(written on the 20th from notes taken last night)
Up early… again… And again without getting a decent night’s sleep (at least, duration wise). 🙃
Not sure what the deal is, but I’m going to focus on trying to be grateful in all things.
So… shout out to my sister Heather who lives a life of perpetual exhaustion because of a lack of good sleep.
I can be grateful that I get opportunities, in teeny tiny ways to experience little glimpses of what it’s like to be perpetually sleep deprived.
Let’s see, did my Elevate brain exercising app, chatted with the Biggest Cheese.
I’m so out of practice and so quick to get distracted. 🙃
It’s a process.
A lot of the knowledge and the memories of spiritual experiences that I lost/forgot that I had gained/experienced during my Golden Years and in my seasons of spiritual connection following those years is coming back piece by piece, but the habits… Oh boy, those don’t just come back. The desire can come back, but the neural pathways are carved out in different directions. Those have to be filled in, and the old neural pathways need to be uncovered and cleared out, and the water needs to start flowing through them again to start digging the channels deeper.
Work.
Much work required.
So I’m still barely finding my fitting in that part of the journey, but it’s been a great journey so far, and I’m grateful. 😊
The physical symptoms I have are making that task all the more challenging. It’s hard to focus and to point my gaze outward when fear of the future and a desire for relief in the present dominate.
But I’m working on it!
I listened to an uplifting song. I spent some time studying LDS church history stuff.
Other than the rebuilding of the habits, I feel so close to being back to my golden years.
Admittedly, I’m still afraid to have God talk to me again the way he used to. You’d think I’d be excited because those have been some of the most meaningful, impactful, and uplifting experiences of my life, but… I’m nervous. 🙃
I also still have so much direction from him from years past on what I need to do in order to become the kind of person I most want to become and to be able to do what I most want to do that I’m not hurting for anything. I have more than enough to keep me busy for a long time to come.
So… I might not hear from him in that way for a while anyway. 🙃
I both want to, and I’m nervous. I don’t want to get anything wrong.
But… come what may…
I brought my dishes into the house and finally got some dishes washed, and I filled my water bottles, and I spent probably maybe 45 minutes or an hour just chatting with Craig? Not sure how long.
Really good man. Great to have as part of the family.
From there, I headed to the Walmart in Vancouver to grab some food basics before heading off to the Olympic Peninsula–bananas, yogurt, cheese, etc. I keep trying to buy soy milk, but they only seem to ever have the expensive kind, and I don’t want to spend that much on something to pour over my cereal. 🙃
And since I always seem to be talking to my friend Cory when I’m in Walmart lately, it just felt right to give him a call. 😆 So I chatted with him a little bit. 😊
Then it was on to the Planet Fitness, where I thought that maybe I would do some exercise, but I was so tired but I ended up taking a nap we’re probably a couple of hours before getting up and finally going inside, which didn’t happen until the darn place was packed.
I miss my Rogers Planet Fitness 🙃. Amazingly, it’s been the best Planet Fitness I’ve ever been to. How grateful and lucky I feel to have it as my home Planet Fitness, though Arkansas might well not be my home for much longer. 🙃
I’m sure I can learn to like the other ones.
Got in touch with Heather’s dentist whom she raves about. I’ll make an appointment with them once I have a better idea of my timetable for arriving in South Dakota.
Also got in touch with my uncle’s spine surgeon, but they require a referral, so I’m hoping to get a referral from my Arkansas surgeon to my Utah surgeon, since I’ll be in Utah anyway, I’m hoping they won’t have any problem with that. I wouldn’t imagine so, but we’ll see. 🤞
If that works out, then I’ll likely be back in Utah at least long enough to see that surgeon.
Anyway, spent just a little while inside Planet Fitness, just using a particular stretching apparatus that hasn’t caused me issues in the past, and that I felt like has maybe helped align my spine.
I started to do more exercises, but the machines feel so much different than they feel at my Rogers place. My Rogers place, they feel nice and smooth, but here, they just felt like jerky motions.
Chatted with my mom for a little bit, with tornado weather going through the area again and again. The first storm of concern went north, and I guess there are two more storms left to go before the cell has moved past the area.
🤞
From there, I finally headed West toward the coast again, to finish up the last of my Highway 101 trip. I didn’t really have that far to drive today in comparison to some of the other days that I’ve driven, as I planned to relax a little bit on the Olympic peninsula once I got to the national Forest area and could stay pretty much wherever I wanted off of the national Forest road.
I also wanted to spend some time by the ocean to enjoy the coast before bidding it farewell for who knows how long.
Despite the short drive, my spine is really really unhappy, so it was a rough drive. It’s been pretty nutty lately how rough it’s been. Hoping for some relief soon, but I’m grateful to be able to have the opportunity to go through it patiently, and perhaps even gratefully.
🤞
As crappily as I’ve been feeling physically, it’s been really hard to try to stay upbeat emotionally and spiritually, and I found myself just wanting to veg out in front of something, to not think, to be entertained.
Nothing wrong with down time, but I haven’t yet come up with downtime that isn’t a trigger for me to slide back into one addiction or another. All of the alternative things that I come up with all require at least some brain effort.
So I’ve got to find something.
I ended up spending maybe 5 or 10 minutes watching Facebook reels of extreme sports, cliff jumping, insane Red Bull mountain biking stuff where they’re jumping over crazy chasms and doing crazy things… stuff like that.
Fortunately, I pulled myself away from that relatively quickly, and then I jumped over to some church history stuff that I could just watch as movies. I’m hoping that kind of stuff will be good enough as a vegetative activity to allow me to escape for a little while from the physical ailments while still being uplifting.
🤞
I’m going to find a way to be cheerful, upbeat, and grateful for all of this and through all of this.
Found a nice Forest Road off the main drag going up into the rainforesty hills, nearly slid myself into a ditch not paying attention to the road, gratefully didn’t. My rear passenger wheel started sliding off the road, and the whole back end started sliding into the ditch, but somehow I managed to keep the van on the road and going forward with enough momentum to slide me back up and onto the road.
😅
That was a close one!
I have no idea how often this road is used, so I have no idea how long it would be before I saw someone who can help me out. Fortunately, I have bear spray, so I could have walked down and pretty safely gotten some help, but I’m grateful that I didn’t have to.
🙏
Chatted with my brother Richard for probably an hour, and then I crawled my little butt into bed.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful but my mom is okay in the storms.
- I’m grateful to be able to have another opportunity to enjoy the ocean before I head back inland again. I’ve enjoyed the ocean more and more as I’ve been along it for a good while. I love this beautiful world, and I’m very grateful that I have the privilege and flexibility and opportunity to enjoy it the way I’m enjoying it.
- I’m grateful to be able to enjoy conversation with friends and family who are far away from where I am.
- I’m grateful finding a place to sleep tonight was relatively easy.
- I’m quite happily surprised to find that way out in what feels like the middle of nowhere, in the foothills of the Olympic mountains on the west side of the Olympic mountains, I have 5G connection and don’t even need to turn my internet on. 🥳
- I’m grateful for my sister and brother-in-law for buying me that oat milk. It’s nice to see it sitting there knowing that it’s not going to go bad! I used it on a bowl of cereal today. Thank you!!! 🥰
Success:
- I think I did just about perfectly not using my phone while driving today? I think? If I did screw up, I don’t remember, so that’s a major positive!
Improvement:
- Dare I say that I’ve got a couple of days in a row without an obvious area of the improvement that’s just glaring? I’m sure there are some if I could think of them, but it’s nice to not have something that’s so blatantly obvious that it’s just jumping off the screen at me, so to speak. 🙃 I think being grateful for the physical struggles that I’m dealing with is definitely an area of improvement that I can work on. I want to be able to be happy and joyful and grateful through the struggle.
My love to all of you! 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 