I am sorry to report that I am still sick. Not quite sick enough to justify skipping work, necessarily, but sick enough to have a bright red nose and to need to drink a lot of tea. I can breathe through my nose a little bit now but I fear it’s only because the mucus has migrated ineffably into my Eustachian tubes, thereby muffling my world to an annoying degree and forcing me, when speaking on the phone to patients, to go “Huh? WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT A VERY PERSONAL PROBLEM YOU ARE HAVING?” My skin is still very dry and my hair…the less said about that the better, unless you want to hear about how my grooming ritual in the morning now consists, essentially, of noticing how high the curls have reached in their never-ending quest to be rid of the tyrannical regime under which my head oppresses them so (“Yep, today’s a five incher!) and batting ineffectually at the ensuing hair aurola with product and brushes and combs and barrettes before giving up with a martyred sigh and going “Oh well, no one looks at me anyway.”
And then there is the ongoing sadness about the tsunami victims as well as the welcome renewed stirrings of political rage (take your pick: social security, torture fan Gonzales’ appointment as Attorney General…I knew we were kidding ourselves when we all sighed with relief when we heard Ashcroft was stepping down…the Iraqi elections, among others). I know it’s a good thing to be reminded (constantly) that my little personal problems are not much or many in the face of a devastating natural disaster or being locked up with no charges and no access to legal help, but thinking about that makes me feel sad and powerless too. I’m still finding it difficult to regain some of the clear-eyed purpose I felt prior to the elections…most of November and December has been all about the lethargy and apathy, politically speaking. You’ll be thrilled to know, however, that I’ve been looking at my election promises and working out how to best fulfill them. Right now I am setting up an ongoing volunteer gig and trying to keep in touch with my elected representatives. (As soon as we figure out once and for all who’s going to be in the governor’s mansion for real I’m sure that task will be much easier).
For a while, for the past couple of months, I was feeling pretty focused on a lot of things: the election, all my various travel plans, going home for Christmas. That’s all over with now and I find juddering between New Year’s Optimism and Oh What’s The Point. New Year’s Optimism has me making brinch reservations and signing up for the gym again (on November 3rd, no less, can you believe it?) and getting back into bellydance class, which I am totally paying for now because the first rule of bellydance is that you can never never never take any time off because if you do, you mere mortal, your hips will not work when you put on your awesome new skirt that your mom got your for Christmas. You will try to make your hips work but it will be useless and you will apologize to your duets partner for the fact that you cannot dance at all because your hips do not work. But you will still, since you are in the throes of New Year’s Optimism, feel pretty good about yourself in your new skirt and you will be happy to be back in class.
Under the influence of Oh What’s The Point, I am unhappily aware of all the paperwork you have to do in order to realize your Top Secret Plans, which feel absolutely impossible to achieve and who am I, anyway, to think that I can do or be anything other than what I’m doing and being right now, right this minute? I mean, here and now isn’t bad. I live in a nice house and have access to all the dried pineapple I want and I can see mountains sometimes from my work window and hey, I hear there’s a sale at the Gap this weekend. Much easier to just keep on and stay safe, right? Lots of people in the world would love to be where I am right now, yes? Hey, maybe I’ll buy a house this year.
Ideally I’d like to spend most of my time being active and optimistic but I have to say I am in a bit of a funk at the moment for reasons I don’t really understand. I can’t decide if it’s just January malaise or symptomatic of something deeper.