Where have I gone?

I'm reading my old blog posts because I'm supposed to be doing other things, and I'm feeling too mopey. Specifically I should be applying for healthcare, which I apparently don't have. I am told (via text) that there's a message in my inbox (which I can't access without calling the Healthcare Marketplace) explaining why I don't.

Can't face it right now, so...unless I find time and space to face it tomorrow, it looks like I might just not have health coverage until I get a real fucking job. Note to self: don't get sick. (PS, I'm feeling like I might be getting sick.)

In other news, Ian and I finally retrieved my ring today from the jewelers, it having been resized. (Did I mention that we're engaged? This is a relatively new thing.)


In reading old blogs I am noticing that I used to write much nicer things. I used to spend much more time alone, watching the sky; I used to spend much more time alone, thinking and writing about the sky, and about the trees, and about my heart. Where is all that now? Though I have no desire to own my own pet, I am beginning to think that I ought to have a dog--because evidently that is the only damn way I get myself outside for walks every day. And it seems that not walking means not breathing, in an expansive metaphorical sense.

It doesn't help much that I've been living in the city, and people discourage me from walking alone at night. This doesn't mean that I don't ever do it, but when I do, I feel like I need to look purposeful. Looking purposeful cuts down significantly on meandering, and walking with my face up to the stars, and occasionally sinking to my knees in prayer, or joy, or grief. There has been none of that here, and I am missing it.



Perhaps the issue is in part that I'm never alone. I haven't particularly been feeling that "get the fuck away from me" feeling (which is probably a good sign, in some ways), but nevertheless I haven't really spent any time alone since I moved in with Ian and Sara. And yet, even when I took my mostly-solo August road trip this past fall, I still moved too fast to stop and reflect in any meaningful way. I filled almost every moment with driving, rushing, researching, audio books, and exhaustion. I spent weeks alone, and weeks distracted. I can't say I didn't spend any time in quiet reflection, but I did spend far too little.

It seems that the lesson here is that I do not only need to learn to take time alone for myself--I need to learn to utilize it for myself. Not for rushing from one destination to another, but for simply being, and watching, and appreciating the world and the blessings around me. I need to feed and soothe and caress the quiet, expansive thing in me that is my spirit--the quiet presence that will so easily shrink and defer to the frantic, purposeless demands of whatever stupid whim happens to be yelling at any given moment. I've been spending all my time rushing around in vain attempts to quiet those endless whims, and forgetting that attention only makes them louder. That the only peace I'll ever find is inward.