Late for a flight

 September 26, 2020

 

Last night, all night, I had a recurring dream. Each time I woke and slept it was the same dream. Different spaces, different people around, different things that were holding me back, but the same dream. I was trying to get ready to leave for the airport but either I hadn’t packed, or I had to run out to get some urgent stuff and couldn’t find my way back home, or I couldn’t find the shower or I couldn’t find a carry-on for my lap-top etc. I woke very tired though I had seven hours of sleep.

 

Each scenario (lap-top/carry-on, packing, showering, not finding way home) needs its own analysis, and I did some free association with each, but the thing I was trying to do through the night was get to the airport. We had some trips planned this year so far which had to be cancelled. A trip in July, for the German Gasshuku with a week after of travel, but more importantly a trip in April, to India for sorting out urgent stuff. 

 

But on a symbolic level getting on a flight is definitely about change and a new ‘destination’, and not being able to leave in time is fraught with anxiety, maybe fear of change or losing control of time among other things.

 

Not surprising I had the dreams since I feel all of these. The free-floating anxiety from a few days, or yesterday, is more persistent, particularly in the morning when I just wake and the self is most vulnerable, but also last thing at night when I resist falling asleep by watching news or reading—as if sleep will automatically transport me elsewhere, or perhaps I will wake up and find myself in a Rip Van Winkle moment. I don’t fear change on a personal level, except I don’t want my hair to fall out or my muscles to atrophy, but I fear the changing world—both the changes towards fragmentation and the feeling that all the change the world desires is to not change. But what I am feeling most is losing control of time—as if it ever had been in my control.

 

Yesterday I had a zoom with a writing group I belong to. When we were setting goals my goal was to make writing my goal, as in the previous months it had been buried under ‘priorities’. Where have these months gone? Where do the hours in a day go. I knew I wouldn’t survive October without a schedule, ya that horrid thing I hate. Since many who bullet journal use colour (and stickers) to help them find a productive structure, I pulled out my markers and began filling the days of the next weeks, using a different colour for each activity. The number of colours in a day shocked me. No wonder I was feeling so fragmented, what with all that shifting the mind required between the things of different colour. 

 

I prefer a deep dive into one thing, definitely don’t want more than two colours a day. Hmm… need to find a new way to organise that schedule or let some things go in October. 

 

Meanwhile the things on my mind remain the same, the Agri Bills are still high on my list. So many more stories to research and understand there—Pepsico India and potato farmers for one. How this fits with the other stories of the new India of Mr. Modi. I still want to explore the light and shadow(not dark) paths chosen by me and my friend and how they are affecting the relationship. I am most curious about why this time I took a stand about it stronger than the times before. How to add back some of the tasks that fell off my roster in September. How to train enough—when nothing is enough. How to find hours to read more, and more, and more? Most importantly to make sure I do catch that flight. 

 

Is writing this blog just procrastination or a beginning of something. I seem to run to it to relieve anxiety but also believe that it is the seed of more.