It’s January 10 and I never had the chance to publish my New Year’s post. In an earlier post I had written that I like “flipping the calendar and starting fresh” but it is a 50/50 gamble. This year it was a New Year’s drowning. The first and second of January were rained out and me with it. I wrote…

Rain, my nemesis…it’s pounding noise. It’s loud drip. I can’t concentrate. It makes all the incongruent parts of my body swell with discomfort…like the wrong puzzle piece… they don’t fit. Dizzy. Achy. Swollen. Worst part, I can’t sleep through it. …If I accept this is temporary then I hold on to HOPE. A very important word, thought, idea, way of life….

I lost days and then we were traveling with my whole family, celebrating my father’s 70th birthday. It is a month early but we surprised him with his grandchildren from California in Washington D.C. Yes, chilly time to head north but fabulous none-the-less!

I’m not sure how (I need to learn to tap into the secret area of my brain) but I rally. The car ride, hotel bed, eating out too much, walking so, so much walking, off hours for bed —but I did it —I not only survived but I enjoyed every second of it! Sure there is pain and I felt it building but I ignored it the best I could. The side effect is most think you really aren’t sick but once I’m home that secret part of my brain switches off and the pain floods back in, not to mention the ridiculous cold weather even at home. …Although today we are melting.

So I took yesterday to sit on the couch —heck, I could barely stand up but today I need to try moving around and the laundry is piling up. It’s always worth pushing and see how it goes.

Now that I am home and vacation brain dissipates, thoughts of the New Year goals and resolutions flood in. The “I wants…”

So getting back to normal and see where my thoughts take me, make a list and keep rewriting it. That’s life. 

For now I need to just be and choosing to be OK with that —it makes for a better day. I no longer want to go to Rare Disease Week. Not this year. Maybe not ever. I started feeling this way in December. The feeling was getting very strong that it wasn’t a good idea. I decided to wait and see if I would receive a travel stipend. I did not. So that makes it easy. I can’t be somewhere at 7:30  am, I can’t be out all day and night. It doesn’t sound interesting…. It sounds like Big Pharma.

Sometimes you lose sight of your original goal…. that’s alternative therapies. So I need to regroup….and see where it leads me! I have ideas…

Featured Image from the Ragnar Kjartansson exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Gallery