We live in such a catastrophic world today where a 14 year old can shoot up a school in Georgia and another 14 year old can set a fellow student on fire. In light of that my own difficulties are just minor skirmishes. In thinking and writing about catastrophes these last few days, I’ve realized that I’ve been blessed.
I have no real catastrophes and nothing to complain about. I’m in good health, have a roof over my head, food in my pantry, clothes on my back and in the closet and a comfortable bank account. I have a multitude of interests and hobbies. I’m still keen on learning. I’m looking forward to the start of my online class on Curing the World’s Diseases next week. At the moment I am enjoying the Healing Kitchen series from Sacred Science. So many things to learn about food and healing.
It has been a dreary drizzling day but the sun just came out and lit my world. I hope it stays longer than a few minutes. But it is enough to lift the gloom from my mood. On with the rest of my afternoon.
I haven’t thought of myself as being a quitter till these last few days. For this 2nd week of September I’m writing on catastrophes. I’m thinking back over the years to my most troublesome times. Now I remember I am a bit of a quitter. I quit university after 2 years. I did not finish. I did not get a degree in fine arts or English, my two majors. I can’t remembered exactly how I felt. Knowing my nature I was probably despressed, feeling like a failure. I was not talented nor a bright prospect as my high school teachers lauded me.
After slinging coffee at a cafe for a few months, I took a 10-month secretarial course at the Saskatoon Business College. I completed that and had plans to move to Vancouver to find a job. Somehow, I never got there and ended up settling for that job at a broiler making company from which I got fired within a few months. I wasn’t a quitter there. I was fired.
After working 2 years at the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs, I got bored. I went back to school, taking a 2 year diploma nursing course. The first year was not a problem. Nor was the second until the final few months. I’ve never had any hospital experience, no candy striper experience or even hospital visiting experience. So I had problems clinically in my last two rotations. Besides that, I had both personal and financial problems. So one evening when my instructor muttered ‘You’re flunking’, I lost it. I yelled, I quit!
I didn’t. My instructor intervened. I got help and graduated. After working a few years at a hospital, I said the same thing. I quit! It wasn’t the hard work. It was the environment. I did not find hospitals a friendly supportive workplace. I wanted to leave nursing behind me but I lasted only a few weeks. One day, driving past the university hospital, I stopped in on a whim to fill an application form. When I came out, I had a job. Instead of being happy, I put my head on the steering wheel and cried.
Nursing must have been my calling. I stayed for over 30 years. They were memorable though I can’t say it was good or bad. Whatever they were, I can say I felt good about the work I did. But today I can still feel the stress and trauma in my body as I am tapping out the words. My body shivers with the memory. But I have survived. I would not do it again if I could relive my life. Or I wouldn’t have stayed so long.
I should have quit sooner. That’s what I know now. It’s okay to quit if something is too hard or not working out. You can always pick it up again later. Or something else better might come along. Hind sight is better than no sight.
It’s working time again, time that I sit in discipline and write. It used to be so much easier when I came to the keyboard regularly. I had a need and something to say. Now I have a want. I always have something to say. But I struggle with the discipline. I struggle with the flow. I have to work at it till it all comes back. I’m relying on Susan Wittig Albert’s writing prompts.
It’s good to have prompts to think about. This 2nd week of September, the prompt is catastrophes. We’re often advised not to dwell on the negatives and the past. Look forward, don’t look back. Sometimes I find that impossible to do. I’m easily triggered and my mind travels backwards and into dark tunnels. The topic had me time traveling back to my earliest catastrophe. It took me back to my 2 year old self when I was still in China.
Being so long ago, it is only a memory of the memory. I was playing in the courtyard chasing the chickens with my uncle who was only a year older than me. We were called in to have a dessert made with arrowroot flour. It was a hot sweet syrup. My uncle and I were fighting over the biggest bowl when I upsetted the bowl over my left arm. Being winter, I had a heavy long sleeved shirt on which was difficult to remove. I ended up with 3rd degree burn halfway down my arm starting from my elbow.
I have no memory at all of the spillage or the pain at the time or after. My burn would not heal with home treatment. So my mother took me to see a doctor in a bigger town. I do have memories of trips to the hospital by a bicycle taxi. I remember going through the gate and under an arch. I remembered that we had the bad luck of getting the same unskilled driver every time. But I have no memory of pain. My mother said I was a good baby. I did not fuss or cry much.
My burn did healed but I ended up with a big scar. I was very fortunate I did not lose any function of my arm. It did cause me some self image issues when I was young. I had often gazed at my arm, wondering what it would be like to have 2 normal looking arms. How would I feel? Would I be happier? How would my life be without a scar? Now in my ripe old age, it matters not a squat. I think we are all scarred having lived.
I’m settling down to do some serious work. The house is quiet and amazingly cool for a hot 31℃ afternoon. I’ve finally opened Susan Wittig Albert’s Starting Points: A year of Writing Prompts for Women with Stories to Tell. Since it is the second week of September, I shall begin with week two’s prompt – to write about our own personal catastrophes, and about survival and recovery.
I had a few minor catastrophes as a young person. One was being called called out by my public school principal. I got a severe tongue lashing because he overheard me telling another student I didn’t need to study. I was terribly hurt and felt devastated because I thought I was his ‘pet’. Everyone else thought he called me out to give me praise. How wrong they were! But I soon over it.
The next one that came to mind was much more serious. I got fired from my first real job. I had it only for a few months and it was just before Christmas. I got an inkling of it when I answered a call from someone enquiring about my job. When the office manager called me into her office a few days later, I already knew what was coming. Everybody else did, too. It was a very small office. I cried all the way home. I was not worried about money yet for I was still living at home. But it was Christmas and I was fired. Jobs were not plentiful back then.
I was not sorry about losing the job. I was sorry that it was that way. I was told I was not suitable. I really cannot understand that. I did everything I was told to do which was not much. I was quite bored actually with not enough to do. Freshly out of business college, I took the first job I applied for. It was for a broiler manufacturing business out in the industrial area of our city. It was a new position – that of a telephone girl. I answer the phone and make coffee and get donuts. There was not many general office calls. Meanwhile the person in accounting was overly busy. I could have done some of her typing if instructed. But no one shuffled any work to me. After awhile, I just sat, smoked and blew smoke rings waiting for phone calls.
In the end, I was happy I got fired. It would have been hard for me to quit since it was my first job. I would have suffered more months of boredom. I was quite young then and recovered quickly. I moved onto a job working for the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs. It was a big office with many employees. I worked as a steno for the post secondary education section. I was quite happy there till I got bored and wanted more responsibility. When I left, it was my own decision.
So here I am, in my new/old .com space. I have more space but what do I have to say? The sky is overcast. The air smell of smoke. We are burning up on our West Coast while they are drowning in Texas. Then there’s the monsoon in India, killing over 1,000 people. But we don’t get much coverage of that. It’s still on the other side of the world. Texas isn’t within our vision range either but it’s in our livingroom every evening. So many terrible things are in our livingroom these evenings. If we don’t watch the news, does not knowing/seeing change anything?
The winds are blowing, bringing more smoke from the forest fires. Our planet and we are between a rock and hard place, I would say. What can we do? What can I do besides hope? Hope is an inert noun. We can hope, want and yearn all we want, but without action it is nothing. It’s just like the song says:
Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ Plannin’ and dreamin’ each night of his charms That won’t get you into his arms So if you’re lookin’ to find love you can share All you gotta do is hold him and kiss him and love him And show him that you care
So then, how do we show that we care about this world of ours? Where can we start? Try reading Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnson. I have the book. Now I need to READ it. Really I do. The need comes up more frequently now. Reminding me to read, to do. At least I recognize it. I see the picture. I see the need. I’m talking about it. And we are bringing some hope for a greener life in the rainwater we catch for the garden, in the growing of our vegetables in the summer and in the solar power we’re catching with the panels. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things. But it is a start. Where are you at? How are you coping?
onethousandandtwo 