There Comes a Season: Turn Turn Turn

The weather is starting to turn turn turn toward the winter ahead.  This is always a tough time for me.  I'm an outside person.  I'm a big lizard, looking to bake in the sun.   I tend to experience some melancholia this time of year.  The knowledge that this happens every year and I can't do anything about it doesn't seem to help much.


I'm back to The Old City next week for work and family.  That's two reasons to be warped off center.  I'm trying to continue my long long long ballet of deception with The Evil Empire.  I'm trying to be comfortable with my questionable behavior.  I'm a master of self-justification when it suits my purposes.  Part of the difficulty this time is that I have to spend a couple of days with a co-worker who isn't aware that I've moved far far far away from my territory and wouldn't be supportive if he knew.  It's one thing to be hyper-vigilant for an hour conference call and another altogether to do it for a few days.  Eventually I have to stick my foot in my mouth.  I'm going to say: "Boy, it sure was a rainy summer" when, in fact, it was not.


"You know, you could be honest about it and just quit if it makes you feel so bad," my sponsor pointed out.
"Hello?  Hello?" I say.  "I'm having some trouble with the connection here."


And my family, oh, yes.  My mother is very very very excited to see me right up to the point when I start to explain why I can't completely mold my schedule around the several frankly odd things that she has pre-scheduled.  I never never never question the origin of my Control Freak button.  I know who installed that.


"Can't you cancel your dentist appointment?" she asked, ignoring the fact that I had to make the appointment 6 weeks ago and I'm only in town for 3 business days.  She knew when I was coming shortly after I did.


People do fit us into categories.  They're happy happy happy with us when we step obligingly into the space they've created.  Not so much when we try to go our own way.


Sometimes I don't feel so great and I don't know why.  I have to do the work to figure out what's going on.  Sometimes I find something real and sometimes I'm drifting drifting drifting off into Free Floating Anxiety Land, and that's OK, too.  We all get to be disconnected.  And sometimes I'm around people or in situations or enduring weather patterns that I can't control.  Sometimes they aren't that great, either.  It's not always my fault.


All I can do is to work on finding my place in what's going on.