I mean to tell you, I am just slap worn out. As many of you know, in March, I planted that I would grow strength and good health throughout the year and for me, that involves very healthy eating and lots of exercise, which is not my usual way of being in the world. The planting has been very successful. My eating is mostly in a good place and is something I can live with long-term. I have been doing walking and interval jogging, which has greatly increased my stamina and my strength. I feel good about all of that.
The challenge is that whenever I face up to major life changes, it requires tremendous focus and it’s not that I expect life to stop while I do this, but wow! Life has acted like a spoiled child who isn’t getting enough attention! Everyone around me seems to be having a crisis of some kind or another and it isn’t that I can’t tell my stuff from their stuff, but more that it’s happening right in my front yard – more like in my living room – and demands attention. It is absolutely exhausting. As a result, my latest book is very, very late coming out. I feel as though I drive up and down the mountain constantly, which is a huge time consumer. My running takes up an hour and a half of my mornings during the week.
In addition to dealing with the various issues, sadnesses, challenges, and other fire to put out in my immediate family’s lives, which means in MY life, it seems as if the world has gone out of the way to complicate matters. Consider the Magical Mystery Tour that was my simple trip to the little grocery store on Sunday to pick up some milk. I got into the car and there was a smell that for all the world, smelled like something died. I went through the car and couldn’t find it and man, it was horrific. Finally, Josh found it. When the kids unloaded the groceries from the trunk on Friday, they left a canvas bag (I use the ecological shopping bags) with a bag of frozen chicken breasts in it for two days in the heat. Not only was I out eight bucks for a bag of chicken, but my whole car reeked of dead bird. Got that managed and headed out, only to immediate get behind two RVs going down Logan’s Grade. Mind you, Logan’s Grade is only around a quarter mile stretch of road, but the change in altitude between the top and the bottom is around (literally) a thousand feet and it is very curvy and there are no guard rails, so you just go right off the cliff if you screw up. The road itself is just wide enough for two very average sized cars to pass one another and they could likely high five out the window as they did so. Here we have two RVs inching down the mountain at around 15 mph. Not only was I burning up my brakes to try to keep from driving into them, even in a lower gear, but their brakes were literally on fire and smoking to high heaven. There is an alternate route that adds maybe 6-8 minutes onto the trip, but the road is about a mile wide. It is not at all for people to not care if they inconvenience the people who actually live here and know how to drive Logan’s Grade just so they can shave off that 6-8 minutes.
So after I finished creeping down Logan’s (and I swear, if I went any slower, I would have to be in reverse), I followed them creepy crawly for several miles, they pulled over and let me and a lot of other people pass, probably because their brakes were still smoking to the extreme. Just a couple more miles down the road, I rounded a corner and found people standing in the road and a car stopped in the road going the opposite direction. Another car, pointed the same direction I was going, was pulled off to the side of the road on the right. Johnny First Responder, whose car was parked in the middle of the road, was in the other (my) lane of traffic holding up his hand stopping traffic and screaming into his cell phone to a 9-1-1 operator about a woman being unconscious behind the wheel of the other car. A woman who was with her was fluttering around the other car. A giant truck going wicked fast almost plowed into me where I was stopped and when the guy on the phone finally decided that maybe he could talk on the phone and not be in the middle of the road playing traffic cop, the truck behind me gunned it and flew around me, almost hitting me. The black truck behind HIM thought that was a grand idea and also floored it. Josh started yelling at me to “JUST GO!!” which I guess I was supposed to do with two huge trucks burning around me.
That has been the theme. Anything that needs to happen is complicated almost to the point of comedy. Yesterday,I went to town to open a business account. That was my whole mission. The bank manager invited me to sit, then told me that a training class resulted in only she and a teller working in the bank. She could take my basic information, but not open the account. Finally, Logan, who could not have been over twenty-five, showed up and apparently, he was the vital key to the world of new accounts. To make a long story short, I ended up having to go back to the bank two more times over the next two hours to sign papers that they decided now needed to be signed and to my knowledge, Eric’s still have not been signed.
My next book is more than two weeks late because life keeps getting in the way of writing. It’s like the never ending book that just goes on and on and on, but there is specific material that has to be covered. I sat through a ridiculously hot sweat lodge trying to burn off whatever is pulling these challenges to me. I have meditated. I have taken ritual baths. I am still lost. Today, I did something I almost never do. I did a Tarot reading for myself, asking what I needed to know about my current circumstances and where I am headed:
It is significant that five out of nine cards in the reading are Major Arcana, which means it’s a spiritually significant time in my life. At the top or head of the reading, we have the Queen of Wands/Rods, who is very stalwart and committed to the process. That indicates that all things flow forward from my own sense of commitment. The Star is inspiration and illumination, of which I have none right now, so serious, WTF. Apparently, based on the flow of the cards, once I get that, the happy harvest home will flow from it (the 4 of Wands). On the other side stemming from the commitment is The Emperor, which is an act of pure will. The exercise is nothing less than that. I have to talk myself into it every time. If it were not for Andrea, this time would be like all the other times. From the will power flows Strength, which taming the beast inside and knowing when to speak and when to be silent. That is a major lesson for me right now and I am trying to find my way through the time when I should listen and be supportive of people and when I should walk away and when I should speak up in my own defense or with ideas.
In the center of the reading or the heart position, we have the Wheel of Fortune, which means everything that is happening is a function of Fate and is absolutely meant to happen right now (great). Below that, we have The Sun, which is joy and happiness to the extreme and next to that is the Six of Swords, which means a journey of some kind is at hand (good). The outcome is the King of Swords, which is a protective, aggressive, and sometimes opinionated man (Hmm, I think I have one of those).
So really, I’m not a lot more clued in than I was before. It basically says, “Learn when to shut up, stay the course, trust the process, it will get better later, and it’s all about Eric.” Thanks, CARDS.
I am not a rock. I am not an island. I love having an interactive, plugged in, cooperative, inclusive life. Sometimes, though, it would be great if things were about me.
Meh, it’s just a flesh wound. I’m still in the game.
Rant off.