Awakening the Child-A-Beast
November 13, 1998
5:45 a.m.
Brigid is having problems waking up these days. She's cranky, and she stays in bed as if she figures that maybe we'll go away if she closes her eyes a little harder. Then she pokes around in the bathroom and the shower and at the breakfast table. Of course, she's then astonished when we get upset with her. I should clarify things. These days Lisa's the one that does pretty much all the morning work around here, so she's the one that deals with it the most, and she's the one that gets frustrated first. I tell myself that this is just the normal routine of a girl growing up into the pre-teen ages, and that this too shall pass. I tell myself that I should look at the rest of her life, and what a great person she's becoming. And she is, you know? She's bright. She's funny. She's worked hard to catch up on a huge backlog of schoolwork, and she's gotten to the point where her piano teacher is pleased with her effort. She tells a great story--and seems to really enjoy herself most of the time. Still, though, there's this new tension that's grown in her that I'm just not used to, yet.   I'm not following my plan very well at all, and it's starting to bother me. The primary reason would appear to be the time I'm putting into redesigning the site--which I had not included in the plan. On the surface, I can accept that. But it's not completely true. I mean, it's a real reason--porting pieces of the current place over into the new environment takes time and concentration, two things I have been in short supply of recently. My cold still hangs in there, you should know. But there's more here than simple arithmetic applied to the hours of the day. I should be able to do more than these two things at once. I've proven that I can in the past, you know? And I expect it out of myself. But I'm so danged tired. I've had a lot of "thinking" type work to do at my job, which always takes a lot out of me in relation to having a lot of "meeting" type work. Perhaps my body is changing as I get older. Yes, I'm getting the redesign finished, but emotionally I can't help but be bothered as a milestone slips further back. The alarm went of this morning. A song playing on the alternative rock station that we listen to. I don't know who that artist was because my brain was in such a sleep-fog. I hadn't taken antihistamines before going to sleep, and that had been a mistake. I had been awake all night, and now some song was blaring in my ear. So I hit the snooze button. Quiet. I realized at that moment, that all I really wanted to do was to call time out. I wanted to pull the covers up and slip back to sleep. I wanted to wake up and blow off the day. I wanted to ignore the site, ignore my writing, ignore work. And it struck me that maybe I know more about how my daughter is thinking than my conscious being is willing to admit. I woke up and took care of feeding the cat. I put coffee on, and stumbled downstairs to work on the site. Instead, I started writing what you see now. It seemed important to put this down on phosphor. And I feel better now that I see it. I've printed out a couple manuscripts to critique. I owe a couple folks, you know. And it's nearing 6:00 a.m. Brigid's wake-up hour. I've threatened her with my presence as she goes through her morning routine--you know, get upstairs and rattle her cage a little at each step of the way. So I am going to go upstairs in s moment. And I'm going to make sure she gets up and gets going. But instead of rattling her cage, I think I'll try a different approach. Think how wonderful it would be to have someone at your bedside who would tell you how great you were the first thing you got out of bed, and who cheered your accomplishments. Think how that might start your day off. And think what you might accomplish.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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