Sleepless in Seattle

My internal clock went "zing" at 4:30 AM today. After pretending that I could overcome the call for coffee and a start to the day, I gave in at 5 AM, poured the first cup and started reading blogs. The glow of my laptop casts an eerie light in this shared bedroom of mine but Denny doesn't seem to mind my early morning clicking on the computer. He's become immune.

So now, I write my own post for the day on a morning when I felt certain I'd "sleep in" just a bit after a "bust-ass" busy week at work. No way. My brain, on "work-overload" for six out of the nine days into our New Year, has me on the eternal treadmill of thought after thought after thought. I'm in sore need of a restorative yoga class with an emphasis on pranyama and shavasana. Maybe soon, I say. Wasn't my New Year's promise to myself the gift of time to pursue joy in my life? I'm about 10 days behind on that plan but hope springs eternal. I'm off work for the next 6 days and WILL launch, even if it's baby steps, my plan.

One of the first things I need to do is to cure myself of this addiction to modes of communication (including email) but especially the telephone. I walk around so worried that I'll miss an important call (from either my daughter overseas or the adult family home where Mom and Dad reside) that I walk around all day with my cell in my pants pocket and a beeper on my belt. Plus, when I'm home, the cordless phone is never more than a foot away (because if I'm in the shower, I'll certainly hear it ringing). Sicko. But even worse is the insanity that goes on at night. When I'm on-call for work, I've got the pager under my pillow on vibrate mode, the cell phone on my nightstand, and the cordless house phone right next to the cell. Oy. No wonder I'm a jumpy mess.

Do I have an addiction to being "needed"? Duh!

This is dumb and it isn't healthy. I look back on the early days of the cell phone when my clunky apparatus stayed on "off mode" in my purse. I only turned it on and made a call when I needed to do so and incoming calls weren't even on the radar. This sounds so foreign to me now as I live in a world where I feel that unless I'm connected minute to minute 24/7, something bad will happen or something important will get by me. Perish the thought.

So, Sleepless in Seattle (me) is going to work on this problem in baby steps. In fact, I had my first lesson that I don't have to be first up to bat 24/7. Yesterday, unbeknown to me, my cell phone which was dutifully minding its duties in my pants pocket, was on the fritz and all 6 "important" incoming calls went directly to voice mail only to be discovered later. Lo and behold, the world did not come to an end! In fact, those who couldn't reach me somehow made do and figured out a plan on their own for whatever the issue happened to be. Amazing how these folks just forged ahead on their own without me!

I'm learning that if I kick the bucket take myself out of the loop, people all over the world keep breathing, making plans and living quite nicely, thank you. It's a tough lesson, but I gotta learn it. However, I am up for the day, early as it may be. It's still dark in Seattle. I'm on my second cup of coffee and very awake. But, I'm determined today to find joy and to throw the cell phone down the toilet (well, sort of...).

One lovely plan is a road trip with Denny, Chris and his girlfriend Heather to a fabulous and authentic Mexican restaurant in the great town of Monroe, Washington today.