Wonder if...

As Jon Stewart has been known occasionally to say, "I got nothing."

I can barely control my right hand with enough precision to use a mouse, type, tap a button on my iPhone without putting my eye out or dropping the phone on my face or even tapping the "tap here" surface, much less a selected spot on said surface.

Could barely spread jam on a waffle. Without "spreading" it everywhere. The floor, my lap, the napkin, the... everything.

Rocky Mountain MS Society this week has an article about "fatigue."

Wonder if I'll have the strength to read it?

Gotta have your priorities

Ah, Seth Godin... Yesterday's blog post, about "Analytics without action," was almost the very picture of where I used to work. Except they would gather bad data, badly, creating untrustworthy analytics, whose only purpose was to make Them happy. We've got data, you see! And merely by the having of this data, They were proven Right, which of course was the only reason to gather said data. Who needs to be so scrupulous about data gathering? This proves We're Right, which was after all what We wanted.

I guess I'm not really over my last workplace. Attachment is a powerful thing...

I'm not as violently enraged simply by remembering the existence of Said Workplace, but I've clearly very deeply rehearsed the telling of the story, and although I omit the "You stole [x] from me!" pretty much all the time as I used to, but clearly I'm still channeling the Cosmic Owl, muttering "You messed up."

Not much more to say... I was hoping to do some kitchen work today, making refrigerator pickles, sharpen a knife maybe... eat more before checking out & heading back to bed. We'll see what happens... "Eat more" is priority, so I'm going to do one more thing online... Nope. I feel like I'm hitting the wall, so that'll wait, the "do stuff online" stuff.

Gotta have your priorities, right?

Quite a gift

Bathroom remodeling proceeds apace. We're down to the final day (or so), installing door moulding, a bit of priming, maybe another handle or so (or other hand-hold fine-tuning).

It rained last night. A few days ago there was a brief thick and substantial mist (San Diego, where my wife was at ComicCon, had by her description full-on Florida-grade downpour, plus spectacular thunder and lightning), but last night it was actual rain. Drops and all.

It only took moments before the plants in the garden began positively radiating happiness. Finally, FINALLY, the sky is watering us. Life is very, very good. Even the back-garden kami seemed to be back, not burned to a cinder by the summer heat and drought; even the kami was happier, from the rain.

Sitting on the veranda last night, it was a truly beautiful evening. The sight, the sound, the smell, even the taste of the air of a late-midsummer-night rainfall, was truly beautiful. California is going through a horrible drought, but last night, the sky was sharing water. And it was very, very good.

I've been reading a lot of Ram Dass recently, courtesy my mighty iPhone. One that really caught my eye was about learning to grieve... about saying farewell, about letting go.

This is something that confronts us MSers very directly, very personally, very deeply. Like humanity doesn't do that anyway. Well yeah it does, but somehow, on the Neurological Highway it's somehow... accelerated.

It was a horrible struggle to let go and grieve leaving my last workplace, without judging or accusing. "You took my [whatever]!" As time went on, it became clearer that no, it was simply time to leave. What they (whoever They are) do, that's on them. Choose the path, choose the consequences... the path They choose is their path, and the benefits and consequences are theirs. Not mine. If I choose to weigh myself down, that's on me... and I do not choose to do that any more. Been there, done that. As Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Moving on..."

But not just watching the end of the train moving away, but actually speaking truth to experiencing the loss, truly grieving... that's different. So many things are gone... my driving. Riding a bicycle, still hanging untouched, and untouchable, in the garage. Let's not talk about playing the organ, that's been something I've been working on grieving for quite a while... Same for playing timpani and drum set, all kinds of percussion... Gone. For now, at least, but for now at least... gone.

Bathroom stuff... standing up to brush my teeth, not always a good idea even to try that, and of course the Elimination Polka, which is doing many things but "getting better" ain't one of them.

"Stopping caring," or as usually happens, saying that you have stopped caring, and grieving, are different. Very different. As past master of Denial in all its insidious forms... Very different.

So, I don't need to swim through the sea of anguish, but to tell the truth with love... and when it calls to me to do so, to grieve with love...

Quite a gift, indeed, should I choose to open my hands and heart, and receive it.