  I was a little worried about myself, to be honest.  And instead of keepin' on keepin' on, I wallowed.  It wasn't a matter of consciously resting to recharge and heal myself.  It was allowing myself to swirl down a bad sequential vortex of negativity.  There were lots of tears.  Lots of impatience.  I couldn't get a good breath.  I couldn't concentrate on anything.  And I wallowed in it all.  

As I've mentioned before, I'm talking to someone about all my schtuff, and that's a tremendous help.  If you're Going Through Some Schtuff, I highly recommend seeking out a mental health professional and talking to them.

So.  Talking through with a professional a bunch of poison I've been carrying around for decades helped me feel a lot lighter.  Besides that, I decided I needed to get back to Doing.  The laundry is always a rich source of Things To Do.  Dishes, same.  I think before This Is All Over, I'll probably end up giving my house a good going-through.  That's only about 13 years overdue.  I feel better Doing.  

It's good to be useful as well as ornamental.

That's not to belittle the importance of taking a rest when you really need it.  There's a time to keep on keepin' on, and there's a time to rest.  Some of us feel like we should be KILLIN' IT!!! every day of this quarantine.  Sometimes I feel like I should be KILLIN' IT!!!  And when I try really aggressively, I end up HITTIN' THE WALL REALLY HARD!!!  The thing I've got to remember, and maybe you need to be reminded of it, too, Friends, is that right now, all we need to do is survive until it's all over.  It's okay to balance days where we KILL IT REALLY HARD with days where we just laze around on the couch reading magazines or doing origami or whatever you might dig for self-care.  

Before All This, I think we can all admit that we were all a little out of whack with the work/self-care balance.  We might have overvalued working until we just dropped, glorified lack of rest.  It all goes back to the fable of the ants and the grasshopper.  But if you think about it, the ants worked so hard in the summer so they'd be set for the winter, when they naturally had to lay off their workaholism.  

Being too committed to a life of leisure isn't all that happenin', either, though, Friends.  At least not for me.  If my hands are idle for too long, my thoughts turn themselves up to eleven and do a number on my psyche.  

I'm always looking for the lesson I'm supposed to learn.  I'm searching for the lessons I'm supposed to be learning from this pause that's been thrust upon us all.  It shook some things loose that I couldn't handle on my own, so I learned that asking for help doesn't make me weak.  That was the low-hanging fruit, the easy thing to pick out.  This is a huge Thing.  There's got to be more lessons to be found and learned.  

So here I am.  I'm going to keep on keepin' on and find those lessons.  Thank you for being here with me, Friends, even if we have to be far apart.  I'm grateful.