I'm making a real effort to be more regularly engaged on here, because I believe in what HIVE represents.
At the same time, boy am I busy these days!
As I wrote a couple posts back, it's as if the world is on fire. I do believe it is building toward something better than what was before, but we are in the thick of making sure that happens instead of things getting dramatically worse.
Somehow I keep finding my way back to a center of well-being, despite needing to stay plugged in with all that is wrong so that I can be of assistance when I can.
I'm in the process of shifting some of that though. For one thing, I'm getting kind of tired of the whole process of buying groceries for single parents and getting them delivered. It sometimes takes me an entire day of back and forth to get a single family helped.
This is probably not a particularly PC thing to say, but honestly, poor people are often hard to help for the same reasons they stay poor: they don't know how things work and are emotionally overwhelmed all the time, so not thinking clearly. My heart goes out to them, so I do what it takes to get it done, carrying the load of thinking for us both. Only once have I given up on someone with it just being too much frustration to get food to them.
At this point I think I'm going to just donate money to Food Not Bombs and then give out the URL for their form for folks to request groceries from them. They can handle the logistics of fulfilling the needs. I can't keep sinking this much time into it.
I share this under this headline though to say that it does give me some gratification to be able to help feed the hungry at all. So much of feeling okay in the midst of so much falling apart is knowing that you are adding something positive to someone's life. So I'm grateful to be in a position where I can do that and having the clarity to know how important it is that I do.
Also I'm dancing for at least an hour every single day and going to a fair number of weekly meditation events. All online, of course. There is still COVID19 lockdown where I live. Eating really well too, though my Keto is getting worse and worse. I can tell my stress is gradually building by my desire for carbs growing.
Do you get queasy in your stomach sometimes?
I can also tell the stress is starting to build for me by queasiness that seems to come out of nowhere sometimes.
To de-stress I can't possibly exercise more than I'm already doing. Also I'm eating lots of fresh veggies and fruits and sleeping lots. Taking Ashwagandha supplements.
What else should I be doing?
Anyway, I'm staying busy during the day with searching online for opportunities to have a positive impact and then following through. And in the evenings I'm either hanging out with my new sweetheart or streaming videos from Netflix. (just signed up for that)
Hopefully I can hold down the stress enough to stay engaged sufficiently to know how to help where I can. I don't want to retreat from the commons just to stay mentally and emotionally well myself, though I realize that at some point I may need to.
How are you balancing your desire to stay sane with your desire to be of use to others?
(All text and images (except the AT logo) are by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for HIVE.)
