GAH

Still no sleep, I am ...it's odd very wound up and highly stressed at the same time but the only way it is coming out is in this lack of sleep. I fall asleep and have crazy nightmares and then wake up.

But...it is all a good thing. I just completely my "rearrangement" of things and essentially getting myself back to where I should be and the result is a massive sliding off of stress and pressure so that when a certain surprise thing happened - I am stressed, I am not sleeping - but I am happy as a clam and am going to haul my bicycle out today and just pedal myself into physical exhaustion and all will be back on track.

Until the next thing of course.

But it is remarkable to note how what would have been insurmountable two weeks ago is an inconvenient blip now because I have changed the circumstances around me. Sometimes that is all it takes.

I was walking and talking with a friend last night and we were talking about this and both of us agreed that the release of stress when you make a change is so fast and furious that it can leave you breathless and not really believing it is true. But it is the painful months of getting to the point where you are willing to take the steps to give up something that is not working for you that are hard.

There is a reluctance to let go. We hammer on the idea of commitment, like Chesterton in the chapters yesterday, the idea that in marriage the marriage does not actually begin until the honeymoon fails and you choose to stay through the difficult parts.

His choice of words "forcing himself to be happy" can be easily misunderstood these days. That concept has evolved into a very superficial understanding of what it takes to become happy. It does not take "doing the opposite" or smiling when you want to cry. Don't get me wrong, that can help in the moment, but what he is saying is that in the recognition in marriage that one has joined with another because there is a unity that brings happiness, in the moments that are difficult, you have to remember the big picture. The big picture being "I am happy with this person therefore I will be happy again with them once we get through all this."

This only works if the two persons involved have entered into the committed relationship with as full an understanding of both their relationship to themselves and to each other as possible. If you marry someone you have made no effort to get to know then you only understand the relationship based on how it effects you. Commitment in a relationships requires that you have developed a sense of empathy for the other person, that you can place yourself in the positions of feeling what the relationship means to them.

This is true of the nature of every committed relationship whether it be to a lover, a friend, an animal, work or a belief. Unless you have the ability to understand empathically what the relationship means to the other thing involved you will not fare well.

In work and beliefs, these are not people with emotions that we can relate to but concepts or things. The empathy comes with the awareness that without you that idea or thing has no action or interaction in the world (or less of one).

When you gain that sense, you also begin to see how the interplay of the relationships you form affect the world around you.

Half of my brain was returned by the little gremlins. I do believe MK is chasing the other half around the yard.

I was hot on propagating rose cuttings until I realized it would be a year or two until I had something to plant. I would like more blooms now please. So I bought a sad little rose bush at home depot. I will see if I can bring it back to life. It's already looking happier then it did yesterday.

Then I went into lalaland and I bought some flowers for the front. Mind you, I can grow roses. Nothing else. Roses like me, we bond and get along. Flowers and other green things try very hard to grow feet and run down the street away from me. But every so often I get this small delusion that I can grow flowers. Especially after looking at the obnoxious rose blooms out front.

I am taking my bicycle out today - rain or shine - and riding, riding , riding to get some rosin and a violin book. AND I discovered that in my hiatus from torturing small animals with my violin playing they have made a practice mute (that is affordable) I think I will start with that until my confidence is higher.

I am closing in on releasing the first of the free creative workshops. I am slowly catching up on all my projects that just sort of stagnated while I was in the albatross.

I feel like my life has been returned to me.

Chapters later...
and then two other things...

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