Woooooooo Hoooooooo!
Just thought I’d start off today’s blog a little differently than usual. For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that I write it in the evenings as my day is winding (or has wound) down, and as often happens, it is now 9 p.m. Pacific Time and many of my regular readers are already in bed. So tomorrow sometime they’ll get their “woo hoo.”
Today has ended on a good note after a somewhat rocky start this morning. I approached Mephisto the mechanical bull, but didn’t climb on today, which is a good thing. Still, I confess that I woke around 5:00 a.m. in a great deal of turmoil, as I grapple with some fairly significant unresolved issues concerning my move East. My mind was whirling too fast and I couldn’t quite calm myself to relax back into sleep. I went to work today, frazzled before I even walked in the door and when I got there, the air was crackling with intense energy. There are major business transactions happening where I work where millions of dollars of grants and loans and properties are changing hands tomorrow. Between the intensity of the people in the office and my own high pitched whine of anxiety, I wasn’t able to concentrate on what I was doing. I ended up leaving hours earlier than I usually do, which turned out to be a good thing.
The truth is, I needed to be doing something related to my move and get myself out into the air. I went to my storage unit, and did some work around the house–not tons of work like I do on the weekends, but I got some more things packed and did some good thinking about how I need to organize myself for the next few days. I also spoke to one of my sisters who is on the case helping me think about where I’m going to live and other important details that have yet to be worked out. All in all, I am grateful to be in a calm, quiet, good mood as I wind down this evening. There have been times over the past month or so when I’ve felt like a violin string someone has wound just a little too tight, that feeling of being stretched to the breaking point. But I haven’t snapped, and I’m not going to. (You can’t count my little tantrum that I had yesterday as “snapping,” it was simply a 10 minute tirade that passed almost as quickly as it had started.)
Even when I don’t feel fine, at my core I know that I am fine. Sometime after my little freak out yesterday, I sent a message to my cousin about how shaky I’d been feeling that day. She wrote back to me, her words rich with wisdom, humor, and enthusiasm, stating, “You’re a shining example of courage and strength. You’re not *going to be alright*, you are already more than alright.” Oh yeah, I have to remember that. So as I get ready to take my rest for the night, I am calm and peaceful, resting in my “alrightness” and living that truth. I am grateful to have family and friends in my life who remind me that I’m not in this alone and that I am definitely going to be alright. Their words and actions encourage me and help keep me keep moving even when I want to sit down in the middle of all the chaos and give up.
Tonight I am looking forward to a good rest. And if I wake tomorrow morning at 5:00 and am freaked out all over again, I’ll continue to use the tools at hand to calm myself down as best I can and get on with the day. I’ll be back here tomorrow ready for another go at gratitude. For now, sleep calls.
