Month: September 2020

Thinking out loud…in my coffee drinking station.

This is my theory about worry.   Creative minds are really good at it.  I mean really good at it.  You might think of worry as a side effect of a creative, imaginative brain.  An idea pops into our minds and before we realise it we have created a whole long scenario of what might happen, what could happen, and we end up scared.

I recall many episodes like this when I was a kid, when I took an idea and ran with it until I scared myself silly.  It always mystified me that the adults didn’t understand.  They looked at me as if I was hopelessly from another planet.  Who knows….?

Anyway, as I grew up I gradually learned to handle worry.  I still have a weakness for it to be sure, but now I work hard to stop myself when I notice fear is building.  I can see that I am afraid of what might happen, what could happen.  To counter those thoughts I focus on what is right in front of me right now.  Then I can see that none of my elaborated thoughts are here in the room with me.  The trick is to set fear aside.  That is an act of will.  Time to focus on something else.  Time to corral my thoughts and imagination and do or think something positive.  Dwelling in fear doesn’t help anything.

Making stuff works for me—whether it is following a recipe, a knitting pattern, or writing my thoughts out in this blog, it turns a key that gets my mind busy solving something I can handle.

Creative minds tell stories, we make good things, we turn negatives into positives.  Socks or tortillas, apple pie or art, making stuff, fixing stuff, cleaning stuff—it helps.  Though I am not terribly enthusiastic about the cleaning stuff part…

I could worry about the fact that my tortillas came out too small, and maybe I did for a little while…   Even little worries can be toxic.

The worries are many—social injustice, environmental, political, personal health and well-being.  Finding our way through all the worry is our job right now. Keeping our spirits up so that we can respond to what needs doing is our job right now.

Hold on, hold on.
And thanks for sharing time with me in my coffee drinking station.

Thinking Out Loud…

It’s been tough, hasn’t it?  Chaos seems to reign.  I admit it, it’s been difficult to keep my head above water, to keep my balance, to keep a sense of hope.  Yep, it has been tough.

I haven’t felt like writing because I didn’t know what to say about it all.  Anything I can add seems paltry in the face of so much suffering and ill will.

And yet, I do feel hopeful.  We’ve each our own road to follow, our own challenges, successes and failures, loves and sorrows.  Today, after feeling overwhelmed, down cast and worried, I feel like getting on with it—just setting all those worries aside, and getting on with it.  Whatever IT is.

Time to catch up with myself, time to say “I’m still here”.

Let’s keep on keeping on.