Sleeping Is Also Not Sitting

Here's my choice of song for launching into the NEW YEAR this morning, January 1, 2024––
Dolly Parton's "Light of a Clear Blue Morning".

 
(I found this song ^ in an article from three New Year's ago: "All that Mattered Was the Music: Songs that Got Us Through 2020", Guardian, Dec. 31, 2020.)

I. Step Away

I'm not being mean to myself about this, but I am kinda angry at myself for giving so much life-energy to my part-time job this past year. (I mean, to the workplace outside of my BOOK's--I don't regret any of that.)
I guess it's a normal enough thing to do, like staying in any relationship after you know the score. You know it, but it takes a while to believe it, and then more time to start to course-correct.

I got to practice letting-go at work last Friday when a coworker of three years brought in a hot lunch she'd made for Manageress's birthday.
So thoughtful.

Unfortunately, it was ham & cheese casserole, and Manageress is a vegetarian who tries to avoid dairy because of health issues.
So thoughtless.

I didn't say anything, but someone else did.
It occurred to me to suggest to the coworker that I could coordinate with her for birthdays in the future.

And then I caught myself, thankgod:
This SNAFU work communication is exactly what I want to step away from. The coworker cared enough to cook something but not enough to pay attention to (or to ask someone) what food the recipient eats.
I didn't offer future help.

II. Paying Attention Is the True Gift

Here's this theme of BAD GIFTS again––like my sister sewing me a comforter cover (out of a bolt of free fabric she'd been given), despite me telling her each of the three times she'd asked that I didn't want it.
I didn't feel loved and cared for, I felt like someone offloaded on me the unwanted product of empty hours they fill with crafting.

Hm. The coworker who made the unsuitable lunch does this too--she is almost frenetic in her gift-making. It's not really generosity, it's offloading, like someone who won't stop giving you those great pot-scrubbies they crochet out of fruit-bag netting, even though they know you have a hundred unused ones.

In contrast, Maura gave me such a thoughtful gift this Christmas. She put all her quarters, $11.75 worth, in a coin purse with puffins on it, for the coin-operated washing machine in the basement of my apartment. So welcome and useful.
And I love puffins!
I don't know that she knew that, but if you know me well, you could guess I would.

Anyway, the true gift/trick is to pay attention not only to others but to one's self, right? I mean, if I'm unhappy with the energy I expend at work, it's my responsibility to pay attention and to shift that.

Which means figuring out what I want to do with all that free time, when I give to my part-time job only the time I am assigned to work.

I like those crocheted pot scrubbers, but making them is not it.
I'll just have to tolerate feeling a little lost for a while.

(Above figure by Tove Jansson--I don't know who wrote the words.)

III. but also, Yes, Step Up!

I do know though that I want to go outside.
bink and I went hill walking yesterday--she is climbing back after more than a year of enforced inactivity because of a cruel concussion. It's so unfair--you hit your head, and boom--there goes months of your life.
But what you gonna do?

I say to myself, Step up.
_________________________

P.S. Re stepping up, I recently came across this wacko quote from Nietzsche in a review of A Philosophy of Walking:

"Sit as little as possible;

do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement — in which the muscles do not also revel.
All prejudices emanate from the bowels. — Sitting still (I said it once already) — the real sin against the Holy Ghost."

(Does all prejudice emanate from the bowels? Not sure about that. I've seen this quote with that sentence removed, but it's so much the guy. Cleaning Nietzsche up seems a bad idea, as if he's fit to be a guru, WHICH HE IS NOT.)

Less wacko, Tove Jansson, from her novel Fair Play:

“It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent – never lose your invaluable curiosity and let yourself die. It’s as simple as that, no?”

Vroom, vroom.
But one does tire, naturally enough, and must rest and restore too.
We pay a different kind of attention when we're asleep.

And, sleeping is also not sitting.

BELOW: "Sleeping in the Roots", Tove Jansson [via]