I should be more worried about myself

After all the excitement with Lauren and Mary Lou, I was left at home with peace and quiet. So far, in the course of attempting to write that report, I put a bowl down in such a way it fell on the floor and broke and now just discovered I put my underpants on backwards when I got dressed.

Sleep

I see things moving forward as I strive to get on track. I'm making plans to go to Athens to be sworn in as executor on my mother's estate on Tuesday, March 10.  I'm motivated to do what needs to be done. Yet I felt heavy sadness yesterday going to a meeting with a construction designer with Mary Lou to look at plans for a big addition to our garage building that will create a big enclosed party room, a hot tub (something I've wanted for a long time) and possibly a studio space and loft in half of the garage.  And my sleep has been somewhat spotty, as I've been awakening early and having difficulty falling back asleep. Part of it is the aging prostate gland and part of it is anxiety. Even though circumstances are extremely favorable for me right now I have that irrational feeling that there's a catch, something dreadful is going to happen and the house of cards will collapse. But I'm dealing with it constructively. I meditate, I speak the truth to myself, that all any of us can do is our best and have faith in the mysterious and inscrutable Higher Power behind all of everything.

Meanwhile... (the short version of a long story). As I began writing this, Lauren appeared and we sat and talked for awhile. Having gotten drunk and sung some tunes with me after band practice last night, Lauren was feeling somewhat connected. I put "Don't Stop Believing" on i-Tunes to figure out the guitar parts and picked up my hybrid Strat to pick them out. Then, Lauren discovered a dent in her fancy Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones of which she is very proud and very fond. At that point, Mary Lou returned from a practicum meeting and came through the back door just as Lauren was telling me to stop playing "endless scales" which I was doing nervously. Mary Lou scolded her because "it's Dad's house" and this set Lauren off further. The culmination was Lauren stomping down with her hands full and bumping into the sofa causing her to drop a short Tervis tumbler full of red wine onto the floor and the side of Mom's new sofa. Sigh. How I can relate to everyone's pain and frustration as we muddle through this life somehow being successful in spite of everything.

And now I will return to the report I'm having so much trouble writing.

Quote for the day

"When I feel now I can make peace with my self, it finds time to prepare another attack."

From the Bowl of Saki web page devoted to the teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Respite

At my office. LaTasha is out today. Mary Lou left this morning to visit Jenny in New York for the weekend. I had a follow-up visit with Dr. Boris S to check on the extraction from a week ago Monday. The pain has eased in the past 2 days but is still there. Of greater concern is the overall treatment plan for the dental disaster known as my teeth. I had an in depth conference with Boris and Grant and came away with a clear understanding, after asking numerous questions to help them give me the full picture. I then drove back to the office where I learned my 230pm appointment with GZ is cancelled, thank goodness, giving me a chance to meditate or take a nap without disturbance as the case may develop. I'm determined to get back on track mentally and physically but it's going to take some effort. Like everyone else who ever pursued a worthy goal, I've learned one must slog through ones share of unpleasantness in order to have a chance of success. Here's to slogging.

Today is Ash Wednesday

Yesterday Mary Lou and I attended the New Roads Mardi Gras where Mary Lou served as a VIP float judge for the afternoon parade. It was a combination of fun and surreality that took up an entire day I could have well used to try to catch up on the myriad things I'm having trouble getting myself to do. I need to take some more decisive steps such as going to an every other week clinical schedule to allow myself time to do chunks of non-contact work.

Back to the future?

After experiencing considerable anxiety and indecision for most of the day, I finally decided to take advantage of the Presidents' Day Sale at Guitar Center and look for a new practice amplifier and possibly a new Gibson SG. I had received a coupon for a significant discount through the mail and had carried it around for several weeks waiting for the sale. But when I started to go out the door around 230pm, I couldn't find it. I looked in every possible place and finally gave up. However, I saw the wicker recycling trash canister was full, so I picked it up and took it to the outside recycling trash barrel.  Noticing some paper items as I dumped the contents, I decided to look through them and voila- there was the coupon! It would appear Mary Lou threw it away without asking me if it was something I needed. To make the remainder of the story short, I bought a beautiful cherry red SG reissue model and a small Fender tube amp for a total of around $2,000 which includes 5 year accident warranties on both items. And why "back to the future?" I played Gibson SGs for most of my youthful musical career, emulating Eric Clapton from the Cream era. The guitar and amp combination sound lovely.

The obstacle

(Revised Thursday February 19, 245pm). I need to get a handle on my resistance to taking care of business. I'm going to try a spontaneous dialogue between parts of myself, Rational Self and Resisting Self. Since they both have the same initials, I'll call rational Owen and resisting Will.

Owen: I am confused and concerned about your resistance to engaging with the business of life fully. I understand you are an emotional dimension of me who has been hurt, frustrated, demoralized, angry and anguished about the human race as you have experienced and learned. However, I'm struck by the fact that we (all parts of us) are winners in this life. We've taken our significant gifts of talent and developed them, using them to survive and succeed in American society, despite our criticisms of the petty, narcissistic, narrow-minded, short-sighted, mean-spirited, wrong-headed and destructive elements out there. Moreover, we realize that the human race also encompasses noble and admirable people who achieve remarkable things by applying themselves to worthy goals.  We have reached a point of financial security that opens the way for greater freedom than we've ever known. Given all of this, why are you not more excited or at least motivated to pull things together for this past great phase of our life?

Will: Those are all good points and a good summary question. I will try to answer honestly from my emotions as best I can. The problem isn't intellectual, it's emotional and physical. I'm not resisting and I am motivated; but, I feel worn down much of the time. I want to get my act together and I feel frustrated. I have bursts of anxiety and guilt and often feel pulled in multiple directions, even though I see all the positive possibilities. Our mother just died and I'm giving myself time to take that in and consider the best ways to move forward. Sometimes I feel empty and apathetic. I know this is a dissociative state that distances me from my actual values and emotions but that doesn't make it go away automatically. Music and stamp collecting help me connect with myself and nurture my spirit. I realize that stamp collecting also connects me to my parents, as they took me to a hobby store in Maryland where I discovered the fascination of the hobby.

All of this dental work is another thing that takes time and wears on me, especially the latest extraction (last Monday) which is still painful and has raised concern in my mind about whether there's a problem that needs further treatment (infection or food particle causing pain and inflammation?). But I'm hopeful we can sort all of this out and put ourselves in a position to do as you said, pull things together for this last great phase of our life.

Owen: I wonder if there's more, something deeper that needs to be brought into consciousness and resolved in some way to remove the obstacle to living?

Will: That's possible. I think we need to stay with this inquiry and keep asking the questions. Going back to Active Imagination as a way to work through things could be a key.

Owen: OK, that sounds good. Let's keep working with it. After all, this isn't a dress rehearsal, is it?

Will:  No, Owen, it's our life.  Haha.

I'm now working voluntarily

This is my new mantra. With money inherited from my Mom and Dad, I should be able to retire from being a psychologist whenever I decide to. This needs to be confirmed by Jim R., my terrific financial advisor, but I believe it to be true. The irony is, my assertion implies previously I was not working voluntarily. We all know everything is voluntary but the idea "I'm now working voluntarily" is about the psychological perception and we also know that's what really counts.

Aging and the loss of body parts

My dear friend, Roy, has to have one of his big toes amputated today because of an infection that threatens to spread into the bones of his foot. He's a Type II diabetic and he's done everything he can to control it but still this happened. It's not exactly the same but I've had five or six teeth extracted in the course of the big dental make-over I'm undergoing and teeth they plan to keep have been breaking apart before they install permanent crowns and implants. I don't know how many original teeth will be left at the end. I don't know why my teeth have deteriorated so much. I'm glad I can get quality dental work done and I hope Roy is able to get a prosthetic toe that allows him to retain the functionality of his toe.

Tired of the disorder

I started to write "chaos" but decided disorder was less histrionic and more accurate. Then I realized 'disorder' is the current term for mental illness!  And the truth is, it's my own disorder I'm tired of, not the external messiness.

I'm also tired of my not taking assertive steps to address my disorganization, inefficiency and passive aggressive reactions. I'm not helpless, yet I act as though I'm helpless. I'm an intelligent,  capable adult who has the power to act. 

Then there's my memory

I misplaced the slender little pair of tongs I use to handle stamps in my collection. I was using them on Saturday when I soaked a batch of used French colonial postage stamps to remove the old hinge remnants from them prior to drying them and placing them between the pages of a thick book to leave them nicely flat for the hingeless mounts that hold them on the album pages. I looked high and low, me being Mr. Findit, and didn't, find it, that is. Today before I left to come into the office, I looked in a white plastic bag hanging on the door knob of a big credenza in the Play/Stamp/Music Room of our house, I found a new set of tongs I purchased a few weeks ago at Hobby Lobby. I had completely forgotten this purchase until I looked in the bag. It seems to me I forget a lot of little things like that in recent times. How recent? I don't know, maybe the past year or three.

What is this anxiety about?

I spent the morning driving to New Orleans for a tooth extraction with Dr. Boris S. and repairs to my temporary upper teeth with Dr. Grant K. Major renovation of my teeth is underway and it's taking a long, long time to reach the point that I've got more chewing surfaces rather than less. Something caused my teeth to deteriorate over the many years I was under the care of Dr. Locke and they continue to deteriorate even as I go through this major program of treatment. Today the tooth Boris was extracting broke apart and took considerable work on his part to remove. An immediate implant was planned but the condition of my tooth and jaw prevented that from happening until later. I'm trying Provigil as a possible replacement for Adderall (for excessive daytime drowsiness) and after taking it when I got up at 630am, I felt less alert than usual as the morning wore on. I took the Provigil on Friday afternoon and it seemed effective. I also took some on Saturday and Sunday. I took Adderall in the afternoon but never felt quite sharp and alert. I came home and Jenny, who is visiting us between jobs, and Lauren, who has a job but is able to stay home at will with no apparent repercussions, were sitting in the living room watching Orphan Black episodes one after another. Everything felt strange except the perception is familiar, that my life needs to have a stable routine but instead one thing or another continually disrupts and prevents the routine from happening. I stayed home and fooled around, practicing my guitar, organizing my specialized stamp collection, and considering organizing my personal papers and documents related to my mother's estate. Around 5pm I got tired and lay down on the bed in our room. I think I'm experiencing grief as the reality of Mom's death begins to sink in. I wrote a long email to Natalie about Mom's house and exchanged emails with Mike, the estate attorney in Athens. I'm perfectly competent to take care of all the business I have yet I feel strong anxiety, at least strong for me. I've done such a good job of mastering the anxiety that it's not overwhelmingly painful, just a hindrance to my plans and good intentions. The net effect is to make me wish to be alone and do nothing. Maureen was here for the weekend but she left yesterday evening. Mary Lou and the other two girls have gone to see Birdman. I was invited but I didn't feel up to it. I turned on my amplifier and played for awhile, impressing myself with my ever greater facility. After I stopped, my neighbor, R. came by, worried because his oldest child misbehaved and then said he wanted to be dead when he was punished. He reminds me of Jenny somewhat, very intelligent but unable to control his intense emotions. I decided to counter my anxiety and avoidance by taking the garbage cans out to the alley for pick up and driving down to CVS to pick up my post-surgical prescriptions.

Or maybe not

Instead of attempting to sleep again, I stayed awake reading up on Richard Wagner, his wife, Cosima, the story line in The Ring Cycle, German political history of the 19th Century and Wilhelm Furtwängler. (I did listen to a Furtwängler recording of the operatic version and it was terrific. Even though I vowed not to travel with Jenny Scott again after her rudeness on our Oktoberfest adventure, we've talked about getting tickets to Beyreuth for some distant future date and attending in style). Now, at 710am, I'm tired and will don the Mask of Sweet Dreams once more.

What's with this?

Here I am at 5:10am in Athens, Georgia, awake since 4:30 or so for no obvious reason. I scanned Facebook and noted one lonely soul posting on Pet Sounds and liking various music videos. I listened again to my post, Entry of the Gods into Valhalla, instrumental version conducted by Zubin Mehta. Actually not the strongest rendition, just the one at the top of the YouTube search, but certainly good enough for a post on 'What music do you want played at your funeral?'  Then, I started my own SoundCloud songs beginning with Six String Beauty and down through a series of recordings documenting my creative life over the past years all the way back to 2007 or even 1970 considering Pete Love's Strut is a song I wrote for Black Narcissus. I ate two Jimmy Dean maple sausage biscuits when I woke up and just had a bowl of cereal and now I'm listening to a more powerful Furtwängler version of Entry of the Gods (Furtwängler is a great German name, isn't it?). And I'm still pretty wide awake. I'm a free man and this is what I'm doing. I posted the Sweet Dreams sleep mask video on FB last night around 11pm and now I'll try putting the thing back on and closing my eyes again. Maybe put Wagner back on and see what happens (actually, it was Klemperer). Maybe this is when the dreams will come.