I am definitely in the thick of it, so ready for these 100 degree days to be behind us, even though I know that isn’t for another several months and still recovering from our 31 days above 110, not a record I’d typically want to smash (previous was 18, in 1974). It’s the middles, as Jen Shoop, from Magpie recently wrote, a blogger I love to follow, mostly in part to her residing in the Washington, DC area and myself being super jealous of that fact. I don’t fit her typical audience, despite going to an all girls school, I’m not a prep school girl, I don’t wear a string of pearls, I don’t have kids, nor do I like paisley. But other than where she lives, I truly love her writing style. She has an ease with words that reminds me of my sister, something I have been working on my whole life. She wrote recently of “the middles”..
The unresolved, happening-right-now stuff of life. How to be present and receptive to it, how to abandon the need to organize the phenomena of living into categories and lessons and (for me) first and last lines. On a philosophical level, it is about being present and bearing witness. It is about channeling flow. It is about openness to joy but also acceptance of frustration, hardship, tedium, and other unpleasantnesses. Because truly, even as a writer focused on imposing a provisional structure on the raw experience of life, most of life is the middle.
It’s that mid-August, school is back in session, weather is still miserable, longing for that first crisp morning, wondering why in the world you’d ever live in the earth’s equivalent of hell (during the summer at least), middles.
Those changes are happening at work, but no one actually knows what is going on, what’s next, where to focus efforts, monotony of work, middles.
The seemingly never-ending wedding prep, despite not doing an actual wedding, middles.
There is a lot going on, nothing really, truly exciting, nothing necessarily bad, just, there, happening, doing. Constant movement from A to B, hours and hours spent working on something with no big reveal, no big presentation, nothing really to show for it. Knowing, though, it’s not for nothing. It’s not wasteful. It’s just that being in the middles, channeling flow, knowing and working through frustration after frustration.
“most of life is the middle”
Like today, it’s Sunday afternoon just before dinner and I spent a solid 4-5 hours working already, knowing it’s going to be a pretty busy week (to be fair, much of that time was spent working while also watching Premier League and La Liga futbol.. also, that La Liga ref in the Barca/Getafe game.. woof he needs to lose his job). I spent another hour+ (not to mention the too many hours weeks ago) to finish our dang wedding “invitations”. We are doing the smallest, elopement-esque wedding possible, and it is still so beyond stressful. I can’t even image doing this for a “real” wedding, with several hundred people. I just want to have a nice dinner with a very small group of those closest to us, in Hawaii, at sunset, wearing a pretty dress and shoes.
So yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I’ve been stuck in those middles. A lot of frustrating moments, but really just a lot of head down work.
Unfortunately I had to drop from my MBA program, 2 days before orientation, after ASU royally screwed me over with fully explaining my financial obligation as an employee, despite my asking for this several times over the last year.
Meh.
We will be in Nebraska in a few short weeks for Nationals, a state I have adored since high school. I’m still working on my real estate license. The weather is going to be getting better here soon. And then we go to Hawaii. The middles will still be here through all that, but there are some destinations to look forward to. The endings, the reasons behind all the middles.
And! We welcomed Alfonso, Fredo, “Alfie” to the family just before the fourth of July. He is an almost 6 month old German Shepherd/Beagle mix and just an absolute maniac in all the best ways. But more importantly, Sammie is doing amazing with him.
That’s my middles.. the monotonous day to day. I can’t promise I’ll be here more often, that wouldn’t be fair, but I will share and write when I can, because I can promise that part I really do enjoy.
xx.