Cognitive Dissonance in Everyday Ramblings

The sister community garden to mine at sunrise a few days ago. Ours looks the same, blanketed in oak leaves.

I am usually in pretty good spirits but this morning after my last class of the week my mood took a nosedive. I am pretty sure that there are a number of contributing factors, simple things like the fact that it is cold and often dark and while I have recovered from the challenges of the trip to be with my niece I get tired more easily than I used to. And restoring my energy takes longer than it used to.

And it seems like a lot of the news media is acting like everything is relatively normal, where it feels to me like there has been this huge shift into an uncertain future that includes the impulse towards cruelty, as if cruelty were the point.

Not that I am paying a lot of attention to the news, my consumption has gone way way down since the election. But it is all out there. Stuff filters through. And there is this uneasiness afoot.

The other thing is that my nonprofit work has been way more challenging than I anticipated when I took this role on. I keep trying to get a handle on things and get them set up as routine and things keep happening and I have to figure something out, or learn something, or email someone or… it just goes on and on. Hours trying to figure stuff out.

And yet, the work is valuable I know that, but as I was telling our current chapter President this week, I was thinking I would do this for four years but if it doesn’t get any easier, I am out of here in two. With teaching and my other nonprofit and just taking care of myself, all the things seem to be piling up leading to this big block of overwhelm I am lugging around.

I am so impressed by all the work everybody is doing. This week I learned a lot about how recalls work in our state and it is interesting.

But ugh. Finding a balance. Not having everything feel like this complicated slog.

Walt asked for a poem for our newsletter this week and while I was waiting for it to warm up outside so I could get across the street without slipping on ice I wrote a little one. It is an occasional piece written for the moment and the people I know who read the newsletter. It isn’t very good. I am okay with that. It is something I composed in an hour and sent off.

They wanted me to read it in class yesterday after I mentioned writing it. I said it wasn’t very good before I read it. They gave me a hard time about saying that. I understand why they told me this and it was probably not appropriate to say in that context, but I was being myself, and I forget sometimes to rein it in.

Especially because I have so much on my mind right now. I was happy to have written something that Walt liked enough to include. I realized while I was working on it that I need to do more of that and less of the crazy parts of the nonprofit stuff.

Where is the fun in everything being a challenge? I would like to slide on in to home base now and again and score a sense of accomplishment.

And yet, when I am able to drop into the present moment, I am good. I feel fine, Carlo is doing great, I am back in my apartment, and everything is working. Next week I am getting my ridiculously long hair cut so that it hangs better and looks cared for. Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is on its way.

I guess it all comes down to acceptance. There are always setbacks and difficulties and yet change does happen. Even if it feels like four steps forward and 14 back. And I doubt there has been a time in human history where it wasn’t to someone’s advantage to be cruel. Things can be learned.

I think I will go find some fun uplifting music to listen to and tell the chatter in my head to chill and see what I can do to slide (if not into home plate) out of this uncomfortable not easy mood before I say or do something that might be authentic but not helpful in the least bit at all.