I am deeply, profoundly tired. I think the reason I find it profound is that it's not the tired of emotional stress or working too much. No, this is the tired of exercising too much, and it should go without saying that I've never experienced that before. I went to five classes last week and this week; I could feel this morning when I got up that I was tired and unfocused and I should have stayed home, but I went to class, tried to do a forward roll, made my shoulder hurt worse than ever, and sat out class with an ice pack on. Beyond an overarching stupidity on my part, this indicates to me that I need to stay home until at least Wednesday, icing my shoulders and not doing things that make them hurt.
I don't have anything else to do. If I had anything else to do I wouldn't go to aikido five times a week. What the hell do I do with myself besides sleep and apply for the five new jobs I see every day?
I guess I can eat more. I need to eat more, as I'm hungry all the time, as I lose fat and probably some weight. Kinda surreal, this "regular exercise" bit. I think I am no longer "stout", as Peg said, and have moved into the realm of "solidly built"; as I think I said before, in time I believe I will shift to either "wiry" or "hulking", although I don't know enough about exercise science to say which. I do know that as I sit at home I can at least say that I'm not getting fat AND poor. At least I'm finally getting the money for my electric guitar.
I've been feeling a bit blank the past few days, maybe because I'm so tired. I have a wide variety of problems and unpleasant tasks ahead--things that I doubt will have any immediate effect, and possibly none at all, but which I've decided must be done, based on what I want and what's important to me.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be
born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future
or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.
-- Babylon 5
I was talking to Mark a couple of nights ago and had some thoughts about what's inside, what makes a person...what sustains us, gives us desire, ambition, feeling, being? What drives you in the difficult times? What keeps you going? Do you marvel sometimes at the continuity of self, that something that was you when you were 3 is still you now that you're 17 or 25 or 40? I do. Despite the uncounted transformations of mind and body I've gone through and continue to have, something hasn't changed, some indestructible thing inside that, atomically and indivisibly, simply is me. It's the essence of being, the origin of action, the generation of will...and there's an unshakeable stillness in there, if you stop and listen. Just feel that core. Don't try to analyze or understand it--you can, but you'll probably just conclude that you're a bunch of contradictory thoughts and feelings all at once, and that's psychology, not understanding. You have to feel your core, inside, feel like there's a light that you think about and say without doubt, "Yes, that is me". If you can feel that, then you know that life washes over you like water over a rock, and while you're being troubled by emotions and problems and the endless pain and pleasure, feel the unchanging stillness inside.
I should be hit forty times with a stick just for trying to explain it. Although since I should probably be hit forty times for staying silent, it's not a winning situation. Which is the point.
I'm tired of my oblique writing. Go read Nowhere Girl. It's really good.