Retrenching

Well that was interesting.

After weeks of it, I'm finally at the point where I don't feel like a bag of hammers. I suppose it was ambitious, a tempt of fate to believe that in the midst of a flu, I could undertake writing every day. Instead there came another flu and another week off work, followed promptly by a cat scratch/bite that required a week's course of antibiotics.

So I seem to be done my batch of three and have been emerging from it all the last couple of weeks. I've also restarted my fitness training, with a new trainer to boot. But we have paced ourselves, and having lost no strength, I'm working on correcting some aspects of my form so that I am able to train even harder to get even stronger.

I've had the last four days off. It's Family Day today and my employer provides the great benefit of tacking on an extra day to any long weekend. The weather's been good, pretty much springlike, and it's the first time since before Christmas that I haven't felt completely horrible when I've had time off. I took four days last weekend, but felt no real benefit as I had my hair colour updated and ended up having an allergic reaction to it.

So now I sit, mid-afternoon, with that same feeling that I usually have on Sunday afternoons, pretty much dreading the coming week and the expending of time upon things I don't care about. It feels like a waste of my life.  And I feel bad for feeling that sentiment.

Because I am grateful for a full time job and I am grateful for wonderful people to work with. But I am bored out of my mind and am not making enough money to accomplish what I need to accomplish. I'm not sure how I'm going to get myself out of this.

And yet despite the fact that this disappointment in terms of my vocation has been a near constant in my adulthood, I have also had the constancy of another feeling, namely that I am meant to be doing much more than I am currently, what I consider to be more important and frankly, greater things. And I am not sure how to get myself out of that either.

Where and how can I make these two trajectories meet? Resolving this conflict has been a great question in my life.  I know I'm not meant to be doing what I'm currently doing and yet the way forward to where I really need to be always seems to elude me, at least in terms of any definitive clarity.  There are so many people, Dear God so many, who deal with such awful circumstances in their life. I am very blessed. I have a world of opportunity laid out before me like a banquet.  And yet there seems to be some key, some correct way of engaging that I can never decipher.

Lately, I have instead been grasping at whatever seems to help, whatever has a sense of forward momentum. Focusing on my training, losing weight and getting fitter.  Eating healthfully. Getting more financially solvent. Keeping my home organized. I sometimes feel that maintaining the basic buttresses of a good life will save me somehow, or at least stop me going completely underwater. These are things that I know others don't struggle with. But I do struggle and I also struggle to understand why. But somehow, I think that if I feel better about myself generally, the world will too and that in recognizing this, it will rise to meet me somehow

But this second feeling, of heading towards what I'm meant to be doing has been much stronger of late, and I can only put it down to the simple fact that I am much stronger of late. Life has long been well settled, if unfulfilling in some respects. There's a lot to be said for a boring, uneventful period of time. For example, I've only recently had the urge to read again. I think it's because the words don't hit my brain like the dumping of Lego bits out of a box.  I can actually absorb and retain what I'm reading. Some bandwidth has opened up. And I think the same applies to my writing, which is why I've been able to come back to blogging too.

So I keep going. And I wait. All at the same time.  I want to know what to do. I want to be sure. And yet that's not possible.

Maybe that is the lesson for me, that I need to continue learning: to be accepting of things as they are and not expend any more energy trying to fix or direct them.  All I can fix or direct is myself.  I have been reading a lot lately about the notion of a "future self."  It's the idea that we make decisions based on short term reward or relief rather than the prospect of a bigger gain in the long term. In other words, we reward our current self, at the expense of our future self.

I've been thinking about this a lot. For example, I'm 50 pounds lighter and the strongest I've ever been because my past self didn't sell the current me out. She got to the gym three time a week even though she was under slept, sad and embarrassed. And because she did that, I'm who I am now. And if I keep that up and my current self doesn't sell my future self out, then I'll be even better a year, month, a week from now.

I'm rambling I know. But I'm trying to get all of this out of my head. I suppose it's a mulberry bush I have to keep circling until I'm done with it. I'm really angry at some situations in my life that I can't change. I'm tired of keeping myself small so other people aren't disturbed. I feel like I've walked out of some cave I've been in for years, and am finally seeing things in my life for what they really are. These things have conditioned my way of thinking about life and about myself. It's not pretty. It's not a fun time deconstructing and reassembling yourself.

But I have decided one thing. I am digging in my heels. Despite my fear, I am not going to run away from what is meant for me and who I am meant to be. This is a mean and shabby world at times for a good many. If I have my chances, I should take them.