As some of you might be aware, I don't really do time. I don't mean that I don't "do time" in the gritty cop show kind of a way, although I'm not doing that either. I just don't buy into the whole concept of time and its measurement because it is just not helpful as a construct. Except when you are trying to meet someone for coffee or hold down a job of any kind or pick up your children from the bus stop. Then I suppose it is useful. Man, am I feeling abstract this morning. I have a cup of chocolate mint black tea beside me and it smells delicious. Perhaps I can blame the fumes for my random thoughts. I spent some time knitting during my break from school. I just got the urge to do so and found a lovely skein of yarn and went to town. Perhaps it is my lack of belief in time that allows me to do ridiculous things like knitting with fingering-weight yarn and hand-quilting giant quilts and beading with those teeny tiny little seed beads. It's probably also why I am rubbish at planning birthday parties and writing thank you notes. Or it is a convenient excuse. I'm trying hard to write those this year. It's not something I am ever good at doing and it is a neverending source of shame and guilt becuase I know there are people in my life for whom the thank you card is an important punctuation mark to the winter holidays. And I kind of leave them hanging there in limbo. I am thankful. And I have no decent excuse for not writing that down and putting it in the post. I'll keep you posted on my efforts to adequately express my thanks this year. If I miss you, it is not an intentional slight. I think I need a spreadsheet next year. Although that would seem a bit odd during the present opening process to have my computer out so I can type in gifts, names and addresses (in case I can't find those). It is likely that I have a guilt-ridden post like this every year. Because I have managed to make it more than four decades without establishing a habit of thank you cards despite coming from a family that values them. I did an In Our Own Voices speech for NAMI at an adolescent inpatient treatment center for kids with dual diagnoses-- chemical dependency and mental illness. I left there thinking that the two people chosen to speak (me and a young man with childhood-onset schizophrenia) were the right speakers for the job. ' Because the two of us in many ways are on the outside edges. My story is not scary. My mental illness has been chronic and irritating but not acute and scary. His mental illness HAS been acute and scary. And yet both of us have jobs we love and have carved out a life that works well for us. And for both of us the life (when working well) includes enough sleep, healthy food, no recreational chemicals (our own brain chemistry is recreational enough), and volunteering as mental health advocates for NAMI. I wonder if the increase in numbers of people with reported mental illness is due in part to lack of sleep, exercise and healthy food on the part of large swaths of the population. Not that these things CAUSE mental illness, but can worsen the symptoms to the point that you get a diagnosis. Maybe in days gone by when there wasn't so much "convenience" food and people had more physical exhertion built into their day, mental health conditions were easier to manage without medical intervention? And I know that before the electric light people got more sleep. What if I turned the lights off when the sun went down? That would mean darkness beginning at 4:30 pm right now. I would likely go to sleep out of sheer boredom even if I had candlelight to read by for some time. Hunching over the candle flame would pall after a while. My sleep hasn't been too bad lately. Really nothing has been too bad lately. In spite of the fact that I am reading the news daily and there are external stressors. Internally things seem pretty much okay. Grateful Crap: that Spouse's cookie-baking frenzy is coming to an end Equatorial Actions: taking it easy having a friend help with decluttering watching children play in a nondestructive way knitting Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |