Bending without breaking.

It seems to me, at times, that a good portion of my life in the last 6 years has been spent exploring the question of just how far I can bend without breaking. I’d like to say I have an answer but the experiment is still in progress. Please stay tuned.

I have had this feeling for a while that my life is on the razor’s edge and that I must be very, very still and quiet or I will fall. But standing here, holding my breath, is still slicing me to shreds. There is no winning solution yet, that I can see, but I’m still looking. I have begun to think that the answer may be that I need to fall, that this place I’ve found myself is simply a dead end. I’m working up the courage to jump.

In the short term, my approach has been bury myself in work, in planning our conference, in making over Monkey’s room. Don’t knock it works! There isn’t space to ponder the bigger issues, the real issues, lurking beneath when you’re obsessing over just the precise hue of red to put on your 7 year old’s walls. Sure it comes across as being slightly obsessive and your friends might start poking fun at you but that is a small price to pay!

The problem is, I can see the end of all of my distractions and I’m starting to worry about what to do next ((Yes, I DO worry about what to worry about next. That is normal, right?)). I’m creating a mental list of “Things That Must Be Done” to stave off the inevitable ((in my mind)) slump that I will descend into as soon as I no longer have 80 gazillion things to ponder instead. I know I am not the only person who does this but, in what I like to believe is an improvement in my mental state, I can see how maybe this isn’t a good long term strategy…that maybe I should try to, you know, cope.

I would love to hear from anyone who has successfully stepped off this hamster wheel…