As I noted last year, physical activity is part of my strategy for coping with the negative: When the frosts start yielding to the sun, I begin to revive. Seasonal affect disorder dissipates, and it’s time to make maple syrup. I then clean the garden areas. Raking leaves, branches, and daily walks in my tiny wooded garden area commence. I probably look weird to the neighbors as I slink around, eyes on the ground looking for the earliest of our native wildflowers. They are late this year!
No, my Patron Saint is Nicholas, not the guy assigned to idleness. My silhouette and shadow have to be nimble to keep up. I revel in being able to be active.
Yesterday, I loaded wood (four cords delivered) and boiled sap for maple syrup. My shop has been a wreck this winter, so the other creative aspects will also come into focus as I clean and reset the shop. I already have a project in process, and have others in the planning stages. This stuff is sauce for the goose, as they used to say. Well, another cliche comes to mind…Seize the day.
Pondering
But what about those feelings, Lou? Are you evading them? It’s not as though I don’t have them, and keeping busy is not really a way of deflecting them. My activity is a way of letting them slip into perspective while I juggle potential solutions.
But big secret. I’m a ponderer. That’s why I frequently process the ugly, dirty stuff on a particular wooded stretch of road on the way to and from work. No traffic except the traffic of my mind, and out come the dark wiggly things. Let’s call it Ponderer’s Way. There I am, driving along, having a sometimes loud argument with myself about something I am royally cheesed about – recent, or paleolithic. The other day, I was grumbling about the government and how we’d be cleaning up the cesspool being made for an entire generation. If you’ve ever worked for the government, you might realize that most of the folks there are long-service employees, and have a deep knowledge of what they do, who to contact, and what CFR (code of federal regulations) says about how to do it. No, their life is not a continual coffee break.
OK, let me stop there, but that gives you an idea of the sort of rant that takes place while driving on Ponberer’s Way. And it can be loud.
Keep the windows shut!
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And suddenly, inexplicably, I feel myself winding up for a good old rant about the current conditions of the cesspool. And my window isn’t even open. :goes for more coffee:
Go Laura! Go!!!
Yeah, you really don’t want me to. I did last week on another blogger’s post (who was also lamenting the current pool of cess) & my comment was a wall of text tome. 🙂
I don’t think “seize the day” is a cliche. I think it’s good advice. BUT… The cesspool? I don’t know…I’m just a weird combination of scared, resigned and nauseated. I understand in a mechanical sense how we got here but in other senses? I don’t get it at all. Who are these people? Where did they get so warped and ugly? And THAT’S irrelevant. Who cares where; what matters is that they go away.
Well. How did er get here? I think we’ve been on the road to no where since we allowed oursewlvess to gwe tcucked into the Southeast Asian cesspool called Vietnam. but it sped up it the other wonderful “police actions” “conflicts” an such.
But I truly blame Billy bob Clinton and his ilk for NAFTA. Help the outflow of industry and manufacturing move from a trickle to a flood. Promise training and education, and don’t deliver it to displaced workers. and their kids became MAGATS.
Then the Supremes issue Citizens United that allows you to buy a senator or congressman on the QT and cheap.
Yep. that’s how I think we got here. But Martha, that’s only my uneducated belief, and I can’t afford to buy a politician for even one moment.
You make sense, Lou.
Oh Lou! I try so hard to tell this to anyone who may listen: most federal employees are really good people. They work so hard for not enough pay or recognition or appreciation. They care about each other. They care about their “customers” (usually the American people). They care about doing their best at their jobs. I worked my entire career in the federal workforce and those are GOOD people.
Pedro and I were just talking the other day about how long it’s going to take to repair all the damage done. It will take so long. Ugh. Just wretched what this administration has done.
Anyway, my favourite part of this blog is that you ponder, and that you recognize the dark wiggly things. If only every human spent more time at this. It’s important.
Thank you, Crystal!