On edge and sitting there

I woke from an anxiety dream last night. The kind where you have that heart-stopping, throat-closing, stomach-lifting feeling as if you’d dropped off a high-diving board. I don’t remember the dream, but I know why I had it.

I feel like I’m not doing my Third Third right. (It is a positive sign that I’m not saying I’m failing at it, but that’s the feeling.) I have one friend who hopped on a bicycle and has covered the country and is still going. Another who took up photography and is preparing for her first solo exhibition.

And I’m still sitting here.

Okay, I’ve been to Machu Picchu, been back to care for and visit my mother, explored Vermont and Portland. I’m excited by this blog and the creativity it inspires. I thoroughly enjoy the classes I teach as a volunteer, and I’m challenged by a contract I’m presently working on and the problem-solving I need to address for it.

Enough of the floor work is done and things moved back into their places (and dusted and vacuumed!) so that I’m not living in chaos.

So what gives?

In re-loading the bookshelves, I came across the giant envelope full of photos. I put it in the box with all the other unsorted, tossed-in-the-box photos. To work on the floors, I put on a pair of old jeans that needed mending. When I pulled out my sewing supplies, I saw the still-unfinished quilt. I finished browsing a magazine, tearing out a couple pages of recipes I’d like to try, and added them to the pile of many more recipes-I’d-like-to-try. The mint and chives are still unharvested from the garden, and I know it’ll be too late when snow lands on them.

I saw a movie where they said, “Sitting is the new smoking,” and here I sit. My feet developed some odd pain after the Mayor’s Half-Marathon (in June!), and I haven’t been running barely at all since then.

Yes, I know this is whining. This is WHINING. I would be horrified except that I’m making the excuse that if it’s in this blog, maybe other people will identify with it and think they’re not so alone after all. I’m still horrified.

I just don’t like feeling this way. This on-edge, unsatisfied, fidgety, uncentered feeling. Even my clothes feel uncomfortable. I guess I keep hoping for a once-and-for-all resolution to life questions, that I figure it out and I’m good. That things on my list get DONE.

I’d been excited to solve the goose poop problem at Cuddy Park. People had all come together from all different agencies with lots of good ideas. And then they all separated, and I can see that the solution for one is going to create unintended consequences for another and they really need to be brought together to decide on solutions. But I’m only a volunteer. A volunteer amongst volunteers is fine, but no one listens to the volunteer in an interdepartmental crowd. So that’s a fizzle.

I know this is all to be expected in our Third Thirds. That trying new things means some won’t work out, but that failing to try would be the real tragedy. That coming up with too many new things means some – a lot! – won’t get done. As always, I know that “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Okay, today I’ll put one foot in front of the other and make an appointment with the podiatrist. (!) The rain has stopped. Maybe first I’ll go out for a run.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (one of my heroes) said, “We are what we pretend to be….” So right now, I’m going to pretend to be a runner with a lift in her legs. Let’s see if that works.