Scatter my ashes here...

Scatter my ashes here...
scatter my ashes in the desert...

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Day 5, Time Warp

I officially ran. I shouldn't even count this as a run, but today was one of those days when you get a pin in your balloon and you have to regroup mentally and emotionally before you can reclaim yourself and your senses. 

So after a long, long, day of starting at 4:45 am, going to Denver and back, and working all afternoon in the cave, and trying to take a nap but not being able to sleep, I finally got out, just after dinner, in my bathrobe, with Dennis as my witness, and ran in the dark down the driveway, past the community mailbox along the sidewalk, past the neighbors' house, then turned around for an out and back. I estimate it was 0.1 miles. 

I did it. Kept my streak alive, on a week where I have the energy and brainpower of a slug. Tomorrow will be a better day. It has to be. 

So what happened? I was accidentally and temporarily absorbed into the suckhole of a past traumatic experience and suddenly found myself as a 28 year old graduate student being told by a old crusty fart told that my ideas of merging the two disciplines of physiology and behavioral sciences in recreation research had no place in our discipline, and the feelings associated with that, being afloat and mentor-less and out on a rudderless boat on a choppy sea, halfway through a Ph.D. program. 

Just having to regain my equilibrium. I was talking to a doctor about my business and I realized that we really do speak different languages. Coming from a holistic, nursing and patient-advocacy perspective, talking to a physician who is of a certain mindset, can be one of the most frustrating experiences, because you don't have the language to communicate it. 

Anyway, it's gone, but it took me a little while to realize where it took me: back to a place long ago, before I had the life experience to recognize that there were some people whose world view was limited to a certain territory and as long as you didn't intrude on their firmly held belief system, they were okay. But they couldn't see you, you were invisible. 

Yes, the old days when even in academia, in a small mixed -gender group of people, you were still invisible, no eye contact or communication was directed at or shared with you. The good ole days of the 80s and 90s when women were not encountered as often...and could easily be ignored. There but not there. Back in the days when they tolerated your presence because the law said they had to, but they wouldn't tell you the rules of the game. 

An intrusive memory, a time warp, lasting a few hours, but now I have time traveled, reinflated, and am back to myself, but that was a weird experience. I guess I didn't realize how vulnerable I felt in this situation where I am behind the learning curve, and tend to see things differently anyway. 

I really don't "get" some of the dogma of the business world. Whatever. I do what I like to do. I do what makes me happy. I'm not building a business to sell it off in a couple of years. I don't just do things for the sake of money and growth. That's why I'm NOT in traditional health care, I don't believe in winning because I had the most toys. 



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