Apocalypse When?

Ever since I was young, I have been somewhat obsessed with the end of the world. Not because I'm looking forward to it, of course, but more because I have found I become obsessed with everything that scares me. Maybe I want to find out as much as possible about it so that I won't be frightened of it anymore; or maybe it's just the natural morbid human fascination with things we can't control. We don't want to look, but we find that we HAVE to.

This week someone at work mentioned an "Oprah Winfrey" show they had seen about the bird flu. Apparently there was a doctor on the show that theorized that the coming pandemic was NOT an "if" situation, but a "when" one. That is, at some point, a bird flu pandemic WILL hit this world and this country. The doctor then launched into a grisly, depressing vision of what life would be like in such a situation; massive deaths, scarcity of food and medical care, etc. At some point, I just told the person I didn't want to hear it. If, as the doctor apparently asserted, there was nothing we could do to prevent this from happening, why did he bother talking about it? And why would I want to listen?

At some point, I am going to die. That's a fact. There is nothing on this planet or any other that I can do to prevent that from happening. And while I have to live every day with that knowledge lurking in the back of my mind like a shadow you can barely glimpse from the corner of your eye, I see no point in moving that knowledge to the forefront. All that would do is ruin whatever time I have left, and all modesty aside, I don't really think I deserve to be that miserable for the remainder of my days.

Likewise, it's highly likely that at some point, humanity as a whole will no longer be here. Every dominant species in the history of the world has had a finite existence and there is no reason to think that we will be any different. But to boldly state that one knows how this will occur (though to be honest, the doctor didn't say he knew when) seems to me to be not only extremely arrogant but downright irresponsible.

My mother was told in February of 2004 that she may only have two years to live. Now, as it turned out, she only lived 13 months after that. But the first thing I did was to tell her that no one really knew for sure how long anyone had to live. If she had wholeheartedly embraced that prediction, the remainder of her days would have been nothing but a slow, awful march into infinity. I didn't want that for her; I told her I didn't think we should talk about timetables. I said that every day when we woke up I would ask her "how are you today", and we would go from there, dealing with each day as it came and not projecting forward any more than necessary. I hope it was the right approach. I just didn't want her hope to die. Later we took her to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, and the doctor she saw there concurred that no one could say for certain how long anyone had to live. Sometimes people beat the odds, and sometimes they don't. But the point is that to dwell in that terrible "countdown" mode is unthinkable. A certain degree of assumed immortality is necessary just to get through your day without losing your mind.

So I will approach this "guaranteed" pandemic with the same philosophy. We may indeed be headed for something catastrophic. God knows there are enough ways to end things floating around right now; disease, environmental chaos on a global scale, nuclear chess in a world full of mad leaders, asteroids hurtling toward the planet from everywhere. But if we concentrate on today, on how we treat each other in the precious seconds, minutes hours and days we have here, maybe that effort will add up to something worthwhile. It may not forestall armageddon, but it will at least make whatever time remains before it enriching and warming.

Maybe that's the whole point?

Snowball

How like a snowball you were.
Composed of a million, unique, beautiful elements
All mixed together in a delicate whole.
Your every facet, humor, love, strengths and weaknesses
Frozen for a wonderful, brief period of time.
No matter how treasured, no matter how much protection,
Fated to melt.
But in melting, there is not destruction,
Just transformation.
What was once separated from the ocean of life,
Returns, combining, mixing and adding to the whole.
How sweet it would be to think
When my time to melt arrives
That you would be there, part of me, part of all,
But still unique, the elements intact,
The mom I remember.

Stress

Someone posted to my blog that blogging is good for OCD. I think that may be true. I'm not sure why, but it seems logical that getting your thoughts down on "paper" or the computer equivalent might be a good way to purge fears and anxieties.

I hope so, because I have quite a few right now.

I signed up, foolishly, for a new natural gas delivery service that I was lead to believe (or was kidding myself) would lower my bills in the winter. Only after I signed up did I think I should call my current provider and ask them what they thought. It sounds as though I may have even higher bills with the new service, and I found that there were a lot of questions I should have asked but didn't. So I called back the new company, got an answering machine and left a message for the guy that sold me the service. I put a lock on my current account so no one could touch it; then I called back the next day the new service and left a recorded message for the salesman telling him I wanted to cancel and stay with the old provider (you have three days to cancel). I then called my state's commerce commission and they said that if the new service sent me the info anyway and tried to sign me up, to call them and they would take care of it. But with my OCD...I still wonder, what if they say they didn't get the message and try to charge me some exorbitant exit fee (as I hear they have done in the past) to get out? I feel so darned foolish; and I'm sick with worry. I feel dumb because I never do things like sign up for programs without getting information first, but I was tired and this sounded OK. At least I had the forethought to call my current provider afterwards (or it that afterthought?), but still...I feel dumb.

When I worry, my stomach gets all tight and painful. I know there's a lot of acid in there trying to eat me up. And I don't sleep well, my mood is bad; I just hate waiting to see how things turn out. I'm no good at dealing with stuff that involves waiting and I have a hard time knowing when and when not to push the panic button.

Work remains horrid. It is disorganized, poorly planned and terribly stressful. I can't think of a single person who isn't probably thinking during the day "how the hell can I get out of here?" The atmosphere is very tense and people talk to each other in a very disrespectful manner. It never was a great place to work, but it has become much worse over the years.

Tomorrow I am supposed to see a woman at a local community college about setting up a class schedule. I don't really think her idea is going to work because I have to work during the day and most of the classes are while I'm working. But we'll see; maybe I can take some night courses. I need to do something, get on some organized track rather than just drift as I have been. I have to follow up on some job possibilities too; but I am just so tired when I come home and have so much to do that I just never seem to do it. I need some days off. Yes, I just had some time off for Christmas but you can't ever get anything done at that time; you're busy getting ready for the holidays and most of the people you need to get in touch with are too. It's not a "get things done" time of the year.

So I sit here, sick and nervous and depressed and angry at myself. I see so many people that just seem to be so together and organized and fulfilled and I wonder what the difference between them and myself is. Genetic, environmental, a combination of the two? Who knows for sure? And I miss my mom so very, very much. I always have but it's particularly hard at times like these, when I need a shoulder to cry on and someone to use as a sounding board. She was always there for me, through all the craziness and dark times I've had; patient, loving, understanding and willing to listen. You can have friends, but you can't recreate that type of love. It's a once in a lifetime thing.

So, has this helped me? I don't know. I hope so. I'll be relieved once I know how this gas thing turns out. But after that, it will just be some other crisis I'm sure. I have to somehow learn to live with the unknown and not have it turn me inside out. It's at times like these that I realize how very, very alone I really am; again, it's not that I don't have people who care, but how many people do any of us really have that can be a source of "unconditional positive regard"? How many people do any of us have that will make us a priority and put aside their own needs in order to make us feel comfortable and safe? I would wager very few.

Well, this is a bit more personal that I tend to be, but at least it's a post.

Onward...

Shutterbug

I like to take pictures. I've only taken on photography course in my life, and it took me over a year to finish it, but I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure what turned me on to pictures, whether it was my mom's interest, or the Rolling Stone issue that featured Annie Leibowitz pictures, or just something innate. But whatever it was, it's something I find myself coming back to time and again.

I think there's lots of opportunities for creativity in photography, and operating most cameras isn't that difficult. I haven't learned how to use a darkroom yet, but I might someday. I guess I just like the notion of finding, or bringing out, something unseen or heretofore unexplored in the world around us, a world we all see but take for granted for the most part.

I like taking pictures of nature, of animals and skylines and trees. Nature has always been a kind of peaceful, positive influence on me, and so many of the images it conjures are really magical to look at. And there's so much opportunity for sharing a personal vision of nature; you decide how much shadow to use, what angle to shoot from, etc.

Likewise, personal portraits are fun and interesting too. I loved the Leibowitz article because it really showed how portrait photography can bring out someone's essential character, or bring out an aspect of their personality that no one has really seen before. It's just a great creative medium, and all you really need is an original perspective and a good eye.

So hopefully this year I'll be able to do more of it. I've toyed with the idea of starting a photo blog; a photo a day, with accompanying text. We'll see. Like this blog, I hate the notion of just "logging" in each day whether I have something important to post or not. I don't want what should be a creative endeavor to become rote. But I guess there's some value in a daily routine as well. It creates discipline, and heaven knows that's something I could use.

For instance, it's January 2nd, and I've now blogged in every day of the new year.

Yippee!! :)

Resolve

As I head into 2006, I get alot of advice about "leading your own life", particularly in light of my mom's passing last March. I understand the advice and I appreciate it; people think that I was living mostly for my mom (as with any relationship, things were much more complex than that simple analysis would allow) and denying myself certain things. The advice givers certainly mean well and I realize they are simply trying to get me to look forward and concentrate on the reality of the here and now. They are trying to tell me to do what I have to do to be happy.

I guess the only response I have to that sentiment is to say "thank you for caring" and add (silently of course) that "living your own life" does not, for me, at least, denote being self-absorbed or making life decisions in a vacuum. I applaud and admire those brave souls everywhere for whom following your dreams has meant casting off all or most old relationships and being single minded in pursuit of whatever encapsulates that dream; a career, a romance, a philsophical calling. Bravo.

I'm not sure it's always that easy; certainly it hasn't been for me. Part of being "who I am" means a desire to have some sense of security, to be around those who care about you and can be counted on to be there for you in hard times. I'm not trying to say that following a dream and having people who care about you are mutually exclusive propositions, but in my specific case there have been a wide variety of factors that led to the decisions I made (and didn't make) and some of them involved other people and some of them were purely selfish i.e. fear, insecurity, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that we all do what we have to do to stay sane at every particular moment of our life and most people really aren't looking very far beyond their comfort for the next few moments, if you really dig down into their motivations. That's human nature; it's often something we have to fight against, but it's something we need to acknowledge and be aware of. When we feel that the risk is doable, that is, when we feel secure and whole enough within ourselves to withstand whatever negative consequences the risk may incur, then we go ahead and take the risk and hope it's worth it. Risk is necessary and for the most part, good for us. It's just that we all arrive at the point of feeling confident about risk taking at different times, at our own pace. And it's all relative too; what may seem like a huge risk to me might seem like little or no risk to someone else.

As controlled and as cautious as my life no doubt seems to outsiders, I am taking risks. Like the movement of the clouds, they may be small and barely perceptible, but they are occurring. And (to continue to metaphor) just as a good wind increases the clouds speeds, so too have different factors increased the speed of my risks. The counsel and care of friends, the confidence which comes with more experience taking risks, and just the general feeling that I've remained fearful and static long enough have all helped push my "clouds" a bit faster.

My life is a long way from being what I want or need it to be. But...there's movement. And I hope to continue moving. I don't expect to "remake" myself, and to be quite honest, don't want to. There is at least a little "baby" with all this bathwater. But I do need to try and redefine who I am and what I'm doing on this little ball of dirt, and little by little, inch by inch, I am asking the hard questions and doing the things that often make me want to curl up and hide in a corner.

I want to post more here next year. Wish me luck.