Sick In Bed

Woke this morning with a headache at three in the morning. Go back to sleep, I told myself. I tried to relax my closed eyes but clenched them against the ache, bringing it on even more of course.

I woke next at ten to four, headache still there. A not-so-dull aching that pulsed with my slowly beating heart. I remembered signs on the highway saying that if I'm having a stroke say, take me to Crouse. In the midst of a stroke I doubt I'd speak or think so clearly. I drifted deep into that thought.

The alarm sounded at four-forty. I turned it off and closed my eyes against the headache and the morning. My stomach felt clenched. The word swoopy came to mind. What does that even mean? I wondered. I lay there, swoopy, for half an hour, my head beating like a second hand.

Out of bed just after five I went downstairs. The cat said it was time for food. No deal. Learn to read a clock, I told her. She meowed in time with my headache and the swirl of my stomach. I skipped coffee, grabbed my pen, and went down to the basement nook to write my Morning Pages.

I wrote about whether or not I could make it to my job and through the school day. My headache made its argument, my stomach concurred. I finished the three pages, went upstairs to the computer, wrote and sent in lesson plans.

That done, I returned to bed with the computer thinking I might write. I got as far as the title of this then, squinting at the screen, felt myself sliding, maybe falling. I set aside the computer, lay down, closed my eyes, and tried not to count the beating of my pulse through the ache in my head. Last I saw, the clock said 7:55.

Then it was eight-thirty-something, then quarter to ten, and finally ten minutes to noon. The headache had mostly dissipated. My stomach was still off balance. I got out of the bed, changed out of pajamas into khakis and a sweater. I went down and ate a toasted bagel, drank a cup of decaf, sat on the couch and read for an hour and a half.

Then I picked up the computer again. I had the urge to write something. Who knows what? It wasn't this. This came much later, after dinner, when the headache had begun its return. I wondered what the point of it was, the long writing I had done in the afternoon, this shorter piece at night. It had me thinking of the Morning Pages. My 1,735th day in a row of doing them. That number has to mean something. Maybe with a clear head and stomach I would be able to say what that is. Probably not, but when I'm feeling sick and so unsure, it's nice to think that all I need is a clean bill of health and the mysteries of the world will open enough for me to write them down.

Until then, I'm going back to bed.

Prayer & Writing

I don't want to complain too much. Talking about my job and how ill-suited to it I have become is worth only a certain number of pixels and I've exceeded that number. I'm sure I'll go deeper into the red on that, but here I want to talk about falling behind, feeling rushed, and the accompanying feelings for writing. Some call this writer's block, but it's something else entirely.

In the few moments I've had for writing the last three days not much has happened. I've been tired, rushed, and doubtful about any of my ideas. This isn't writer's block. I just lacked faith and didn't have time to let writing take me back into the land of believing.

These things happen.

Though I haven't written a blog post every day, each morning I wake early and write three Morning Pages by hand. No one will ever see those pages. I wrote them for myself and just to be writing.

Morning Pages are one way to keep in the habit of writing and that daily practice builds faith. I imagine it like prayer for the doubtful and am reminded of this Thomas Merton prayer:

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

I replace God with writing and think of Morning Pages as a kind of prayer. I fall behind in publishing the blog and assembling pieces for submission, but I return to the daily practice of the pen, the pages, and the act of writing. "I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire" and trust that I will, someday and in some way I may not yet understand, find a lasting rhythm that carries me through my days.

Given that I began this day, as I have every day for almost five years, filling Morning Pages, maybe I already have.

An Amazing Gift

"...the universe has sent me some amazing gifts just when I thought it had forgotten me."
— Carol Mikoda

I have good friends who write well.

The message above came to me this morning and has stuck with me all through a tough day. I've been feeling very much at the end of my rope for the last few months. There are times when I appreciate the goodness around and within me. Then there is all that dark time when I spiral. I've been so tired all day and while those sixteen words haven't been quite enough to fill me with energy, renew all my hopes, and get me over all my troubles, they have certainly buoyed me and allowed me to float a little better than otherwise.

What amazing gifts has the universe sent to you?

This Is Leisure?

My job wore me out so much today that if we had other access to healthcare, I would put in my notice and never look back. Driving to my daughters' school to pick up our youngest I gladly left the job behind and in favor of family time. My girl suggested we go for coffee. We picked up her older sister and drove to the coffee shop. Along the way I asked if they would help me clean the dining room later. We're having people over soon and the house isn't Martha Stewart clean. After the day I'd had at school, it was tough to imagine doing the cleaning at all, so it was a relief when they both said, sure, no problem.

(When they were babies and toddlers, people warned me about how difficult girls would be. They weren't. As they moved through middle school, I was warned how terrible they'd be as teens. Nope. Trust your kids, not people's warnings.)

We came home and my older daughter went to work on the dining room. It's where we dump bags, coats, mail, and most everything else. She cleared all her stuff. I swept and dusted and then my younger daughter cleared her stuff. My wife would clear hers later. Finished in the dining room, I took garbage down to the basement, saw the vacuum cleaner, and remembered that the den carpet really, really needed cleaning. Oh, and the washing machine reminded me of the clothes waiting to be washed. I carried the vacuum up to the first floor, got the laundry from the second floor, brought that to the washer, went up and vacuumed the den, and brought the vacuum back to the basement. I took the broom from the dining room and was about to put it away but instead swept the stairs.

Somewhere in all this I got wondering what happened to being tired from my awful job. I scanned my body and mind. Yep, still tired. But instead of collapsing, I was cleaning the house and somehow feeling less tired. What the hell?

For dinner we were set to have eggplant parmesan. I began prepping while still wondering how all this work was energizing me. It came to me that all of it, strange as it still seems, was a kind of leisure, perhaps the best kind.

Leisure is doing what I want to be doing. It isn't collapsing on the couch. It sure as hell isn't browsing the web, reading the news, or flipping channels. My current job doesn't fulfill me because I can't do things I want to do. Coming home to clean, do laundry, and make dinner doesn't sound like a good time, but I chose to do those things. I wanted not just to have them done but to be doing them. Along the way I got time with my girls, time to think, some solitude and peace. The dining room and den are clean, the laundry is washed and dried, and dinner was delicious.

Here I am now writing, listening to New Chautauqua by Pat Metheny, and thinking about the differences between being a vegetable and enjoying real leisure.

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Much of the thinking about leisure draws on "Reclaim Leisure" which is chapter six of Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism. It's a book I recommend.