Addicted to Excitement

That phrase is sometimes noted as a characteristic of adults brought up in dysfunctional families, as I was. (Trust me, I was. This blog doesn't tell everything about me, y'know.) I find myself questioning whether my normal daily behavior involves a lot of gratuitous excitement-seeking. Why is it often easier to fill my moments, my hours, my days with stressful and "essential" activities than it is to spend some quiet time with myself?

Over the past few months I've outdone myself in the excitement department, scheduling freelance jobs on top of my regular job(s) on top of travel on top of social engagements on top of who-even-knows-what. I've been neglecting myself, my home, my family, and my friends, all in the name of things that had to be done. And although I've still been running three or four times a week, my runs have been squeezed in, and I've often been fatigued before I even got out the door.

The point is that I've decided to try a different approach to my life (no small-potatoes ambitions here). Yesterday I turned in the last chapter of the book I've been editing over the last two months. In the weeks before that date I had forced myself to turn down two different freelance jobs that I could have started next Monday--which would hav egiven me, in other words, an entire weekend off between stressful projects. It was hard to refuse both of these jobs. But I know or am beginning to know that the money they would have brought in would not have paid the price of the quality time they would have eaten up.

A couple of years ago I read Your Money or Your Life and was so taken by it that I scrupulously went through its steps and followed its program for about a year (the charts! the figures! too fun!). It motivated me, so I became aware of my spending habits and of the relationship between how I used my time and how much I was compensated for it, both materially and spiritually. I recorded every penny I spent and entered it in a chart weekly. It was all good--but of course at some point I fell off the train. Gradually slithered off it is more like it, soundlessly, like a piece of silk that had been placed on the roof of a boxcar. I landed without any obvious snagging or tearing of the fabric, but I've remained aware that after going through a period of employing useful ways to structure my life, I abandoned those ways with nary a glance over my shoulder.

I started this post because I wanted to talk about today and how I'm going on a long run soon but don't really want to go. The reason I don't is that I already have too many photos of recent runs that I want to post on this blog and I'm afraid I might take more photos today and thus never get around to posting the earlier ones!

I think about running in as simple a way as I can. What it is (motion). Why I love it (when I'm in motion I feel strong, alive, present in the world). And what does this have to do with posting camera-phone photos on this blog? Uh....

Posting photos is fun. I like looking at them. Running is fun. I like doing it. These are two activities dear to me. Why do I make the relationship between the two into a puzzle to be solved? Maybe later I'll create a post consisting of just uploaded photos (lucky you, readers). Or maybe after I get back from my run I'll write a long post with no photos at all that describes every step taken in the course of 10 miles (again, lucky you). Or maybe I'll walk down the street to the local cafe, trashy novel tucked under my arm, and have some tea and a cookie while I read for an hour (really lucky you--then there'll be no post). What difference does any of it make? Should one of these activities take precedence over another? They're all just me, living.

My new goal is to not only allow myself to live, but to live without turning that process into a series of deadline-driven activities. I've been heard to say I feel as if life comes with a rulebook that everyone but me has been given. Now I'm seeing that I've made up my own rulebook, and a mighty arbitrary one it is, one that requires me to imitate one of those cars in the freeway photo above. Time to rewrite the book. Or time to throw it away?This sign is on a fence placed around an area that used to be the Berekely dump. I'm using it as my motif for this day. Excuse me while I take some time to work on my personal resource enhancement program. And keep on breathing, y'all--maybe today!