I Am Finally Back

I think I am getting my life back on track. I have allowed personal and health issues get in the way of my writing and blogging, I will attempt to post daily. Notice the word try.

Lost Equilibrium

Anyway, the long and short of my ramblings heI haven't written in months in this or my other blog. My fledging attempt at a novel is sitting on my desk collecting dust. Why is this? Something occurred in my life, a change, this summer that caused me to loose my balance, my equilibrium so to say. Change is what life is about. If everything stayed the same our physical world and  humanity would cease to exist. At least how we know it.  Humans must mature through infancy, childhood and puberty before they mate and perpetuate mankind. Foliage must die in the winter before it is replaced in the spring with beautiful new foliage. Areas in drought do not produce crops and other plants, but after rains and the area changes to being moist the plants and the crops grow.

Enough of this simplistic discussion, but change is good. Why am I so reluctant to it? Why does change hurt so much? I have had several major changes in my life which I am sure we all have had. But most of them have hurt. A few have been welcomed, but at least for me the magnitude of the joy in pleasant changes never seemed to reach the magnitude of hurt in the perceived bad changes. Again I ask myself the constant question why? Why this? Why me? Why now?

Dependent on where one is in their spiritual journey one looks for a reason why the supreme power in which they believe would allow the things they experience to occur, asking what is the ultimate plan? How does this change fit in? Why can't they let me know why?

I find myself becoming more cynical and pessimistic because of change and I keep trying to resist that. Our relationship with loved ones is constantly changing  as they die, move away, or reject us. Our physical surroundings change because of employment relocation, change in physical mobility or various other reasons. Does that mean one can eliminate change by not loving other people? Not becoming attached to our environment? How about the change to our bodies. We see the changes in the mirror? We notice the things we can no longer accomplish mentally and physically? How would we ever avoid those? Not be born? That wouldn't work.
re is change is life. We need to embrace it and not resist it. I, as I assume most folks, cognitively know that, but are our feelings and attitudes are controlled more by our hearts, than our brain? In times of turbulence and change I reach for something constant, something familiar, something that has not recently changed. In the changes I've experienced in my lifetime friends and family were very supportive and tried to help, and were paramount in my acclamation to the change. Unfortunately, its been my experience and indicated in much of what I've read that change must be dealt with within ourselves. We as an individual need to learn to change our perspectives and our expectations.

I just had to articulate my life the past few months.  Trying to put feelings in words seems to help me.   If reading these words might help anyone who reads them, I am thankful. It would be interesting if any of my readers have any comments.

The Move

I apologize for not posting for such a long time. We were moving and downsizing.  I had always loved a large house and a relatively large yard to live in and maintain.   I used to actually like housework and yard work.  Guess MS might not be my only ailment. As my MS continued to worsen it got harder and harder to keep up.  Last month we decided it was time to quit home ownership (translation  - maintenance) and downsize and move into an apartment. Also travel had become an issue. Before I retired the location where we lived made sense because it was basically equal distance from both my partner's work and mine. Now that I don't drive to work why should she spend a large a mount of windshield time?

Everyday for the past month I have ben cleaning, packing boxes, loading and unloading boxes into and out of the car, and preparing for our garage sale. Of course we had movers move our big stuff. I get so tired these days to the point I can not finish a project because I no longer have the strength to stand. All of our stuff is out of the house we are selling and leaving, but the place we moved to is not yet completely organized. To make a long story short, my personality being what it is, I haven't been able to concentrate on writing on my next book or even in my blogs until all is in place and organized. I wish I wasn't that way, but I think its a bit late to try and reprogram myself. I just wish when my body  gets so exhausted it didn't take my brain with it. 

We had so much stuff. We went from a house about 2150 square feet to a 1350 square feet apartment. Pretty much all is organized in the new place except for the garage and hopefully that will be completed today.  I do think the new place will be less demanding on my body and I will have more time to write in my various venues.

This frustration of trying to accomplish things when my MS is unpredictable, frustrating and limiting has reinforced my desire to include in my books persons with MS and address their frustrations in how the disease affects them. 

Quite the Ha-Ha Moment

Last Wednesday evening I stopped by an office supply store to pick up a few things before I left for New York the following morning. When I got home that evening I realized I had left my cane at the store. I called them and asked them to look for it and I would come by and pick it up Monday morning.

My MS does not require me to always use a cane.  I need it only on certain days when I am unsteady and experience trouble standing and walking. This condition changes more often than daily, almost by the minute. Often I will go into a store or restaurant and after sitting stand or standing still for awhile my legs feel better and I end up walking out and forgetting the cane.

I went to the office supply store today and asked about my cane. The clerk asked the manager who went into his office and walked out carrying two canes and asked "Which one is yours?" I looked at him and chuckled "they are both mine." Apparently when I had gone to that store earlier on Wednesday I had been unaware I had left my silver cane there. When I got ready to return to the store that evening I couldn't find my silver one (which is my favorite) anywhere in my home and took another cane.

Not AWOL, really.

I have been involved in a move the last few weeks. In trying to downsize I sure had a lot of stuff to look through, throw away, or set aside for a garage sale. Even the city said I was throwing away too much stuff because there was more trash than my one can would hold.  The company we chose to move us realized they would need two trucks instead of one. My back and knees are screaming that they bent and carried far more boxes then they felt were necessary. Hopefully I will not move again for many years.

I won't be writing for several more days because I will be in New York at the Writer's Digest Eastern Conference April 5-7. Then the week of April 8th, the stuff set aside for the garage sale must be sorted, priced, and displayed.  Will write when I get out of the quicksand of stuff.