PANDEMIC DIARY

Alone With My Thoughts

August 21, 2020

Upon rereading yesterday’s blog it struck me as dense, too long, and a tad all over the place.

Well, Yeah!

That’s what happens when you are home all day, alone with your thoughts recovering from a total knee replacement. I’m like a caged animal. Do you know that wild animals in zoos are actually psychotic? That’s what all that pacing is about. They pull out their hair. They chew on their hides. They bang their heads against the cage. Or, they become completely docile.

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing that. The roster of people I know who receive this blog are busy…busy…busy…a Director of a Not For Profit; a Cardiologist; a Statistician; a Museum Docent; Commercial Real Estate Manager; Human Resource Consultant…

I am retired. I am no longer the entrepreneur. I no longer lead a team. I am no longer mentoring. I no longer am answerable to anyone but myself. This blog has become a welcome, self-charged commission. I actually love writing this blog. Not for the exercise of it. Not because it absorbs time. Because it is absorptive. I don’t think I knew I had so much to say. I’m (humbly) amazed some days at how much I know or remember. I cannot for the life of me remember where I leave my cell phone or why I find myself in one room and not the other. But, I can reach back and tell a story about an insignificant event that took place fifty years ago. Go figure.

Writing this blog has allowed me to remove much of the internal rumination and turn it into a thing of substance that I hope can be enjoyed. However, I am still dense, too long, and generally all over the place. My brain continuously jumps from one thing to the next making associations and drawing relationships that sometimes have me asking, “Where the hell did that come from?” That has always been the case with me. I have meditated on and off for more than 40 years and every guru and ‘baba’ is turning in their graves at their failure to slow down my neural connections to a state that distantly resembles quiet…not to mention bliss.

In this sense, the blog is primary to me. And, because it requires reflection, research, and sometimes rumination I do find that although I can get caught up in cerebral cycles firing on all cylinders, blogging offers a dose-a-day of subject matter that keeps me focused. And, that focus is healthy.

I thank you all for being there.