Too Much Confusion

August 2, 2018 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

To simplify their lives, my husband’s parents try to avoid scheduling more than one activity on the same day, which they view as “too much confusion.” I usually am more flexible than that, but this week definitely had more confusion than its fair share.

Monday started out pretty good when an energy-efficiency rebate check from the power company arrived for replacing the old air conditioner. Unfortunately, the equally old refrigerator died on Monday evening, so that money now has to go toward its replacement.

No food got spoiled because the freezer side is still working and my husband brought an old dorm refrigerator (left over from when our daughter was in college) upstairs from the basement. Still, it was disruptive, what with going shopping for the new refrigerator and having computer issues at work.

Tuesday was a dark, rainy day. I got confused driving to the appliance store because the street numbers changed from one city to another, and I had to call my husband (who was meeting me there) to find out where to go. I put an image of a dark, tangled tree on my art display because it seemed to fit.

Dark tree outlined by pale green leaves.

The new refrigerator is on order and should arrive next week sometime, so the confusion won’t last forever. Yesterday evening we went rowing on a nice calm river. Getting outdoors and spending time in nature always helps to calm the mind and the senses.

What Comes Next

July 11, 2018 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

I recently had a midyear conversation with my manager about resources available for building more skills, among other things. The company has been encouraging employees to use online training materials for personal development.

My manager said that she had been talking with other people in my workgroup about their plans. Some wanted to keep doing the same job, while some were looking to change positions or to retire, and others hadn’t settled on what would be next.

Although she didn’t come right out and ask, I got the distinct impression that there was a question in there; so I replied that I was in the “not sure what comes next” group. That was true enough.

I have been doing pretty much the same work for many years and sometimes feel as if I’ve gotten stuck in a comfortable rut (which I didn’t say). The job is well suited to my temperament and skill set, and my manager and coworkers are very nice people.

Rutted road bordered by telephone poles and fences.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)

In our turbulent modern society, there is now an expectation that we need to plan far ahead. Otherwise, we’ll miss out on valuable opportunities and put ourselves at risk of falling too far behind to ever catch up. It’s no longer enough just to be a responsible adult who is working and paying the bills.

There are rational reasons for that fear. Many people really did end up in bad situations because they lost a job to offshoring or automation and did not have the skills needed to get a better job, or they wanted to retire but did not have enough savings. So, now we’re always seeing news articles that admonish us to save much more, improve our skills at every possible opportunity, and plan our entire lives in great detail.

There is an emotional cost to all this pressure, though, which I don’t believe our society is fully taking into account. When we’re expected to run faster on the hamster wheel at all times, we get stressed out. And stress causes health problems, detracts from mental flexibility, and leads to persistent feelings of being overwhelmed and insecure. Then, on top of all that, we feel guilty for not doing a better job of managing our stress, and we get even more stressed.

So I’ve decided that I am not going to worry about what might come next. Why should I feel obligated to live up to some arbitrarily created checklist—which, given how fast the world is changing, may not even come close to my actual future circumstances? To me, it makes much more sense simply to exist in the moment, saving a reasonable amount and learning enough to broaden my horizons, but without forcing anything. Then, maybe, when the time is right, discovering “what comes next” will happen naturally.

Rowing the Eclipse

August 22, 2017 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

I went rowing with my husband during the eclipse, along with a few other people in the rowing club. That made it feel more like an adventure. We brought our eclipse glasses into the boat and, as the light faded, we stopped rowing from time to time and watched the eclipse’s progress. it wasn’t total where I live, but it got dark enough to look almost like nightfall was approaching.

Two pairs of eclipse glasses on a wooden table.

On the river, we had a great view of how confused the wildlife got during the eclipse. Birds flew up to trees and wires to roost, cicadas started singing, and ducks and geese climbed out of the river and started waddling off to wherever they go at night. Then the light started coming back and many of the birds just flew around in circles looking totally befuddled. Their little bird brains couldn’t deal with the fact that it had been getting dark, but all of a sudden it wasn’t anymore.

As civilized humans who spend most of our time indoors, we don’t have that sensitivity to the natural world—at least not consciously. If we hadn’t known there was an eclipse, we might easily have looked out the window and assumed the dark sky was just some clouds blowing over. Then we’d have gone back to work and thought nothing more about it.

I wonder, though, if maybe there’s a primitive part of our brains that gets just as confused as those birds about all the unnatural things in our modern environment. Maybe our inner troglodyte peeks out every now and again, muttering to itself in a very worried tone, “Hey, what are all these bright lights in the middle of the night when it’s supposed to be dark? And why are we all staring at little glowing screens instead of looking at normal stuff like trees and fields? Eek! Too freaky! I can’t cope!”

Of course, there are many other reasons why we have so much anxiety nowadays. Mainly I think it’s because the world has been changing so fast that it can be hard to keep track of what’s going on around us, whether natural or otherwise. More time spent in nature surely would do us all some good, though.

Stress Relief

June 7, 2017 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

I had a busy weekend with a lot going on. It’s all good, but it left me feeling like I need to give myself more time to just rest and breathe. Also, can’t forget to de-stress by looking at a few good cat pictures, right? Wouldn’t want to end up like this poor kitty…

Cat picture that says "I'm so stressed out over being stressed out that I can't even remember why I'm stressed out... and it's stressing me out!"

In the interest of avoiding stressed-out kitty syndrome, I put a beach photo on my art display this morning, with a nice relaxing view of the tide coming in. That, along with getting some exercise rowing for an hour or so this evening, should do the trick.

Beach photo with rising tide

I’m hoping that this post gave everyone visiting my blog a little bit of stress relief too!

Just a Few Air Bubbles

May 14, 2017 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Last weekend, I mentioned to my husband that I had noticed the water was running slowly in the kitchen sink’s tap from the reverse-osmosis filter. He changed the filters and repressurized the tank. At once, the water flow was much better. As with most time-change items, the improvement was much more noticeable than the slowly degraded performance from one day to the next had been.

Reverse osmosis filter unit under the kitchen sink.

The water from the tap looked frothy all week. Even now, it still has a few air bubbles, which naturally happens as a result of servicing the system. Not a problem—it just takes a while for the air bubbles to work themselves out.

That’s true with many kinds of maintenance; it takes a little time for things to settle afterward. It’s not all that different from what goes on in our personal lives when we have to deal with changes in society and technology. However much of an improvement something may be, it’s unavoidable that there will be some amount of disruption.

Getting anxious when things look different is a natural reaction. But rather than letting our worries build up, we might do better simply to recognize that small disruptions happen and that, often, they’re no more of a problem than if they had been just a few air bubbles.

Fear Corrodes

January 16, 2017 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

We the People of the United States of America seriously need to chill out.

Among other things, that means stepping back from the political nastiness and having respectful conversations with each other, instead of yelling at each other. Calling people ignorant never made them any better informed.

We live in a modern nation with a strong tradition of democracy, not in a primitive land of warring tribes. Our fellow citizens in the next county, whatever their race or religion, are not going to attack our homes in the middle of the night. Whatever we may think of the government and the economy, we’re not dying of starvation in the streets. By historical standards, that makes us very fortunate indeed.

Word-art of a woman with an American flag covering her head that says "We the People are greater than fear."

Fear corrodes. When we make decisions based on fear—when we go through our days full of anxiety, feeling as if disasters are everywhere and we’re about to be attacked at any moment—not only do we make poor decisions and get stressed out and unhealthy; our society’s collective health also suffers.

Yes, we have real concerns, and there is much in today’s world that needs attention. Still, that doesn’t mean we have to look at every political dispute like it’s a fight to the death. If we want to imagine ourselves charging heroically onto a battlefield, that’s what war movies and video games are for. Social and political issues, like everything else, are best addressed through kindness, decency, respect, patience, hard work, and staying true to our values.

Looking at a Broken Fence

November 9, 2016 · 6 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

On Tuesday afternoon when I went to vote, it was dark, windy, and chilly here in Ohio; the past week’s unseasonably warm weather had turned to more typical November conditions. Although I try to cultivate the habit of finding something to appreciate in each day, rather than using words such as “dreary” and “gloomy,” I was finding it hard to take a more cheerful perspective—especially after I got home and noticed this:

Aluminum fence bent at top by a leaping deer.

Apparently this damage to my backyard fence was caused by a deer jumping over it. There is a small patch of woods along the edge of the subdivision, and we sometimes see deer walking across the front lawn, but usually they just amble along without causing any problems besides munching on an occasional shrub. I certainly wouldn’t have expected a deer to leap a six-foot aluminum fence! It must have been reacting in a panic to something—a coyote, perhaps, or a large dog.

Finding itself in an enclosed backyard, which surely must have left it feeling trapped and even more panicky, the deer then escaped by bursting through the fence at the back corner.

Aluminum fence broken by a deer.

It probably will be a while before a contractor can get us on the schedule to replace those damaged sections, and in the meanwhile my husband zip-tied some pieces of wood across the gap to discourage any more deer from getting into the backyard.

I suppose I’ll never know what made that deer so frightened. Maybe when a subdivision was built in the middle of their natural habitat, leaving only a little strip of woods, the whole herd got more anxious than they were before. Even if they didn’t clearly understand what was changing as the houses went up one after another, they might have had a vague sense that something didn’t match the way they remembered it.

That’s probably the best explanation I can come up with for the current state of our politics, too. The world has been changing so fast that our mental maps can’t keep up with all the newly created landmarks that diverge from our expectations, and sometimes we just get spooked.

A contractor is going to come out tomorrow and estimate the work. Unfortunately, it won’t be as easy to quantify and repair the damage done to civil society by the scorched-earth politics of recent years, which has cost a lot more than money. One of the saddest things about it is that the younger generation won’t even remember that there was a time when politicians were expected to behave decently and work together to serve the community. We need to set the bar much higher—not only for the behavior of those who want to hold public office, but also for our personal responsibility to set a better, more respectful example.

Staying Safe on the Road

September 28, 2016 · 2 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Twice recently I’ve had a dream in which I am sitting in a parked car with the engine running, and it suddenly starts rolling backwards. I try to brake and to turn off the car, but the computer is malfunctioning and won’t take any input. The car keeps on rolling away no matter what I do, and I know it’s just about to crash into something when I wake up.

A car wouldn’t really do that, of course, and there is nothing scary happening in my life right now. So I’m guessing that the dream reflects a fear that I might somehow “roll back” to stressful times in the past when I felt like I wasn’t in control. How to deal with it? Well, mainly I’d say that I just need to take a few deep breaths and stay focused on the safe, straight road ahead.

Straight road with colorful autumn trees on each side.

(Creative Commons image via flickr)

Also, there’s no need to keep a narrow focus and look only at the pavement. Much better to slow down and take enough time to appreciate the pretty landscape, the soft sound of leaves rustling in the wind, and the crisp autumn air. There is always something in the moment to enjoy!

No Squawking Needed

September 21, 2016 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Sometimes I spend too much time ruminating about what people’s motives might have been for saying or doing things that baffled me. When I have no clue what they were thinking, it leaves me feeling anxious about what kinds of unpredictable stuff they might do in the future. Of course, that is a silly worry because we can never really understand what goes on in other people’s minds, and much of the time they don’t even understand it themselves!

So when a coworker sent an email with this joke about a chicken crossing the road in a better world, it gave me a good chuckle:

Word-art that says "Dream of a better world where a chicken can cross the road without having his motive questioned."

Next time I find myself getting sidetracked by anxiety about what somebody might have been thinking, I’ll remind myself that there’s no need to squawk about other people’s motives!

The Who Needs To Do It List

May 31, 2016 · 4 comments · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

Modern life is so complicated and full of things that need to get done, it can feel overwhelming at times. Not so much because of the existence of the to-do list, which is simply an unavoidable fact. What causes to-do anxiety is the feeling that there’s just too much on the list to ever get it all done.

And, you know what? There probably is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. Much of the stuff that ends up on the to-do list wouldn’t be a calamity if it never got done. Chances are, nobody would even pay enough attention to notice. It may feel like it’s been hanging around embarrassingly on the list forever; but the fact is, nobody else cares because it’s not a big deal and never was.

So I decided to write a “who needs to do it list” where all the annoying stuff that has been buzzing around on my to-do list for years can go take a nice long nap. Preferably on the ancient couch in my living room that is #1 on the list.

old couch

When I say ancient, I mean it has been around since my two college-graduate kids were little preschoolers gleefully jumping on it when I wasn’t looking. After they inevitably broke something and left a sagging spot, my daughter (who was full of good practical ideas even as a child) helpfully suggested putting an old pillow under the cushion.

Replacing the couch was something I wanted to do for a very long time. But, even though we are not paying tuition anymore, it still hasn’t gotten done. My husband doesn’t seem to have much interest in looking at furniture—like many guys, he’d rather buy gadgets and do fun stuff.

And I started thinking, well, what difference does it really make? Who needs to do it? After all, my husband is the one who sits on the cushion with the old pillow underneath; my side of the couch is not as broken down. If it doesn’t bother him enough to want a new couch, then why should I care?

I was going to finish this post by listing a few more “who needs to do it” things; but after writing about the couch, while sitting on it with a notepad and pen, I felt like I’d really rather take a nap instead! And of course, the list itself is another “who needs to do it” because it wouldn’t matter one iota if I never wrote it. Ditto on finishing the blog post at a particular time or writing a certain number of words; it’s just for fun and to reflect on whatever’s on my mind. No biggie!

« Older articles
Newer articles »