FOG

I am not sure where I've been...

Well, I've been exactly nowhere since I'm still 90% staying home because turns out there is still a Covid-19 pandemic raging and the numbers are going up locally, but today I feel I've emerged from a bit of a foggy inertia that has kept me from writing here. 

Catching up:

I did a 4-part series in September on my yoga blog about the Enneagram (personality typing) and I think I'll repeat it on this blog sometime.  It's where my brain has been -- studying the Enneagram to explore my inner landscape, my motivations, habits, responses to life events.  It's fascinating and helpful and has given me valuable insight into old ways of being that no longer serve me.  All of this has come up as I continued to marvel at the various ways my friends and family are responding to the pandemic.  But beyond that I have found growth points to work toward that have nothing to do with the Covid crisis and everything to do with finding a healthier way to express my basic personality type in relationship with others.  

This all sounds rather vague here, I know.  Suffice to say, I've been lost in my books, notes, podcasts, and practices.  I love it and it's been incredibly psychologically and emotionally draining -- doing inner personal growth work is necessarily about relationships (with oneself and with others) and that makes it complex, difficult, and ultimately rewarding.  And also, yes, exhausting.  

Also in September we were visited by ten days of unhealthy air due to the smoke descending from wildfires raging in California, Oregon, and Washington.  We kept doors and windows shut tight and looked out into the yellow-gray haze of what should have been sunny, warm late summer days.  It was depressing and scary -- portents of a climate crisis future.

Once the smoke lifted, I went out to my garden.  I decided to stop waiting for help with the "heavy gardening" and just try to tackle it myself.  I spent hours digging out ten huge clumps of bearded irises that were taking over various locations and crowding other plantings out.  Each clump took me between 5 and 20 minutes to unearth, kicking the shovel under the root ball over and over, incrementally levering the root ball up from the earth, then hauling garden cart after garden cart away to the dump pile.  I did the same with four peonies that I transplanted.  I cut back the yellow leaves of my five big hostas, pruned other things back, transplanted a few perennials, mulched some transplants....I sound like a real gardener here.  I have no idea what I'm doing.  I Google everything and hope for the best.  

I feel pretty proud of my work though, and have a sense of satisfaction about taking the initiative and successfully completing hard physical work tasks that normally I might have stewed about and grown frustrated waiting for "manly muscle" help.  (See personal growth work above.)  I'm basically a genteel gardener, but I did it!  Woman!  Roar!  

We've had 4-5 days of rain lately, so I figure all of that garden work and transplanting is getting a nice soaking now and that has to be good, right?  I still have to weed and cut back last year's canes in the two 40 foot rows of raspberry patch, cover the raised beds with some compost and mulch, and generally finish the whole "put the garden (and garden furniture) to bed" chores of Autumn.  I always find it a bit depressing; winter is not my favorite season in this northland where the darkness and rain feels oppressive already.

And then there is politics.  I'm hanging on by my fingernails.  I find my ability to keep attending to the daily outrages waning.  I can hardly stand to read/watch about the latest debacle of decency and assaults on democracy.  I feel if I start writing about it here, I won't be able to stop -- and I'll likely forget something because every day is chock-a-block full of awful: Covid raging (and fights over mandated attempts to slow it); the current White House occupant behaving like a petulant child at the presidential debate; the Covid epidemic hitting the Administration (33 tested positive -- some refusing to have the test; the president and first lady testing positive, then declaring they are "cured" and that the virus is not a big deal, so don't worry about it. Tell that to the 210,000 families of Americans who have died.); a far right wing conservative nominated to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court and the GOP rushing the hearings to get her seated prior to the election; voter suppression tactics in full force; a president who is undermining the validity of the election and refusing to leave office unless he feels the election has been "fair" (with him being the decider on that).  Then there is the ongoing lying, gaslighting, ridiculing...

So, my response has been to stop checking my phone for the latest news. (I literally leave it upstairs in my bedside table only checking for updates a couple times a day.)  I have signed up with organizations working to write postcards to GOTV (Get Out The Vote) with Postcards to Voters, Reclaim Our Vote, and Moms Rising (over 200 written to date.)  I have also completed 100 letters for Vote Forward.  I took a text-banking training and know I should get busy on that too.....and I'm tired.  If I were a marathon runner I would not be one who gets a second wind....I'd be the one crawling, panting and bloodied, across the finish line.  At least the polls are looking good for our side...and then 2016 flashbacks pop into my head and I'm back wondering what more I can do.  I can't do nothing.

There is a word I've discovered for this fog of overwhelm: acedia.  Physical and emotional isolation (covid), along with a steady barrage of bad news (politics, social unrest, climate crises), creates feelings of listlessness and anxiety, which is a legitimate response to the current predicament.  Some may think this is depression, but it feels different.  It feels to me claustrophobic -- not hopeless in the same way as depression; more like impatient and agitating, with no way out.  The point is, this is a valid feeling to have and it has brought me lately to a place of inertia: "bored, listless, afraid, and uncertain". *

I hope the urge to write today means I am returning to the land of the living -- emerging from the fog with clear-sighted resilience.  No matter what happens on any of these fronts, the task is to keep moving forward, questing for a fully lived life of self-awareness, connection, growth, and commitment.  

Also, I may take a nap.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit:  pixabay.com

*Resource: "Acedia: the lost name for the emotion we are all feeling right now", by Jonathan Zecher, writing for 'The Connection', August 2020