My Year of Doing Nothing: Getting Stuck

My brother owns an artisan sawmill Whitman Boys Manufacturing and I've been helping out now and then by hand finishing molding. Molding are the boards that run along the bottom of the wall. You've probably heard of crown molding, which are boards that run along the top of a wall, or over a doorway or window. So anyway, I've been staining and buffing or sanding molding one piece at a time and it's been an insightful process.

First off, I have to say the idea of me working in a lumber mill is ludicrous. I'm 5'3" in my ballet flats. I have very small hands and only a little bit of upper body strength that comes from operating two skeinwinders at once when re-skeining yarn. I hate machines, machinery and loud noises, although I am fascinated by them, much like our old long-haired siamese cat who would sit at a respectful distance watching rats come and go from under the chicken coop, too afraid to approach, but too engrossed to walk away. And the guys listen to a country music station. Country music depresses me what with it's constant emphasis of badly behaving men singing songs of repentance to the women of their dreams and all the ess ee double x they then have, of which I have only the badly behaving man part.

But I like being helpful, so I put on my White's boots, a pair of Carhart canvas jeans, a wool t-shirt, a Hanes T-shirt, a wool sweater, and a sweatshirt and picked up a pair of pink housecleaning gloves, filled my Dharma coffee beans cup (There are no Dharma Beans, Nor Coffee Maker bright. Since all is void, where does taste alight?) with tea and set out.

I tied my hair in a kerchief, fitted a dust mask, inserted neon orange marshmallow-type ear plugs, pulled on my housecleaning gloves (I assumed correctly they wouldn't have any extra extra small nitrile gloves) and attended to the wood.

And then scenes and conversations from Sweetheart's bad behavior set in and started to torment me. Scene after scene, speeches I wish I would have battered him with, witty reparte to his blaming and criticizing, him coming to his senses and saying, "You're right, I'm a jerk and I'm going to fix this situation right away because you know everything and I'm an idiot." Over and over and over, hour after hour, day after day. It was driving me crazy.

I tried the Zen master trick of being present to what was happening in the moment. I noticed the whine of the saws which sounded like a woman singing in an almost discernible singsong language. The freshly saw lumber didn't smell like the turpentine smell that hangs over my end of the town on cloudy nights, it smelled like freshly sliced lemons and wildflowers. Sometimes it smelled like slightly burnt popcorn. Unfortunately, I am not a Zen master, so I soon was back to ruminating and feeling crappy about myself for always choosing the Wrong Guy. And because my mind began to get tired of slapping me around with Sweetheart, it decided to go back to the dawn of time and beat me up for every bad guy I'd ever dated and all the stupid mistakes I've ever made. Needless to say, I haven't been feeling very good and have been waking up early in the morning after some kind of anxiety dream and having stomachaches so painful I can't eat anything but Smarties and tea.

Huh.

My best defense against anxiety is running. I like to run and run and run outdoors, preferably on trails and never in circles. I haven't been running because I've been working too much and feeling too guilty to take off a couple of hours during the day when the kids are in school, but yesterday I went running along a beautiful river. A man was cutting firewood, the air was so pure it was almost painful to breathe, it smelled like caramel apples and wet leaves and every color of brown-red imaginable was visible in the forest shrubs.

My mother taught me to think about a creative project when I'm feeling anxious or depressed, so after running I went to the big box store in Less Rural and browsed paint chips. There were lots of beautiful colors. I remember paint chips as being awful shades of peach and light blue, so I was pleasantly surprised.

I also feel better when I'm on top of the checkbook, so I made myself pay the bills and look at the bank statement in detail. Then I made myself not beat up on myself. I had to go back to the paint chips and breathe slowly for awhile.

I also decided I would tell a couple of close friends about the Bad Thing Sweetheart had done and what I had done in return. I was taught not to gossip, to take my losses and shut up about it, to not burden someone else with it so I had to go against all that childhood programming and feeling nervous and awkward and guilty. Sharing that secret was the right thing to do. Keeping someone else's dirty laundry is a heavy burden.

The Buddhists say there are 3 unhealthy states of mind: Greed, Hate and Delusion. I think I need to probe the delusion idea more. What do you think?