Sunday, January 16, 2022

 Sunday, January 16, 2022

 

    Slept well, deeply, and untroubled, ready to take life as it comes instead of worrying about possible negative outcomes. My ankle felt good when I got up during the night, and then it bothered me right before it was time to get up. I did the ankle stretch Kim, my chiropractor, did with me. It caused cramping, but it felt better afterward.  

    I did a short walk before the ankle started bothering me. I found it felt best if I turn my feet in completely. I have no idea why I was like this. It’s almost as if I had a club foot. Judy and Paulette were pulling out at Mei’s as I came home. They had a car to pick up from the airport. Judy waved her gloved hands at me. It was cold out. We’ve been running high fifties to low sixties during the night.

   I finally checked Tommy’s email with the links to my videos and posted them on the blog site. I am convinced most of the visitors to my blog site are reading it as part of a class assignment, probably students who are learning English. All my German visitors disappeared at once. Then the Indonesians dominated, then the Turks, and then the USA topped the list.

    I looked for the writing of Fifth grade W. I couldn’t find one piece we spent a lot of time on. Have no idea why. I went through all the files with her writing. I deleted some with fragments. I marked some for further development that I hadn’t pursued. The completed ones I ran through Grammarly and sent them to her mom. I will have to tell her to give her daughter copies. I suspect she’s just concerned about getting her daughters’ performance up to speed. She doesn’t realize she’s causing some of the problems with her tiger mom approach. No joy there. 

    My friend Jean from Arizona and I finally connected. We’re both having family problems. We talked about what it means to take things personally. It’s an expression therapists use I hate. Someone did something to me, and I shouldn’t take it personally. I beg your pardon. It can be interpreted that we shouldn’t assume something is wrong with us just because someone has treated us badly. That definition of not taking it personally works. But what someone does to me, regardless of reason, impacts me. I never found therapists who clarified that difference. It was just a meme they threw out to see what would stick.

    Among other problems with this approach, we are programmed to take other people’s bad behavior toward us personally. Our brains evolved when we were living in small hunter-gatherer groups. Those bands had strict rules of conduct. If someone consistently failed to conform to expectations, either because of a handicap or because they were bucking the system, they were in trouble. That response, generally a shame response, warns us that we are in danger. It creates discomfort so we can change. If we didn’t change, our lives could be in danger, as surely as they were when we were severely injured. Shame and physical pain both warn us that we are in danger.

  Here’s an example of something Mike “did to me.”   I’ve written about this before. During a family therapy session between Mike and me, he broke down crying and declared, “When we cross a street, I just want to push her in front of a car.”  This is what he did not do: 1) ever push me at all, no less in front of a moving car, 2) he didn’t blame me for the way he felt. Therefore, I did not take his feeling personally. Quite on the contrary, my heart went out to him. How sad to have to live with that kind of rage inside. I knew it was because of his mother. He didn’t endorse those feelings for other women.  

  I went out to finish the shopping I started on Saturday but didn’t have time. At Target, I looked for an external keyboard for the tablet. I got an employee immediately. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Tommy had talked about a plug-in keyboard. This was a Bluetooth. I decided I’d look at Office Max to see if they had more variety. While at Target, I picked up a mild salsa, and I looked for masks. Good luck! Everyone is out of masks. I bought two packages of cloth masks. None of them fit well. What’s the point? The one my sister made for me fit the best and looked the best. Too bad it’s ripped now and useless. 

    I went over to Office Max. Again, I got an employee immediately. Most unusual. They had the same brand as Target, Logitech. I bought one on sale. When I got it home, I was surprised to discover it wasn’t rechargeable. It has a two-year battery.      

   I finished Merton’s Seven Story Mountain and started Batchor’s The Art of Solitude. I tried getting back into The Writer’s Journey. It’s not my thing for now. I’m not into developing stories at that level. Judy recommended it. She’s writing a book of historical fiction. It’s about the Parker family, one of the haole founders of Hawaii, establishing a haole dynasty and making the Hawaiians second-class citizens. It’s too much information for me right now.