Hump Day

Wednesday . Hump Day. I’m pleased I made it. 

I feel burnt out and depressed some days.  The work week is more strenuous. The depression, anxiety and despair is palpable. There are too many calls and demands for letters and forms. Insurance companies, lawyers, all these folk peripheral to health care co opting health care resources.  More and more the patient may die as long as the chart lives. More and more the recording is for administration and not for the patient.  I’m asked to write 15 minutes for every 15 minutes. I see the patient.  Half the health care resources are taken for the bulging administration. Peace time army. I’m feeling lonely on the front lines. Not understood.  So much I read and hear misses the mark I worry. I push back fear. I’m anxious. I’m isolating.  

I used to be sick every winter. I lost a week in sick days, repeated colds through winter. I’d have injuries in summer. This last 2 years of Covid and isolation I’ve had no illness but the psychosomatic back pain that comes and goes. My self pity sometimes.  Get down of the cross, we can use the wood.

I push back the encroaching darkness. Winter is passing and I feel that spring and summer will lift my mood. I’m sun deficient and all day long with negativity takes me back to the place where I say I want to be a talent scout. I want people to come with their best song and dance. But no, I see people at their worst and struggle to rise to the occasion, lending ego. My ego is fragile. Not egotistical ego but the Freudian ego, the executive function that balances the desires of the state and the desire of the child within. I want to run away to the warm and camp. I want to walk in the sand. But I fear if I did I’d not come back.  

Now I’m preparing to walk where my grandfather did.  I wish I’d spent more time with him when I was younger. With age I’ve learned to love and admire and cherish so much I took for granted when I was a child.  

I laughed listening to Jordan Peterson describing the third world scheduling in Canada today, the unreliability of government services like Africa and Asia.  The corruption reeks in high places. I muddle along . It’s been decades since we had lights in the OR.  We operate with candles while the elite fly private jets to orgies.

I have a mind that slips so easily into anger at authority and resentment and fear.  All is God. So what is this anger at God and fear of God. God made Justin Trudeau. God made Hitler. God made George Soros.  God is good all the time. I know these are the manure for the tulips that grow and bloom.  I would not know good without evil. I am taught to forgive. I must forgive the liars in the media. I forgive so my mind isn’t focused on the negative.

I share my experience, strength and hope. I don’t rent my mind out for free to negative. I want my mind focused on the positive. I want to see the goodness. My aunt never said a bad word about people, a great Baptist lady. Her silences were legendary.  She would never utter Trudeau’s name anymore than she would invoke Satan.

So what was good this week. My tired mind jumps to the negative. I did so enjoy the walks with Madison. The air is so fresh after the snow and rain. I’ve enjoyed inhaling deeply in the morning at the beginning of our river walk and thanking the Lord for Breath and Air and Lungs and the lingering sense of smell I retain since the medications took out half my sense of smell years back.  Now I am thankful that my body moves.  I have pain at times but mostly walking I’m free of pain and the old dancer body is uplifted by motion. I feel the joints move and frankly I think my back is angry at the size of my belly. Parts of the body are like siblings. My gut is an elite these days as I suffer gluttony and sloth snacking watching Netflix.

I was thankful for the people who thanked me for my annual songs,  

I’m planning for the trip to Scotland praying that I dont’ get Covid, that the tests are negative and we don’t have to deal with quarantines.  Laura is coming over this weekend for us to make the next step of arranging accommodation and transportation.  I want to see the great accomplishments of man in Museums and Galeries. I want to see the castles of my family. I want to walk in the hallowed hallways of Oxford, that place where I chose to leave the world of dance and theatre and return to scholarship.  I’ve done my time in the trenches of medicine and now hope to reflect and write more.  

It’s time to work.

I’m really blessed. It’s a good day. I must always check my preception like that great book, ‘new pair of glasses’.  It’s my glasses that are dirty and bespectacled not the world and not my life. I simply have to take out the cloth and clean them off to see the glory of God and Gods’ creation. I am so blessed and so thankful to have feeling and breath. I love the colours of creation.  Thank you. I love the story of Jesus.  All is well.  Thank you God.