Last night, I got an email from my job. It was addressed to all the per diem workers on my unit, reminding us of our education and scheduling requirements to stay in the hospital’s good graces. There was no due date in the email for the education compliance.
Failure to comply, it concluded, may result in termination.
I set my laptop aside after reading the email and tried to figure out what about the email had bothered me. I remember a similar from one last year. When I read it, I freaked out – Was I behind on my education? Was I working enough weekend hours? (Everything was fine.)
This year, I have been so mentally bogged down by family life, homeschool life, and the pandemic that I actually HAVEN’T done my education, at least not all of it. So maybe the email WAS for me.
I was standing in our dining room with one of my older daughters. We were having a conversation when we heard a loud noise. The door of our china cabinet, inches away from our elbows, flew open. A cascade of china fell to the floor at our feet.
While we were standing very close to it, neither of us had been touching the cabinet. My having seen what happened with my own eyes took away the anxiety I usually experience when I find something broken. I knew no one was at fault, so I was able to skip the Who Is To Blame step of dealing with brokenness.
If I hadn’t been in the room the moment the accident happened, I would have spent serious bandwidth trying to figure out how an accident like that could have happened without human interaction. Yet it clearly had.
Today is a day of mourning for Native Americans. It has been so for fifty years. As our country awakens again to the tragedies that have dogged us at every stage of our history, it’s difficult to find a holiday that can be celebrated without mixed feelings.
Truthfully, what holiday was ever free of baggage? These days were already burdened with the small and large issues we have with them, wrapped up in financial woes, boundaries with family members, or our own dark personal struggles.
If you go back to my very first blog post, I talked about the pressure of trying to make all the holiday magic by myself. In the couple of years since then, I’ve realized that I don’t have to do it alone.
After yesterday’s post I felt like I had to follow up because today was so different from the past several weeks.
I woke up this morning and had finished molting.
I’m on high alert a lot of the time. The past few weeks have been especially bad. When I meditate, or take a walk outside, I can temporarily hit pause on all the stimulation my brain is getting and it settles way down. Then, the volume shoots back up to ten.
