Diversity

I started this week on vacation, in a gorgeous mountain area, hundreds of miles from my home and am ending this week in my own house, with the same old views out my windows. And in between these two days was a week filled with diversity. Time spent with many family members, a visit to Heritage Park, a movie, good (and bad) restaurant meals, back to the work routine and home-chores routines like grocery shopping and laundry and housework, contacts with people at work that were sometimes trying and sometimes satisfying, contacts with friends and aquaintances in a number of ways, an emergency visit to the hearing aid clinic to try to solve a 'howling aid' problem, time with The Kid, being asked for advice from some people, asking others for advice, time with others, time alone. Each week is almost as diverse, and I often forget how much I do or how many I people I talk to or how much time there really is in any given week. I'm lucky to have this.

Three things I learned in this week of diversity:

-vacations are fantastic, no matter what I do or what the circumstances. Vacations, for me, exist to get a break from my real life and the time off and away always helps me to refocus on my day to day life. Often I dread the end of a holiday and having to go back to reality. Coming home this time re-emphasized to me that I can create a vacation attitude every day. I don't do that as often as I could, and my moods and attitudes suffer for it. It re-taught me that I need to plan something to look forward to: large vacations, small moments with family, time out for fun, and this week, even cleaning house and getting my physical space back in order. Re-organizing my living space is one more small way that I am reclaiming my life.

-the people in my life are there for a reason. There are people I have chosen to have in my life and there are others that have to be there, through the choices of others. One example of this is some colleagues at work who are particulary difficult for me to deal with. My lesson this week is that they are not just going to go away, and I have to interact with them. I can keep my sanity and lower my stress level by remembering I can't change the situation or the person. I can only work on my reactions and emotions during my contacts with these people. It sounds so easy, but is so hard to do in reality. The lesson is to look at myself and analyze my own reactions, and to take pride in myself when I can walk away without being frustrated, angry, or giving up. There will be some successes and some failures for me in working this way. And they're just people.

-I am lucky to live in an age where technology and medical advances make my life easier. And have allowed me to HAVE life. I thought I'd go stark raving mad when I had problems with my hearing aid this week - continual howling if it was in and a very marked decrease in hearing if it was out. My visit to the hearing aid clinic did not solve my problem, but did make it somewhat better. I have some areas of strangeness with my body - calcified ear bones than create hearing loss, high protein producing eyes, blood that is too 'thick' and clots for no known reason, a recent meet-and-greet with cancer that has left me with an ostomy and a bag for elimination, areas in my breasts that are being monitored due to calcification. I had a little fat cyst removed from my shoulder a number of years ago, and no one knows why it grew. Very strange things, these bodies of ours, but also they are the most amazing and fascinating things on Earth. I can hear better, keep my blood from clotting, monitor the calcification, and eat, breathe, and LIVE thanks to being born in this age, where these medical advances are available, and often taken for granted.

I hope to have just as diverse a week coming up and pray I can find the good stuff.