Perspective: A Juxtaposition

I wrote this last week:

I am back home. Relief sighed. Chicago and Philadelphia seem distant; carried away on a gentle lapping tide, farther and farther out to sea. Although mostly stressful, one day among those drifting into the horizon was that was gloriously perfect: a blend of challenges overcome, delicious food, great conversation, a beautiful city, smiling eyes and delicious laughter. To capture that wave of delight, contain it and carry it around with me to remind me that life has moments of utter bliss, would be wonderful but unfair. Life seems to be designed to keep you moving forward and only occasionally looking back to those days of wonder. The ecstasy would not be without the agony. Delight not perceived without the pain.

In the midst of the most stressful project of my life with a short timetable, high profiles, and a move to begin a new life at the end, I am surprised my body and brain have not yet shut down completely. Memory loss/absentmindedness seem to be the only side effects thus far. Particularly the loss of car keys; I need a better system. Magnetize my body? Could this work?

This is what I wrote tonight:

Somehow I’ve flown into the Bermuda Triangle of hell, vomit and death. When your childhood best friend dies, work throws you a huge curve ball, a family member is hauled in by the police, committed for instability, threatens you with physical violence, then disowns you, again…. All in one weekend, it makes sense that you would have to pull over every half an hour to empty the contents of your stomach on your way home from Idaho. Disregarding the life change on the horizon approximately one month from today and the mounds of unpacked stuff.

Just when you think you are headed for sunshine somehow you lose course and end up in the jaws of a raging storm with all of your gauges spinning. It is times like these that you start examining your life.


Maybe next week I will be ecstatic? Transcendent? Maybe I just need a little perspective.