Relief (I think)

Some good news to report. The worst seems to be past on the technical end of the windup to opening night. The myriad tiny changes I maybe wanted to make in the music, director said I didn't need to make. He didn't hear what I was hearing/worried about, he thought it sounded great. "Time to let it go," he said of the whole production. And I think he's right.

A good treatment today. No blocks (yay! finally!) and a very interesting treatment, to tap into "the sea of energy." Felt really good. And still does.

So I came to work a few minutes late one day last week, to find the plaza filled by paramedics, an ambulance, and a fire truck. Turns out one of the teachers bumped his head hard enough to cause spectacular bleeding (which is why the called the paramedics). When the shouting died down, he was fine. No worries there.

One of the kids said she was pretty creeped out by the whole thing (she was in his class when it happened). I told her, "You are eternal. The thing you're driving around in is temporary. Nobody enjoys being reminded of that second point."

I've given, and had to receive, that particular sermon a lot recently. I don't think I like being reminded of that. Which lesson was, of course, one of the first gifts of MS.

The wall

The wall, as in "slammed up against."

A confluence of time- and energy-sucking activities, which I could not avoid, taking said time and energy away from other stuff that only I could do.

We hung lights for the show this weekend. It has been a while since the lights were hung by someone other than myself or a student (or ex-student) who really knew what they were doing. Instead, it was a fun and jolly learning experience for some of our students, provided by another one of the faculty. Who isn't as fast as I am (or at least "was," before The Disease). So, slow student being piloted by slow faculty member. It took two hours to hang four lights and gel and touch-up-focus twenty others (which started the day mostly pointed in the right positions). I could have done it in less than half the time.

The problem wasn't that they're just slower than I am... the problem was that there was a long list of other stuff that only I could do, that required energy/thought/creativity rather than simply patience, and waiting for the slow people ate the time/energy that I needed desperately for other activities (also, by the way, related to the play, and also on the critical path to "ready to rehearse Monday").

Same thing today. Had to skip lunch because I had to bolt from church to change to get to the school to set up for Open House. Then had to run sound at Open House. For hours. Then, finally, got to cue the lights for the show... which I would have done yesterday except I had been sucked dry of energy and time. Which, in turn, sucked me pretty much dry of energy and time today. Didn't get dinner until, um, 8:30 I think, because I couldn't take the time away from the work I was doing. And of course, no food means even less energy...

Being sucked dry is bad for me. Very, very bad. To add insult to injury, I'm going to the acupuncturist Tuesday (to get what I'm sure is at least one block cleared) and then I don't get to rest, I have to go back to school for a rehearsal.

What does this kvetching have to do with MS? Well, before The Diagnosis, it would have been a rough, but eminently doable, week. Sure, there's a lot of crap to do, but that stuff happens, and we get to the end of the week and the show opens and everybody has a great time and all your work pays off.

Post Diagnosis... we're gonna get to the end of the week, and the show'll open and everyone'll have a great time, just like before, but I this time, feel damaged. Really badly damaged.

I wonder how long it'll be before I feel like I've recovered. Well, we'll see. Perseverance, I thought I had already quite sufficiently learned by now, thank you very much. I guess I'm just really, really tired of having to persevere all the time.

So now, meta-perseverance is required. I have to persevere at persevering, so I can persevere at working/living/whatever I'm struggling with.

I guess I'm not completely drained. At least I still think that's funny.

Stuck/Unsticking

A quietly rocky week; a lovely week.

Double blocks at the acupuncturist... seems that I'm back on the block-a-week plan. Currently, the multiple-simultaneous-blocks-a-week plan. This suggests that I may be "stuck" somewhere (no acupuncture puns intended) in my internal process; and a particular challenge for me, the path out of this state requires me not to look for "the solution," but simply to get out of the way of whatever it is that is trying to present itself to me but that I'm not seeing.

A bad night last night. Very cold by LA standards (low 40s), I got into my truck after church-choir rehearsal to drive home, and... I couldn't find the pedals. Imagine the "oh crap, where did I leave my keys" scramble, except involving your feet, and the pedals that operate the vehicle. And your wife is out of town, so no easy phone call to get a ride home... and then, terror. Nasty terror. Fortunately, I mastered both the terror and the pedals, once the truck heater kicked in my feet became much more cooperative, and I made it home without incident. No near misses or anything, quite an uneventful--to an external observer--ride home. But still... a lot of profound, and quiet, terror.

MS has definitely changed my "dealing with the world" process, on a far more profound level than just "I need a cane." I've never been a multitasker, if you want your best out of me you need to give me one task, clear direction, and then leave me alone. It has always been that way. But now, "dealing with all sorts of crap" is particularly difficult, and I really can't deal at all with chaos. But cutting to the core of the problem at hand and finding the simplest, most appropriate solution... I've always been good at that, but right now, that has become one of my major strengths. We faced some problems in the play we're about to open at the school, and just this week I found some low-effort low-complexity solutions that turned out to be better solutions to the ones we had originally been planning.

The "calmly cut to the chase" approach does make it hard to interface with people who are running in circles and yammering about whatever bug has currently infested their bonnet, and it's very hard to explain to people that they don't need to be as wound up about things. A very hard conversation to have is "You don't understand. Orbital mechanics presents deadlines. This is a preference." But generally speaking, I don't get as wigged out as I used to... about pretty much anything. I still backslide into dark and vindictive places from time to time (a symptom or a cause of blocks? maybe both...) But in any case,"calm" is certainly a much nicer state to live in than "outrage" or "apprehension," two of my favorite pre-diagnosis dwellings.

And that is definitely a gift of MS.