Before I knew it was a dreary and hard-rainy day, I awoke feeling off.
Perhaps it was the uncomfortable dreams in the early morning hours. Dreams are unexplainable in a world of logic, but I will summarize the main premise: we'd bought the first house we looked at not realizing the second house sat alongside the water.
A bad dream indeed.
With melancholy as my bed fellow, I needed a reversal plan.
In years past, I’ve found four cures to melancholy.
1. Travel
2. Hard work
3. Exercise/hike/walk/run
4. Service
Travel was still a day a way.
The only hard work was garden work and the garden was still a muddy, snowy, space in March. The other hard work was reading, grading student work, and lesson plan preparation. But I'm off-teaching for the next four weeks.
Third: I remembered my friend's online yoga class, and I could join her this morning. A shift is in the fault line.
The fourth option was service.
I perked up immediately when I remembered my daughter had a 9:00 a.m. conference call with kids who needed to be at school by 9:15 and preschoolers that needed care. I called to see if I could help. The little ones were still sick, and she'd worked it out but didn't know when she could get groceries.
I can do that!
We didn't grocery shop until 8:00 p.m. tonight, but knowing I could be of help changed the trajectory of my mood, my day, my daughter's often-difficult life.
Scat melancholy.
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