Words as Wayfinders

 Sometimes when you look at things differently you find a whole new kind of beauty.  I am guessing there are a number of ways to find perspective.  These days I find myself looking for that.  The third and find theme on my walk pondering words, was could words be the wayfinder for me?

Call it what you will, the way, the work life balance, the joy, the energy...it's no longer at my fingertips like it once was.  I spend my days never getting through the work that needs to be done in my job, being mentally and emotionally exhausted, and losing the days off to worry and stress of the accumulating work pile. Who is this person? It's getting harder to tell.  So I know I need to find my way back...even to just last summer for heaven's sake.  How to get there is the tricky bit. In addition to always being tired, I am also uncharacteristically grumpy, far less social , less interested in most things that don't involve sugar, caffeine or sleep.  A colleague and I talked quasi seriously about PTSD in healthcare...and how we probably don't talk about it enough.  As if a pandemic wasn't enough, there had to be politics and camps fighting about the pandemic during the pandemic. This was not helpful.

And so, I wondered while I wandered, could words lead me back?  It seems like words have gotten me through many things.  Writing is therapy, a release -- it soothes a busy mind and sets down some of the burdens on a heavy heart.  For me, there is more therapy in my words to the keyboard than a conversation.  They keyboard never interrupts my sentences, argues its perspective, riles me up, or demands my attention to another topic before I have worked out my feelings on the first.  

Wanting to write feels like a bit of spark of life.  It's a complete distraction from the "other" work self.  It asks me to schedule a time of reflection, and the blog usually has a photo, and heaven knows I love to take and share those.  And maybe this little blog can drive a wedge between the demands of the other self, and nuture the weary and witherered former funny little me.  Writing as soul food.  It might feel a bit open and vulnerable again, but I can comfort myself that my years long neglect of the blog means it might not get read a whole lot in the rough patches of finding my groove again...so maybe the words will drift out into the world wide web and be lost in the melee, or maybe they will find and soothe a soul twin someday down the road.  One can never tell.