Self Discovery

Too close to bedtime Tuesday night, I downed a glass of Barefoot Bubbly and a frozen strawberry sorbet bar.  A little later, I swallowed an Ibuprofen, hoping that would take enough of the edge off my recently rampant arthritis discomfort to facilitate a decent night’s sleep. 

AND… I woke up at about 2:00 am with a raging case of heartburn.  The feels-like-I-swallowed-a-bottle-of-drano kind of heartburn. 

To ward off another of those middle of the night panic attacks brought on by physical misery when one is half asleep, I cracked open my iPad and delved into the archives of “Coming to Terms.”

I ended up in a place on my blog timeline that I had completely forgotten about.  It was December of 2016, and apparently I had decided that I wanted to complete 1300 posts by the end of my 13^th year of blogging.  I had actually set my sights on that goal two months prior, in October, where I revved up and posted 36 entries in 31 days.  I was trying to set myself up for a relatively attainable less than 30 posts in each of the two final months of the year.  Then November of 2016 happened.  The shock of the election, along with a 40^th anniversary trip to Canada (where we seriously considered never going back to the US) derailed that goal and set me up for the nearly impossible task of putting up 40 posts in the month of December.  

Impossible.  Unthinkable.  Absolutely unattainable.

But I did it.

A remarkable feat five years ago, to be sure.  But when viewed through the lens of how much I’ve struggled to drag myself to 40 posts a year of late…well, it blew me away.

So of course I had to read them.  

And they were decent.  Good, even.  I seemed to have a remarkable amount to say, and a still-viable voice with which to say it, five years ago.  I could even make a post about a Christmas shopping stop at Sears articulate and interesting, if not compelling.  

I don’t know whether to be beaming with pride in my past self, or deeply disappointed and depressed by what I have become.  Perhaps the two extremes will neutralize each other, so I can go on with my milquetoast life, rather than heading toward the nearest bridge to throw myself off.  

Maybe what I should make of this is this:  I have the potential.  It hasn’t gone anywhere.  I just have to tap back into it.  Which will take discipline, perseverance, creativity and imagination—four things of which, for whatever reason, I have found myself in short supply lately.

And I’ll need to crawl outside my head long enough to observe things that inspire me to write about them.  I need to get back in touch with the world.  And maybe that’s been the problem, in these pandemic-battered, fear-driven, contentious times.  The world has become so ugly and so dominated by negativity, strife, selfishness, anger and violence that I have pulled in my head like a little turtle.  There’s only so much of that crap you can expose yourself to after awhile.  And only so much ranting and scolding and proselytizing one can do before it becomes obvious that you’re screaming at a hurricane.  

 

 

At some point, you shut your mouth, turn your back, and walk away.  But...should you?   

I don't know.  I only know that being silenced is almost as suffocating as shouting into a gale.

And now I have to figure out what I want to do about it.