November 20, 2013

Blue.

20131120-125839.jpg

So I woke up feeling kind of blue this morning. I was having a dream where I was trying to beat some sort of timer in an action movie. I was in a warehouse on the third floor and whatever needed to be attended to was on the ground floor. The staircase was open, and so, in slow motion with the appropriate sound effects, I jumped over the railing and with a descending whooo sound, I landed on the ground floor, ready to run. The problem was, when I landed I didn’t hear a bum-bum-bum-bum-bum sound trailing off, instead I heard my iPhone in my pocket making its cutesy alarm noise. This didn’t fit into the scenario at all. When I jerked around to see why this was happening, I was suddenly in this reality and my iPhone was making its cutesy alarm noise.

I didn’t leap out of bed this morning.

I turned over and realized that Earl is still away on business (he’s in Memphis) and that it was still dark and quite chilly in the house. Looking out I saw no signs of a sunrise, only evidence of a hard freeze. It was time to get up, get ready for the day and head off to the office.

Sigh.

I don’t know if it was the subsiding of the dream-inspired adrenaline surge, the darkness, the lack of a husband in bed with me or “weekend drop” that was making me feel kind of blue, but I was feeling kind of blue. Ho hum, off to work we go.

As I drove to the office, the sun rising on the horizon like it does on some sort of regular schedule, I came to the realization that I could either choose to continue to be blue all day and just get through it all until I could resume the urgent matters that needed tending to in my dream, or I could find a reason to smile, latch onto that and make the smile grow.

I took five minutes and pulled over on the side of the road. During this time, I opened up a note app on my iPad and I typed a bucket list for 2014. The list is short, rather focused in nature and definitely a subset of my bigger bucket list. For a few moments I focused on the future, and what I want to do with that future. That focus helped make now better. I smiled and I think the smile has been around for most of the day thus far.

The blue feeling feels a little more like a blue sky with sunshine this afternoon. Perhaps a small, simple meditative exercise is all I needed.

Now to attend to that bucket list.