Round And Round

And so it goes.  This world we ride on keeps spinning, and we keep going round and round with it on this little adventure.

Sometimes, it seems as though there is no rhyme or reason to any of it.  Other times, you get into a rhythm and everything flows naturally forward in a way that almost seems linear and perfect.  It is true with life and definitely true with writing, for me anyway.  "The zone" or "flow" or whatever you want to call it is as scarce these days for me as an endangered species, as illusory and fleeting as spun sugar in a rainstorm.

My brain skitters wildly from one topic to the next, and stringing together any sort of coherent thought process or even action plan is shattered within minutes as things bounce around, buffeted by the latest in a string of little emergencies that crop up out of nowhere demanding immediate action and leaving whatever else needed attention in the all-too-soon-forgotten dust. 

Even though you always know that the perfection is a bit of an illusion and won't last forever, savoring those fleeting moments of everything falling into place at the precisely right moment is everything. 

Alas, I rarely realize them in the moment, only after the fact.


Somehow, there has to be a way to be more centered and conscious of the day to day, but I have yet to find it.  Motherhood seems to be a series of races to a finish line that keep moving further and further away.  Ditto for work, and any number of other hats that I wear week in and week out.

It may just be that, with breast cancer surgery looming, my "to do" list looks so impossible because it really is.  That I should cut myself a break and get what I can done and let the rest go until later.  But instead, I'm finding that it is driving me to push harder, and that push makes accomplishment even more difficult because I'm trying to do too many things at one time and not quite finishing any of them well.

Balance is a fickle concept at the moment.  In being so off-kilter internally, it is making everything I try to do feel off as well.

Life is funny.  Just when things were going so seemingly even and well, this little tumor has wreaked havoc on my personal compass in a way that far outstrips its actual mass.  The question is whether I use this chaos and fear to learn and grow, or to shrink away and fade.  I'd like to hope that I'll choose the first path, but it is definitely a work in progress at the moment.

Funny how a personal scare can be such a catalyst for internal reflection and potential change.  How to make that work for a good purpose and not a bad one is a worthy subject to contemplate...would that I had the time with so much to do, and so much yet to be finished.  Round and round and round...

(Photo via hellobo.  Loved the composition of this shot -- really striking.)