Starving today

I’m hungry today. As in, ravenous. I had my usual breakfast egg with some coffee, but that wasn’t nearly enough. So, I finished off a sandwich I’d made yesterday. I’m still hungry. This feels like the start of a migraine coming on, when everything feels weird and trippy, and I’m hungrier than usual.

It wouldn’t surprise me, if that were the case. It would make perfect sense, in fact.

Yesterday was a long day. I had to work, starting at 6 a.m., then I had to run some overdue errands. I had to prep for a trip to the next state, where my spouse and I were attending an art show by our friend who is literally on their deathbed. We were all hoping they’d be there, but they couldn’t make it.

Dying takes precedence. Especially doing it well.

I’ve had a lot of people pass in and out of my life. Death was a regular visitor to my family, when I was growing up. That’s what you get when you have a large family and you stay in touch with a wide array of second and third cousins (many of them once or twice removed). Grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends of the family… every year or so, somebody who meant something to me died, while I was growing up.

So, yeah, I have some familiarity with loss.

Plus, a lot of people have come in and out of my life through job changes, relocations, and just the usual migrations of people in these times. Whenever someone moved away, never to be seen or heard from again (this was pre-internet times), it was just as if they’d died. And that happened to me a lot.

It’s happened so much, that when people die, I don’t have the same level of devastation that others do. To me, dying is a mystery — which I’m not qualified to understand completely. I leave it up to The Great Almighty to work out. I don’t believe in hell, anymore, so I’m not really torn up when people die, thinking they might burn in fire and brimstone for all eternity. I tend to think of death more as a transition to a different state of being. The body dissolves, but it continues on. We’re breathing air that contains tiny bits of Beethoven, from what I’ve heard.

Anyway, yesterday was a marathon of sorts. I didn’t realize how tired I was, until I’d done my mid-day errands and had my shower… then started to crash. But there was no time to crash. I had to keep going. The 90-minute drive to where we were going took 2 hours (because my spouse forgot some stuff and we had to improvise & make stops at stores along the way). And when we got there, I couldn’t find parking. I couldn’t even find the venue where the art show was… it was really disorienting, and I was tired, so that was exciting.

I did find the place, though, and the evening commenced with way more social activity than I’ve seen in quite some time. I saw a number of people I used to hang out with a lot, and I did a lot more talking to like-minded people than I do on a daily basis. It was a very artsy crowd, which was a very different “feel” than the mainstream suburbanites I’m usually around. It wasn’t better, it wasn’t worse, it was just different. And doing “different” takes effort for me.

The ride home was trippy, too. I was even more out-of-it than I was driving there, and I nearly ran a red light. But we got home safe and sound, and I got in bed at a fairly decent hour. Slept like a rock. Strange dreams, though. To be expected.

Anyway, I have another full day ahead of me — a bunch of stuff to do this morning, then I crash this afternoon. All afternoon. The plan is to have a hot-hot shower at 1 p.m., then go back to bed and not set an alarm. Just sleep.

And that’s what it takes: a good balance between doing and not-doing, between going and resting. I’m at my best, when I’m hyper-engaged and keeping really busy doing things that matter to me. I haven’t done as much of that in the past couple of years, as I would have liked to. For some reason, everything felt like it was stacked against me, and no matter what I tried, nothing really worked out. But now this sense has unaccountably changed, and I’m feeling more optimistic and practically directed, than I have been in a while. It feels pretty good. I just need to remember to take good care of myself. When I’m starting to get signs of a migraine, take some time off to recover… and then get back into the flow with a good balance of what-is and what-will-be.

It’s always a balance, and now that feels even more important.

I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve got a life to live. There’s nothing like having someone close to you die, to remind you of how short life can be, and how important it is to bring your best to each and every day.

Duly noted.

Now, it’s time for another glass of water.

Getting back the calm – regardless

Photo credit: Myshelle Congeries

Before my TBI in 2004, my weekends were a combination of busy-ness and calm. It seemed like I had unlimited energy, and I could pack a lot into each weekend, including studying things that fascinated me and taking long walks in the woods and working in my yard and doing chores around the house and working on my personal projects and cooking a nice supper.

Yesterday, I did two of those things – a few chores around the house and yardwork. My lawn desperately needed to be mowed. I had not taken a mower to it in over a month. The grass was high. But perhaps waiting so long was for the best, because at the beginning of the summer, huge patches of grass were gone, thanks to grubs. I’ve had grub problems for a number of years, but this year it was particularly bad, with much of my front yard bare patches of dirt. I can’t use any pesticides on my lawn, because I am on a well, and I don’t want it getting into my drinking water. Plus, I tend to spaz a little bit, when I am handling poisons and dangerous objects. I have sudden spasms that make me jump, and then I hurt myself or get the chemicals on my hands or on my face. Not good.

So, I looked around online and found a recipe for mixing mouthwash with alcohol and water and laundry detergent, and I sprayed the grubby patches liberally. Then I put down grass seed and watered it a little bit, and let nature take its course. Within a month, I had a lawn full of thick grass, which I just let grow, to get its root system in place. I didn’t want the grass to have to put a lot of energy into regrowing the blades, and use more of its energy for growing roots.

So, I let it be. And the results are pretty danged good.

No more bare spots.

Of course, yesterday I was sure I’d wrecked my mower a couple of times, as it stalled on the thick, high grass. It must have stalled at least 5-10 times, and each time I wasn’t sure it would start again. But it did. And I was able to cut my lawn relatively even, in the end. I’ll need to make another quick pass today, but I got the job done as I could, under the circumstances.

No 8-inch mohawk.

I also did some cleaning around the house. My spouse has mobility issues, so they can’t do a lot of cleaning, so that falls to me. I did a thorough wipe-down of the half-bath downstairs, and I cleaned the grungiest parts of the full bathroom upstairs. I was seriously low on energy, yesterday, but I did get something done. I also did some more organizing in my study — to the point where I’m comfortable being in the room again. It’s been so messy for so long, I haven’t wanted to spend any time here. That’s different, now, though. And I’m much more comfortable here than I’ve been for quite some time.

I also have more ideas for how to better organize it – I have the right sized boxes that I can slide under my bed to keep a lot of my books that I don’t want to look at anymore. I don’t want to get rid of them. I just need more space. Having those boxes gives me more options. And I can use more options.

The question is – and book-lovers will totally get this – which books do I put away? They are all my “friends”  that have special memories associated with them. I’m not sure I want to make those memories disappear from sight.

Alternatively, I could get bigger bookshelves for my study. That might be a good idea.

Book decisions aside, today I am focusing seeking calm. Chilling out my system, so I can relax. I have been pretty uptight for the last couple of weeks – partly because I’m back to helping my spouse with packing and planning for their events every weekend, which can be pretty stressful for me. It’s putting an even bigger load on my system than usual, and I need to find ways to offset that. Things like getting back into my sitting practice… making sure I stretch… getting out in nature when I can… and keeping their crazy-nuttiness from affecting me.

I’ve gotta work on that “CN (Crazy-Nuttiness) Defense” pretty actively. Because it’s really all around me. CN is around me at work, it’s around me whenever I interact with other people. And if I’m not careful, it drives my blood pressure up, which gives me a headache. I’ve been getting more headaches, lately, which is disappointing. But it also shows me that I need to take corrective action.

After all, I can’t expect the rest of the world to accommodate me. And if I know what to do, to keep myself healthy and safe and sane, then it’s really on me to do just that, whenever the situation calls for it.

I also need to be mindful of those times when I am tired and out of sorts and I am more likely to respond intensely to something that normally wouldn’t bother me. My spouse has a habit of starting really energized conversations about good experiences, and then when the conversation is just about to conclude, switching gears to be critical or find fault or start getting really negative about someone or something. They don’t see it as negative – they get a big energy charge out of it. But to me it just sounds like they’re exhaling smog, and I start to choke on it.

I know why they do it – neurologically, they rely on a “negative” charge to get their adrenaline going, so they feel more alert. They are feeling good when they’re talking about good things, and when they start to run out of energy, they resort to negative criticism and adrenaline to “keep the party going” — predictable standard-issue behavior for them.

And if I’m tired (from the animated conversation we just had), I get really angry and upset when they start being critical and talking about behaviors and choices I don’t agree with. It’s insidious — and it always catches me by surprise, just how quickly they can change gears. And it’s a sign of their cognitive issues that they do this — which makes me even more upset.

End result: migraine.

So, I need to step away and catch my breath, slow down my racing heart and calm down my over-wired system. I have to get away from them as soon as possible, so I can breathe freely again… and when I’m calm, I can come back, but not before. Sometimes that takes a while. And that makes my spouse very anxious. They see it as having to do with my brain injury, rather than their own cognitive impairment. Their perseveration seems completely justified to them, and it makes me physically ill to think about what’s causing that — and how they’re not doing all that much to slow down the process.

Cerebrovascular dementia is not much fun. Especially watching it happen to someone you love who is unable to help themself deal with it. Add to that panic-anxiety issues, and it makes it all but impossible to discuss. And if you can’t talk about it, you can’t figure out what’s really going on — and you can’t do anything about it. It’s so critical to control your blood sugar and your moods, so you don’t “blow out” your system. Long-term elevated blood sugar compromises the vascular system. And high blood pressure puts additional strain on an already weakened system. NONE of this is good for the brain.

My spouse also believes that they only have a few more years to live, so they are putting a lot of pressure on me to travel with them before they die. I don’t have a million hours of vacation saved up, so there’s only so much I can do. It’s actually the pressure of them constantly talking about where we’re going to travel and when and how we’ll do it, that weighs me down.

It may be a vacation for them, but it’s an awful lot of work for me. They don’t see it, however. All they see is what they want and how they can get it. Nobody else really matters that much to them, when they’re locked on the target of getting what they “need”.

I have a feeling I’m going to be blogging about my spouse’s decline a good deal, in the coming years. It’s ironic that, no sooner do feel like I’m back on track with my life and I feel like myself again, than my spouse begins to decline. But it does put me in a better position to A) respond appropriately to them, and B) try to educate and raise awareness with others about what the deal is with stroke, vascular dementia, diabetes, and how they all conspire to ruin lives.

Bottom line: Diabetes weakens the vascular system. It weakens the walls of the blood vessels over time. Unregulated blood sugar can make you get crazy about little things, which drives your blood pressure up. That doesn’t bode well for blood vessels that are weakened. And since the brain has so many, many blood vessels, it’s one of the first places that things start to break down, small bleeds happen, cells die, and your cognition gets f*cked. Lack of exercise doesn’t help. The body needs to be moved and challenged to stay strong, and it also needs exercise to clear out the gunk that builds up from stress and other environmental “pollutants”. So, if you don’t ever move, your body isn’t going to get the movement it needs to keep healthy.  And if you never move, you can’t keep strong so that you’re able to keep your balance — that puts you at risk for a fall, which may include a bone break or a TBI. None of this is good.

But I’m getting off a tangent. More — much more — on that later.

Anyway, like I said, I can’t expect the rest of the world to accommodate me. Life will run its course. I just need to find calm in the midst, find ways to keep the joy in the midst of others’ pain… to keep calm in the center of the storm. My own internal life is my own space – and that is the only space I have any control over, whatsoever.

I need to make a point of taking very good care of myself. Take my dose of “Fukitol” and head for the great outdoors. Or, if I have to stay inside, keep that mindset of being outdoors and not really giving a damn about what other people do, say, or choose to do with their lives.

That being said, it’s time for a walk in the woods. I do have the energy for that, this morning. No guarantees on what’s happening later today.

For now… off I go.

Onward!

 

 

Late night, and late morning, too

I had to work late, last night – as in, early this morning. We started an installation project around midnight, and we were all on the phone till 2 a.m.

The install didn’t actually work 100%, but my piece of it did, which was a huge credit to my team, because although we were the ones who had tested out our piece of the puzzle the least, we were the ones who actually had the least amount of problems.

We had one little thing we needed to re-do, but other than that, we were good.

Which was really what we needed to prove, anyway.

The rest of the extended team has to sort things out, but we’re good to go, the next time we take a crack at it.

So, I got to bed around 2:30, and I actually managed to sleep till 9:30, which is a rarity with me. It truly is. Typically, I would wake up at 7 a.m. and just be awake — which would have given me all of 4-1/2 hours of sleep. No good. As it was, I got about 7 hours of sleep, which is my minimum for basic functionality.

It’s been an exciting week. I had a phone screen job interview on Thursday, and I think it went okay. It’s a permanent job, not a contract, and there are lots of benefits and paid time off and all that. I’m not sure if the money is there in the paycheck, but it has lots of other perks to go along with it.

I thought the conversation went fine. It didn’t fire me up and get me really excited. It’s a job I’ve done a number of times in the past, so I could do it. I’m just not sure I really want to. After considering getting the hell out of my current job, it occurs to me that I’m actually fine, being where I am. I know I complain and bitch about things, but that’s to be expected — anywhere I am. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

So, to make a change from the situation I’m in, which is safe and guaranteed and has plenty of money associated with it, and is actually really easy for me to do, might not be the smartest thing. My present situation gives me plenty of flexibility and leeway to come and go as I please — not to mention affords me plenty of time to work on my other projects, like this blog. If I transfer to a permanent, full-time position, then I’m stuck in the corporate world with a corporate job and all the strings attached that come with it.

Nothing’s free — least of all a “good job”. It has a price tag attached.

So, if it works out with the new thing, it works out. But I have a feeling it’s not going to give me what I’m looking for. I’ll go talk to them, if they want to meet, but I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket. And I’m interviewing them, not just being interviewed by them.

I have my pride. And I know my worth. I know the worth of my freedom, and even though I’m not fully vested with any one company right now, my freedom is worth it. Everything has a price, you know?

So, I’m still a little groggy from the late night. I almost fell last night, when I was standing up from the table. That’s not good. I really need to take care of myself this weekend and recuperate. It takes a lot out of me, to work late. More than I’d like. But there it is.

Main thing is, I did get 7 hours of solid sleep. And I have another day and a half to make up the difference.

Who am I today?

Summary / Bottom Line

I don’t feel like myself, these days. I haven’t felt “like myself” in a long time. And all the hopes and dreams I once had as a kid, seem so far from me. But maybe, just maybe, I am truly living my hopes and dreams… I just don’t feel like I am. And that changed sense of myself is keeping me from realizing how much my life really does resemble my onetime hopes and dreams. Restoring a sense of self can be a huge challenge with traumatic brain injury, and adjusting to how things truly are, versus how they appear to be, or feel, is one of my biggest challenges.

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I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about my identity… who I was when I was a kid, who I am now, and who I’ve been along the way. I recently had a birthday, and while I don’t feel like I’m having a mid-life crisis, I still have been thinking a whole lot about whether I am where I expected / hoped / planned to be, when I was younger.

I know that “life happens” and we can end up very far from where we wanted to be when we were younger. And to be honest, I’m not even sure if I had specific plans about the trajectory of my life, when I was younger.

I do know that what I wanted more than anything, was to become a scientific researcher. I wanted to go to school to get a bunch of degrees, and then focus on research. I’m not sure what kind of researcher I wanted to become — I just wanted to study, collect information, synthesize it, and publish it.

I also wanted to be a writer. Maybe more than being a researcher. Being a writer is what I always wanted to BE. Research is what I wanted to DO. In a way, being a writer is like being a researcher – it’s not the same type of science, but there’s a sort of science to it — observing, drawing conclusions, testing your hypotheses, etc.

Over the course of my life… well, life happened. I got hurt. A bunch of times. I fell and hit my head a bunch of times. I got in car accidents a bunch of times. I was attacked. I did stupid things. And I got hurt. I also had a lot of chronic pain that knocked me out of the running when I was in my early 20s. And I got in trouble with the law and some rough characters, and I had to go on the lam when I was in my late teens, which limited my future prospects.

Now, looking back, I see how so-so-so many opportunities have been out of reach for me, because of everything that happened back then. I have done my best to patch things up over the course of my life, and relatively speaking, I’ve done extremely well for myself.

But am I really where I want to be today?

I’m not sure. This life I’m leading doesn’t look and feel like I hoped it would. It feels strange and foreign to me. Hell, I feel strange and foreign to me. I feel like a stranger to myself, half the time. I don’t have that feeling of being “comfortable in my skin” that people talk about.

Now, I used to have that feeling. I used to have a clear sense of who I was and what I stood for. And I didn’t let anyone hold me back. Even when I was getting in trouble with the law and then went underground, living overseas till things quieted down here, I had a clear sense of who I was, and what I stood for. I had to change my life for a while, and I couldn’t do a lot of the things I had once enjoyed doing — like going anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted. But it didn’t feel like I’d lost a part of myself. I’d screwed up for sure, but I was determined to fix things.

When I was in all that crippling pain, 25 years ago, I had to let go of a lot of activities that had once meant a lot to me. I had to stop exercising and spending time outside in the sun. The diagnosis that the doctors came up with was probably wrong (I never had tests that confirmed or denied it 100% — they didn’t have good tests, back then). But I had to take steps in any case. As it turned out, the things that I was told not to do — exercise a lot, move a lot, test myself physically — were exactly the kinds of things that I needed to do to alleviate my pain. Movement and staying active was NOT going to hurt me. Being sedentary was.

In those years when I was dealing with the pain, I lost of lot of things that meant a lot to me. I couldn’t eat and drink the same things anymore, and I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do. But I didn’t have a sense of having lost myself. I was still who I was, and I was clear about that.

Now things feel so strange and foreign to me. It’s hard for me to describe. Even though I know I’m doing better, and I have numbers and feedback from friends and family that indicate I’m improving, I still don’t feel like myself. It’s hard to describe — just that someone else seems to have taken up residence in my life.

I know my personality has changed a good deal, since my fall in 2004. And it kind of freaks me out, because that wasn’t the first mild TBI I’d ever had. I’ve had a bunch — probably about 9. I’ve been assaulted once, had at least 4-5 falls, got hurt a couple of times playing soccer, got majorly dinged while playing football, I’ve had a couple of car accidents, and so forth. But not until I fell in 2004, did it totally screw up my life.

Not until the past years, have I felt like a stranger to myself.

It’s kind of getting me down, too. At least, it has been. I try not to think about it, but it’s still always there… Who am I today? What am I going to do today that doesn’t seem “like me”? What am I going to feel and think and say and do that doesn’t seem consistent with the person I know myself to be?

That feeling of observing yourself going through life… it’s weird. Disorienting. I resolve over and over again, to hang in there and just keep plugging, until I see some glimmer of who I am. And sometimes it works. I’ve been feeling more like “myself” lately, which is nice. But at the same time, I don’t quite trust it. Like in Flowers For Algernon, when the main character stops taking the medicine that made him think and act like a normal person… and he drifts back into his old state. Whenever things are going well for me, I feel like I’m looking over my shoulder for signs that I’m slipping back into not recognizing myself.

I would like to stop this. It’s not fun, and it’s not productive. It serves no one, and being on high alert over it just kills my quality of life.

So, over the weekend, when I had time to think about it, I realized that maybe it would be better if I just acclimated to this feeling and let it be. It could be that I actually am getting back to my old self — I just don’t have the sense that I am. It could be that I’m even better than my old self. There’s a good chance of that, because my old self was majorly concussed and had all sorts of issues that I didn’t even realize. It could be that I’m in better shape than ever before… but I don’t have the sense of it being so, and therefore I don’t trust it.

I don’t feel like I’m myself, most of the time. Maybe all of the time. But maybe I actually am. Maybe the missing piece is NOT my personality and my identity, but the sense of my personality and identity. Just because the sense of being who I am isn’t there, doesn’t mean I can’t BE there myself.

Rather than getting all caught up in recreating that sense of myself, maybe I need to just get on with living, regardless of the sense of myself. Maybe I just need to trust it… not place such high demands on what qualifies me as me, or not-me.

And maybe — just maybe — the life I have now is exactly what I was hoping /expecting / planning / dreaming I’d have, back when I was a kid. Looking around at my study and thinking about how I live my life, I realize that I am doing exactly what I always wanted to do, when I was younger — reading and researching and writing and publishing. I write and publish this blog. I read and research TBI-related materials (especially concussion and mild TBI) and I spend a lot of time thinking about them.

I also read and research other subjects and write about them, though I haven’t published much of that … yet. I am getting to a place where I soon will, and then I will have that to my credit, as well. This is all done independently, according to my own standards. I’m not doing it professionally, but I have managed to help some people, here and there along the way. That much is clear from the comments on my blog.

So, even though it may feel like I’m one person, the objective facts reveal something quite different. And for me, it seems the challenge is to not let feelings of weirdness and alienation and failure stop me from just getting on with my life.

At some point, I just need to trust. I’m working on it.

Onward.
 

Pacing is everything

Better plug in soon

Okay, so I’ve got the majority of the hell-work out of the way for my day-job, and I’m itching to get back to the other projects I’ve had going on the side. Up until about three weeks ago, I was able to juggle everything pretty well, coordinating my schedule so that I could do a whole lot in relatively little time.

Then things got insane with the day-job and I had to drop a lot of other things I was working on. Not fun. It was pretty much non-stop focus on those two massive deadlines I was balancing. I got it done as much as humanly possible, and the most important things were completed on time. Unfortunately, there were numerous links in the chain that broke, for one reason or another, so it wasn’t a seamless, uninterrupted process, and I’ve been wrangling with leftover issues for the past several days.

But the bottom line is, I made the deadline, and life is good. Pretty much.

Now I’m eager to get back to what I was doing before, but I’ve got to check myself. I’m pretty well exhausted by everything that went on, and I’m just not myself these days. I’ve been running on adrenaline for weeks — and I’m still pretty amped-up, since little things still keep breaking — so I’m in no shape to get back to doing the things I was doing before, all at top speed.

I need time to rest, relax, and recharge my batteries. If I had a battery indicator on me, it would be flashing red, with a little tiny stripe of power left at the bottom. I’ve still got some juice, but I need to do some serious recovery, before I get back into things.

And that’s hard. Because the other things I’m working on, really bring me a lot of satisfaction and happiness. And they are time-sensitive, too, so I really need to keep on track. But seriously, if I dive back into everything right away, it could get really ugly really quick. And there is too much riding on the other things, for me to just rush it.

So, here are my priorities:

1. Rest and relax and rejuvenate and recharge. Recover. Not later. Right away.
2. Do an assessment, while I am on vacation next week, of what I’ve accomplished and where I am going, and what I need to get done, so I am clear, moving forward.
3. Get back to my routine and my regular schedule that lets me do a lot in relatively little time. That includes regular exercise and good nutrition.
4. Focus on updating my resume and cover letter, and reach out to headhunters and recruiters with my most current information.
5. Take care of everything that needs to be taken care of in my current job, tie up the loose ends, and get ready to go.
6. Take good care of myself, so that when I am presented with more opportunities, I am in decent shape to respond positively.

That should do it for the short term. I really need to get myself on good footing, before I head off into the sunset. There’s no point in me starting on a bad note, and if I push too hard too soon, that’s what can happen.

Looking for a new job can be extremely challenging and anxiety-producing. So can starting a new business. I need to be the strongest I can be, to make the most of the opportunities.

And now, off to start the rest of my day.

Onward.

Rolling with the changes

Roll with it

So, the new managers from HQ have returned to their homes, and we have one last day with the old boss — who is definitely not the same as the new uber-boss. In spite of the uncertainty and the stress of dramatic change, I am very glad that this change is happening at work. I feel like I can breathe again. Literally.

I hadn’t realized just how strongly I had been affected by the behavior and demeanor of the old uber-boss. They were just so manic. Always pushing and pushing and pushing and instigating and maneuvering and working an angle and promoting their agenda, which has seldom been the same as the company’s agenda. It’s been very stressful to walk that fine line between what the uber-boss tells you you’re supposed to do, and what the company (and their boss) expects of you. Frankly, it’s really screwed up the past two years of my performance – I haven’t been able to serve two masters effectively, but that’s exactly what I’ve had to do.

I think those days are behind me, and I’m feeling pretty positive about this change.

One more day with the uber-boss in the house. One more day…

They’re not a bad person, just problematic. And badly behaved. Hurt and insecure and passive-aggressive. They are also in a marriage that doesn’t work for them, which I’m sure contributes to their level of stress and their bad behavior.

Anyway, that is nearly behind me now, and it’s time to move on to what’s next. What’s happening now. I have a lot to catch up on, and now that there isn’t constant interference and people constantly trying to steer me in the wrong direction, I can relax.

And stretch. Last night when I got home from work, I was so wiped out. But then I stretched a bit, and it felt like some life was coming back to me. I have been so tense, and I didn’t even realize it. Or maybe I did realize it but I figured that’s just how things were, so there was nothing I could do aside from accept it. So I just went with it and tried to do what damage control I could.

Now I feel like I am out of damage control mode, and I’m loosening up again. Stretching my tight and tense muscles, cracking my joints, feeling my whole body loosening up. I don’t feel like I have to be in a protective state anymore, always braced for what new foolishness is coming down the pike, and it’s pretty great. All these changes, I can take, because it’s not personal anymore. It’s not individual. We’re all in the same boat, trying to keep afloat and move in the right direction, which is a very different scene than it was before.

So, change… I do need to take care of myself, and make sure I get some good sleep this weekend. I am listing all the things I need to do this weekend, making my schedule now, so I don’t have to think about it for the next two days. Just do it. I’ve got to replace some insulation in my basement, and clean up a bunch of crap, so I can move things around and have a decent living space. I also need to get some extra sleep — a nap on both afternoons, if at all possible — and get some exercise, too. I am feeling a lot of energy coming back to me, and I need to pace myself, so I don’t wear myself out. It’s all very exciting and dynamic; I just need to make sure I don’t over-extend myself in all the excitement.

Fortunately, that seems to be the direction that our new management is going – they don’t want to move too fast and make changes too quickly. And that’s good. It will give us time to adjust and adapt and figure things out as we go along. I’m sure there will be conflicts and confusion along the way, but in the end, I do believe it will all work out okay.