On paper

What a weekend.

Saturday, I went to a conference that I've attended before. It always recharged me, in the past. This time, it didn't. Many reasons (almost all of them completely external to me, for once), but "recharging" is what I hoped for, and sadness and grieving were what I received.

It was a two-day conference; I was so bummed out by the Saturday session that I bailed on the Sunday session (I foresaw a repeat of Saturday's non-recharging, I saw no reason to drive that distance, and sit in the really really hard-to-deal-with chairs, merely to get disappointed for several hours, again). Instead, I stayed home and spent the time writing some workhorse music for Pentecost (hymn arrangements for brass quartet), stuff that fit into the "for various reasons, that needs to be done first" category. I'm taking a break to type this, then I'm going to go back to saw away at another work, A Big Piece that, @$@#$ it, I promised myself quite literally years ago that I'd have done for this June's graduation, and not having it done is really pissing me off. Hardly a "muse-attracting" emotion, but there you are.

At some point, I'm going to need to connect with the gift of yesterday's disappointment. I'm so "out of energy," so "having no fun," so "finding no enjoyment in anything," I'm looking desperately for anything outside of me that I can hug and get some reassurance from.

And I'm not finding it. Anywhere.

In my head, I know that the lesson is to look within for joy, not without. Yeah, on paper, that's a great lesson.

But in my heart, I'm not connecting with that particular lesson. I just don't care enough.

The longer-every-day litany of body-used-to-function-better-but-doesn't-seem-to-want-to-anymore is most definitely NOT facilitating the finding of joy in anything.

If anything, it's reinforcing "I just don't care about anything anymore."

In my head, I think that I probably still do care. Yeah, on paper, I suppose I still care.

On paper. But my heart? My spirit? Those are seriously disconnected from really caring.

In my head, I know that this is an MS hurdle that needs to be overleaped.

Yup. Grapple with it, and overcome it. That's what needs to be done!

On paper, that's a great idea, isn't it.