Coming to the Here and Now – Right Now

Image by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

5 September 2023

I am feeling jittery and distracted. It’s not wholly uncommon, of course, but I seem to be lacking focus more than is usual.

Part of it, I realise, is that I don’t have enough structure in my days at the moment. A lot of the time my diary is quite packed out – save the parts of the day I block out unashamedly at lunchtime each day, for eating, walking the dog and playing some piano.

Another part of it is that I don’t have anything “urgent” in terms of work deliverables. Lots of things I could do, could be preparing, could be advancing… but no imminent deadlines. Or the deadlines I do have I am on top of. There’s nothing rushed.

I think the bigger part of it is that I miss my commitment to my weekly writing for the widow’s blog, Soaring Spirits. The ideas still come bubbling up during week, but without the “deadline” visible, I find I move on to something else. And that now has created a swirling of ideas and emotions that are not sufficiently processed. I would not be the first to suggest that writing is therapeutic, that it brings clarity.

I keep a sticky note list of all the things I want to write about. There are about 7 topics on it at the moment, and some ideas I don’t even remember the gist of. Whatever was important in that moment has gone. Pouf!

So what IS present right now?

I want to write about what it must be like to be widowed for 50 years. Someone I know, a dear family friend, has just past that landmark. I can only begin to imagine how that must be. How does one widow for 50 years?

A fellow widbud is thinking about dating and wants some input from me. It brings up so much – not just my own experiences of starting dating, but also losing Julia, because it all happened at once.

I am signed up to do what I planned to be my “swan song” trail run this weekend. It will be small by trail run standards, and yet SO BIG for me, given my lack of preparation, and what trail running has meant. There’s some processing to be done there, for sure.

I am setting up a face-to-face group for Anglophone Grieflings in the Geneva area – widows or people who have lost a child. I still don’t know anyone other than myself, locally, who ticks “both” to those categories. I know they will come. And in the meantime, I continue to hold my Zoom Multiple Losses group on a monthly basis for those who have lost a spouse and a child/ren. At least once a month I get a new name, though for most, it’s too soon to commit to meeting up – even virtually. Especially virtually. But just the solace of having two, three or four faces looking back at me when we meet is huge.

And I am readying myself for my first psychedelic experience. More on that soon, I am sure.

And I am sure if I went and looked at my sticky note, other musings would return to my murky brain.

So there we have it. That is what is present. I feel clearer already. I feel that I can focus again.

Onward. Back to that pile of reading.