Trying to get unstuck
I’m feeling rather stuck lately. This is not being helped by my network, we seems to be posting things that are depressing rather than up lifting. I haven’t written much on this blog lately because I don’t want to contribute more to the depressing nature of the posts that going around on my cancer network. I want to help change the tone to help be more up lifting, but I’m just not feeling up to that.
One of the decision I made on vacation was that I wanted to focus more of my time on writing. I want to write a couple of books. That is in part why I was focusing on writing more about our vacation. I wanted to practice that genre of writing (adventure travel writing), which is quite different than the writing I do here, and the writing I do on my academic blog.
Last week, I created a blog post per day about our vacation to the Eastern Sierra’s. I wanted to write about all the wonderful hikes we went on. I wanted to remember the fun parts of the vacation, in part because it didn’t end well. I got stuck on day 7. Not because day 7 was bad, but because I chose to relax on Day 7. I didn’t go on a hike that day, rather, I lazed around in the hammock and read. After five days of hiking, I needed the break, but also, I wanted to give hubby the opportunity to go on a more rigorous hike then I was physically able to go on. I didn’t want to be holding him back. I’d say that this was another one of those losses from cancer, but it isn’t really. Even before cancer hubby was always more of a hiker than I. So, it would have been pretty normal for me to take a day off while he hiked. And as you can see, I was comfortable in he hammock!
My plan was to go on a nice hike on day 8, but the weather gods didn’t agree with that plan. I got stuck on day 7, and need to just get past that stuckness. I need to learn to just write even when that writing is a more difficult.
Day 8 was really the end of our vacation. We came home a day early. It got to a point where I was no longer having fun. I wanted to just be home, back in my bed. Back to familiar comforts.
I find that interesting too. I used to love travelling. I used to want to spend time away. Now, I find travel to be exhausting. I do enjoy it, but I also find it stressful and tiring. I find that I miss the routines that I have at home. I find that I just want to be back into those routines. This scares me. I feel like I’m prematurely aging. Like I’m becoming someone who doesn’t want to adventure anymore.
I’m so thankful that we did our Going East bike tour while we were young and relatively healthy. I cannot imagine doing that type of trip now. It would be so complicated – I’m having a hard enough time managing my pills for a 10-day trip (my pill organizer only has space for a week). I cannot imagine how to manage the pills for a longer trip.
I’m writing this post in part to help me get unstuck. To get the creative juices flowing again, so I can get back into the routine of daily writing. And with that, it is time that I go and write about vacation day 7 … coming soon …
- Becky
- My first haircut Wed September 11, 2024
- First day of class - A time of transition Tue September 3, 2024
- A long overdue post Sun July 28, 2024
- Navigating the Side Effects of Trastuzumab: Finding Balance and Embracing Summer Wed May 29, 2024
- Sunshine and Sunflowers Thu May 9, 2024
“I feel like I’m prematurely aging. Like I’m becoming someone who doesn’t want to adventure anymore.” You are meeting your current needs. “Current” is the operative term. It’s different from the past, but we don’t know what the future holds. We can only do what feels good and right in the Now. Good for you for pressing forward with your travel writing, which is an adventure in itself!
Elissa – thank-you for the encouragement … some days it really is just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and pressing on …
Unstuck sounds like a useful term to describe escaping the after cancer mire. Stuckness is making me resist my psychologist’s suggestion to release the resentment I feel for all the bad medical service dumped on me. But I don’t feel comfortable as a hurting person because it tires me out even more. (Why, as a person who never takes advice anyway I should even HAVE a psychologists is a question I’ll skip over).
For me, I’m re-targeting my reflective efforts to focus on the shock effects of change as in dealing with mortality and new limitations. Instead of reinforcing the hurt for itself as a kind of dramatic self-image anchor I think the journey away is more important.
Travel writing sounds like a great idea. Took a travel writing course through SFU Writing and Publishing extension service and even found it useful when I was whacked out in ICU for a week. Caught myself narrating my hallucinations and my version is way cooler than medical record version.
You are a very observant person and even the journey through / with cancer is certainly travel material. Have you read any Dervla Murphy? Daughter Lindsay read all her books and loves to travel. Dervla doesn’t write fun travel stories but they are optimistic nonetheless.
Becky – It is not that I can’t understand what you may be going through, but why were you wearing your chemo cap on vacation? Also, a good piece of advice is to surround yourself with everything positive. No negative thoughts or negative persons allowed. Take care! Love, Aunt Margaret
Hi Aunt Margaret – although it is a head covering that I wore during chemo, it is actually a buff like they have on the TV show survivor. They are great hats to provide warmth or protect from the sun. I was bundled up in the hammock because the air was cool/cold – so it helped me stay warm, but also covered the mess that my hair was. Scott has one too – we were them all the time when we are camping. It just so happened that my favourite coloured one is one that I wore a lot during chemo!
Wow, your writing is so conversational and uplifting that I think you are beyond your stuckness already!
BTW, using a vacation, especially one that is active and gets us out of our regular day-to-day processes, can be really useful to help us reset. Turning to a future of writing is a great first step on that journey.