Cold Plunge, Warmed Soul

The sky is a blank featureless gray canvas.  Even the mountains under it, normally vibrant still with fall colors, seem muted and dull. It is cold. I was reluctant to crawl from under my shroud of warmth and head to the kitchen to boil water.  My cats though herded me onward towards their bowls.  Everything in me screams that I should run back into my bedroom and cover up until everything is warm again. I sip coffee and feel the hot liquid trickle downward seeping into my core.  There is only marginal comfort in it.  It reminds me how dreary I still feel.

Normally I do not feel so impacted by the lack of sun until well into January.  Maybe it is that snap back from having just come from the beach earlier in the week. It wasn’t very sunny there either.  Still, I was soothed by the rhythm and sway of the ocean.  Its sweet sirens’ songs lulled me into a deep comforting sleep each night.  Before I left her I breathed in the tangy air as deeply as my lungs would fill.  I had hoped it would linger as I left the shore for home.

The ocean was the salve I needed for my battered soul.  My work of late has seen more craziness than one should experience in an entire career.  I AM NOT EXAGERATING.  Add to it the stress of school and my own demand that I get as near perfect a grade as is possible and you have a swirling mass, pierced by multiple adrenaline spikes.  Normally this doesn’t faze me but there was the added pressure of managing a disaster…calling others to action and maintaining a sense of calm and order while doing so.

It occurs to me that as I am approaching zero hour, I am already anticipating a bracing plunge back into chaos.  I was looking at my MySpace profile this morning thinking that I need to continue moving my writing off of there and saving it elsewhere.  The very first blog I read was called ‘Chinked, Dented and Depleted’.  As I read it, two things came to me.  One is remembering exactly WHY I left my former employer at a public hospital.  (Most reading it will probably think it is a greatly exaggerated fable.) Two, that my current job really isn’t very different at all.  It is just a little cleaner and lacks the rats. 

It doesn’t make me feel better about going back to work in the morning.  I am not looking forward to what madness awaits.  It does however spur me on in my studies.  I am impatient to see what doors open at the end. I am good at managing disasters.  I rather enjoy it.  But I also need something else.  I would hesitate to enter age into the equation.  It is that to a degree.  I think though it is more about managing my internal resources a little better.  I have smoked through an exciting career thus far; I still need that excitement and stimulation.  I just need to find something I am able to moderate a little better.   

Even taking time away from studies to write this feels a guilty pleasure…a long overdue one though.  I have been balancing quite finely the demands of job and school but haven’t eked out much for writing and socializing.  I am looking to remedy this however.  My friends reminded me this week that I am missed in their lives.  It was wonderful reconnecting at the beach with one of them.  The fresh rays of memory touch me and burn away my gloom.  And I’d like to think there is that wisp of sea air that fills me still.