Blogger asks me for a title and I have no clue.
All I know is that I have a new job so I have more money, my daughter is now in college so I have more time for myself, and I am so lost. Now that I don't have to drop her off at school and take her to soccer (which I desperately miss) I am taking the train into work. I am trying to find my rhythm.
If I do the full commute on my own, I walk up the street to the bus stop, take that east for a bit, jump on the Red line to Jackson where I transfer to the Blue line and get off at my campus stop. I walk up the steep walkway to the street and head into the office. During this hour and a half journey I listen to a meditation app - which, to be honest may not be helping. Each time it asks me to clear my mind, a zillion rush in. Usually the ones that I have been keeping at bay. The ones that taunt me. When the meditation app asks me to locate where my body is holding the stress it reminds me that I have begun to clench my teeth so much during the day and as I sleep that I busted two fillings. I play softball once a week, 16" of course as I am a Chicagoan. I do my best to hit the climbing gym twice a week. My therapist still thinks it is funny that her goal chasing Capricorn client picked indoor rock climbing as a way to de-stress.
So what am I doing back here?
It's been forever since I have properly used this space for what it was intended - capture my thoughts. I tried to keep a journal during lock down, but that went no where even though I wanted to be able to flip back to remind myself in years to come how hard the year or so we spent physically isolating ourselves from the world. Maybe the fact that someone read my diary years ago still haunts me and putting it all out here like this, now, on my own terms is the only way for me to brain dump.
This is dangerous. Public sharing is dangerous. But I know this better now versus when I started blogging in late 2000. But it is also liberating to put things out into the world.
Yesterday I led a time management and bullet journal workshop for my students. As they shared their struggles with juggling their classes, their personal life, the obligations to family, and of course work, I nodded. Not in "I've been there," but in "I am still working on that."
I have no idea if this is gonna stick, but if there is one theme in my life right now it is that when I share my story, others nod along. Some will thank me for helping them know they aren't the only one thinking that way. I need to silence the voices in my life that tell me that I should be satisfied with enough. Cause I am a lot and there is never enough.