Life is actually like that, most of the time, isn’t it? “Without warning”, I mean.
I woke during the night to the sound of a partner’s voice in the dark…something about thunder and lightning and unplugging things. It made sense to me, wrapped in the surreal world of sleep and dreams, and although I wasn’t sure in-the-moment quite where/when I was… all seemed well with the world. I remembered my father unplugging things during thunderstorms. I did feel a vague moment of envy as sleep sucked me back into the land of dreams… thunderstorms are not common here, and I rather like their wild fury and drama. The nearby rumbling of thunder, real thunder, was the last thing on my mind as I returned to sleep.
morning sky
I woke to sodden gray skies, heavy folds of clouds as the dawn broke seeming to promise more rain soon. My coffee sucks this morning. The beans are from a bag that didn’t get dated, and did get… old. Beans from July seem ‘vintage’ by September, and really not very good. lol. The resulting coffee (I assure you it does not qualify as ‘espresso’) is strong, a bit bitter, and although considerably better than fondly remembered cups of military coffee in another time and place… it still sucks. lol. It’s not a big deal, I’m pretty adaptable as beings go.
I contemplate, for the moment, that handy quality about myself, adaptability. I didn’t always recognize it in myself. I didn’t always understand what a tremendous strength it is. I struggle with being spontaneous – I’m more of a planner – but when things break down, go awry, drift off plan, or simply turn out differently, I generally do pretty well in spite of my desire to plan – because I adapt easily. The down side of adaptability is that I sometimes forget to mention to others that something is broken or not working as it ought to… because I am simply working around that! An example of what I mean would be a laptop I had for work years ago; the keyboard was not sufficiently robust for me, and keys would pop off regularly and the IT guys would glue them back on, or whatever it took to fix them. It was a regular thing. Eventually, the ‘o’ key popped off in a more permanent way… it was some time before I did anything much about it, because I had quickly learned to type using language with fewer ‘o’s (yes, yes I did. lol) as well as slightly changing my keyboarding style so that an ‘o’ resulted in a very specific key strike that hit a very specific spot on the missing key’s location. It slowed down my typing a bit, but was more nuisance than impediment.
This post is pretty irrelevant. Frankly, this morning I am simply enjoying some quiet. Watching day break through the window with this unsatisfying cup of coffee, and ‘getting my head right’ for the work week. Usually after a long weekend, I’m a wreck, frantically wanting to get back to work and stressing weird details that don’t actually matter – like ‘that one thing I said the other day’ to someone relevant to something, that by the start of a new week has developed into a tiny demon all its own, named ‘you’ll probably get fired for that one!’ It’s an illusion, I know, since it generally turns out to be something no one else remembered at all. This morning is different. I am content after a weekend well-spent. We wrapped it up yesterday quite pleasantly, watching movies together, laughing, and enjoying the easy familiarity of chilling with family at home.
A pleasant long weekend – without warning. It doesn’t really ‘look quite right’ to see ‘without warning’ at the end of a comment about something nice, does it? Still, pleasant days are just as likely to come up unheralded, without a calendar entry, no RSVP necessary – aren’t they? Far more likely, as I consider my own experience, to have some bit of warning ahead of something really bad – like ‘duck!’ or ‘take cover!’ or ‘we’ll talk about this later’. Awesome stuff, and nice days, usually just happen in my experience. That got me thinking about how often I may get in my own way of having a great day – by giving myself an unnecessary warning about imminent danger – that isn’t really there. Small stuff like those quiet internal reminders about someone who is grumpy in the morning… does it cause me to see them as being grumpy in the morning when they aren’t being grumpy, too, because I have warned myself? Something to contemplate on the walk to work – expectations, early warning systems, and setting myself up for failure by preparing for the worst, and failing to be open to the best.
It’s a lovely Tuesday morning after a stormy Monday night. Heavy gray clouds that threaten rain, also promise a cooler day, don’t they? 😀 Today I will go forth into the world without expectations, and without warning. ;-D
