Pain, The Touchstone

Of all spiritual growth.

Well, what do you know.

I have been in pain.

A lot.

My right shoulder is tweaked.

And I can’t stand it any more.

It is so bad, I am having a hard time typing this blog.

It is bad enough that I don’t want to write my morning pages.

I have been keeping it mum to myself, but I need to get some work done.

I suspect I am this close to doing it some serious damage.

This has not been helped by the busiest nanny week I have had in months.

I started the week full on with a twelve-hour shift and have worked nine to ten-hour days every day, with two charges every day, and will end the week with another twelve-hour shift.

The good news?

My bank account won’t be short funds.

The bad news?

My body is trashed.

It hurts to ride my bike.

I mean, I can do it, but it’s not going the fuck away and I can’t stands it no more.

Normally I would try to muscle my way through this, but after the week I have had, the emotional roller coaster I have been on, mostly my own fault, and I can see that, I certainly did enough writing and inventory around it, I am just not prepared to go another couple of days waiting for it to get better on its own.

So I am going to get some body work done.

I don’t go get massage very often.

The last time, well, it’s been awhile.

There’s that.

Then there’s the crying on my bicycle to work as I was suiting up to do another full day with the kids and thinking, always the thinking that leads to the tears, now isn’t it? I was thinking about what a friend said to me about what I am making as a nanny and what I could be making and what people are charging on Task Rabbit, etc.

I just got off craigslist and saw an ad for a nanny share full-time $24 an hour, with full benefits.

I wanted to start crying again.

I am not going to apply to the position, though I thought about it for a minute.

The location is SOMA.

The hours?

8a.m.-6p.m.

Monday through Friday.

The money would be great and I more than matched every qualification they were looking for and then some.

But I don’t want to bicycle commute from Ocean beach to the SOMA.

Not to get to work at 8a.m.

Oof.

That’s all I would do.

I know it.

Back and forth to work.

Exhausted, do my daily writing, do my daily get my head straight, and live for the weekend and be too tired to do much else.

But the money.

Fuck.

To not be juggling the three families right now, to just have secured full-time work, benefits.

I am grateful to be working, I remember how tight it was in Paris, how I was just getting by on the barest of the bare, but it really hit home today, in a painful way, how much I am working and how little I am getting.

I don’t get over time if I work longer.

And despite not always having one child for the full length of the day, when I start early for one family and stay late for the other, I am working a day with overtime in it.

I am also juggling three different baby nap times.

None of which currently sync up.

I had no real break away from the babies today; or for any day this week, as it turns out.

I did sit quietly, letting the toddlers play kitchen and chase and destroy, sipping some tea in the sunshine.

What could be nicer?

Not having my back feel like this.

Fuck.

This is hard.

I am sure it is something small, but it is throwing everything off.

Bad.

It all just smacked me as I rode my bicycle up Lincoln avenue this morning.

And shall I forget about HALT?

Hungry.

Mmm, yeah a little, pickings in my pantry not so full, not empty, but I am tired of three bean soup, let me tell you, even though it is quite tasty.

Angry?

Not too bad, but it is there, a sort of low simmering boil.

Who am I angry at?

Why, me, of course!

Shouldn’t I have figured this out yet?

Maybe it’s time to get a government job, I did go on the SF City and County website and look over the employment opportunities, but nothing really caught my eye.

Go get a temp job.

Go get any job.

Lonely?

Yup.

Thank God I got out last night and saw friends and went to see Mike Doughty, that saved my ass, such goodness.

Tired?

Uh, yeah, see above, out past my bedtime on a school night.

This equals me knowing that my rationale is not rational.

I don’t have clear perspective.

I have a sore shoulder and I am tired.

I am not eating the way I care too, although that will go back to normal tomorrow.

I don’t care for the discomfort of just getting by.

Living hand to mouth is an old habit.

An old idea.

One that I seem to get stuck in again and again and again.

There is lots to work on here.

“Aren’t you glad that you were given all this to work on,” she said to me in a cheery voice, “keeps you coming back and working the solution.”

Argh.

Lady.

Except, I know she’s right and I know enough as well that I would rather be happy then right.

This leaves me with getting, let me write that again, getting to work on these things and be, yuck, but yes, you heard it here first, grateful, that I have come to a point of such pain in my life that I am willing to do some more work and find the solution.

Which I know is not necessarily a new job or a new set of families, it is a new way of looking at what I have and what I can give and who I can help.

I also am more than well aware that unless I help and take care of myself, I can’t help anyone else out.

Massage this weekend.

Some writing and soul-searching about what would work better for employment and how to best take care of my finances.

Asking for help.

I don’t know how to live this life, I just know that I want to.

In a wonderful, desperate, mad way, I want to live this life.

There is so much yet for me to do.

I just got to get this shoulder taken care of so I can go do it.

Tags: body work, friends, HALT, massage, Nanny, postaday, San Francisco, soul searching, spiritual solution, work