Be Here Now
My mom and I, separated by about 1500 miles, have settled into a little email routine wherein we are as content to touch base with such oh-so-non-newsworthy events as trash day, the arrival of the lawn guy, turning on the A/C, opening the house, and occasionally, even the results episode of some lame reality teevee show as we are with actual News. After surviving everything from illnesses, deaths, squirrel attacks, crack whore neighbors, loss of limb, and snarky teenage daughters, we've come to appreciate the mundane as "okay." As in, "Yeah, I really could stand to get a life, but at least nothing happened today." I like to think of it as cultivating those lessons Baba Ram Dass espoused many years ago, appreciating each moment for what it is. The main point is that we've made our obligatory contact and the other person can relax for the day, knowing that nothing untoward has befallen the other. No new IS good news.
This last week has been kind of a string of those not-so-special days. I think the high point was finally hanging up all my orchids and wind chimes that I'd taken down when Hurricane Fay threatened (no sense giving her projectiles to work with), and then the relief of knowing that Gustav--whilst he provided a lot more excitement in a shorter time than she did--wasn't going to make me take them all down again. I'm crossing my fingers that Ike isn't going to totally ruin my September, but for now I'm "being here now," happy to have survived almost another work week and ready for the weekend. Last weekend was a bit on the hectic side and I failed to meet my goal of finishing my course so I could study all week and take my final, but I'm just one chapter shy and may just make it anyway, if I pull a few all-nighters.
Even with my brain either halfway disengaged or at least focused on a ridiculously close horizon and my rationale that Ram Dass would agree with my savoring the moment instead of fretting about what I'm not getting done, I'm fighting a bit of guilt over my Lazy Libra-ness. . . My frenzy to get out of MT is stymied by the fact I do work full time (and on the worst possible shift), and I'm probably fighting old age, as well (that could just be the lingering back problem talking). When I studied to become an MT, being a student was all I had to do, and I was a fiend about it. Knowing what a disservice the femininists of the '70s did when they convinced us we could "have it all," it's still discouraging to experience first hand that you really can't. The only time we will really be able to compete on equal footing with men is the time someone figures out how to give us ALL wives. Until then, we (i.e. mostly women) get to figure out what part of our lives will suffer from neglect to make room to accomplish something more pressing.
I think part of my problem is that I have quite a few friends who are also scrambling to leave MT, and they've either chosen areas that require much less work to slip into or they're just infinitely better-organized than I am. I have one on the verge of being hired to become a police dispatcher (wow--what a great way to utilize those MT's ears!), another becoming a virtual real estate mogul (money aside, at least this one doesn't appeal to me), and another big MTSO who seems to do more world traveling now than ever before (some people just live right, I guess). The one who makes me feel most inadequate, however, is the Energizer Bunny of the group--not just a mother of two kids under five, but also running an online cross stitch business AND writing a novel (or six) in her "spare" time. But it gets worse. Failing to find a publisher who knew what to do with a genre like Mormon bodice-rippers, she's started her own publishing company. (I suspect the spectacle of Good Girls Behaving Badly will have a much larger audience than the mainstream publishing world grasps, so let me crow right now that "I knew her back in the day," before she starts making the talk show circuit and becomes famous without me.) The woman just started tearing into about 10,000 pages of editor's notes--we're talking a hands-on thinker with scissors and scotch tape here, folks, no crazy modern conveniences like computers--and I suspect she will meet her self-imposed timeframe and get it on the shelves this fall as planned. And her kids will still have clean clothes, her house will be neat, she'll still be churning out as many transcription lines as I do, and even her yard will be ready for winter. At least she has a husband who doesn't have to be hit over the head to pick up a dish towel.
So yeah, I've tripped over a little something this week in that woodsy path through my head and am feeling, if not discouraged, a little inadequate. At least I can take solace in the fact that at least nothing happened this week. Here's hoping when it does, it will involve a bright, shiny A on my terminology course and heading into my final prerequisite class.