This Old Gray Mare

I definitely ain't what I used to be.

Gone are the days when I could function on nothing more than a few hours sleep, caffeine and nicotine. I've looked under the couch cushions and everything, I just can't find them. There wasn't any change, either, so it was a very disappointing venture.

I discovered this two years ago, when I had an orientation for my first year of AmeriCorps service. For one week, I got next to no sleep, and found myself chugging along on coffee and cigarettes. And where before, it would have taken an entire twelve week semester at least to send me crashing back to earth in a flaming heap, that seven days was plenty.

I've rediscovered this a few times since -- I guess I just don't learn. For instance, now. After about five days of intense strategizing and researching, I have expended myself. I can't think straight. I can't think around corners. I can't think. Period. I have thoughts, but they scatter in all directions before I can get a grip on them. This has it's merits -- I find things funny that I normally might not, and I'm starting to make some strange connections between people, places, words, television, the environment, washing dishes, and all manner of other things that wouldn't normally go together. I can sit here and watch my fiancee play video games with absolutely avid attention. Things in some ways are very simplified, and in others, very complicated.

I miss the me that I was when I was in college, but life keeps chugging along with or without my say so, and she's long gone. What am I left with?

Hmmm. When I seriously inspect things, quite a bit. I have the aforementioned fiancee, contentedly playing a little kid's video game after dinner. I have a cockatiel who I adore. I have good friends, one of whom is crashed out on my living room floor. I have books and music, a comfortable bed, and for the most part a roof that keeps the rain off of everything (the exception being one small place in the kitchen ceiling).

I have all the same drive and passion and energy that I did in college -- I simply have to spend it more wisely now. I slow down to appreciate small things, like the bubbles that shoot out of the bottle of dish soap. I have an ability to be mentally still that I never did before; there are as many answers in stillness as there are in the frantic thrashing of an anxiety driven mind. I take time to enjoy the flowers I'm trying to grow, or talk to the fish in the tank, and any number of other things I might have avoided because I was too busy hauling ass to get to the next something-or-other. It isn't as important to be constantly "doing" as it once was.

So, yeah. I can't race around and accomplish everything in one day like I used to. I like sleeping for eight hours a night. I like taking care of my own home, even if it's something of a hovel. I'm comfortable with that. I'm okay with the strands of gray that are coming in, and the little laugh lines that are hitting the corners of my eyes.

There are just other, more important things now.