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I am consistently taken by surprise when I reflect over some relatively short span of my most recent past. I create plans for most of things I intend to do. (When I am resisting making the plan, I know that I really have no intention of doing the things I'm not planning.)
I reflect from time to time on how the plans are going. I do this because I have weak skills in identifying an area of concern while I'm standing in the middle of it. I can see them coming and I can see the deviations from the plan that landed me in the middle of a problem. I rarely see the deviations when I am deviating. I seem to always have a good reason for getting off the road.
When I finally notice that I'm off the road, I have to drag myself through the thickets and briers of my sour mood (it is my major red flag for being off the road). When my mood is sour, I have some horrid default perceptions about humanity. And those perceptions thicken slime of my mood. And I'm off and running on the "why bother, we are all doomed anyway" racetrack of despair.
I'm much faster at getting through the worst of it. Faster does not mean less suffering, though. It just means a few minutes, hours, or, sometimes, days of more intense suffering. I haven't always preferred the "pull the band aid off quickly" approach. And I sometimes what to continue to stand in sewer up to my neck rather than risk even momentarily getting my face in it. It is that dithering that creates the suffering. I know that standing there isn't going to end well, I just keep standing there pretending to weigh the consequences of one or another action.
I say "pretending" because I already know what there is to do and I just resisting doing it while flailing around looking for a worthy reason to not do it. It usually boils down to some version of "I can't fail if I don't try."
Well. What am I suffering about now? What sewer am I standing in? What is the "I don't wanna" running my life today? Well, I know. I can see it clearly (and won't be revealed in a publicly available entry in my journal. Now, the question is this: What do I do about it? I can see no acceptable actions that result in my having what I want. And, it seems, I'm unwilling to be with that.
Sigh. More suffering to do until I'm ready to say "So this is how it is."
I reflect from time to time on how the plans are going. I do this because I have weak skills in identifying an area of concern while I'm standing in the middle of it. I can see them coming and I can see the deviations from the plan that landed me in the middle of a problem. I rarely see the deviations when I am deviating. I seem to always have a good reason for getting off the road.
When I finally notice that I'm off the road, I have to drag myself through the thickets and briers of my sour mood (it is my major red flag for being off the road). When my mood is sour, I have some horrid default perceptions about humanity. And those perceptions thicken slime of my mood. And I'm off and running on the "why bother, we are all doomed anyway" racetrack of despair.
I'm much faster at getting through the worst of it. Faster does not mean less suffering, though. It just means a few minutes, hours, or, sometimes, days of more intense suffering. I haven't always preferred the "pull the band aid off quickly" approach. And I sometimes what to continue to stand in sewer up to my neck rather than risk even momentarily getting my face in it. It is that dithering that creates the suffering. I know that standing there isn't going to end well, I just keep standing there pretending to weigh the consequences of one or another action.
I say "pretending" because I already know what there is to do and I just resisting doing it while flailing around looking for a worthy reason to not do it. It usually boils down to some version of "I can't fail if I don't try."
Well. What am I suffering about now? What sewer am I standing in? What is the "I don't wanna" running my life today? Well, I know. I can see it clearly (and won't be revealed in a publicly available entry in my journal. Now, the question is this: What do I do about it? I can see no acceptable actions that result in my having what I want. And, it seems, I'm unwilling to be with that.
Sigh. More suffering to do until I'm ready to say "So this is how it is."
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