Beautiful Sunny Day

I have not been blogging much lately - it's just been busy, between appointments, work, and going away for the week-end. I had a Herceptin treatment yesterday morning - was there for three hours - and am dealing with some fatigue and lower back pain (kidneys processing the drug). My legs felt shaky this morning, like they were weak, but I don't know why.

I'm feeling okay at the moment. It helps that it's sunny. I need to get out and enjoy it, but after I eat a good lunch with veggies.

I have a lot of work to do, little things like article and proposal reviews, plus two research projects, and a couple of my own proposals to work on. I'm feeling miffed because I need to get this work done, but my energy is kinda low. I'm also feeling miffed because I have a volleyball match tonight but I won't play because of the fatigue. I'm just miffed at the fatigue. I'm trying to be mindful and take care of myself and not overtax my energy. But it's a fine balance between taking care of business (i.e., I do have a full time job) and taking care of myself.

I'm also miffed because I don't like having lots of demands on my time. I just want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. But the world doesn't work like that. A few weeks ago, I talked about how I didn't quite have the focus at work and I think it relates to having the freedom to do what I want when I want to do it.

I just read this section at the end of Chopra's book "Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul" that relates to encouraging your own sense of timelessness. In our society, we always talk about how we don't have enough time. Chopra says that we need to remember that tasks get done when they get done and that they take as long as they have to take to complete it. There's no sense in stressing about making things happen faster. I've been gradually getting to this point where I try not to stress about all the different work projects or home projects that need to be done. They'll get done. It doesn't matter when. It's part of learning how to go with the flow. I like that freedom.

This past week-end, when we were in Brookings, I enjoyed going with the flow.

What bothers me about work is that I have to be in class at a certain time on a certain day. Or a meeting. That irritates me because I'd rather be able to say, "hey, this week isn't good for me for teaching a class - how about we all schedule it for next Tuesday at 2pm?" Wouldn't that be great?

Part of my dislike of being scheduled is that my medical appointments are so highly scheduled. Because of that, I want the rest of my life to be UNscheduled. That is why, to some extent, I haven't signed Eddie up for music lessons or sports or whatever. It's just too stressful - and there's some research that talks about how stressful it is for kids to be scheduled all the time - they need the free flow of play to help their creative/imaginative sides. I wish I could say to my medical team, "hey, I'm in the middle of writing right now - I have a good flow going - can we reschedule for tomorrow?"

Wouldn't it be great if we all had that sense of freedom and timelessness? : )