More guilt

"That woman is looking at us."  They were walking into the Taos Brew, on the main drag of Pueblo de la Norte, two dark-haired, dark-complected men of medium height and medium age. I had been noting the establishment, wondering at the odd mix of family-friendly and brew-pub advertising, pondering just who the clientele would be.  Burgers and brew did not sound at all appealing to me at that moment, but it seemed a cozy, pleasant enough place, adobe (natch) with a small portal in front and darkness behind the windows.  No neon.  The men walked in file with long strides across the sidewalk towards the door, looking straight ahead, one of them wearing a hat with a thin dark something dangling from the back.  I wondered if he had a braid or ponytail, but it appeared to be the hat's long cord.  They were talking about me, I realized, suddenly, and I turned my gaze back to the street and the soft blue sky with the soft white fluffy clouds.

I really wasn't looking at them, or not purposefully.  I was out for a walk, an attempt to clear my restless legs and mind.  This being Day 7 of Cold 2, I am finding it difficult to settle.  My head is foggy, so reading or practising or writing are out.  My throat is still sore, and my cough (as unproductive as the rest of me) breaks out in mini-seizures, unpredictably.  So I can't sing in the last concert, and social engagements are also out.  My pirated internet from the Town Hall across the Camino is too intermittent to permit me to watch Netflix re-runs and knit.  Tutoring is doubly unavailable as an activity:  neither my brain nor the wi-fi will focus sufficiently.

Because I have done nothing but work and sleep (and cough) for 7 days, my legs are twitchy earlier than usual.  I don't want to take the ropinerole too early, or they'll start twitching again when I'm trying to go to sleep.  And yet, the twitching is keeping me from napping or sitting and watching the fire and the birds.  They are restless too, swinging on the cottonwood boughs, darting to the feeder, WHUMPING to the ground en masse, fluttering upward again for no reasons.  I think I see the spotted towhee, but a closer look has me puzzled:  the distinctive red eyes are missing, and the hood does not connect with the back wings.  I decide it's a grosbeak, all the more because the males are being territorial about the single feeder. 

Watching a flock
Of aggressive grosbeaks through
Opera glasses.

I miss the magpies and the ravens:  my visitors seem to mainly be finches and grosbeaks, with a smattering of doves.  These don't seem to have any messages for me, not like the portentous raven or sly, cheeky magpie.

This cold, allergy attack, what-have-you has been going on for close to  two months now.  The first attack was March 15, and the cough lingered after the two weeks of repulsiveness had passed.  I had one week of reasonable health:  visited with M and C, sang in the community chorus' first two concerts, enjoyed life.  Then, whammo! on the evening of May 3 I attended the gong journey with M and walked out, disoriented with the vibrations and swallowing against an increasingly raw throat.  I still don't know if this current attack is a result of the vibrations or the incense, or if  the cold had just been in remission.

A library curse:
I either caught a new cold
Or renewed the last.

I remember the last time I was sick for so long.  I was working at the Woodstock Branch, and we were getting ready to close it for demolition and rebuilding.  My staff and I were being scattered to other branches, and I was going to open Capitol Hill Branch, which had recently been renovated.  In the midst of this turmoil, I caught a respiratory ailment that had me coughing so hard my rib muscles went into spasm.  I spent a month at home, too doped up to read or watch TV, and in too much pain to lie down.  I ended up sitting in the cushioned chair at the big oval library table in the living room, folding origami.  Mind you, I had never folded origami before.  Someone had been clearing out her supplies and had given me a beginners book.  I had reams of  smooth photocopied music from orchestra, and I also had thick fuzzy 6x4 sheets of deckle-edged paper, made from junk mail with a blender, a screen, lots of water, and lots of counter space.  I cut all this paper into 2-, 3-, and 4-inch squares and sat hour after hour, making tiny flowers and tatos and boxes.  I didn't get into the cranes until much later:  they were too free form for my beginning efforts.

I think about that now, because I just read a friend's blog about napping and guilt.  She and I both wonder what it is about us, or our culture, that will not let us just be.  It seems that even being must have a goal, a purpose.  If I'm sitting and staring into space, I must be meditating.  If I'm napping, I must be rejuvenating, replenishing the life force.  I can't just be sitting and staring or sleeping.  Likewise, if f I'm sick, I can't just sit and be sick.  In fact, if I'm sick, it must be something I did, there must be a purpose other than a virus' mission to live and propagate.   A friend used to tell me that I got sick because I was too busy and it was the only way my body could get me to rest.  M can relate:  she says she was sick for every vacation she ever had.

Still, if  there is a metaphysical purpose to my illnesses, I wonder why my illness is always respiratory.  Why is that the weak point?  What does it mean that I cannot breathe deeply without expelling the breath in a violent cough?  What does it mean that, usually, there is nothing obvious to expel?  That I am suffocating with my coughing fits, that nothing is clearing?  What am I drawing in that I do not want?  Why do I feel so claustrophobic?

I also wonder what I did to get sick this time.  I'm not overly busy, nor am I stressed.  Or am I?  I recently completed another move, recently started another job.  My aunt is upset with my self-centered behaviors, and I don't know what I want to do when I grow up.  But, these factors have been present for many years:  I was never attentive enough for D, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I have been switching jobs and/or moving since 2009.  I'm so used to those feelings, they don't really have the power to stress me.  Also, I've had 18 months to heal, and this was a very painless move into a very easy life.  Objectively speaking, my life just now is idyllic:  I am surrounded by the most gorgeous skies EVER, and this town, despite its dark side, offers me so many opportunities to learn and experience my beloved high desert home.

So, no, I'm not unduly stressed.  Why, then, am I sick?  Why restless?  Why questioning and second-guessing myself?  My friend is taking naps:  why can't I?   And yet...my friend is also questioning.  She and her husband are currently living my life:  their possessions are in storage and they are exploring and house-sitting.  They both brought along projects, and they are both ignoring said projects and she, at least, is feeling guilty about that, just as I felt guilty about not doing anything but crosswords and internet while I was on that 18-month sabbatical.

I still want to learn Spanish, piano, and gamba.  I want to hike ALL the trails around here.  I want to finish my NaNoWriMo novel.  I want to find the man-made caves near Embudo.  I want to draw.  I want to throw pots.  I want to make music.  I want to finish those darn knitting projects and start a new one.  I want my friends to do all these things with me.   I want, I want, I want.....to sit in my chair, reading, writing and watching the birds.  I want to travel.  I want to share.  I want to save the oceans. 

I want to be able to nap, guilt-free.

Discombobulation

My daily routine has been disrupted, and suddenly I want OUT.  I realize that I have been a civil servant for over 30 years, minus that brief 18-month hiatus (but even then I was working on call for a library.)  This is not a new realization, I whine about this all the time.  But for some reason, it feels more visceral than usual.  I'm almost ready to march into the Administrative offices and say, "Enough! Genug!" I am not visualizing it, I can almost feel myself doing it.  I smell that fug from the sewers and unwashed customers.  I see the beige, square architecture.  I blink in the fluorescent lights, I walk up the stairs, noting the art posters on the brick walls.  I skirt the doors to the offices, which are always locked, and open the swinging gate into the Customer Service office, smiling and nodding at T who is talking on her headset with some disgruntled customer.  I circle the offices, looking for the Assistant Director who is the most appropriate recipient for my message.

But I'm not sure if I want to Just Leave, or if I want to do something different.

On some level, I want to create my own job with the Library, one that utilizes my creativity, one that does not have me clocking when I arrive at my desk and when I leave for lunch and when I come back. This week's schedule is perfect:  work a Sunday, make up the time by starting late, leaving early, visiting schools and daycares.  I am active, and I am seeing different people and doing different things. I am not working 8-hour days.

But, I'm still clocking my time, mentally.  And therein lies the problem.

I am tired of working at someone else's schedule to someone else's specs.  I love the work I do, but I want to do it on my own terms.  I want to work with people who inspire me or at the very least entertain me.  I don't want to spend 40+ hours a week with unlikable people with whom I share no interests or goals.  Well, that's a bit harsh:  they are likable on their own turf, and we do have a few interests in common.  Not enough to get through 8 slow hours, though.

The last few days have been full of conversations and events that are somehow melding into one big decision:  should I go or should I stay?

1.  On this morning's walk, JR was talking about the commencement address she listened to over the weekend:  all about making your own opportunities.  Is it too late for me to do that?  The address was directed at people beginning their careers, and I am close to ending mine.  I could actually retire in one year, but probably should wait for 5.  And then I have close to 30 years more in which to live, work, love, and play.  What opportunity can I create for that time frame?   What skills or affinities do I want to employ?

There are so many options.

2,  Yesterday I was helping J cut down her dead tree. The sun was hot, but the breeze was cool against my sweaty bark-and-resin-covered skin.  The scent of juniper was sweet in my nostrils. It reminded me of how much I liked archaeology:  the combination of physical and mental activity was just about perfect. We talked and were silent; we clipped, sawed, broke branches. I was absorbed to the point of dizziness....oh that was lack of water and food.

I like it when I forget about those bodily needs, but my body doesn't.

J suggested I take my love of travel and become a tour guide.  Apparently there's a place in San Francisco that offers a 15-day course and then promises to place you.  At the very least, it would be a fun working vacation.  I enjoy those.

Actually, I want to be a travel writer or a wine importer:  travel to various wineries, write about them, buy up the stock, and bring it home to share with my friends and family.  How do I create that opportunity, I wonder?  Just visualizing or putting it out to the universe is not enough.  I've been doing that for 25 years.

3.  A woman who was on the interview panel for UNM-Gallup last year contacted me yesterday.  She is interviewing for a job with ABC, and we are meeting for coffee afterwards.  I wonder:  should I have accepted the UNM 20-hour position?  Or, should I have accepted the position at Aztec, a year before that?  Should I have never left MCL?  Should I have stayed in PDX?   As I think through those choices, I believe they were the correct choices at the time. But things are different now.  I don't think I want to move back to PDX, but I don't necessarily want to stay in ABQ.  It seems to me that what I really need to be doing is jettisoning the safe routines and the familiar surroundings.  I don't need the cushion of a civil service job:  I have a reasonable retirement.  I don't need possessions:  I have pared down my lifestyle.  And, I don't need to live in any particular place:  I have left my old friends, and my new friends won't miss me.

4.   J mentioned that I am used to having far more money than she ever had....a reality check.  M  is stranded in Asia, looking for work:  out of money, out of luck.  That is not my case, nor, despite the last year, have I ever hit rock bottom.  Am I too smug in my ever-cushioned comfort zone?  Should I be glad I have a job, any job, without fussing about being ful-fucking-filled, for god's sake?!

5.  Yesterday was the first Monday in 6 months that I did not spend sobbing and regretting and self-flagellating.  Am I well?  Ready to move on?

But what do I want to do instead? I kinda miss being a basket case:  it was easier than synthesizing experiences and thoughts and coming up with a goal.

What I need to do is get ready to go to work.  Today at least.