Freddy's Fantastic Foray

Happy Birthday to Me

This is (mostly) verbatim what I posted on MySpace.  But, I thought it insightful (and hopefully inspiring) enough to share on WDC:

Yeah, yeah, I know...I haven't blogged in months (or, on WDC, um, over a year ).  But, with my birthday approaching, maybe I'll say a few words. (You can pick yourselves up off the floor now!)

The problem is, as Richard Belzer's character said in the last episode of the first season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, "I'm not good at talking about myself."  That is, without question, my number one personal issue.  So, thanks in advance for "bearing with me".

So, what to say on one's 47th birthday?  I could say I'm not where I thought I'd be at this point in my life, but, that probably fits, oh, 60 to 80 percent of the population over 40 (though that number may be increasing a bit due to recent, um, "events").  I could say I wish I had the kind of insight into "things" I have now when I was much younger, this level of "understanding".  But, that probably fits nearly 100 percent of the population over 40.

Okay, here's something: stress.  I'll be frank and say I've been dealing with more than my fair share this past year.  But just the other evening, I had one of those "over-40" moments of insight, and realized that a lot of my stress is really my own doing.  Yes, "things" are weird, both in my life and in the world.  But The Light of Insight told me, "And, just what the hell can you do about most of it?"

Alot of my stress has come from the situation with my elderly mother and aunt, whom I love very much, yet have lately felt paralyzed to do anything for.  Alot of the problem is that they need so much help now, sometimes "by the hour", yet at the same time I really need to become gainfully employed, yet that means being away from home for eight hours a day, and....  Well, it's the classic "life conundrum" (and stress creator!) you might imagine.  But, taking "action" by getting them some real outside help via a program of the Department of Human Services here will take a big load off my mind (and body!).  Yet the initial appointment/interview with a DHS worker so stoked me that I came home and did a little something to shore up our living room ceiling (another of my stressors).  Wow.  Action.  Amazing what it does for the brain and digestive system!  (And, to be honest, it was probably responsible for The Light of Insight paying me a visit a couple of evenings ago!)

But, there are things I have zero control over.  For example, what if the DHS nurse who's supposed to visit us tells us to "go blow" (a favorite, and hilarious, phrase of my mother's since my sister, susanL , and I were kids)?  Well, The Light of Insight says, "Reapply for the same program, apply for other programs, apply for disability, for Food Stamps, etcetera." 

Plus, The Light of Insight informed me that one must cross bridges when one comes to them.  Do what you can, but then realize when you've done what you can.  And, in those instances, find an "alternative" action, like going for a walk, going to, oh, McDonald's for a bite, visit the public library, etcetera.  Bottom line: via The Light of Insight, it's time (way past time) to get my stress under some real control, as, though I may not be old, I ain't no spring chicken, either.  Or, to put it another way, time to get a handle on my stress, or I'll have real problems to contend with!

Let me close my annual (just kidding ) blog entry with something I've always seen and heard, but never quite "got".  And it makes sense regardless of whether or not you are a religious person (I'm not that particularly "religious" myself, e.g. "devout" or "fundamentalist"):

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference



(most commonly attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr], though I cannot personally vouch for that, and whom I have no real knowledge of)

FREDDIE E