Feeling More Alive

Calamities can be opportunities.  Our odious President and our pandemic confinement have enabled a few beneficial things.  My Inner Compass seems a lot better defined.  And physically I feel more alive than I have in a few years.  Each has forced a level of previously frittered focus but in different ways.  I'm off a couple of my chronic medicines, not the antihypertensives and the lipid agents intended for longevity but the compulsivity suppressor, the nasal steroid, the anti inflammatories, and the alpha blockers designed either for my comfort or the comfort of those around me.   

I've done admirably well with personal scheduling.  There are designated sleep times and exercise times.  Grocery shopping has been more purposeful.  I have assigned days for finances and for car maintenance.  TED talks, which add to my sense of alive via admiration for what others achieved and convey, are accessed in a scheduled way with some design to what I will listen to.  Writing has not done quite as well, though blogging has settled into a morning activity with subjects added and saved as I think of them.  I keep up with reading the subscriptions that I pay for.  A new ritual of sherry or port in late afternoon has been added.  While concerned about both the expense and indulgence, I can afford both.  An attempt to replace with herb tea, which I also like and is more economical, did not generate the same late afternoon inner peace.  Household tasks have become better defined with more tangible end points.  Kitchen floor washed, bedroom floor vacuumed.

Looking at my aspirations from a few months ago, I've done well.  Making friends has lagged, that goes a lot better in person than on a screen.  I've been on my day trips, one more to go with destination affirmed.  Whether I will really get to a National Park seems less assured.  One project was best abandoned.  Better to do that purposefully than to have it linger undone if I am sure I won't do it.  And while the upcoming national election dominates the attention of others, I have made peace with making a statement and voting, which I can do effectively, and influencing outcome, which I cannot.  But it does clarify my Inner Compass.