Moved

This blog is alive and well at My Midden at http://www.mymidden.com.

I hope I see you there.

Marathon to Hell

The end of this shitty, exhausting marathon will be worse than the running. I always knew that, but as it looms closer, it is even more frightening.

Dream

I had this dream. K & I were walking home together from a late meeting. I was so tired that I couldn't imagine doing anything but falling asleep. Then K told me we needed to give a lift home to a frail old lady. I fell asleep right there, walking, and hit my head as I fell. I woke up in a strange dream bed, disoriented and alone, crying for my wife. Then I really work up.

Priorities and Worth.

Three months? It seems like years.

I stopped blogging because the volatility of the household made me afraid of unintended consequences. Now I'm less afraid. Things are less volatile. Anger has blown itself out for the moment.

I am now putting more of my energy, attention and time into caring than into any single other thing. I am happy with this path of love and integrity, and it isn't really a change in priorities for me. it is, however, a change in what my priorities mean in practice, and it starves time and energy from everything else. It is taking time for me to adjust to the implications of this for my relationship to myself, my family, my community and my career. 

In my me-centered universe, I know that my changing ability to deliver for anyone other than K is really an Important Topic. People are losing sleep over my lack of delivery -- my lack of even showing up. Empires are crumbling. Right? Right? 

Maybe not. 

My sense of myself as indispensable needs some adjustment. I always tell people in professional settings that "everyone is indispensable, and yet no one is indispensable." And it applies to me, too.

Which leaves me with internal work to do. Those things that seem so important at work? Not that important, really. Not compared to what I'm doing for K. Someday, they might work their way up the importance food-chain again, but for now, I need to re-tune my internal monitor of self-worth, and that takes time.

Wise People Say

"You are going through a lot subconsciously that you don't realize you are going through," said a wise and experienced friend of mine, with whom I have shared many successful summits and cautious retreats. When I heard that, I nodded smugly and said to myself "sure, but I'll be mindful, and then I'll know what's going on inside."  Which is BS. Whatever I do manage to glimpse, there is always more that I don't see. I didn't see my own misdirected anger, and my own need for control, and how they drove (and are presumably still driving) my reactions to this shitty disease marathon.

I suppose the lesson is that I should always remain open to the possibility that my reactions are being driven by some obscure process, and remain committed to responding thoughtfully rather than reacting "righteously." Like so many lofty goals, this will be impossible to perfect.

Another wise one said "you can't push and you can't pull, you can only walk beside." No control, just presence. Cancer as an extended, fucked up exercise in compassion and mindfulness. For a closeted type A problem solver, this is a slice of hell. I have trouble listening to the emotion and disconnecting from the content. I hate shit that can't be fixed.

All of which is to say that I can now look back a little on the past year and the past four months, and gain a slight (very slight) degree of perspective. And if that helps me be some of what K needs, I'll take it.

Morning Confession

Confession: I don't always go  straight to work.  On days when I don't have a 9 o'clock meeting, I go to my local green-branded coffee shop, where The Barista knows what I want and gets it for me with a smile. I watch people passing through on their way to and from work or the gym. I do what I want to do, within the limits of a cafe table, my MacBook Air and a decent wifi connection. I set my own priorities for a moment, and push the clock into the background. I act like there's no pressure.

This morning, I am seriously pondering not going to work at all. In my LA fantasy, I just drive to the mountains and breathe for a few minutes. Maybe I drive up to the snow line and feel the sharp breeze. We'll see. Don't rule it out. Life is precious.

UPDATE
I love the mountains, and that's where I spent my afternoon. Funny how a few trees and some snow can make me smile.

Job Drift

I am struggling to remember that my role as carer does not make me a comprehensive mediator between my wife and the world.

There are some interfaces I need to handle, and some I can't, or shouldn't. I need to cut her meat in the restaurant, or set a pick for her in Costco, but that doesn't mean that I need to explain her behavior to friends or strangers, or try to protect her from her own impulses.

After so many years together, I feel a little joint ownership of K's opinions, plans and actions. I expect them to be familiar, even if they're uncomfortable. Cancer has changed that. The disease, the treatment, and the angst are pushing her to new, more-extreme places. And when she acts from those places, my comfort and my joint ownership are challenged. No, they're gone. My impulse is to apologize, to explain, to mediate, to do anything to get us out of an uncomfortable situation.

I am a conflict averse person. I am professionally tasked to interpret conflict and turn it into progress. Pain to progress.

Here, in Cancer, there is no progress. The roots of the pain are deep in intractable disease. The best I can do is be mindful and watch for caring opportunities. Not opportunities to avoid conflict, or to explain K away for other people, but the opportunity to provide true comfort. Easier said than done.