September

I'm so full of nonsense, though.

Honestly.

Sad had its claws in me today. I took it out with me and walked it around, and as night fell and I was carefully brushing and arranging my self-pity I realized I'd actually done as many useful things today as I probably would have were I cheerful.

I went to the gym; I did the dishes (twice in one week!) (so now you know how well I cope during term) (oh, let's be honest -- ever); I met up with colleagues to do a little work; I made food with vegetables in it.

-- on the way home from the gym I found a cedar shelf left out on the sidewalk. I carted it home in easy stages, punctuated by bouts of positive visualization while leaning my head on the top plank. The wood needs refinishing, but it smells amazing.

-- a woman walking behind me took my elbow at one point and offered to help, but I was nearly home. And I had a sort of ghost to help me, too.

I had a vision of the difference between problems and anxieties -- the anxiety over the last few weeks has sometimes scaled up to a full-body scream, but I see friends with problems -- not worries or struggles or bad habits but non-negotiable, sometimes intractable problems -- and I see that most of what I think of as problems in my life as it is now are to do with how I engage the world (as incipient catastrophe, as unpredictable punishment, as indifferent beloved), not with actually having anvils dropped on me. And thus sad slunk off in embarrassment and refused to come back out. Which is not to say that I am epiphanically cured -- just that I am trying -- as K. would advise -- to feed other animals with my attention.

Well, that's still mostly nonsense. But the shelf is great.

{rf}