cool your jets

In case anyone was wondering, posts with phrases like "most depressing ever" in the title get all-time low reads. Noted.

I am not on top of the world lately, as you might have noticed. I am having a few attitude problems; last night I fumed and muttered curses under my breath all the way to BodyCombat. I was late, despite my intentions of leaving half an hour early so I would have a few minutes to catch my breath and read and decompress. But there are not enough hours in the day. And then when I finally got into the parking lot with a minute to spare, I spent that minute plus one waiting in a long line of cars because someone at the front was waiting for one of the coveted close-to-the-building parking spaces to open up, and the vehicle leaving wasn't leaving as quickly as we all would have liked him to.

It never ceases to amaze/frustrate me when people cause this kind of mass disturbance only to snag a parking spot that will secure them a short walk from their car to the gym. Seriously?!

Anyway, as I pulled into a space (very far from the door) I realized: The only person who is feeling the heat of my generalized anger right now is me.

Which just made me more angry: if I could only get my shit together, none of this would have to be such a big deal and I could just be happy. But there are a few uncalibrated elements to my life right now.

A day or two after my last post, which I took as a "rock bottom" alert and the kick in the pants I needed to get back on the upswing, my horoscope hit the nail on the head:

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). In some way, you are recovering your balance. Don't expect that this will happen just once. The dance of life requires you to be in a constant state of recovery.

You may recall my past post about homeostasis, with the sine curve diagram. I've just looked it up and I'm actually surprised to note that I wrote it almost exactly a year ago. Is this annual downswing a coincidence? Might there be some larger correlation between early- to mid-February and rock bottom alerts?

(I might also note that there is something circular in the fact that the aforementioned post mentions the recent engagement of a good friend, whom I have just recontacted to collaborate on a new post feature, coming Sunday. Stay tuned...!)

Last February what I was aching for was social connections. Girl time. Close friends and love to celebrate outside of my family. This year, as you might have noticed, I am starving for me-time. I pine, with a certain sense of le-grass-is-always-greener, for a lull in stimuli. I may be in the wrong career (public relations is famously fast-paced and high-stress), or in the wrong family (I come from a long line of crisis-finders), or just in the wrong body, for that matter; but a girl can dream, right?

My family spent a few days in Disney last week, so it fell to me to hang out with the cat. Now, many of you may assume this is not my dream come true, given the amount of time I spend tearing my hair out over the cats I live with in the Little Italy house; but somehow I adore my parents' cat, claws and all. She likes to play tag, and she's so soft, and she has a tiny, sweet meow, and she did curl up with me to watch a movie on a few occasions. I had the whole house to myself, and the whole weekend to myself, and I skipped four days of working out (unheard of!) and I went out to eat almost every day, and I didn't have to run into anybody if I didn't want to...

And yes, of course I am in the wrong body to completely slow down; of course I filled every moment with something to the point that Sunday night I nearly panicked when the sun went down; of course my to-do list is not and will never be a finite entity. But I realized this weekend that I need a vacation.

I need a day off, a day out of town, where I don't have to be anywhere and I don't have to do anything and I don't have to meet anyone.

If you're not one for these lofty lifestyle statements and deep psychoanalysis, I've got a great metaphor for you. (Ha ha, -phor for! ...Ahem.)

This week I also noticed J. throwing his car into neutral to cruise down a long hill, and probably overreacted on a grand scale. "It saves gas," he explained. "Well, not a ton... but still."

So I got the scoop, and as he talked me through it this whole new world opened up through my expanding consciousness. "Do you even understand what this means?!" (I might have been yelling a little...) "I would use this EVERY. DAY. on 48 on the way home from work! That lonnnnnggg hill..."

So the next day, I tried it. I glanced around like a crook, like I was sneaking snacks right as my mom called everyone for dinner.

I was not disappointed. Let me tell you: it was so oddly exhilarating. Just cruising in neutral.

I could still steer just fine; I could brake; I just couldn't accelerate. Any momentum I gained came solely from the results of some physics equation I never learned how to solve: the effect of gravity on the body of my little car, hurtling down the hill at 40...45...50 miles per hour. (The speed limit was 50, so cool your jets.) And I'd be willing to bet that I wouldn't suffer much from at least a temporary suspension of my ability to artificially accelerate. (Try coasting in neutral sometime, it's fun! Just don't forget to snap it back into drive before you put your foot back on the gas...)

I feel like I can say "cool your jets" to you guys because the universe has said it to me so many times this week. This is something that gives me hope, that gives me license to take a deep breath every once in awhile. First there was the horoscope. There were the two unusual invitations to go out and grab food with people I don't often go out and grab food with -- but great company, both of them. And then, another day or so later, when I was drinking tea like a fiend, looking for peace-- I got the same message twice on the tag of the Yogi tea bags. A gentle slap across one cheek and then the other. A mantra, not to follow dictatorially but to strive for. One of my now-and-then cosmic reminders to cool my jets.