Wednesday Cycles and Associations

--For those of you mournful about middle age, read this article in The Washington Post.  Here's a taste:  "These two roles of middle-aged humans — as super-providers and master culture-conveyers — continue today. In offices, on construction sites and on sports fields around the world, we see middle-aged people advising and guiding younger adults and sometimes even ordering them about. Middle-aged people can do more, they earn more and, in short, they run the world."

--Several decades of midlife as evolutionary advantage?  I'll try to start thinking of it that way, while at the same time reminding myself that I won't be on this earth forever.  Time to get moving on the projects that mean the most to me.

--Thank goodness I'm not a ballerina--my glory years would be behind me, and my crippled feet would barely support me.

--What would it be like to be as thin as a ballerina?  I've never been that thin, even when I was 8 years old.  Sigh.

--But I've been healthy, and that's no small thing.

--My brain has been cycling like this since yesterday:  a smidge of despair, followed by looking on the bright side, followed by a pervading sense of descending doom, followed by a concerted effort to shake off gloom.

--I was able to hold on to the refreshed feeling from my retreat for much of the day. 

--Being conscious of trying to hold on to that refreshed feeling made me realize how many obstacles the world will throw up against a woman trying to hold on to feelings of renewal.

--I also spent much of yesterday thinking about my idea for a memoir and planning the first essay about finishing the assessment document on the feast of the Epiphany.

--I've already got a lot of rough draft material in my blogs and poems.  This morning, I came up with an idea for how to organize the rough draft material.  It's not a complicated idea, since I'm organizing the memoir by calendar and liturgical year.  But I want to put everything into one document, just to see what I've already got.  As I look through my blogs, I want to cut and paste as I go along, instead of the more cumbersome process of taking notes and making decisions before cutting and pasting.

--Even though I back up my blogs, I live in fear that one day I will wake up and my blogs will have been rendered inaccessible.

--"Live in faith, not in fear."  I must remember my mantra.

--This will be a day of expensive car repairs; the car developed a horrible, rasping brake noise during our travels.  Luckily, we made it back safely.  Unfortunately, the car needs rotors on each wheel, brake pads, the works.

--And we may have more repairs soon, if the tire warranty turns out to be invalid.  Turns out, the tires have dry rot.  Who knew that could happen?

--Another mantra:  Anne Lamott's quote from her friend John, one I come back to again and again: ". . . if you have a problem you can solve by throwing money at it, you don't have a very interesting problem" (Traveling Mercies 259).