Mapping Reality

[Ergh. I haven't re-read this post, so forgive errors--I have to dash to catch the bus! ]


I. The Map of the Present

Penny Cooper had sat on the closed lid of a chocolate-mixing machine at my friend Tracy's chocolate factory, and the centrifugal force had thrown her off.

If my life is spinning, I thought, I better get in the center.
I haven't been there.

On my birthday trip to Wisconsin, I decided I am going to accept that my life has sped up since I started at the thrift store a couple years ago, and that it doesn't look to be slowing down.
That feels like a realistic mental map.

I've been reading a great book––Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzalez.
It's about people who survive extreme accidents (or don't), like falling off cliffs or out of airplanes. It looks at neurobiology--(it'd like a Hidden Brain episode)--how our brains respond to crises-- and Gonzalez says the science of  survival applies not just to extreme examples but to most human endeavors--economics, personal relationships, etc.
I recognize a lot of the survival skills. Either because I intuitively figured them out (don't bite the hook!) or because I want to do them better (don't bite the hook).

One of the key survival factors, he says, is getting a mental map in your mind that matches the reality of the map of the world.
And then having a bit of perspective--the sort provided by humor and hope.

I was spinning so badly last week, after managing the store on the previous Saturday, I really felt lost--as if I'd taken a wrong turn in the wilderness.

I have a couple/few options.
I could go to Big Boss and propose that I become a store manager. I could take on Volunteer Coordinating and Community Engagement, Health and Safety, Physical Plant maintenance improvements, Marketing, Grant Writing and Fundraising.... all things we do not do (or not in any coordinated way).

I believe he would happily accept this. (Probably.)
I believe I could do this. (Well, you know--coordinate it.)

How much do I want to do this?

That's a zero.

Or I could choose to focus only on the areas at work that I love and for which I was hired: 
being custodian of the bookstore and social media. And also, I could keep my social-media work within the time Big Boss allotted to it: four hours/week.
That is very little, so I would need to cut way back.

Turns out, that's another survival orientation: focus.
And that's what I'm going to do.

II. Mapping the Past

I'm leaving in ten minutes, so I don't have time to write about this as I want to––I'm just going to plunk it here.
Besides reconnecting with Tracy after twenty years, I recently heard from Ann, the woman who was involved with my father for a few years, starting when I was fifteen.  

Starting when I was eighteen, my father and I didn't talk to each other for five years, during which time he and Ann broke up, so I haven't seen her for forty-one years.

It's fascinating to get her insight into the past. It's different than mine--or, anyway, it's from a different angle.
She mailed me a batch of photos, for instance, and I don't remember them at all.

Here I am with her 20/21-year-old nephew Chuck. He and I took two significant and amazing road trips--one to the Gulf of Mexico (I think) in Alabama, the other up into Canada. 

I relate to the photo of me, below--I felt like this at fifteen/sixteen: watchful and sad and unhappy. (Also, fashion-challenged. :)

But this one, below, blew my mind! I don't remember being happy EVER during this time (1977), but here's proof that at least for this moment, wearing Ann's hat on a windy day at the beach, I was:

 
Without redrawing any lines that I know to be accurate (I was verifiably miserable), I am rethinking the mental map I have of who I was at fifteen/sixteen.
As Mr. Spock, who I was deeply into at this age, says, It's fascinating.