Mortificatinertia
Sometimes I need to get clobbered with the same message a bazillion times before I can hear what it’s saying. Even though everyone is shouting the same thing, I have a remarkable ability to ignore the din. And sometimes it takes a proper clobbering for it to get through.
Inertia is a huge force in my life. Both in the more common grinding-to-a-halt process and in the once-at-motion-hard-to-stop process. Generally speaking, I’m not much good at stillness. Until I crash, and then I might never put on pants and leave the house.
There’s this little bird, a sparrow, maybe? (I don’t know my birds, but brown, bigger than a hummingbird, smaller than an eagle.) Every day, it hits my windows repeatedly. The sound has become so common that even Kolo doesn’t react to it (and she seems to react to everything). The other day, I finally noticed it banging against the dining room window. I tried putting things in the window to scare it off, and, somewhat illogically, noticed that fully opening the shade kept it from flying into the window. Now it’s back and banging against the kitchen window. At this point, I’m wondering if it might have a concussion and just doesn’t know any better [Note: My friends have pointed out that it’s probably the reflection, so I’ll try and put a bird silhouette on the outside of the windows and see if that helps…]
Generally speaking, I hate the onset of winter. I’m wholeheartedly a summer person. The longer I can go without socks (or shoes), the happier I am. For the first time, I’m finding winter to be a bit of a relief.
To put it a little kindly, I’ve been on a bit of a tear. Perhaps it’s just a prosaic midlife crisis (though I’d argue that the midlife crisis was more likely to be a series of events that precipitated this behavior, and that this is some odd reactionary descent, rather than the crisis itself). Whatever it is, for the last few years, I’ve been especially bad at staying still. It’s like I’ve entered myself into an endurance event — fueled by a combination of poor nutrition, caffeine, and sleep deprivation. (Oddly, this is also the best physical shape I’ve ever been in. I attribute that to growing up Catholic — mortification of the flesh and all that.)
There’s something about stubbornness that means that I can paddle across the ocean with nothing but sugar and caffeine to fuel me, and that I’ll grind through with pride in my tenacity. (Some would call it stupidity…) But it also means that parts of my house are held together by blue tape and lit with unseasonable seasonal lights all year round. And that I’ll limp along with slow internet speeds while working, avoid risk when it’s good for my independence, and embrace risk when it leads to bad life choices.
Last week, I got the same message. Repeatedly. To the point where it wasn’t just clobbering. I was lanced, boiled, and then clobbered. And somehow I still almost missed it.
Change is hard. I’ve always thought I was good at it. Or getting better at it. But honestly, stuffs doesn’t change until it has to. Why would it? But this winter is kicking my okole. And in a good way. My body is just shutting stuff down, and the rest of the world is sitting on me until I get the hang of it. It’s been a really really good tear. But I’ve been turning a corner and not a small part of that is in navigating Kehoe’s end of life. We’ll see if I do something different or if I just get up, continue, and await the next clobbering.
