Day 9 of 100 intentional, reflective steps.

I woke up early today. I was really disappointed about that, not because I needed extra sleep  but because I hadn’t yet formed my brain into something to look forward to today.  See, I used to wake up with a laundry list of tasks and if there was no list, there was always, well . .. laundry.  The point is, even if I felt purposeless, the tasks at hand, my drive to succeed and/or my sense of over responsibility would drag me through the day until I found something that felt like a lot like meaning to hang on to.

Now my day, almost every day, has no schedule or calendar to march me through the day.  Instead I have a smorgasbord, a veritable feast of time laid out in front of me with all sorts of delicious possibilities. Only I’m not hungry.  Why force myself to participate or choose off that buffet when there is no internal motivation?

I have close friends and family I don’t call or visit; mostly because I can’t imagine that they would really want to take time out of their meaning-filled lives of changing the world to deal with me. There are so many relationships that hang in the air like dangling sentences just begging for a punctuation to complete them. This one should be a period because the relationship ended or should. Another is a questions mark leaving possibilities and still others are a comma, just waiting for my permission to write the next sentence.

There are personal “projects” to attend to. Exercise, walking, planning and cooking healthy meals and journal writing. There are also household projects to tackle, wedding decorations to think about, and tons of crafts that could be made for the holidays.  Well, hang me on a tree and call me bored. All that seems like a big pile of meh to me. The question of how to take care of oneself against crohn’s diease is important.

It is a weird black hole to fall into where nobody has any expectations on your daily life.  It is there you begin to realize how much our lives revolve around the expectation of others. At one time I had no time to catch my breath. Now I have the advantage of all the time in the world. Sadly, it all seems like play money, useless to spend and meaningless to even try.

However, everyday I put something on my calendar and try to have an idea of something I would like to do. Because I can. Because I’m alive and I have my health and my breath.  Because I have beautiful children and a lovely home to be grateful for.  And ultimately because as long as I’m alive I will choose to really live  with all that is in me.