Sandbags

Sometimes my brain does weird stuff. (Yes, only SOMEtimes. I CAN be normal. Occasionally.) Right now, the weird thing it's doing is translating my emotional/psychological states into word pictures. 


For instance, a few days ago, I listened to this fascinatingly gross episode of RadioLab entitled "Guts." In one segment, a neuroscientist describes a lab test he conducted in which he gave mice extra probiotics and then observed their ability to handle stress by dropping them into bowls of water and seeing how long they'd try to swim. The control group panicked under the stress and quickly gave up and did the "dead mouse float," as RadioLab host Jab termed it. The mice with the extra probiotics just kept swimming - as if to say, "It's cool. I'm sure someone'll get me outta here soon. No worries." Any guesses as to which group I'm in?

For the rest of the day, the image of those despairing mice stuck as a perfect representation of how I was feeling. I was doing a Dead Mouse Float. (I should probably have eaten some yogurt.)

But thankfully, I'm not quite to perpetual Dead Mouse Float. Instead, I'm mostly envisioning a completely different metaphor in which I am taking a journey by hot air balloon.

Ah... that sounds nice, huh? You probably are thinking that this is a positive thing.

Well, it isn't.

I mean, it's not all that bad, but you know, it's still about stress.

So I'm on this hot air balloon ride, but I have all these sandbags that are the myriad items populating my To Do lists. And with each mental note I make ("Don't forget to take that to the post office." "This floor needs to be swept." "This plastic fireman's axe does not belong in my bathtub."), another sandbag appears on the side of my basket. 

So the trick is that to get anywhere, I'm gonna have to let some of those sandbags go. Sometimes, when I'm lucky and the stars align, I'm able to accomplish one of the tasks and watch that sandbag drop away. But most of the time, I'm having to force myself to cut off sandbags - delete them from my list - and forgive myself for giving up on that particular goal. Which is ridiculously difficult sometimes. But you know what? I just can't do it all! And as much as I hate to admit that - even to myself - it is a truth that I have to face if I want this journey to go anywhere.

And the magical thing is that the journey does begin to go somewhere as the sandbags fall away. One by one, these minor accomplishments and intentional releases lighten my load and ease my travel. 

The weird thing is that all sandbags are of equal weight to me, no matter how they may compare to each other. For example, in a list that included grocery shopping, unpacking boxes, and paying bills, the task that I ended up completing yesterday morning was this one: Organize my Pinterest boards. (I'll wait while you finishing scoffing. I know. It's totally ridiculous.) But guess what? I felt the weight of that particular sandbag, and I was no less relieved to see it disappear than I would've been if instead I'd chosen to purchase breakfast provisions for this morning (it's okay - we had some old frozen breakfast sandwiches). 

So there you have it. An unsolicited peek into my crazed psyche. Explains a lot, I'm sure...

Happy ballooning!