One month of aftermath

One month ago today I lost my dreams, and along with them most of my hope.

I can’t really talk about the details yet, and I don’t really want to. But wearing my heart on my sleeve is kind of my schtick, and holding back is painful. So, notes.

Lessons learned

A month isn’t really time to learn much, so this will be short.

Mania is one of the stages of grief. Nobody tells you this. After several days of nonstop crying you may feel an unexpected giddiness set in. You may think you got the worst out of your system with your power-grieving. You haven’t.

Don’t live in the future. I spend a large percentage of my life in the future. Envisioning, planning, dreaming.

I’m not even going to look at this room right now, but once I get shelves installed you better believe I’ll clean it up!

Oh, the family outings we’ll go on once we have the new car!

I have to work late these days but just think of the freedom this is buying us!

I don’t have to pick up my guitar right now so long as I know that’s what I’ll be doing first as soon as things change.

The tension here is that you legitimately can’t move forward in life if you don’t spend time dreaming and envisioning what’s possible. But the glorious future is a place you should put up posters of, maybe get a few postcards from now and then. It’s not a place to live.

The only future worth spending regular time in is the apocalypse. The future in which you have lost everything. You are sick, ruined, impoverished, your creative faculties gone. Your friends have abandoned you, your loved ones have passed away.

Meditate on this future for a time, then return to the present. Look around with new eyes. You’ll know what you need to do.

Prioritize friendships. For various reasons I lost or de-emphasized all of my close friendships over the years. Don’t make this mistake.

Social media is not a substitute. Sometimes words have more power when they are said to one person than when they are said to many.

Damage control

Let me not leave you with the impression that I am doing nothing with my time but listing my regrets. My self-care rests on five pillars at the moment.

1. Friends. Thankfully I’m still in a position to re-activate a few old friendships, and establish a few new ones with people I respect.
2. Music. There are no excuses left not to work on the one urge that has stayed consistent throughout my life. I ordered a digital piano and I’m practicing on that or the guitar daily. I’m also taking myself to more live music events.
3. Working out. I ran or lifted every day last week and I’m on track to do it again this week.
4. Meditation. Every day.
5. Work. Thanks to some sound advice (see #1), I’m not making any major changes despite the temptation to burn everything down. I’m plugging away.

I’d say “AMA”, but… ugh, probably not.