Don't Know if Thomas Merton would Appreciate Nick Fury But...

Discernment isn't easy for anyone, and I'm not different from anyone. 

My mind goes on a thousand glory trips, daydreaming about where I'll go, what I'll do and why.  You'd think by fifty-two I'd know the answers to some of this, but some of this, isn't happening and so it makes one pause and wonder...am I doing what I ought?  Am I doing what should be done, so that when I die, whenever that is, I can at the very least, imitate the words of one of my mentors though she knows it not, (Erma Bombeck) and say, "I used everything you gave me."

I'd want to tweak it a little and say, "I gave away all to be used." but you get the idea.

So the next step would be to consider, if I want to give it all away, what am I hording?

As I sit in my room typing, I could argue, I'm hording time...need the virtue of prudence. --doing what when in the right order.   

As I stare at myself, I could say, I've horded food...need the virtue of discipline, as I eat too much and too often. 

As I feel tired, I could say, I've overdone to try to hide from addressing either the need to not horde time or the need to not overeat.   (Being busy makes one think, one is doing things of worth, one has value). 

Being tired from being busy means one justifies overeating, because one needs energy to keep being overbusy).   It's a stupid vicious cycle that prevents any change.   I could hear Nick Fury telling me this...he used saltier language.

Note to self: Reading Thomas Merton's book No Man is an Island is having an effect on my thought pattern. 

Which leads me back to the question: How do I stop the cycle?  How do I stop hording time and stop hording food? 

In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Will it"
How? Again, simple.
1) Do less.
2) Eat less.

I can hear the Yeahbuts in my brain and they are legion.  Yeah, but you have ten kids, of course you have too much to do...yeah, but you work from 5:45 am to midnight. You need energy.  There are more. I'm officially turnning down the volumne on them.  I still don't know what I'm doing.

My own reading tells me, you can't take something away without putting something in its place or you will simply rack yourselves over the coals for the lack.  So yes, these need to be paired back, so they become goods, and not excuses from good.  Make not doing, for approval, attention, etc. a sacrifice.  One may think, you are advocating sloth. I'm not. I'm not saying, don't do.  I'm saying I overdo. I overextend and as a result, "am anxious about many things."  and as we all know, I should "choose the better portion." 

So I'm going to start small, with the offering of an eight hour sleep each night for a week, and we'll see where that takes me, and with the offering of no afternoon snack (I'm awful about it) for this week.  "Again, we begin again." as Saint Benedict said. 

Am I still writing? Yes.  I'm still writing. Still submitting.  However the writing world is like that, sometimes it's feast, sometimes it's famine.  Sometimes it's busy, and sometimes it's maddenly silent.  I think the silence was intentional on God's part to get me to reflect and work harder not at doing more, but at recognizing where I need to do less.   I'd have steamrolled on if there were no reason to notice, if everything kept on as it was going. 

I'm still flailing about, but at least I have something of a plan...to sleep and to eat less, and keep inviting myself to think beyond whatever it is I have to do today...and to evaluate at the end of the day, did I do what should be done? Dry spells in writing, like dry spells in life, can bear fruitful thought. 

Still...I hope the dry spell ends soon.