Using My Fears: Arise, arise...

ABOVE: one of the best things I have ever done:
I rescued & repaired a run-over toy monkey in an alley (and even sewed it a jacket), and returned it on Xmas Eve, 2017 (six years ago):
I tied it to a phone pole at the end of the alley, with a note, "Flying Monkey Needs a home!".
It is a great happiness to me that when someone took Monkey, they took the note too.

Truly I can say (with Emily Dickinson), I have not lived in vain.

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New Year Intention

I am happy and relieved that this--having a new blog--is working for me.
It's working to free myself from my fretfulness over other blogs and it's allowing me to move forward, writing more freely.

It's kinda pathetic to me how much I twisted myself up over the others, but I did. I was doing it to myself, I knew that. When I woke up one morning a couple weeks ago, angry (!) at some strand of online hypocrisy I'd gotten stuck between my teeth, I knew I needed to get myself free.

Something in the make-up of the constellation of blogs I'd found myself linked to (in stats, blog rolls, and sometimes comments--but mostly in me reading them every day [giant eye-roll]) was hypnotic to me. 
I could establish no moderation for myself, I had to turn myself away completely.

So I did.
I wasn't sure setting up a new blog would work. Would I even write in it?

It has worked! I'm writing as much as before--but I'm not writing in reaction to the others. I'm surprised, in fact, how quickly they vanished from my mind. I really had been holding them in front of my face. Geez.

Coming off that success, I have a New Year's intention.
(I want to say, if a person is anxious, this might be the worst sort of intention! And if a person attends to practical matters in response to danger, this might be the most obvious.)
For me, who tends toward complacency, my intention is just the ticket--it came to me this morning, January 2:

Use My Fears.

Use, as in: acknowledge ("this frightens me"); plan a response ("is there something I could do?"); and, act (DO it).

Hm. Have I just discovered on my own the Girl Scouts motto, Be Prepared?

I'm not incapable of this.
Setting up a new blog is an example. I had a hard time accepting that I couldn't stay where I was, that I couldn't handle it.
When I accepted the reality, I was sad and a little afraid (would I lose blogging?), but I pondered what to do (move to Word Press? SubStack*? stop altogether?) and I took action.
I merely took a side-step to set up this blogon Blogger, so I'm still attached to l'astronave, as I want to be.

Another example:
the first spring of Covid, 2020, when dying was more likely than usual––(and knowing it would come eventually, anyway--as Penny Cooper said in her blithe way, "You're going to die sometime")––I wrote a will.
I looked up how, wrote it, and got a couple people to sign it.

It's not complicated, so I didn't need a lawyer, but I didn't want the money I've inherited (Thank-you, dead relatives!) automatically to go to my sister, as it would if I died without a will.
Not because I was mad at her (as I am at this moment), but because she has lots of money and my best friends don't.

I'm proud of doing that. It's proof that heartens me:
though I commonly let such things slide, I CAN take practical steps.

This intention arises, I think, partly in response to starting to getting old. Complacency works pretty well when your body keeps itself (more or less) healthy, like a self-cleaning oven, and the swirl of life and the energy of the herd carries you forward.

SO... should I add a Content Note here?
Note: Thinking about getting old and dying. But, cheerfully!

The usefulness of complacency diminishes, perhaps, when things (like having a body) get harder.
As they do.

I turn 63 in a couple months. According to the New York State Life Expectancy Table, I can expect to live one more quarter of my life, some 21 more years.
You never know, but in the natural way of things, dying at eighty-four years old seems about right for my family history.

So, looking ahead--there are three LITTLE things I want to do and know I can do as smart responses to some fears about aging.
Three do-able things is enough!
I know myself--big sweeping changes freak me out.

One. Memorize a poem
Carrying a poem in your mind's pocket is a part of a Good Emergency Kit--something you can recite in the ambulance, godwilling.

I choose this sonnet, below, by John Donne, that I love so much. This line! "The round earth's imagin'd corners"!
(Hm. I hadn't thought of it, but this poem is related to "use your fears" while you can--while alive, "here on this lowly ground", cause it's too late later.)

"Holy Sonnets: At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow"

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For if above all these my sins abound,

'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace

When we are there; here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that's as good

As if thou 'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

And while I'm at it, re-memorize--again!--Shakepeare's sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds of admit impediments".

Two. Make an Emergency Kit

Geez, you'd think I'd have one, but I don't.
I have Odds & Ends in the Bathroom Cupboard.

Besides a Medical kit, I will make an If the Lights Go Out Kit.
I'm not going to become a survivalist (though, heck, that looks like the Girl Scouts, why not?)--but I mean . . .
WHERE IS MY FLASHLIGHT?

Three. No red meat, no alcohol

I got some mildly iffy blood test results last month--(surprisingly NOT glucose related, as I'd expected). It's stuff that changes in diet can help.
Luckily they're mild--the doc said, 'let's test again in the spring'.
Mild Fear is a great motivator!

Making massive changes in how I eat has always backfired for me, so I chose something I can do pretty easily:
stop eating red meat, stop drinking alcohol.
Meat & alcohol have never been central to me, but I take them in pretty frequently (weekly, for sure), because they're easy and present and pleasant.

Okay. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it. One line at a time.

At the round earth's imagin'd corner, blow...

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise...

(Hey! The girlettes could act out that poem!)
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* Glad I didn't go with Substack--it's looking unstable.
From the Atlantic: "Substack Has a Nazi Problem: The newsletter platform’s lax content moderation creates an opening for white nationalists eager to get their message out".