Tired of Mean

This isn't a real post.  This is me just needing a moment to vent.  I'm trying to find time to thoughtfully prepare some ideas and sort out some important issues, but I keep getting stuck and overwhelmed, so thoughtful will have to wait.

Tonight I'm just tired of mean.

Which Part of the Moment?

Recently I've been pondering the idea of "living in the moment."  The phrase sounds virtuous in its simplicity, but I'm not finding it all that simple.

Parts of it I get.  When I look at each of my children and am occasionally overwhelmed with how fast it's all going by, I try very hard to really look at them.  I want to be present and appreciate who they are at that specific time.  When I'm at a concert I try to clear my mind as best I can of the flutter of mental distractions that vie for my attention so I can truly hear the music as it's happening.  When I practice I know I need to focus in order to be productive.  When I snuggle up against my husband at night, I know not to take such basic comforts for granted.

I've even learned to accept living in the moment when it involves pain.  Occasionally I suffer debilitating headaches, and I've found the best thing to do is not to resist.  When I took birthing classes before having Aden I remember the instructor refusing to use the word pain to talk about labor, preferring to tell her pregnant and nervous pupils that it was merely "an interesting sensation."  That, frankly, is disingenuous at best, but there is something to it.  If you don't have a choice about being in pain, fighting it adds to its intensity.  Better to relax and find it "an interesting sensation" if possible.

So I see the value of "living in the moment."  The problem I'm having is that the phrase seems to imply that there is only one thing in that moment.  What if the moment is multi-faceted?  What if living in the moment is about reflecting on the past or planning for the future?  What about all the choices you might have to make about what living in the moment actually means?

At a Loss

Some days you don't get to pick your attitude.  I know there is many a pithy quote to be found on Facebook about choosing a positive thought and about how all you can control is yourself so you have only yourself to blame if you are not happy.

Well, when things are on an even keel, sure.  Some days, though, we need to cut ourselves some slack if we don't have the energy to force some more noble perspective.

My birthday is this week and I'm not feeling good about it.  It's my first birthday without my dad.  His birthday would have been on Easter this year and it's the first one of his since he died.  I don't like these kinds of firsts.  I keep tearing up unexpectedly.  I can go weeks at a time at this point where I don't think of dad in terms of loss, just in terms of pleasant memory, but not this weekend.

Better

Thanks to everyone who contacted me about my last post.  It meant more than you know.  I wasn't fishing for the compliments I got--just some reassurance that I wasn't crazy--but they were certainly appreciated.

I was already starting to feel better by the time I finished the post, but felt like I still wanted to get that out there while the mood was in my mind.  We can be so self-selective in social media that it can border on dishonesty.  I don't want to imply by not discussing negative things in my life that there aren't any.  I have good days and bad days just like anybody else.  My house is never quite clean, we opt to just grab a pizza for dinner more often then I'd like to admit to, we don't regulate our kids' screen time, and the dog has started pooping in the house again for reasons unknown.  Some kind of oasis of family perfection we are not.

But I am definitely out of my funk and ready to tackle things in a more productive manner.  You know the old adage about how the surest cure for hypochondria is a real disease?  Well my husband became suddenly ill, and there is nothing like a real problem (and some vomit) to put non-problems in perspective.  (He's doing fine now but it wasn't pretty there for a day.)  The things that were bringing me down aren't real problems, just low points in a larger process.  I was wallowing in the empty half of the glass, I guess.  Because it's not about that I can't find an agent and that my violins could be better, it's that I get to write and that I will improve my violins.  Yes, the weight thing is frustrating but it's also sometimes stupid to turn down pie.  There are people in my own zip code suffering food insecurity and my 'problem' is too much pie?  Yeah, I'm over myself for now.  Life is too short to choose to be sad.

Moods are interesting, though.