priorities

it's hard to win. on the last night of my week from hell (which was two weeks ago), i started to get the first inklings of a throat infection. while it hasn't been entirely unpleasant (no significant fever phase, for example), it has progressively eaten its way through my resistances, and now sits squarely in my chest. i've been too lazy to particularly analyze my situation with regards to chinese medicine, but i've felt symptoms of lung heat (including a kind of restless energy and irritability) combined with bouts of extreme fatigue, when i just "zonk out." at the same time, it has been terribly difficult to motivate myself to "follow through" on my demands, including completing the thesis and such. thus, i've been trying to take care of immediate responsibilities, which are significant in and of themselves, and despairing of completing the remaining stuff...

thus, priority one SHOULD be health, but often isn't... health is sacrificed so that i can feel some semblance of adequacy and responsibility to the impossible demands of life...

priority two should be my family, and all of its many aspects... in the immediate sense, it means taking care of my kids, doing homework with them, practicing music and soccer and whatever else with them, and struggling to maintain some semblance of continuity in their lives...

lynn should be included in this, but often isn't. sometimes i feel as though we are ships drifting alongside each other on a pitch black night, unseen, and carrying our own secret lives within our armored hulls... i do wish at times that we could find those same empty irresponsible moments we had when we were single and childless. nowadays, we live almost exclusively through our children...

priority three should be my work, which is, to me, my expression of compassion. i want to be a better teacher, i want to be a better healer, but in the run of things, oftentimes, it is a matter of settling for the expedient solutions... for just "managing" responsibilities...

priority four is my art, which actually encompasses several differing attempts to commune with the formless source of all creativity: in writing, in drawing, in music... sometimes i treat this as my release, as my addiction, which is a bad thing, because there shouldn't be any sense of compulsion in these matters. art ideally is a spontaneous and natural extension of oneself...

priority five (maybe it should be priority zero!) is my living practice, the practice of mindfulness. i'll admit that i've been laughably (sometimes not) mindless. paying no heed or attention. just hanging on to survive to the next day, or even the next hour. waiting for a break...

somewhere along this continuum are my friends. i don't think i commune enough with others, "let people in." it is enough to juggle my own spinning plates. i think, unfortunately, that people like myself isolate themselves in their own responsibilities, in their own "concentration camps." beyond the barbed wire and the "mine"-field, there are other souls, perhaps sharing the same miseries and joys. i think there are only rare moments of release and liberation that find me truly communing and communicating with others. most of the time, i find i am, at most, living "in parallel" with others...

i don't know if i'm the only one like this, or if i'm just more honest about it all...

not that i don't care, but i've invented cares of my own, and they are far more proximal and demanding.

someday, when i'm free, i'll be a better friend...

anyway, gotta get back to my priorities, my kids, which i must bocha...