By Now? Why not?

At 9am this morning I was feeling a tightness around my body from the past few days spent moving furniture and belongings into my new place.

I needed to stretch, and roll some of the tight spots out, but the my moment I knelt down I recalled wanting to attend a talk on the work from home life and I sprang up and tuned in to pick up some tips on managing my blur of work and personal life that many of us are boxed into now.

Karen Mangia, today's forceful speaker, brought some tremendous tools and techniques for dealing with the emotional setbacks of isolation.

Muhammad Ali up against the ropes facing formidable George Foreman, while battling the adversity of 7th round exhaustion in the boxing ring retorted: Is that all you got?!

Karen's point with that statement is to help us recognize we aren't done fighting for our lives and we need to stare back into our fears. Our expectations are a reflection of an imagination, not a reflection of the way things should be. Karen states that conceptually our expectations pit our egos against our concept of time, and we ask, shouldn't we be successful by now? What is success now? If it's tied to ego, than it will take some creativity and ingenuity to achieve it, since for many internet platforms seem to be the only mold as our own personal platforms.

My expectations of returning to 'normal' have taken their own form, actually my expectations of the future are a general bleakness, a disintegration of social life, normal casual encounters amongst colleagues, however, I hold some hope that remote workers like myself will be a vital force in contributing capital and skills to their local economies, as we branch out into different areas. There would have to be a critical mass of contributions to local economies and systems for that to happen. For now, that may be too idealistic to fathom for many - that my pizza dollars or donations to foodbanks or volunteer hours would be game-changers.

 but even those have proven to be very conservative estimates, considering I am housebound not only by virus worries, but by the smoky late summer fires - but these fears of a dark future have never ended my life, so these fears oddly act as a safeguard against death fears. I was yearning for a promotion, a house, a car, a spouse and where did it all go?

One half of the sky is blue and the other gray - the 'glass half-full' mantra can withstand even this onslaught. Instead of ask, why haven't I bounced back by now, I can ask a different question...if there is a better version of myself out there, not gripped by fear, why not embrace it?

We should expect there will be want, lack, expectation, disappointment, but that as long as we approach our situation with equanimity, there is an opportunity to address short-term fulfillment, and concrete steps toward fulfilling a greater sense of purpose and creation in this fleeting world.

For me, that is putting paint on a page, or a few notes to or from paper/keyboard/guitar. Why not be satisfied with just that act of play?