Cancel My Reservation at the Cuckoo Hotel
January 31st, 2008I just logged in to this site and saw that the last draft I started was entitled “If This is a Holiday, I Pick Work.” Good heavens! Apparently there was a bit o’ holiday stress nagging at me. In the post, I was whining and sniveling about shopping and wrapping and traffic and cooking and the stress of preparing to take a week off. I claimed to be happy, somewhere deep down inside, about doing it all - but I wasn’t very convincing.
What is especially interesting to me is that merely 6 weeks later, I have very little concrete recollection of this very stressful time. I read the post with a bit of wonderment; it seemed that it had even possibly been written by someone else. Oh, the wonderous mind, cleverly erasing the unpleasant chalk marks of life!
It’s gotten me thinking about the unnecessary stress I have suffered over tasks and events that faded so quickly. I wasted energy and - even worse - missed out on opporunities for joy. It’s a normal and necessary part of life, these cyclical patterns, these ups and these downs. My logical mind knows that. Why do I insist on fighting it? Why not relax and just let it pass right on by?
If I’m going to have any kind of resolution this year, it’s going to be to try to see these infrequent yet stressful situations for what they really are…fleeting, transient dark moments, evaporating soon enough into what is always a brighter time.
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
You know you are right. When things are REALLY BAD (like when my husband was out of work for 6 months when my preemie son was only 4 months old bad) I tell myself “Self. A year from now this won’t matter. It will all be different.” For the most part that is always true.
On a side note… I need to refigure how to post here. And I also need to come up with something interesting to contribute.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Michele, I think you are far more interesting than you believe. I like the advice of in a year, will it matter? Today my husband was laid off as well, and I’m trying not to freak out. Absolute, worst case scenario is we’d lose the house many months down the road, sell one car and move in with the parents. There’s next to no chance of this happening, and even if it did, we’d still be healthy and together. It would suck, but we’d still have the important things in life. What else do I really have the right to ask for?