What if we woke up each morning and asked ourselves:
“What is different about me today.”
This is yesterday morning:
Very cold. Frozen.
The leaves were tumbling from the trees.
This was last night when I drove up the drive.
This is this morning:
Last week it was in the 80’s and muggy yesterday was 23f and blowing. This morning it is hovering just below freezing, still and snow covered.
In Celsius that is called freaking cold.
What if the changes in our heads were this dramatic.
Are the changes in ourselves so tiny that we cannot name them?
You know how we worry at a problem like a dog gnawing away at a bone. That mindless stirring of the pot. The slow cognitive responses. Then we forget what we were thinking and just get on with the day. But the question returns every few hours. In pictures. Technicolor.
I know from my caretaking work that a brain can repair and rewire itself after it has been damaged by stroke or injury. Depending on the severity of course. And with my elder I have been able to work on and track this progress on a chart. And it is good.
I know the mind is not the brain. It is like a soul – intangible. But still repairable. Right? It is more difficult to track improvement or change in our minds muddied workings. And the decline of a body and mind is also secretive. Incremental. When did that person begin to hold the rail as she descended the steps. When does a stoop in the body appear or long earlobes or short strides. When did I stop putting milk in my coffee. When did she have to be encouraged to get up and walk. When did Our John start trailing the walls with his hand as he lurched to his screen. Holding onto the side of the truck to navigate the pathway. Was it Sheila’s death that instigated the decision that I will have no more cats or dogs when these are gone. Or does my mind have another agenda of its own. Will the lack of a dog (when Boo is gone for instance) facilitate a change of its own.
I am not sure where this thought is going.
Do you know what I mean though?
I woke up this morning and there was a change. A resolve. But I can’t quite put my finger on it. I keep putting the phone down (the internet has never really returned with enough constant signal to make a whole post on my laptop so I work on my phone and am considering not having internet at all – it is beyond frustrating working when it flickers on and off and it is so expensive anyway – how can technology keep getting worse in this modern age?) but I keep putting my phone down and looking out the window and thinking through this new resolve.
Curtains have been pulled back again.
How many curtains are there surrounding my soul. Protecting my mind from drafts.
Are we all like onions – pulling back the layers?
What do you think?
Maybe this is why we all love to talk about weather. It is definitive. We can give it labels. Cold is relative but easy to point to.
Good morning. Now I must make haste. To catch my first plane at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning I will have to awake at 3 o’clock tomorrow morning to leave at 4 o’clock and check in at 5. (I love the word o’clock- so old fashioned). And you all know what happens when we have an early flight!
So today is prep day.
Move fast day.
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
23 responses to “What is different about you today?”
I like to wake up with a fresh new day attitude, with resolve to be good in all that I do – be kind, eat right, exercise, do all the tasks I should, clean my desk, play with the dogs. Sometime, I almost achieve it!
Cleaning the desk! Sigh. That one. And Be Kind is the most important of all I think. Good morning Dorothy!
That is my first affirmation every day. Simply be kind.
Wow that’s cold – the nightime lows here are forecast to be between 5 and 9º C for the next two weeks.
¡Buen viaje!
The body including the mind (psyche) can definitely repair itself. Check out German New Medicine, I think you’ll find it fascinating. http://www.learninggnm.com
Thank you! I totally agree. I will check out the link!
Subtle but changing…yes. Every year I get hints that change is occurring around me but so slowly that my everyday reality is unaware until one day, likely out of necessity, my brain brings it to the fore and I am faced with recognition and acceptance. Perhaps a sort of easing into older age, a changing world, a winding down of things long believed to stay constant, although all of us are smart enough to know nothing is constant, even ourselves.
I wonder where these glimpses will lead you C? I also wonder how one simply stops using the internet? Logically I know, but reality tells me that there must be an alternative or at least another easing in of sorts before giving up entirely.
The only person using the internet now is John listening to utube and his radio stations on the tablet. And more often than not he just plays video games that are already downloaded. I can’t pretend I know the ins and outs but I have not had the WiFi turned on my phone for a week now. Everything is faster without it.
My little business has gone south without a good zoom connection. So if I can’t make the money to pay for it . I may as well not have it.
Writing is a problem – but I will looking to downloading writing programs like we had in the old days
I can recommend LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org) I use it every day. It’s a full office suite. There’s also Apache OpenOffice (https://www.openoffice.org/product/writer.html) and FreeOffice (https://www.freeoffice.com/en/). Have to admit I miss Microsoft Word but the way they have it now you have a yearly subscription and it doesn’t work well off-line.
Thank you! Excellent recommendations! I don’t do word anymore either. Photoshop is the same / too expensive.
Yeah, about technology. I do, nowadays, look with quite a bit of skepticism when I see that something is “new and improved”. Well, maybe, but maybe not. It may be new, but what about the entanglements that come along with that improvement. Every new thing comes along with a learning curve that the users have to master, is that ever figured into the improvement? It would be good if the improvements just stopped for a year or so to give everyone a chance to catch up and catch their breaths.
Yes, leaves falling off trees by the bucketful. Almost simultaneously with the pine needles. Usually the needles fall first and I get them raked before the leaf raking and shredding needs to start. Makes for a messy clean up. It was 26F yesterday morning at 7:30 when I left for the dentist. That is quite cold for southern Indiana while still in October!
I absolutely agree. Everything is different – every time. But that is how they sell the new stuff I guess. We dragged along in an ever changing year of holidays and forced celebrations that just become a challenge after a while.
I would certainly love to stop and take a breath!
I love the internet. I don’t pay for cable TV but must have the net!
We have some land in the country and I’ve been told it’s not great there. I am hoping it will be better by the time we move. Otherwisee will have to get satellite internet, or not move, haha.
What kind of internet do you all have?
We have a local provider. It has been really great until this last year. Judy got progressively worse until now it is shocking. I have called and called but we are on the edge of their outer service.
Satellite used to be shockingly expensive. I might have to look into it again.
There are whole tracts of America that still don’t get internet.
Lately I have been finding myself a bit startled by the ‘not having donkeys to look after’ time I am in. I’m in the PD (Post Donkey) era of my life. It is such a sudden line … just then (looking back) they were here and were HOURS of my daily existence … and suddenly … as a trailer pulls away I am here. I’ve had very dear family and friends who have died. I know we ALL have. I find that line startling too. They are here – looking at me – talking with me – and then there is this line … this instant that I step across … which in the ‘after’ times seems so much wider a space than any instant should take up. And my heart knows so clearly that I am in a different place now. A different world than I woke up to yesterday.
That line – when your heart is in a different place – that is a beautiful way of putting it. Sometimes these changes are so startling and sometimes they creep up on us and we get that huh moment.
Pre donkey and post donkey.
Life is all about changes…..constant changes. We are experiencing another huge storm here in the UK…..the height of it should hit early morning….and so it is batten down the hatches time. I have a feeling it will be a different world for many people when they wake up tomorrow!
How did the storm go? Hoping you are all ok!
Thanks for asking. I. was fine, but many in other parts of the country suffered a great deal!
These storms.
Three inches of snow here Tuesday, windy and cold, better today, at least there is sun and no wind though it was 20*F this morning.
I was brough up short yesterday with the realization of how quickly things change. I saw a picture of my brother and his wife watching grandchild #13’s football game in Oct of 2022. Who would ever have guessed that in less than a month my brother would be dead. It’s a sharp slap of reality.
Oh no. That is a sharp slap.
20f is just plain mean – we are going to have a roller coaster winter.
Abscission – When a tree feels the cold air of autumn and sheds leaves. We humans can do the same shedding of old attitudes and beliefs if we feel the right trigger situation.