Procrastinating

I went to work yesterday, all ready to stand my ground with my boss about not driving to Norwalk. He called me first and told me not to go.

Today, I'm sick to my stomach about going to Sandusky. Part of it is fear and part of it is just not wanting to work today. I'm normally at the office by now. The longer I wait, hopefully the better the roads will be.

Beth's interview at the Country Club went well yesterday. She could choose morning or evening hours. When she told Paula that her last day might be next Friday, Paula told her she couldn't quit because she anticipated that we would be too busy because of Curves' annual food drive and the surge of new members that accompanies it.

Paula is going to be quite disappointed when I turn my notice in, then. I talked with Nelson Monday night. I just can't do the two job thing. I like the spending money and free membership--but I'm just too tired.

Here's a few paragraphs I wrote related to the book I'm starting to formulate:

Finding Center in a World of Extremes

We live in a world consumed by extremes. We don’t just have athletes any longer, we have extreme athletes. Would there be a steroid scandal if there wasn’t a need to perform in the extreme? Obsessed with more and faster we send our sons and daughters to speed camps so that can outperform the competition who might actually be more obsessed than we are. And really, do four and five year olds really need to compete in soccer leagues?

Do you remember when people dropped the “F” bomb? Now parents have open conversations in public places with children using profanity that demonstrates the total disregard for its inappropriateness. I hold classes in church buildings and the total disregard for the context is demonstrated consistently by adults whose lack of awareness for the words coming out of their mouths is overwhelming.

What is really awesome anymore? Our language is totally deflated and confused: bad is good, for one example. I love to eavesdrop on conversations around me. The sad thing that has come out of this habit is the realization that we are running out of ways to describe the amazingness of life around us. We’ve trivialized the profound and in the process made it profane. And this is a tragedy, but we don’t realize it because we’re desensitized to it by living and pushing the extremes.

Our bent towards living in the extreme has moved us totally out of balance. In the process we have lost our ability to find our center. We don’t understand how to develop healthy boundaries because we have no sense of our limitations. Young people have always demonstrated a propensity towards thinking they were immortal and impervious to danger, but that behavior has become more widely practiced by adults of all ages and even children. On the other hand, if we are aware of limitations it becomes a paralyzing situation that results in anxiety gone wild seen in all sorts of panic attacks and paranoia.

We’ve been living in the extremes and pushing the envelope for so long that we have begun to think it’s normal. We can’t handle our emotions or the behaviors of our children so we medicate them—either with prescriptions or drugs and alcohol. We can’t define normal. We no longer know what average is.

I asked a group recently what it meant to have healthy boundaries. They sat there for quite some time in silence. Finally, someone gave the definition of knowing one’s limitations. Then someone added respect. If we could get a grasp on these things we would have hope to find our way back to center, to balance, and to life as we were created to live it.