Tending Joy

 Keeping myself current, somehow -- oh, and keeping you current, too.

Relationships

Dear Husband and I continue in counseling. T'other day he acknowledged that he's getting value out of it, for himself as well as for the relationship. I'm getting value out of it too, more for myself than for any real or lasting improvement in the relationship. We are talking better -- which is excellent. Sadly, the more clearly we talk the more clear it becomes that we have fundamental differences that may not be resolvable.

He said not long ago that he thinks of life as a series of projects. Which might be great, except that whenever he's in mid-project he can't do anything else. He feels guilty if we take an afternoon off and aggrieved if I want his attention for something 'frivolous' like 'having fun together' instead of completing an obligation we have taken on. When we started in counseling the 'project' was the great boat rebuilding -- which had us in Guatemala for four winters running without ever leaving the boatyard village except for one weekend. We processed that to death, after the fact, but this spring he's done the same thing with the project of cleaning house for being on the market, and again with the project of putting up fences for goats.

But even when we're building fences I still need to do hospice work, to meditate, to do coven magic, to study, to weave, to dance, to cuddle. Somehow all these become distractions and ways in which I abandon him while he's stuck with the project. Even though I don't want him to be stuck with the project, I just want us to have some 'life' together in addition to the 'obligation'. The more we try to talk about this the more he insists that he has to continue to live his life the way he was brought up -- to be always committing to responsibility and always putting that responsibility first.

I, on the other hand, have spent much of the past 20 years trying to grow out of my own upbringing, especially sometimes when it seems that it doesn't support my growth and upliftment. The impulse to Calvinistic self-denial dies hard, but it can be reduced. I wish I could find a way to make that clearer to him.

In other news, the tone of conversation in the household has moderated. Now that it's really clear that we need to sell the property some resentment and backlash have given way to actual progress, both on 'clearing out stuff that won't go with' and 'figuring out where to move to, and how'. It will be a big wrench for at least three of us to separate into two pairs in different places, but it has become more and more clear that this is necessary. Too many things have been too far out of balance for too long. Affection is still there, but sometimes even people we love need to move on.

I haven't spent much time with the kids and grandkids this year, but we're in more touch via 'social networking' media. It's an interesting shift. And in another month I expect to have some time with a new grandbaby, due in September.

Writing

Pretty much nothing is happening. I write lengthy comments on other people's blogs, very occasionally, and sometimes a longish e-mail. But no progress on the memoir since the last Gotham Writers Workshop class ended in the spring. I'll get back to it, but I'm not sure quite when.

My advice to the rest of you is: Start writing your memoirs in your 40s or 50s, while you still have significant short-term memory to help you keep it all organized. Waiting until 60 was foolish.

Chaplaincy

Recently served as chaplain for a friend having surgery. Was accepted by the hospital personnel with a minimum of hassle. Continuing to like the feeling of helping people be present to the parts they want to focus on and release the unnecessary parts.

Medical

Seems the gastric distresses of the past couple of years are related to a combination of stress and stupid dietary indiscretion. Just because yogurt is easy doesn't mean I should try to live on it. Just because it's unavailable somewhere doesn't mean I should quit it cold turkey. Making sure I actually get both protein and fresh vegetables seems key. Possible gluten sensitivity but this doesn't seem to be a big problem just now. Gotta watch out for depression.

Otherwise I am in robustly delightful good health.

Celebration

One of the frustrations of my life is that we have utterly failed to find ways to celebrate that both of us enjoy. For our 25th wedding anniversary last year we agonized over what to do. Ended up that he took me dancing "for graduation" (from the MA I completed last year) and then I helped him give a party "for several reasons" including the anniversary. I like dancing, he doesn't. He likes parties, I don't. After all that we said we'd "be sure" to celebrate our 26th. But it was last week, and we were so focused on building fences for the goats that he canceled his birthday celebration and suggested we push back our anniversary for the following week. But that week was over yesterday. Did we celebrate? What do you think?

Magic

Lots of coven work this month, and I'm loving it. Put in my request to work toward initiation and have a plan for that work. Have started some of the pieces of it.

Sobriety

The occasional single glass of wine or beer. T'other night a gin and tonic, just the one. No difficulties, no confusion, not much pull to drink more. Looks like the Guatemala experience had more to do with deprivation than alcoholism in particular.

Spiritual Practice

I keep promising myself that I'll meditate tomorrow. What is THAT about?

Keeping commitments

I'm doing better at resisting the temptation to say Yes too fast. I'm doing better at being where I said I would be and doing what I said I would do. Biggest improvement: Actually calling people as soon as I realize I can't meet a commitment, rather than waiting to the eleventh hour and hoping against hope for a miraculous change in whatever's in the way.

Physical reality

I'm loving having goats. I'm also looking forward to selling them off in about three weeks, then starting over with a new batch of young kids.

Plans

We've started talking about the sailing trip up through Belize in February or March or maybe April. Haven't really started the planning process yet, but starting to talk about doing it.

In three weeks we go to Ireland with a group, planning to visit some sacred sites. I can't wait ... and I'm aware that I don't yet have all the information I'll need to make good plans. 

Overwhelm / Overbookedness

Finally took steps a couple of weeks ago to put myself on hiatus with several commitments while we sort out the goats project and get the house sold. Now it feels like there's room. I'm back to weaving and took the current project off the loom tonight. It's either 'finished' or tomorrow's in-depth examination will tell me I need to replace one or two of the placemats in the set. But then ... on to the next warp.

I am so glad for the people who read and respond to what I write here. It helps to feel that there's a place to dump the contents of my head, where I have a chance of being heard, listened to, understood.

Love, light and laughter to you all

Struggled most of the past two weeks with the memoir.

Eventually turned out something that, while not quite as polished as I would like, was pretty useful, coherent, honest, reflective. You'd have thought I'd be pleased, especially when the comments suggest that my fellow students -- and even my teacher -- think it's a good job. I think so too, even if (I'm still wryly amused) I mixed up the episode that prompted Boyfriend M to walk away from me with the episode that provoked the worst fight Boyfriend R and I ever had. Those events were a couple of years apart, maybe more, but I didn't realize my mistake until I woke up the morning after turning this section in.

But anyway. I am pleased with the work I did, I do think it's a good job. I can already see several ways in which tiny revisions can make it even better.

But, emotionally, it's all flat. I took a break to catch up on reading the blogs of people I care about, and when I came back to be working on it just a day or so later, nothing. Blah. Why bother, oh phooey, who gives a damn about that stuff anyway, same-old-same-old, besides which why do I even want to try to unravel it?

So even though at the end of my allotted 5000 words I felt like I was on a roll and had another 10,000 all cued up to write ... today there's nothing.

I don't much want to write about the episode that really did lead to Boyfriend M walking away -- without so much as a goodbye, which I really hated; he simply refused to ever speak another personal word to me, though we continued to move in the same social circles and constantly run into each other in public for another couple of years. I don't much want to write about the relationship with Boyfriend R, who was so on-the-rebound when we met that I should have had my head examined anyway.

But I also don't much want to write about feeling so desperate for a hug, one night at 35, that I asked my neighbor to babysit and went over to the local bar (in those days I was a non-drinker) just so I could dance. And then at the end of the night had to be fairly persuasive in insisting that I was going home alone, and doing it right now, and no, actually I really did come here just to dance. (Thereby learning that I couldn't go to at least that particular bar if all I wanted was a dance, because the guys I danced with all thought we were all looking to get laid).

I don't much want to write about, well, dozens of things I can remember just fine. I don't much want to look under any of the available rocks to see what I can remember about stuff I don't much think about.

And I also don't feel like reading a book, taking a bath, going for a walk, medicating the cat, cleaning my office, doing laundry, emptying the dishwasher, or any of hundreds of other possibilities.

Just now it seems like what's wrong is that we're more than halfway from Lammas to Mabon, the light is fading, it's been raining too many days, and my mood is just tanking. It's been like this every year, earlier and earlier. I have a lot to do tomorrow; I wonder how I can move myself forward to do it?

Dunno what metaphor to be using just now. It feels like the spring breakup of the ice, when suddenly the surface of the river can move after months in stasis. It feels like someone pulled out the keystone log in the jam, and suddenly the river surface is alive with half-ton logs caroming wildly down river.

My cold's not fully over, but yesterday I had some energy and today I woke up with a serious head of steam up. My depression's probably not fully over, but today I feel like it's lifting.

It's not 2 pm yet and I feel like I've made serious progress on several fronts at once, as well as doing more decluttering and more laundry. I've worked on the student handbook's latest revision, looked at scheduling for the next 18 months and made some decisions (and identified two hard conflicts that I don't know yet how to solve), cleaned up my inbox in several important ways.

Part of this is probably physical. But part of it is certainly the result of a couple of valuable hours with my therapist in the past couple of weeks.

Sometimes there's nothing like a sharp-minded good listener who askes the right questions. Where did I decide that I can't stand up for myself? Where did I decide that I didn't have a voice, or had to come in second? What is it that shuts down my ability to negotiate until, finally, I have to 'get sick so I can go home' ? As, manifestly, I did during the end of February.

Process: follow the thread back.

From a present conflict between what my Dear Husband would like (me beside him in Guatemala even if there's nothing much for me to do there) and what I would like (important work, a sense of community effort in which I can participate meaningfully, plenty of deep and personal conversation with likeminded companions) ... and the freedom to come and go as I please ...

Back through the 1980s when I often felt that what he wanted, as he traveled in his job, was to come home and find me exactly where he'd left me, doing exactly the same things I'd been doing, with the same train of thought waiting at the same station. That is -- I felt that he wanted to be able to come home to 'the same' relationship as when he'd left. He didn't want to come home to a mate full of new enthusiasms or fresh from new experiences. Even though, of course, he'd had some new experiences while away. ...

Back through a previous marriage in the early 70s when I had even more strongly that same experience, with a man who traveled even more constantly ...

Back through my 1968 grief at losing my brother and my simultaneous overwhelm at new motherhood, and the slow-to-materialize awareness that my life had changed radically while my then-husband's life had changed little. ... and that this created trouble and distance for us. ...

Back into childhood, where (surprise) my father traveled on business in a predictable pattern, and so our life at home had a predictable rhythm. And here I can see the dysfunction: that predictable rhythm.

Dad liked order and neatness, well-behaved children who were more into 'seen and not heard' than otherwise.

Mom liked frivolity and tended toward clutter. Especially when deprived of the company of her mate, she liked children who were willing to play with her, tell her all their troubles, go for long rides with her.

So, we developed a pattern that was very orderly and neat when Dad was home, with dinner at 5:30 after Dad got home at 5:15, with breakfast at 7:15 so the first kid could go to the schoolbus at 7:30 and still have had breakfast reading homework while Dad read the paper, with committee meetings and scouts and choir.

Whenever Dad left, usually on a Saturday or Sunday, Mom and kids would relax into gleeful abandon. We might eat spaghetti for dinner at 7 or later; we might go out for a hilarious dinner at Friendly's culminating in a contest to see who could order the most peculiar mixture of their 28-flavors for desert. The next week, or usually two weeks, we might get our own cereal or we might have breakfast together, we might leave our schoolbooks all over the dining room table for a day or two at a time, we might not hang up our jackets at all. We might go shopping with mom all afternoon and then do our homework over take-out Chinese food.

Until Dad was due home. Then there would be two or three days of Mom screaming and yelling at us until we had put our rooms back in order, hung up all the coats, put away all the schoolbooks, cleaned up the kitchen, and helped her with the backed-up laundry. Then we would go pick up Dad from the airport and live orderly and neat lives for three or four weeks until the next trip. When Dad was home, they spent several evenings together each week, and didn't want much interruption from us kids. When Dad was home, it mattered which kid was not yet in bed at eleven, it wasn't okay for Mom to sit up and talk with one of us until the wee hours.

So ... Mom could live the way she wanted only when he wasn't there ... and saw it as her obligation to make all of us live the way he wanted when he was there.

Add to this that both of them saw it as her job to raise the kids while he traveled on business and worked in an office all day ... and that once the last kid was in school and she got the job they'd always talked about her getting, it turned out he hated the fact that she had it. And saboutaged it at every turn.

Hmm.

Fast forward to the way my DH and I each independently tend to negotiate anyway.

I like to put all the possibilities on the table and look at them together. It's not uncommon for me to let you have the first move after they're all out there. What would you like? What would you not like? What seems best to you? Now that you've said that, I might disagree ... but it would often be my preference to know where you stand before I say what I want.

My DH, on the other hand, often prefers to take a position: Here's what I want. And wait for the other person to say, No that won't do, here's what I propose instead.

If we were labor negotiators, my way might look like 'let's look at the company's budget and the cost of living, talk about what the company needs to spend money on and what kind of lifestyle the employees would like and then look for common ground, overlap, possible ways to generate a win-win solution.' DH's way might look like 'the workers want to get paid a zillion dollars for doing nothing and management wants them to work 168 hours/week for zero pay: where in the middle can we meet?'

There's nothing wrong with either technique, but we are constantly getting into trouble when we each try to use the one we like best, while the other is using the other method.

Just now I feel like 'all' I needed to do was let myself sit down and 'choose' what I want to actually do with the next few weeks. And suddenly it seems much easier to divide my time between home and Guatemala and other travel I feel like doing. So just now I don't have anything nailed down yet, but I have a pretty good idea what the dates will look like when the dust settles. Two phonecalls to make, and a conversation with DH, and then I should be ready to mark things on the calendar in ink.

Just now it's time to go back to work.

Yippeeeeeee!

The voice of anger says 'he's wrong, I'm right, he has to listen to me, I don't have to listen to him.'

The voice of despair says 'he's wrong, nothing I say matters, I'm helpless, it's hopeless.'

The voice of reason says 'you've felt this way before and it hasn't been true then, either.'

The voice of peacefulness asks 'what good can you find in all this negative feeling? if it existed FOR you, what would it be for?

The voice of loving says 'he's a good man and you do love him, so you should relax and let it be.'

The voice of high self asks 'is there something here you need to change? or are you just looking for attention you usually don't get?'

    I wish I could feel that speaking my truth made us closer. But my prediction is that he'll just pull away further now that I've said how unhappy I am just now. I wish I could feel that holding my tongue worked better, but all that has happened is I've been brooding for days without improvement.

Nothing's wrong, really. Nothing's right at all, though.
   
    Yesterday or the day before I spent an hour thinking seriously about leaving early, going back home three weeks ahead of schedule. I chose not to change my plans. I felt that if I walked out on this construction adventure, it would be an act of disloyalty and it would make a permanent rift. I wasn't angry then, or not a lot, I was just significantly uncomfortable in lots of ways without enough compensating delights.

    Tonight he suggested I just go home. What he actually said was, "I think you should re-evaluate your travel schedule. You've put yourself in a position where you're living in a construction zone and it isn't working." What I heard, in the moment, sounded more like, "If you feel that way about it, why don't you just go home?"

    I dunno whether to feel relieved (to have his permission, like I needed permission) or rejected.

(and another voice whispers "why would you want to choose to feel rejected?").

-- just at the moment it really sucks to be me --

Spiritual Practice.

One way to think about it is: It's about releasing any disturbance to one's inner peace. Maybe it's even about not getting one's peace disturbed in the first place. I'm not sure I would know.

Mostly at most moments these days I feel peaceful inside. At least, that's what I think about the situation. Whenever I think about it.

At least, when I'm in a group and we're studying or learning or practicing or discussing ways to do spiritual practices. At those times, I often find myself wondering what anyone has 'disturbed peace' about, anyway? I mean, I'm pretty peaceful lately, aren't I? Often there is one or another person in the group with me at that moment whose anxiety or depression or self-judgment is visibly getting in their way (much worse than mine) and I think, 'oh, I'm so glad that doesn't happen to me anymore.' And at those times, I feel fully persuaded that it doesn't.

But then I notice how much time I've been spending playing computer games again. Even the ones I don't actually enjoy. This morning I found myself opening a computer-solitaire game to distract me from the computer-solitaire game I was already being bored by.

And then I notice that, now that we're discussing (in class) the spiritual merits of a healthy diet of fresh foods, I've been eating way more starch and sugar than usual -- in years, in fact. When was the last time I pigged out on a box of cookies? In my 40s, I think, except twice in the past week and three times in the past year. What the hell is that about?

I'm not much aware of anger or a whole lot of self-judgment nowadays (for which, much thanks). But anxiety ... as soon as I've given myself more than a few seconds peace and quiet, anxiety begins yelling inside me. The do-list stuff, I can sort of understand ... there are so many items on my to-do list that at any given moment it would be easy to suppose I will simply never get them done. But: most of them, it doesn't actually matter if I never get them done. Nothing there to be anxious about, except that I 'said' I would do them and then I 'haven't yet' -- which is to say, I'm not practicing truth-speaking. So there should be tension there; I've programmed it in, on purpose.

But, um, the simple thing to do about that would be to just do the items on the list. Write and mail the check, make the phonecall, put the next batch of cast-offs onto e-bay or into the car for the thrift store, read the homework, write the homework, practice the homework, walk the dog ... I do those things, some of them every day, but not without a lot of dithering first. And not without a bunch of avoidance behavior first.

In a way it's a very addiction-like process ... I do something that used to be fun as a way of avoiding something that I imagine will be a drag. But the thing that used-to-be-fun is actually a drag now, and the thing I imagine will be a drag is actually just fine when I do it (so then I can feel guilty about having postponed it two weeks or more). I've had times in my life, even recently, when I was just as successfully avoiding anxiety by doing things I love doing -- say, reading an excellent novel, or weaving or painting. Dancing or swimming. Doing yoga (rather than sitting in class talking about doing yoga). I prefer that.

This morning I just couldn't get out of bed. (All right, I _did_ stay up until nearly two ayem browsing Youtube after somebody sent me a great clip.) Dear Husband got up about 8:30 and asked if I was going to stay asleep. I remember saying, "No, I'm going to stay cuddling." So he brought a book back to bed and snuggled while, indeed, I went in and out of sleep (mostly sleeping) for an hour. Then he got up and I said I'd get up too. And a few minutes later heard myself saying "I'm not up. I think I'm sleeping."

So, sleeping until 9:30 would be 7+ hours -- a lot for me, but not unusual. Sleeping until 11:30, however -- 9+ hours -- well, I haven't done that in quite a while. Maybe since the last time I was diagnosably depressed.

So what's it about?

Maybe just the rain -- it's rained 3 of the past 5 days, and the 2 it didn't it was gray and sunless all day. This is NOT my favorite weather. I like sunshine, striking colors, light -- especially at this time of year, brighter is better. Or if it has to rain, I like a downpour, or a multihour soaking rain followed by CLEARING. But this ... it rains desultorily for a couple of hours, and then calms to a drizzle, and then it maybe stops for half an hour, and then starts again ... not much wind, the leaves falling gently and steadily with no particular destination ... yechh.

(Oh. I finished typing that sentence, and _thought_ the next one, which might have been "I like a little drama in my weather." and a sudden gust sent a surge of leaves across my windows, nearly horizontal, their trees bending to point the way. Well, oops, maybe not _that_much drama.)

Outside my windows the brilliance of fall colors is tapering away to the drear of the end of autumn ... and it's not even Samhain (Hallowe'en to you in the secular community). Outside my East windows most of the gold and orange and rich green has gone. Most of what's left is the quiet blotchy yellow-tan, the olive colors, and one swatch of bright red that has lost more than half its leaves. Out my South window one tree is covered in bright orange, but I miss the way it would look in sunlight. Behind me in the West  the whole stand of young beeches point starkly to the sky, just one bundle of leaves and a bird's nest to break up the bareness of their poles.

It's hard to be 60 in this light. The resonance between the Wheel of the Year and the Wheel of My Life is startling, and it would be easy for it to become excessive, to take me into "the autumn of my years," (yikes) like the song "It was a very good year." Which, while true, is not by any means the Whole Truth about my experience just now.

What's true just now is that I've been 60 for 10 days ... and I'm impressed and a mite surprised at how different this has been from other birthdays. Even turning 50 I felt pretty much the same a few days after as I had a few months before ... but this time, no. This time, well, I really "turned" 60, pretty much on the day itself. Something is moving and shaking inside me, or slouching to be born ... both body and mind seem a bit different than they did just a few days ago.

We'll see what that brings.

And in the meantime, it's good to be reminded as I was yesterday that the lovely steep hills of Vermont camp have given me thighs like bull and tremendous lung capacity that I didn't have back in July ... and that I'm keeping. And I am so grateful.