This is great, of course.
But at the same time, it's feeling a lot like I'm emerging from a bomb shelter after a nuclear winter has passed.
I mean... where do I even begin?
It's daunting to face the task of rebuilding something. Of trying to regroup and get back on even footing. Especially when your somewhat traumatized mind keeps whispering that things are going to go back to hell any second now.
Did I ever mention I'm not an optimist? Can you tell?
Seriously, though, I do realize that I have to believe that my five years of famine have come to at least some sort of an end. Which means I should be looking forward again and moving my way in that general direction.
But man. Moving forward is a lot of work. At the moment, the work is physical, emotional, and psychological. Physically, I have a ton of unpacking to do. Emotionally and psychologically, I'm working toward letting go of five years' worth of crap so I can heal and move on. While dealing with a mind that very much wants to jump into fight-or-flight mode at the smallest opportunity.
Still, the past few days, I've... started feeling like my old self. By this I mean the person I was about three years ago where I felt battered, but firmly believed that I'll still be able to achieve something. I'm hoping that, if this was an action movie, I would be getting up around now to kick life's ass after it gave me a pummeling.
Time will tell whether this is indeed what's happening, but in the meantime, I'm sticking to the one thing I've learned by necessity.
Do one thing.
Even if that's the only thing I manage to do in a day, at least I did that. (Instead of... you know... curling up in a corner and crying the whole time.)
When things were really shit, I did this. It meant I mostly worked and got very little else done. But the result is that I built a new career out of thin air. One that makes me happy and helped things settle down to the extent that now I don't have to be at panic stations the whole time.
The other interesting thing is that now that things are calming down a bit, I can do one thing much quicker and easier... And then I can do another. And another...
Which means that, after focusing on only doing one thing, I can look back at a day like today and be shocked at how much I actually ended up getting done. It becomes as simple as keeping track of what I've done, and actually doing something instead of fussing about it.
Et voila. My semi-inspirational thought for the day.
How are you doing? What are you busy with at the moment?
I don't believe the glass is half empty. It's totally empty. So I understand about not being an optimist. I'm finishing up The Great American Read.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
LOL I see myself as more of a cynical pragmatist. The glass is neither empty nor full, but more... unnecessarily over-sized. ;-)
DeleteI'm a mix of optimism and realism.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it helps to focus on just one thing. Then at least something is accomplished each day. Keep moving forward, Misha.
I'm cynical and realistic by nature, but I try to be optimistic as a matter of discipline. Because life is BLEAK if you don't at least try to see the good things.
DeleteI know from the occasional time when a whole series of things goes wrong, I lose faith in the universe as a whole and am on edge waiting for the next disaster to fall. It's a hard place to escape from, and it does take a lot of patient rebuilding before you can regain some stability. I hope enough good things continue to happen to balance out the crap you've had to deal with.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ian. Yesterday, I had a rough day. Like one of those real no-good days. My shoe broke. Then my mom wrote off one of my car's wheels. Then we found out that our pickup's prop shaft broke.
DeleteWhich could have been a real source of negativity, but then I thought:
If my shoe didn't break, I wouldn't have had a reason to buy the awesome new shoes I got. (And they were a BARGAIN at like $5.)
The wheel got a puncture while I went to get my cat from the vet. The cat had gone from "Oh gosh he might die" to "He's okay to come home" in two days.
And the prop shaft? Well. I knew two people who died in accidents where the prop shaft broke, because broken prop shafts flip cars. We moved house with that pickup, which means in the last week, it's travelled probably something close to 500 km. The break was discovered at home while the pickup was stationary, because our employee noticed it was shaking before he left the yard. He had been on the way to go pick up his daughter from school and we live on a mountain. In short, AMPLE opportunity for a fatal accident, but we dodged the bullet.
So. I had a shit day, and yet I ended it feeling so, SO grateful.
And that made me realize how much it means to find the good things even in the worst of circumstances.
Whatever keeps you moving forward:) Between kids and work it can definitely be difficult for me to fit writing some days.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's hard. I don't even have kids, and it's STILL massively difficult to fit writing in at the moment.
Delete