The Couch

(Fig. One)

I can't say when it happened exactly-I think it may have been on or around when I started writing and drawing every day, but certain solid standards I used to hold near and dear to my heart? Completely disappeared.

Fwoosh!

I used to be sort of a show-off. ("Sort of?" you sneer. "Have you checked the edge of your blog lately Ann?") If I couldn't be perfect at everything, I was most certainly, going to be better than you. Not at everything, mind you. I'm never going to win a 5k race-unless it's eating 5k's of black licorice-then maybe-but I was always going to be extremely vocal on my condo board. I'd never go as far as having a career that required pantyhose (Good Lawd Have Mercy Perish The Thought) but, if paperwork ever needed to come in on time, mine would get there before yours. My dog has never had her teeth professionally cleaned but if you find a dog that goes on longer walks than we do in all of glorious Oak Park, please alert my neighbors so they can stop shaking their heads as we walk by.

When I was teaching Creative Thinking, we'd always have a class about Life Pie.(Lifted from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron) What you do is, you draw a circle and divide it into sections
(like slices of pie). Then you label each section with different categories like spirituality, play, work, friends, exercise, and romance/adventure. You connect the dots to try and see what's lacking in hopes of achieving some sorta balance. Conceptually, I've always thought that'd be a really cool thing. Life-balance. But like the three year old who's trying to remove seven giant cookies from the cookie jar at the same time, I didn't realize that certain things would have to be released in order for me to wake up and smell the Oreos, so to speak.

So now, things get done when I can get them done in a majorly untimely manner.

In the olden days, I may have already voted. This past Friday, I spent a few hours riding bikes with MK because my head needed to look at nine deer looking at me. Olden days, my house would be way cleaner-well okay, more orderly anyway. Today it seemed more important to watch twenty adults with intellectual disabilities have a cheering session for the Chicago Bears in the parking lot of a United Way kick-off event. Olden days, I'd struggle to wake up on time in the morning. Now, in order to allow myself to be fully functional on both ends of the day? See Fig. One.