Side effects include...

This is definitely one of those "still reeling" from whatever-it-was days...

No church this morning (choir was excused), so I stayed in bed until 10-something.

Sat at the computer to send Father's Day gifts to my dad and my brother (father of two). And, yeah, to do this.

Started (sort of) the day the usual to-do fantasies... Final school-software touch-ups, which can be fixed by remote login. Fiddle with my music website. Come up with new ways to post recordings of my music (for example, this setting of the Phos Hilaron, "Hail Gladsome Light," one of the, if not the, oldest of all Christian hymns).  Work on a piece for summer choir that's half-finished (let's call it that: it's more optimistic than calling it "half-begun"). Work on "The Song of the Mary Whalen," something I need to write for concert band.

Don't think I'll be able to accomplish much, if any, of those. I'm still reeling from mourning "the transition"--those are the words that people in the Science of Mind church used, to refer to "dying;" fortunately for me it's just leaving a job, but it kinda does feel like it has a death-like permanence and death-like threshold... so I guess, to continue the thanato-metaphors, I'm currently in the bardo, which is definitely not a place to go simply when you're trying to "get work done." (The bardo itself is "getting work done," but not in the quotidian "clearing the to-do list" way. Not your post-it-note to-do list, at least.)

If the best I'm going to be able to do today is "poke at something," at least I'll try to do it outside... or at worst, facing the outside. Get some air, some light, some warmth.

Which, when you think about it, is a good way to spend a day, M.S. or not... and definitely a good way for us M.S.ers to seek healing.

Fresh air. Comfort, and being comforted. Light. No side effects, as long as you don't sit unprotected in direct sun for too long. A good way to thing for all of us to do, M.S. or not.

So... go outside. Breathe. Enjoy the light. Of course, we gotta add a pharmaceutical/legal disclaimer to any prescription...

"Side effects include bliss. And smiling. Ask your doctor if bliss and smiling are right for you."

F##k that "ask your doctor" crap. Just go outside, breathe, and smile.

And make the world a better place... one smile at a time.