Journaling

Twenty-one minutes on the water. Not tired, not cold enough yet to deserve the fleece. It’s in the dry bag calling to me but I think I should be really, really cold first, so I’ll appreciate it more when I finally give in. I keep finding the weeds. I am petrified I will drop my phone into the lake.

Four kayaks are lounging together, loud and laughing, telling stories. Two more over there, traveling as a pair. Two more past them, also a pair. A guy is paddling backward so he can keep talking to his buddy. Somebody balanced popcorn on a paddleboard. The geese are squawking. The barge has live music and the music is bad.

Dip the paddle, the water drips. Dip, drip. Two and a half hours of this, a constant meditation I did not ask for. How do you turn your mind off? My back doesn’t hurt, glory be. I can feel the muscles pull, clean, no pain, and when I lift the blade the drops come down like rain off the end. That part is good. That part has nothing attached to it.

I finally dug out the fleece. You’d think I’d never trusted myself with a decision before, the way I drew it out. I think I saw a fish, or a big turtle. I suppose I wouldn’t be so cold if I stopped reflecting and meditating and actually paddled.

Happy? More like absent of extreme emotion. Not happy, not depressed, not content. Lonely. Missing out. I did it, so now I can write about it. Maybe I can lift some of these details into something else later and call it fiction. The boats strung with Christmas lights looked like fun. I wished for a warm hat. I invited someone to come. They never answered. I came anyway. Alone.

After: watched Antwone Fisher. A therapist story. I cried when he met his mother. I was sad past all proportion when the therapist told him their time together was done. And there it was, hours after the water, the thing the lake wouldn’t give me. I wonder what I am getting out of Tim time. I wonder if it would be better not to go.

If part of the fun of a thing is the anticipation, then why did I spend the whole day agonizing over how to dress for the lake. And if anticipation is the fun, why is looking forward to therapy treated like a problem to fix. The same engine runs both. One I’m allowed, one I’m not, and nobody can tell me the rule.

I would not wish for twenty-four hours without depression. Too small. A week. I don’t know what I’d do with a week. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

I ordered delivery: mac and cheese pizza.

Maybe middle school. I overheard my mom talking to someone about raising her children. Something about how she pushed hard for her first three children to get good grades, to succeed academically. Sharon and Bill in particular were praised for being highly intelligent. Her fourth child, she decided to do different: not push, let her be. Knowing the result of the declaration of her experiment was too soon to tell at the time.

I don’t recall specific memories of being called “lazy.” But looking back, that word stuck with me, beginning about ten. One day I found a gold, short chain necklace buried in the dusty dirt road near the barn. Lazy was the word on the chain In cursive. I liked the flat metal cursive “L” and “a.” I thought why not wear the word of who I was. At one point I was scolded for wearing the found necklace with that word. I was confused. I discarded the necklace—I internalized that descriptor.

I have vague memories of being told, “you don’t think.” Meaning I didn’t follow through on tasks well or problem solve effectively. I have a difficult time counting a BS degree as my success, because I had crappy grades all through college. Not sure if this history has any root to a belief about slacker at work the past six months (or other low productivity times).

Is it true that lazy and perfectionist are at the opposite ends of a spectrum? Doing more, not nothing; work. Seems like laziness would be difficult when you are working overtime making something an unobtainable status.

Note: originally, verbiage was “Dailies not nothing; work.”