if and or

The heat.

I think that is all I have to say about that, once the heat wave hit it is like energy, motivation and IQ just plummets. While I have been good and staying indoors and not doing much, the rare times I have had to go out have just sucked the life out of me. Today was dramatically cooler and everyone’s response seemed to be to want to curl up and just stay in bed.

I am sort of in this bizarre holding pattern. It is a mix of heat and being overwhelmed. It suddenly hit me just how much has to happen over the next three months and I am still in that paralytic stage of “Oh Sh*t” and haven’t quite slid into the motivation stage.

Is that true?

Not really, but that is how it feels. The truth is that I am moving very slowly as I assemble a framework from which to do all the things that have to be done. I have learned a great deal over the past year and even the act of combining all of my websites is letting me really take stock and review the direction I am going. There are old things to be closed out, new things to give attention to, and some surprising recent commitments I have made that are absolutely life changing.

It’s been an odd week for more reasons that the heat. Amy Winehouse died, which has really caused a surprising schism between people. Events in Oslo were horrific. Needless deaths in China, Yemen and Texas all hit the news and handing over absolutely everyone in the world is the continued dickering about whether or not to raise the debt ceiling and it becomes easy to bury ourselves in the grief and worry of living.

It is easy too, to swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and become just as unrealistic about how “everything will work out” or “there is nothing we can do but be in the present.”

But it is neither the end of the world or perfectly fine. It is a little of both and yet everything in between as well. We make a mistake when we grab a hold of one or the other or, when we become so wedded to a middle-of-the-road attitude that we do not validate the potential reality of the extremes.

A lot of what I am trying to feel my way through now falls in the same category. Decisions have to be made but they have to be made with the knowledge that they are not so much black and white decisions as a set of chosen directions. Choosing a direction requires both some sort of vague map and an idea of where you are going. In the process of getting there you can change the route you are traveling, but the objective and purpose always remain the same.

It is just that sometimes, what looked like an easy and practical path on a map, turned into a road split by chasms with dangerous turns. You have to be able to turn back in order to turn again and try a new way. But too often, the traveller will simply throw up their hands and declare the entire venture “impossible” or “not meant to be.”

And that is not true at all, now is it?

c.2011 Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.