The author’s day has not gone as planned. He’s OK with that, though he wasn’t always.
Mood music for this post: “Adrift And At Peace” from NIN:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMnv8zrmAyU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
This day has not gone as planned.
I wanted to be in the office today plowing through some work. But another winter storm forced me to work from home.
Some would say it’s great I can do that, and it is. But when there’s a lot on the plate, I prefer to be in the office. Especially when the kids are home from school for February vacation. At least in the summer I can write from the back deck while the kids play in the field behind the house.
This time of year we’re all indoors and the kids are loud.
A few years ago the snow, the change in schedule and the kids in my workspace would have unhinged me.
I’d get a story written. Maybe three. But I’d be a puddle of lava by day’s end, good for nothing except sleep.
Not so today.
I’m enjoying the cozy chair by my living room window, watching the snow fall.
I’ve gotten as much writing and editing done from here as I would have from the office.
The kids were indeed loud and distracting, but I enjoyed that, too. What used to be stress is now comic relief, especially when Sean tells Duncan he looks adorable when he cries and Duncan responds by pouncing on his older brother, yelling, “Who’s crying now?!”
I smoked one last cigar before Lent begins tomorrow, since that’s one of the things I’m abstaining from until Easter. It was a Cuban stick at that. Thanks to my friend Bob Connors for parting with it.
The coffee is French-pressed and bitter. Just the way I like it.
A much different day than what it would have been five years ago, before I gained the upper hand over the OCD.
Days that don’t go as planned are especially difficult for people with OCD. We do, after all, crave control over everything we can control. And we badly want to control things we can’t, like the weather.
Forget about the small stuff, like checking a doorknob seven times or tapping your feet to the count of 60. A carefully crafted schedule in shambles is the big stuff; hell for a sick mind.
That’s when someone like me turns to the food or the booze to comfort the troubled mind.
But the food is well under control today, and bottles of wine that once taunted me from a kitchen counter rack have gone unnoticed in the corner.
I’m not the same man I used to be.
Credit the therapists, the Prozac, the religious conversion or all of the above.
Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it.