Feeling, nothing more than feelings

 I have been feeling a lot.

There is so much going on in the world and around where I live and with the people I have in my life...

I am overwhelmed and have shifted to staring into the ether a lot these days.

We attended the "bans off our bodies" rally locally, I was proud that The Barren had ZERO hesitation about going, knew what he wanted his sign to say and was next to me the whole time while I was overstimulated by simply being outside in public.

There were about 600ish people there and we marched through the downtown corridor.

It seemed like the right thing to do, sitting at home was not what I wanted to reflect on when I thought of how I lived my life.

Ironically, one of The Barren and my first dates was a pro-choice rally nearly 30years ago!! 

I wanted to photograph the protestors and he said, I'll go with you. Then in the middle of it all, he walked up and tried to reason with one of the sign holders screaming how it was murdering babies.

I have a photo of that too

It feels like a Goliath task to try and change things...

every vote seems wrong, every law seems aligned to attack people.

I am scared, like seriously concerned that things have slid and now I am chasing the car as it drives out of sight  down the road. 

****

Our neighborhood is under the influence of a Chevron effort to secure more drilling and potentially pollute our water and Edison (power company) is set to put a new compressor station not even two miles away and put us into harms way from leaks and damaging noise.

Then there is the war against Ukraine and hunger and a million dead from Covid-19.

My parents seem to be rapidly aging before my eyes and my mother in law went out for a drink last week and when she got up in the middle of the night to get a drink passed out and split her head open and fractured a bone in her back....but she didn't tell us until she was home from the hospital.

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EVERYTHING I have submitted this year I have been rejected from, which has really made me reassess my life and also our eldest niece has graduated high school and I feel a million years old.

My darling husband is so stressed he is considering quitting his job on a daily and I have learned to not react to that...as talking about it or working through alternatives seems to amplify things and makes him even more upset...and it doesn't help the situation for him. 

(I have mentioned again him getting some professional help to manage stress)

SOoooooooo 

I am having lots of feelings with no place to take them

We got boosted again (second boost) and I have been trying to go to the least congested yoga classes in studio with a KN95 mask on...I am the woman in the mask in the back of the room!!

I thought that maybe my mood would be boosted if I did some social yoga instead of impressing the cats with my bedroom yoga.

We are still out on the results on that one.

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I also got The Barren to help me shift the garage around and cull many things we are feeling weighed down by...so the thrift store picked up a heavy load.

I gave my darkroom enlarger and assorted trinkets to a local guy who was setting up his first darkroom, my meditation teacher helped arrange that match. It was bittersweet when he drove away...I only cried a little. It seemed like a perfect example of time passing and aging.

I decided to focus on what I could do, and 

I signed up for some alternative process classes, using less toxic elements and I am looking forward to learning new things.

I am feeling time more these days than normal...I feel myself becoming another person. I am not sure who she is yet, but she is learning to navigate a lot of life on her own, weighing situations out. 

On the outside that mostly mostly looks like, watching and listening more....

I feel more like an adult, I never wanted to feel like a grownup, and suddenly here I am feeling just that.

Here is a photo of me doing what I love best. My friend produced this image.

We have not been able to visit as often as gasoline prices are between 6.50-7.00 dollars a gallon now and it has factored into my budget now.

I am looking forward to some good changes...there has got to be some good changes around the corner... right?!?

Sigh