Keeping my Head Up

I've been looking for inspiration, as I had previously resolved, but lately I'm not really finding inspiration that I can boil down to a theme for a single blog post.  I've had a few conversations this past weekend, mainly with my boyfriend, about how unobservant I am, though.  On at least three different occasions in the last 3 days, he has completed a sentence to me that started with "How could you not notice that..." and that makes me wonder what kind of opportunities I've missed because I've got my head in the clouds.  Or more likely, because I'm looking inward rather than outward.

This is especially frustrating because I suspect that if you were to interview me 4 days ago and ask me to describe myself in 20 words or less, observant would probably feature in those 20 words.  Definitely not the top 5, but probably at least the bottom 5.

Something else to work on, I guess.

New Things I've Done:

• I started, on the advice of my new online coach, setting alarms for myself to drink water.  Every 4-ish hours, I have to finish my 800 ml bottle of water.  I have to chug at least one of them every day still, and at least one of my colleagues has asked me if I'm pregnant because I'm peeing so frequently, but I've been successful at this for one whole week.  So YAY!

• I skated with my roller derby team for the first time ever in a parade.  Up north, I had been in the Christmas Parade with my team, but at that point in the year there was usually a carpet of snow on the road already, and often a mid-grade snow storm happening concurrently with the parade, so I'd never actually been on skates.  It was really fun.  I'm pretty certain that some of the people I passed had never seen 8 girls and women dressed in red and white athletic gear looping around on roller skates, and the looks on their faces as we wheeled past was pretty rewarding.

Weird Things That Have Happened To Me:

• Two of the residents at one of the nursing homes I work at got married (to each other) this week.  On a Wednesday during business hours.  Ok, truthfully, this isn't something that happened TO ME, but it was something I bore witness to.  Apparently the nuptials had caused quite a stir in the community among both resident and staff.  Some thought it wasn't right that two elderly people were expressing their love for one another in a commitment-type ceremony in the common room of their long-term care home.  Some thought it was a wonderful celebration of love.  Real talk: I think this home is a pretty great place to work and the atmosphere is usually pretty upbeat, but that day was buzzing with positive energy.  The chaplain I share my office with was practically skipping back to the office to grab his bag before he left for the rest of his day.  I think we should celebrate love more.  Because, based on my sample size n=1, it's nice and makes everyone feel good.  Even if, like me, you're quietly celebrating it by more-or-less eavesdropping on the ceremony from your office while you work on your quarterly assessments.

Resolutions:

• Wear sunscreen.  Back when I was in high school, there was this popular recording that started with the words "Always wear sunscreen."  I first read it in a "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul" book, and it was full of really excellent advice which I have intermittently followed in the fifteen or so years since I first came upon it.  However, the piece of advice that was most emphasized was the sunscreen bit, which I failed to heed today as I embarked on my first parade on a sunny day in late June.  And as I discussed with a fellow roller girl, I inherited the transparent fish-belly skin of my Celtic ancestors which burns if you even think about the sun.  

• Notice more.  My conversations with my boyfriend make me wonder: How many beautiful things have I not seen? How many people have I not helped? How many conversations have I missed because a cool thing was happening right next to me and I completely didn't see it because I was on auto-pilot?  The answer is: probably too many.

Being Wonder Woman?

I often feel like I'm standing on the edge of something look at the edge of something new, and I have to decide if I'm going to take a run at the chasm, Wonder Woman-style (and last time I checked, I'm not a mythical Amazon warrior woman), or jog along the edge to see where that takes me.  To extend the metaphor, I've mainly been jogging on the edge these days to see if I can find a bridge or something that'll take me across, but you can jog for a long time and that is sometimes pretty exhausting. And sometimes the cliff takes an unexpected turn and you end up jogging right off of it.

My band decided to pack it in a couple of weeks ago.  We had some fun, and I think we had a lot of potential, but we struggled to strike the right dynamic and in general we felt like it was better to call it now and still be friends than have a crazy fight as our plane crashed into a field.  Or wait.  That was a movie I like.

If you were to ask me when I was a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was probably "rock star."  Somewhere along the way, after many twists and turns, I ended up being a dietitian instead, which is kind of like the opposite of being a rock star.  But I have always been an avid music appreciator and in my adult life have dabbled in being a semi-professional pianist.  And that's a pretty cool thing to say about myself.  Once in a while, mostly when I was playing the intro to Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright" I actually did feel like I had achieved my childhood dream of being a rock star.

Since I moved here, I've struggled a little bit with who I am in this new place.  I had carved a pretty comfortable niche for myself when I lived up north, and for some reason, the things I did there don't all fit here.  Even though my band taking an extended hiatus was probably the right thing to do, I had a teensy identity crisis.  "Who am I supposed to be now?" I thought.

So, it's time for some Wonder Woman-style leaps across the chasm.  I don't know what that's going to mean yet, but I know it's going to mean more writing.  

New things I've done:

• I started one-on-one coaching with an exercise specialist, via the internet.  Doing it on my own has definitely not resulted in anything more than the same old same-old.  Consequently, my butt hurts.  All the lunges.
• Yoga with Adriene. I started at the beginning of her videos, which mainly are foundational poses.  I do them first thing in the morning, and it's been pretty nice.

Weird things that have happened to me:

• This past Tuesday, a transport truck somehow managed to straddle the median of the QEW through town.  It was full of phospine.  Ever heard of phosphine?  Me neither.  But apparently it's a poisonous gas.  The subsequent evacuation of ground zero resulted in my having my commute time tripled to 3 hours, during which time I really had to pee.  I've learned exactly how long I can hold it.  Roller derby practice was cancelled because the arena was in the evac zone, so I went for a walk instead.  A cyclist was coming down the walking/cycling trail behind me just as a chipmunk was crossing the path.  The chipmunk sustained a serious (probably fatal) brain injury during a collision with the cyclist.  I watched the poor bleeding chipmunk writhing in pain in the middle of the path and didn't really know what to do, so I have to admit that I kept walking.  Shortly thereafter, I saw two deer drinking water across the canal from me.  I feel like if I told this story to a psychic, they would tell me this is some kind of portent of things to come, but I'm too cheap to pay a psychic.

Resolutions:

• Watch less TV.  I love Netflix, but I can certainly attest how habit-forming its full-season releases are.  I literally have to make myself not find a new show to watch when I finish one.  It's not good.

Coming Back

Hey.

Long time no see.

I don't have any excuses.  I just wasn't inspired.

I often find I look back on periods where I haven't done what I should have done, and I think to myself, "It's been a hard couple of months."

And it's true, things have happened.  I rehabbed my broken ankle.  I came back to my sport.  I've been working hard to help rebuild my crumbling team that never seems to be able to keep its head above water.  I bought a house.  I may have gotten my mortgage advisor fired in the process.  I'm in a band.  The band has performances.  And band drama.  And true, I only work 4 days a week, but if you add in my commute, there's another full work day every week spent in the car.

But every couple of months is a hard couple of months, so that's really no excuse.  Life is hard.  Engaging in this little bit of public self-exploration is actually pretty important, and being uninspired should be a giant red flag that something is missing in my life.  I should be looking for my inspiration.

What's going to inspire me, though?

When I think about that, I often think about my 100 Happy Days journey.  It was work to find something that made me happy each day, and be able to take a picture of it.  But I persevered for 100 days and I found that I was a happier person at the end.  Furthermore, if I look back at my previous posts over the years, most of my personal inspiration hasn't come so much like fireworks as a punch to the gut or a fish that got away.  Maybe a hard couple of months is just the inspiration I need.