Mire

Now would be an easy time to let the muck tire me out to the point where I just quit struggling. Wading through this can be pretty exhausting. I go a few steps and it gets a bit easier, but then they grow difficult again and I feel like I'm going backward. I may not be, but it feels like it. It's hard to stay well oriented and moving forward when the path feels like it's shifting beneath my feet.

God, are you doing the shifting, or are you just allowing it? I'm getting dizzy.

People intrigue me. Their responses to life's ups and downs are interesting to observe. Not that my own aren't equally interesting, and I have to say I have become a bit more introspective lately. We have a tendency to say pendulums swing way too far, when that is what they are designed to do. If they stopped in the middle, in the median, in the "zone", they wouldn't be pendulums. They are made to swing. Anyway, probably totally unrelated, but that's where my mind went.

Where was I? Oh, yes. People and their responses, and me and my own. I'm finding myself exploring why I do and say things I do and say habitually. There isn't a lot I do mechanically, but there are a few things. Most of what I say is fully thought-out, although now and then I do have a spontaneous (polite for "foot-in-mouth") moment of utterance where I'm stymied in regard to its catalyst. I try hard not to let that happen too often.

Secret: Sometimes I wonder if I should let it happen more often in my journals.

I set a goal in my journal writing group to write at least three times a week (and work toward more often) in a place that was neither email nor Facebook. This blog is one of the places I had in mind, along with other blogs and my paper journals. I'm trying to follow Natalie Goldberg's entreaty to keep writing, keep pushing, keep the thoughts going forward whether they seem to make sense at the moment or not. I admit some of my favorite writings to re-read are those where I've just let myself go and write, write, write without stopping to edit or make sense.