Life's Little Ironies and a Week Five Realization

Sometimes life is so ironic. I had been working at TAW so diligently, doing the morning pages every day, trying to do as many of the tasks as possible, doing my best with the artist’s dates, and thinking that this newfound creative outlet would help to cure me of my chronic pain issues. However, as the month of September went on, I couldn’t understand why my back was hurting more and more. In my efforts to watch out for synchronicity, I even clipped a horoscope out of the paper one day that said, “All your aches and pains are the result of inner turmoil.” And so I wrote more and more, hoping to work out all that inner turmoil (not because I believed the horoscope, but because the horoscope—which I would normally not even read, let alone “believe”—confirmed some deeply held suspicions). And still the pain got worse.

Well, sometimes a rose is just a rose, or in this case a pain is just a pain, not an inner turmoil!! It finally dawned on me that the day on which my pain had started to increase corresponded to the day after I had started working on my laptop at my dining room table. No good back-supporting chair, tiny screen, tiny keyboard, shoulders rising because the chair is too low for the table, morning after morning, day after day. And when I wasn’t working at the dining room table, I’d carry my laptop around with me and read my blogs in a rocking chair on the patio, or the squishy chair in the living room. In other words, I was constantly stressing my upper back, all in the name of creativity! Finally one day something blew, and by the time I got to work I was in tears; I started to teach my class and had to leave 10 minutes later. The next day I saw my osteopath, who informed me that even someone with a strong back (unlike me) would hurt themselves working in the posture I was in day after day.

Thus the break I’m taking from TAW. I probably shouldn’t even be typing this post, as I should save any computer strength I have for work, but I’m feeling rather down because I’m not writing at all. I had managed to finish week five, although I never did the “check-in.” At this point I’m not going to start again, because I’d really like my back to feel much better than it does, and to set up a better work area, which will involve spending money that I don’t have right now. So I’ll look on in envy as my fellow TAW bloggers continue their work, and try to post random thoughts as usual as they occur to me.

I will say, however, that during week five, when we were supposed to collect images of things we wished we had done, or would like to do in the future, I realized that I used to love traveling, and most of what I wanted to do (in the past and in the future) was travel, and that I actually don’t travel at all and have in fact developed quite a fear of traveling. During that week I tried to figure out a way I could travel some time in the near future, and that’s something I’m still working on. At first I thought I’d try to go away with a friend on a last-minute deal to the Caribbean or Cuba (I’m Canadian—we're allowed to go!), and then more recently my brother called from Israel to tell me he’s getting married, for the third time, on Christmas Day. Since I missed his first two weddings, I’m thinking maybe I’ll try to attend this one, despite the fact that I’m afraid of flying, that I’m even more afraid of flying overseas, especially to the Middle East, that I’d have to leave my husband and kids over the holidays, and that tickets are a fortune and I’m broke. The whole enterprise has opened my eyes to how much fear (and lack of money, but really that’s secondary) can restrict your life experiences.