Entanglements...

My life is very different. Of course it is. It's been more than a year since I've written anything, probably more than five since I've slowed down writing considerably. The last few posts were me in the midst of a great change.

Great meaning "big." No value judgment for now. (Is that the right judgment? Do I want the one with the "E"?)

I don't have time to tell you all the ways my life has changed. It's late. I must sleep. There is a job, a new one, that requires I wake up early.

What I will say is that things are not very good right now, and, I think, in order to get better, I need to get back to my roots a little. Writing-- specifically, most of the time-- got me through most of the toughest parts of my life. It helped me to look deeper into myself. Process my pain. Acknowledge my strengths. It helped to give me something concrete that I cared about and was proud of. There are so many pages of this thing, so many words that I wrote, so many sentences I crafted.

And yes, most of them are totally self-involved mush. But they're pretty well-written, at least half of the time. And, more importantly, they're mine.

So I think, the goal, for now, for the next thirty days, is to write a little each day. I was originally going to say "100 words at least, and no more than 200." I don't know how long this is so far, but I think anyone who knows this blog is here, well, they know me better than that.

So, I don't know? Not more than a standard, American, 8.5x11 piece of paper worth of type? If it were in 10 point font with 1.15 spacing? (I do a lot of graphic design now, line spacing is big with me.)

I'm not going to hold myself to it, I don't think. If I hit a vein, and I need to write, I write. Maybe it'll give me a chance to reconnect with so many of the people I've lost. People who knew me better when they could start right here. Maybe those people are gone forever.

What I wanted to write about tonight, in my "100 words", was how, in an attempt to reverse what I've decided must be very high cortisol levels (having read this article), I have made the conscious decision to try to meditate. (It would sort of defeat the purpose of mediation to make an unconscious decision to do it.)

The idea gives me a lot of anxiety, being, you know, someone prone to anxiety. Which is the whole thing the mediation is trying to reverse. My life-- which is different-- is very busy now. Busy in addition to the fact that I've always been a very low-energy person (I want that phrase to be a hyperlink to some post I wrote in the past that proves my point, but, while I'm sure there are many, I do not have time to go hunt for one. Perhaps another day.)

Okay, blah blah blah, fast forward to the part where, having struggled with how to implement my plan to start mediation, I found myself in the tub tonight, trying to untie the knot of hair that tends to form at the nape of my neck when I don't have the time (/energy) to tend to it well enough. (My hurrying myself is rather messing with the poetic rhythm that I hoped this post would take on, but it's late, and I'm very near to the end of the hypothetical page, and I wasted all that time establishing ground rules. So. The point of the story. End parenthetical.) I decided that, as I don't feel like I have the time or the focus to mediate, and I rarely feel like I have the time or the focus to un-knot my hair, I decided to combine the two practices.

I focused on my fingers as they slid wet strands free of the knot, the sound of the bathroom fan, the sensation of the water. My mind repeatedly wandered to everything-- mostly thoughts about the future of my mediative habits, whether I would adapt it to exercise, perhaps knitting, writing-- but I did as I've been told you're supposed to do: I simply brought my focus back to the sounds, smells, and sensations of the moment without judging myself.

I don't think it would have worked so well for me, had it not been such perfect symbolism: there I was, slowly untangling the mess of my life, one strand at a time. If I'm going to do this, after all, I have to do this the only way that comes naturally to me: as a shameless purveyor of self-serving metaphors. Writers, I think they call us.


Would this all fit on a single typed page? Sigh. Day one of thirty. On with it.