HEADING OFF THE MEAN REDS
Cindy Maddera
Like so many of us, I entered 2020 with high hopes and big plans. I had a photography showing scheduled for the months of April and May. I had plans for a digital photography workshop in June. I was moving forward with my art. This was going to be the year! I printed and framed sixteen of my nature photos weeks before the hanging up date and then stacked them in my living room. And that’s where they sat. April came and went. May came and went. I finally moved them to my closet where they are now carefully stacked and wedged into a back corner. My workshop got moved to August. With July and August not looking any better than April or May, I went ahead and postponed the workshop for June of 2021.
Sayonara high hopes. Fuck you big plans.
I feel like I have set everything on a shelf. I still try to take at least one picture every day, but I don’t feel good about those pictures. They look stale, old and uninspired. A reflection of how I feel. I have thrown myself so hard into work related classes, that I leave little room for creativity. I just finished a week’s worth of electron microscopy classes in one day. My daily calendar is meticulously scheduled for each day with group meetings, Python classes, EM classes, seminars. COVID testing. Yeah, add that to the list. That one starts today. There is no predictability in what my schedule is going to be for the next few weeks. My boss, during a lab meeting to discuss the testing process, looked directly at me and said “Cindy, do not stress about this.” My boss knows me. He knows that I plan and I organize and he knows that this is something I am probably hyperventilating about.
He would be correct.
The past few nights I have been up late and awake early with restless sleep in between. Right when I’ve just about drifted off, a loud canon will go off somewhere in the neighborhood, jolting me to attention. The cat has started coming in at four in the morning and loudly yelling at me. A few nights ago he did this and then jumped up on my bed. He rubbed his slobbering face on my face. Then he found my hand and started rubbing his slobbering face on it. Then he bit me, walked to the middle of my bed, plopped down between my legs and proceeded to loudly clean himself. This. This is why I call him ‘jerkface’. This and all the dead bunnies I’ve cleaned up in the last three weeks. So much murder and so little sleeping. The no sleeping part is the rapidly rising hot air that is colliding with the cold air of work stress. It is prime hurricane season.
I’m just a little bit sad.
To keep me falling into the mean reds, I’m trying to focus on the things I have accomplished since the lockdown. I have reconnected with my yoga mat in a powerful new way. I’ve done thirty minutes of X-tend barre every day. I walk the dog every day. I started a new silly writing project. I’ve done some reading. I graded all around the house for drainage. I helped build a new chicken pen and a new retaining wall. I distributed mulch all around the house. I’ve learned some basic programming and the fundamentals of electron microscopy. I have even done a little online window shopping at Tiffany’s. In the movie Up, Carl spends a lot of time focusing on the things he and Ellie didn’t do. So much so that he failed to notice all of the things they did do. There was a long time where I worked really hard at noticing and remembering all of the things Chris and I got to do together, but I failed to apply this to my own life. It is so easy to get hung up on the things I didn’t do or I’m not doing.
Oh, but flipping that switch and looking at the things you did do can really put things back into a brighter light.