The past week

Monday I felt so not tired that I did not even have caffeine.

I had a 4pm doctor's appointment.  Afterwards, I turned in my bells. As I walked back to my car after doing that, I found I was crying.  Was I that sad about giving up Morris dance?  Was it because I was tired?  Was it because I hadn't known I was supposed to turn in my baldricks too, so I felt bad for being told I did something wrong?

I went home and got in bed with a fiction book.  Nice and short, so it didn't keep me up too late.

Am I really sad about quitting Morris dance?  Shall I try looking inwards? I tried for a few minutes, then went to sleep instead.

Wednesday in tai chi class we learned something new.  In the fall, we got to the end of part 1 about a month before the semester ended.  The teacher thought that one month was not enough time to start part 2, so we just did nothing.  I  mean, I wouldn't have minded going back over part 1 in ways that helped us improve it, but I felt like we weren't doing that, we were just stagnating.

Then this semester, we have some old people and some new people.  For the first 3 or 4 weeks, we just did drills.  That was fine with me.  It was going back to basics, but I felt like I was learning something.  I felt surprisingly clumsy doing what was supposedly basic stuff that I already know.

But this week, we moved on from the drills and started learning the form.  We split the group in two, with the new people learning part 1 and the old people learning part 2.  So finally I was learning something new.  

Also, at the beginning, before everyone got there, the teacher asked a student if he still remembered the bagua zhang form. The student said yes, so the teacher told him to do it.  I had never heard of bagua zhang. I liked it.  I want to learn that too.

I like tai chi and bagua zhang because they are like dance.  I've always loved dance.

Thursday evening, I lay in bed reading a nonfiction book.  So warm in my bed.  Nowhere else is warm enough this cold winter.  At 8pm, I turned out the light to go to sleep.  Usually I got to bed more like 9:30-10:00, but I just felt like going to sleep.  I was tired.  I'm always tired. 

It did not work.  Still awake, I got up around 9:30pm.  Had something to eat, wasted time on the computer.

I expected to feel extra tired Friday as a result of the interrupted sleep, but I didn't.  Friday I was working hard at my job.  There were several tasks I wanted to get done before the end of the week.

I worked until 8:04pm.  I got a lot done.  I didn't get everything done.

I thought again about how every person, group, or activity has its positives and negatives, and there are some you can live with and some you can't.  In this case, I was thinking of the man I was working with on one of the projects.  He is not really competent to do everything that he should do, but he is kind, and he is responsive.  He works hard to get it done, and he does his best.  I can work with him.  I kind of like working with him, even though I wish he could do more, because it would take some burden off me.

The thing I spent the most time on was making up malarkey.  I had to write all these justifications.  They are so fake.  I mean, we want to do X for reason Y, but the only way we can get approval for X is if we write a justification for reason Z.

That's one reason I hate my job.  Because it violates my integrity.

On the other hand, the days I work late are the days I like the my job better.   I like to rise to a challenge.

It's like the way I was glad to learn something new in tai chi.  I like to be growing, not stagnant.  The problem that I have with my Morris dance group is that we are stagnant.  That's just the way the leadership of my group is, both the squire and the women's fore.  But I love the women's fore, I just don't want her to be my teacher.

One of the reasons it hurts me to leave Morris dance is because it severs me from her, and from the community.  Even though she's the only individual in the group that I really  have any bond to, I have a bond to the group as a whole.

When I woke up this morning, I lay in bed a long time, maybe an  hour and a half.  Usually I lie  in bed for about an hour when I wake up if I don't have to get up, but I think it was a little longer than normal this time.  It was delicious.  I was wallowing in contentment.  In the daytime, when I'm walking or meditating or doing anything that leaves my brain free to think, I think practical things.  I think about what to do, both immediate plans and long term goals.  But in my dreamy sleepiness, I indulged in fantasy.  It was mostly erotic in nature.  There was a lot about the guy I've been thinking of a lot in the past few weeks, someone I knew in college.  There was also my tai chi teacher.  Of course I always thought he was attractive since I set eyes on him, but I don't have a particular sense of connection with him.  But in class last time, he demonstrated push hands with one of the other students, and I thought about doing that with him.  And there were all sorts of other people and situations I imagined too.  Most involved me being in various situations with various men, but there was also the thought of myself being beautiful.  It was like one of those classic paintings, from a time when fleshier women were considered attractive.  I had some sort of flowing, colorful dress or robe.

It was all to a Peter, Paul, and Mary soundtrack.  That's what I've been listening to the past few weeks, and that's the music that  continued playing in my head through my imaginings.  I think it involved  the song Sometime Lovin'.

There were all different things in my imaginings, but what it boiled down to was feeling loved.  Whatever may be missing from my life, I have my internal resources, so I can build what I need in my imagination.

This morning, I went downtown for errands.  The sun was shining brightly.  It was warm.  These days, "warm" means over 20 degrees.  I did more errands than I had planned, and then I wanted to enjoy the sun, so I walked around downtown for 50 minutes.  Wow, going for a walk! When was the last time I did that?  I did go snowshoeing for 25 minutes about 3 weeks ago.  Otherwise, I don't remember going for any walks all winter.  I've been sick most of the winter.  I've been coughing most of the winter.  I do walk when I go to and from work, and for the past few weeks, that has just been constant coughing.  I guess that's both because it has been so cold, and also because the doctor had me go off Flovent for a test.  But I walked, and I wasn't having coughing fits.  Sure I was coughing, but they were just coughs, not big fits that sounded like I was going to vomit, and sometimes I could go for 15 minutes straight without coughing.

I looked around and it was beautiful.  It was beautiful because it was sunny and I was outside and there were trees.  I stood up straighter.  With the lifting of the inhumanly cold weather, the weight of fatigue and coughing lifted.

I got home and it wasn't perfect because I was tired and I didn't do the things I was supposed to do, but it was okay.  I listened to Peter, Paul and Mary.  Their music is stunning.  I'm talking about songs like Sometime Lovin', The Coming of the Road, The Magi, Of This World, Take the Chance, It's Magic, River of Jordan, and Sweet Survivor.