Relative Something

How many roles do we juggle in living our days? I have been grumbling a lot lately that rehabilitating a hamstring muscle injury could easily be a full time job. What I wish I had available to help me return to previous levels of athletic activity is entire days to stretch, exercise, stretch, strengthen, stretch, receive therapeutic sports massage and also appropriately rest; not only for my ailing leg, but the healthy one, too, ultimately hoping to recover with some semblance of balance. It ain’t gonna happen.

The other morning, while I was too-hurriedly trying to inhale my breakfast while standing, in order to make up for time spent sleeping-in a little bit to give my liver every possible chance to accomplish its overnight recovery (since I got to bed late after working long hours on overhauling my bicycle the day before) I gazed out at the landscape around our house. Just last week, everything was finally released from the grip of the long winter’s snow, and I was struck by the amount of attention it all now deserved. For the most part, our landscape gets left to fend for itself until one sunny weekend day when Cyndie and I will labor intensively to do what we can to influence some control toward appearances of order and intent. I mourn the fact that what we are able to accomplish is limited by having arrived at the tasks later than each chore deserved. Much of what we deal with could be refined by timely pruning or culling in advance, which would allow us to focus more on helping support the things we actually want growing and less on fighting back undesirables. It ain’t gonna happen.

The list of other areas of interest and/or responsibility that suffer similar limitations is long. The majority of them would be much better served given full-time attention.

As I was lingering (longer than the task realistically deserved) with cleaning the greasy sludge that persisted in sticking to my bicycle chain the other day, it occurred to me how this very situation reflects a common quandary I find myself facing. I have started in on the cleaning, and then believe it worthy to complete the task to the extreme, yet have not really prepared in advance to be as effective as my noble intentions now expect. I end up spending a lot of time toiling with improvised methods. The thing is, I enjoy that level of tedium. It becomes somewhat meditative. It has a component that I liken to my pleasure for assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

Unfortunately, one big problem with operating this way is that it runs right in the face of my inability to commit full-time to my projects. A lot more things linger unfinished than ever get entirely accomplished in my world.

There’s a thread in all that which is integrated with the depression I have experienced. My decisions and choices set up the situations and in that way I contribute to being my own worst enemy. My mental exercises to alter the dysfunctional process have revealed the power to change things for the better. But when I grow weary, and when I lose one of my supporting activities, it is surprising how quick I can revert to the sickly comfortable patterns of depressive feelings, behaviors, and when it really gets away from me, depressive thinking patterns.

Yesterday morning I heard the familiar lyrics of a song that John Prine wrote and Bonnie Raitt recorded for a hit, “Angel from Montgomery”

How the hell can a person
go to work in the morning
and come home in the evening
and have nothing to say

Unfortunately, I know all too well how.