2002-11-18 - 12:35 p.m.
Monday morning....
Another weekend of work on the binders. Just hours of work, and being really tired and not having time for most of the things that make me feel peaceful and creative and together. I usually do a journal update on Sunday night, and last night I didn't even have the energy to try. For the last three months we have spent about twenty to thirty hours a week on this project, on top of our full-time jobs. I used to always wonder if I could handle getting a second job and just knocking myself out for a while to get ahead financially. And the answer is no. Giving up all your personal time is too steep a price to pay. I feel as if work and "have-to's" have taken over my mind and forced out everything I used to think about. I really miss art and reading and living in an orderly house. But we are seeing the light at the end of the cardboard tunnel. This weekend we began volume eight of the nine volumes. We should be throwing our proverbial hats in the air by Thanksgiving.
I have certainly learned some things from all of this, besides the fact that I couldn't handle getting a second job. First, I have developed a great distaste for excess, which the project has come to represent. No teacher needs to have nine binders full of paper telling her how to do her job. Seriously, if anyone utilized all of this stuff, she would be spending so much time filling out forms and surveys and evaluations she would never have time to do her job. It has made me want to minimize the stuff in my life, and reduce my personal stash of paper, files and notebooks. There is way too much information in the world as it is, and you can't hang on to everything you might ever use. After the binders go, a lot of my own stuff is going, too. I want to see space, empty corners, open table tops, light file drawers...
And, perhaps more importantly, I have learned that you can ask for help in circumstances that are not life threatening, and the people who care about you will help. One of our friends has helped, and my mother and sister put in several hours again this weekend. And what is a boring and dreary task becomes almost fun when we have company and we can talk and laugh and tell stories while we work. "Many hands make light work" my mother used to always say. I remember hating that saying when I was a certain rebellious age and didn't think any of the hands at work in the household should be mine. (Yes, I regret that.) But of course she was right. And it is not just the many hands, but the willing hands that lighten both work and hearts when people help each other. I am amazed and grateful.
I have also learned, or maybe I should say, remembered, that as difficult as life has been lately, I am thankful that I have the health and energy and stamina to do what needs to be done. As we were working this weekend, neither Skootie nor I could long forget that her favorite aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer. The news that changes everything. I always thought she had such an enviable life. We are the same age, but instead of working in an office and stuffing binders, she was always jetting around the world, sending postcards from famous museums and spectacular beaches. How marvelous must it be, I thought, to have the money to be so free. And now, along with my fear for her, and grief for all the medical tortures this good kind person must now endure in order to reclaim her life..... I have a new perspective on my own. I remember that it is marvelous to have the health to be so free.
This morning when I arrived at work, there was an e-mail from one of those services that sends you a quotation every day as a ploy to get advertising in your face. Usually they are warm-overs of the same old ideas. But here is today's quote:
"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.... let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."
-Mary Jean Iron
I think I needed to see that today. I think I really needed to be reminded that life is good, just as it is.
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