some thoughts and a song at the end of a long day

it's been a long day. travel to an out of town professional conference combined with a three hour pre-conference workshop combined with an hour welcome reception. the heaviness of heart that i have been experiencing over the past several days has lessened but still persists. i am not really in the space to be away from home right now, feeling as alone and vulnerable as i do, but tickets were bought, registration fees paid, and hotel reservations made and my lousy emotional state is not sufficient enough a reason to refrain from this activity. i will do my best to move through it all even if i'd much rather be elsewhere.

tonight's song is another nod back to the 70's by one of the biggest groups of that era. there were many great songs to choose from but this one in particular seemed to fit my mood this evening.

too much heaven - bee gees

this was the one

during every walk there is usually a song that starts me to weeping a bit. this was the one during this evening's walk.

will you still love me - chicago

the kind of not well

sorry to report it was another rough saturday. the week has been a difficult one. the brutal conversation with sean on tuesday night surfaced some old hurts from friendships past. my therapy session on thursday was like reopening every painful wound that i've ever experienced. i spent much of the day today running around getting paperwork together for michael to help him get a home loan on a new place closer to work (something that is required by a newly diagnosed medical condition). i don't feel well at all. in fact, it's the kind of "not well" that has me questioning both if i every have been well before or whether i ever will be again.

sticking with jt

up on the roof - james taylor

more boxes

anyone who has gone through the process of moving knows the experience. the moving van leaves and everywhere you look there are boxes waiting to be unpacked. and as you set upon the task of finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place, you find yourself feeling as if there are even more boxes than you remember having been packed and loaded on the truck and even start to question if maybe the movers gave you someone else's belongings in addition to your own. this is certainly the experience i'm having now but it's not exactly the experience i'm going to focus on in this entry.

the thought of "more boxes" first came to me before the actual move itself, right after the packers completed their work and had everything i had brought into my last place of residence nicely and neatly put away in moving boxes of various sizes. what i was referring to with that thought was that yet again i found myself in a moving scenario. and the thought brought more than a hint of sadness and weariness.

you see, this most recent move is my fourteenth as an adult, i.e., since graduating from college (if you add the moves of my childhood this would be the twentieth move of my lifetime). some were big moves across many states. many have been smaller moves across the city or town i was living in at the time. and the fact that i can state with some certainty that this is not my last move may also be contributing to the bit of melancholy that i am experiencing about this whole scenario.

i've reflected before in this blog on how unsettling a move can be for me, and i believe i've also shared how all of this movement has left me with this feeling of being without a true place to identify as home. i remember sharing with michael as we were searching for the place that he continues to call home that i was looking for a "homestead" in which we could settle and establish roots. a place we could live out a significant amount of the rest of our lives (at least until retirement). well, that was eleven years and four moves ago, and the hunger for such a place has only grown more acute.

while i'm sure that some of this desire has to do with being ready to not have to go through the motions of packing and unpacking ever again, i'm also highly confident that the more significant element is wanting to have a place where i feel like i belong. and from yesterday's conversation with my new therapist, i see that while the physical relocations have not entirely created this decades long struggle i've had with the feeling of belonging, they certainly have not helped. i'll be honest that i'm not actually sure that finding the place to settle down is the solution to the problem, but i am certainly ready to try and find out.

time for some sweet baby james

this seemed to be a fitting song to mark the occasion of my first day back in therapy.

fire and rain - james taylor

another encouraging word from kylie

as promised here's tonight's song.

into the blue - kylie minogue