I was so close to postponing this entry. I spent most of the past week stressing about which change I should be making for the LAST WEEK OF THE BLOG, LIKE, EVER. I obsessed over the ones that fell through the cracks, the ones I was too lazy to attack – so much so that I found myself mid-week without really having committed to much of a change.

Thus, I thought I’d just push it back another week. Postpone the inevitable. Give myself some more time to…uh, delay.

Then I had this thought, powerful and fully-formed: I don’t want to. I want to be finished with this blog. I’m done.

So I decided that this would be my change. Letting go of the anxiety and worry and the regrets and fears that I didn’t do a good enough job, and just letting this week and this entry be whatever they were going to be. If that sounds lame or disappointing, or if it seems like I’m phoning it in…well, I don’t have much of a defense. It is what it is. See? That’s the change. It’s so meta it’s killing me.

Weak? Maybe. But letting things be what they are felt more right than any of the changes I debated doing. After all, I’ve built this thing up so much in my head over the past 52-plus weeks that I thought I had to cap it off with something truly phenomenal. (You might have expected that, too. If so, my apologies. You can thank me later for that life lesson in expectations and disappointment.)

Nothing I debated doing – a week without TV, going gluten-free, being a tourist in my own town – really spoke to me. I’m tired. It’s cold. I love TV too much. The only thing that did speak to me was the realization that I was mentally finished with this project.

Naturally, upon realizing I wasn’t going to commit some sort of heroic life-alteration this week, there emerged some of the old, habitual feelings of failure, the usual negative self-talk about not seeing things through. But I was surprised at how quickly those fell away.

Turns out I’m perfectly okay with the imperfection of this project.

That wouldn’t have happened without the preceding year of trying changes, failing sometimes, succeeding others and all along being willing and open – to varying degrees, yes, but always just enough.

So was the past year of blogging everything I thought it would be at the outset? Not at all. I thought that my entries would alternate between bravery and hilarity, always punctuated by searing, original insight into the human condition. Of course, it would be so earth-shattering that it would go viral, blowing up the interwebs. Publishers would be knocking each other down to put out the book version of what would surely be an international best-seller.

It didn’t quite happen that way. Why? What I didn’t account for? My fantasies didn’t exactly account for me. My own human condition, replete with illness, ennui, laziness, exhaustion, fear and all the other things that proved stumbling blocks to one giant change after another.

That’s not to say this hasn’t been triumphant for me in its own little way. I’m actually kind of proud of seeing it through, even if it doesn’t look exactly as I thought it would. (See? That’s me just letting it be!) I could go back through my entries and expound on which changes stuck and which didn’t, but I no longer think that’s the real importance here. That said, I should mention that I’m still a daily bed maker.

Well, a mostly daily bed maker.

What I am, however, is more comfortable with the idea of changing and the idea of not changing, if that makes any sense. I’m more confident, in leaps and bounds, about what matters to me and what I want my life to look like. And, more importantly, what I don’t need my life to be about.

I know myself better. I feel more…distilled. As I’ve noted what feels like a thousand times here over the past year, these changes taught me so much about the distance between the person I thought I wanted to be and the truth.

I’m pretty thankful for that.

Most of all, I’m thankful for you, my small but ferociously loyal band of readers. Without your encouraging words and your sweet eagerness for each week’s entry, I would have thrown in the towel around, say, week five. I’m glad I didn’t. Thank you for making the time in your schedule to read what I wrote and for providing me with a safe place to get brave and write about even the most difficult and personal changes. Thanks for hangin’ with me this year.

I don’t know what I’m going to do next, blog-wise or project-wise, but I have a couple of ideas kicking around. I know what I’m not going to do: worry about changing this or that. Because, irony of ironies, this past year taught me more than anything else just how much I like about my life the way it is. It taught me that I’m open to change, but I don’t need to force it. It landed me in a place where I feel I can genuinely say I’m content just to let it be.

Let it be.

Wait. That’s good stuff. Jot that down. Someone should write a song about that.

This one’s kind of a doozy. As I may have mentioned in a previous entry, I recently made a foray back to therapy, which is good for me. I assert: I think therapy’s good for everyone. That is, I think everyone should be in therapy. Yes, that includes you. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not an insult. It’s just that I think everyone can benefit greatly from an unbiased third-party perspective on their lives. And I think self-knowledge is the most powerful tool we have.

But enough about you and your crazy mental problems. This is about me and my crazy mental problems. Having been in and out of therapy for years now, I’m pretty comfortable with the process and very open to trying new things, particularly if they will help relieve me of the albatrosses I’ve been carrying around for years (food issues, fear and anxiety, etc.)

When my therapist suggested I try EMDR a couple of years ago, a large part of me thought it sounded hinky. But another part of me was in enough pain from some past issues that I was willing to give it a shot. And I’ll just say this: I don’t understand for a moment how it works, but it worked for me. It rendered some of my most difficult, raw and painful memories into benign recollections. That, for lack of a more scientific term, kicks ass.

So when I went back to her recently to discuss how my underlying fear and anxiety has been manifesting of late – with eating issues and an increased fear of flying – my lovely therapist mentioned she’d been training in a new modality. A little something called sensorimotor psychotherapy, should I want to give it a shot.

“Sure,” I like to think I said. “Only…what the hell is it?” My therapist explained the basics. (And, yes, I realize I may be losing you here, to which I can only say: I understand. You’re dismissed.) Sensorimotor psychotherapy. According to the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, this is “a body-oriented talking therapy that integrates verbal techniques with body-centered interventions in the treatment of trauma, attachment, and developmental issues.”

Got it? Okay, let me see if I can explain, bearing in mind that I have little to no idea what I’m talking about. So…regular therapy deals with the conscious part of the brain and tries to resolve issues or trauma through its processing ability. Conversely, sensorimotor psychotherapy focuses on how the body responds to stress or trauma and attempts to change physical responses first, in the belief that they will, in turn, change responses in the brain.

Wow. That does sound weird.

Here’s what I know, though: my fear and anxiety feel like a very real physical presence. In fact, I generally feel fear first in my limbs, a wiry, electric feeling building up so that I get restless and agitated and my mind follows suit. Thus, I can get on board with the idea that if we address some of my physical manifestations of fear, it could help the ol’ grey matter chill out.

Which finally brings us to this week’s change – practicing sensorimotor exercises to try and learn some techniques for dealing with my anxiety. The first order of business in this whole dealio is to try to recreate the sensations of fear and anxiety in your body so that you can then learn and practice methods for coping with it, physically. In other words, instead of starting with your mind and trying to tell yourself to calm down, you start with your body and find ways to physically stem the anxiety.

In case you were wondering – and I know you were – purposely manifesting fear is really uncomfortable. It involves thinking of a time when I felt overwhelmed by fear – for me, that was the last time I flew – and trying to recreate those sensations in your body. It says something that I have absolutely no problem accessing that part of my physical being – but I hate it. I hate the feeling like my arms and legs are humming with an energy that’s whispering to me, “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.” I hate that my heart responds in kind, flipping and leaping, that my head gets light and I feel like I’m gonna burst out of my own skin.

So what happens then? Well, we’ve been trying figure out which physical changes help calm me down – and which don’t. At first, I tried getting up and walking about because, especially when I’m on a plane, when the fear sets in I start to feel kind of trapped. Turns out, pacing doesn’t help me. It just increases all the sensations and if I tune into what my body wants me to do, it says: stop. It wants to steady all the humming, quiet the motion.

Next, I tried sitting down using my own pressure – hands on the insides of my knees pushing out and knees pushing in – to try and exhaust the frenetic energy I felt. Turns out that’s more effective than pacing. Not terrifically effective, but the idea is that the more I practice, the more effective it becomes.

Did I mention I’m also supposed to be breathing deeply while all this is going on? Sure, it sounds easy. But it’s a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. What? You can do that? Of course you can.

Throughout the week, I challenged myself to practice these methods, as challenging as it was. In addition, I learned to employ another resource – imagining a time when I felt safe, visualizing it (while still breathing!) and trying to recreate those sensations in my body. I will tell you right now: some of this stuff is flat-out embarrassing to do in front of another human being. You have to move your body into the position in the memory, even if that means curling up in a fetal position on your therapist’s couch. I didn’t! But I could have…

Interestingly, at least to me, I found that it was much harder to tap into and hold onto the sensations of being okay than it was to feel fearful. As I tried to tap into those feelings throughout the week, it felt like hard work. At times, it was so exhausting I got frustrated and just gave up. Other times, I felt it…a bit.

As if that weren’t enough to work on in one week, my therapist added another calming visualization to the mix: picturing light to calm me, inhaling it and exhaling my agitation. I swear, sometimes when I’m attempting to do what sounds relatively simple, I start to worry that I’m just broken. No matter how hard I try, I can’t picture the light at all, let alone inhale anything. It’s daunting. There is so much to do at once, so much to feel and pay attention to, so much new stuff that makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious.

On balance, however, it doesn’t make me nearly as uncomfortable as my go-to fear response does, so I’m willing to stick it out beyond my initial, “I’ll try this for one week” approach. It’s ridiculous, I realize, to expect to see lasting results in just that short period of time. I am driven once again by what I don’t want to be: a person riddled with fear that holds her back from living her life to the fullest.

I find myself questioning, then, the value of even trying this for a week then writing about it, when it’s far too early in the process to deliver any pearls of wisdom regarding whether this sensorimotor psychotherapy approach works for me. Once again, though, I recognize that this blog is often more about willingness to try than about change accomplished.

Having an entry to write gave me the kick in the pants I needed to give it a shot for a short period of time, to commit to beginning something. For me, that’s interesting food for thought, especially as I realize next week is entry #52 – the ending of something.

As is my habit, I shall present some back story and completely made up theoretical psychobabble to explain how I’ve come to be this way. I believe it stems from a) coming from a long line of genetically impatient people with impeccable manners, for whom being late was simply unacceptable and b) being a painfully shy youngster who couldn’t stand to garner extra attention.

When I was a kid, I hated, hated, hated when all eyes were on me, so there was nothing worse than arriving at school or to a group activity late and inviting scrutiny. I learned early (ha!) on that the best way to avoid drawing attention to yourself was to arrive early and inconspicuously and, preferably, find a seat in the back..

Now, those who employed me during my drinking days will claim – quite fairly, too – that I seemed to have no problem whatsoever being late to work. Habitually. And while I want to claim extenuating circumstances, I also want to note that just because I was late didn’t mean it didn’t cause me a wave of nausea and panic every time. In other words, I was late, but I still hated it.

As an adult, not being late has its benefits. I usually get a good seat at concerts or movies. And now I can’t think of any more. So I suppose it has its benefit.

It also has its drawbacks. It’s hard work being the first at every party, and more than a little awkward to show up while the hostess is still in curlers. In addition, it’s tough on the ego to weather the pitying glances of wait staff who presume, after ten minutes or so, that your “friend” is a figment of your imagination.

But those are not the real issues that spurred me to make this change. I actually quite like being prompt. I remain convinced that being late is, more often than not, simply disrespectful of other people’s time. In case you hadn’t noticed, I like to feel really, really superior about how considerate and thoughtful I am.

The part I can’t stand is the panic and anxiety I get when I think I’m going to be late for something. Clearly, my brain is convinced this is life-threatening stuff and if I’m not on time – if not early – the world will grind to a screeching halt.

Ideally, I would prefer to be someone who could just chill the hell out. A person who is generally on time but not so fearful of being late that she’s painfully early. A person who, if she is late, doesn’t feel like it’s the end be all, an act of unforgivable discourteousness.

Thus, I decided to dedicate a week to trying to be late and at the risk of delivering spoilers, I will say this: it was much harder than I expected. In fact, one could say, I pretty much can’t do it. But back to the blow-by-blow coverage. Fortunately, this past week, I had a minefield of opportunities ahead of me. I had lunch appointments scheduled for three days in a row. I vowed to be the second to arrive at each one.

On the first day, I put my plan in action. Bear in mind I live in a small town. My first lunch destination was a mere five minutes away from my house by car. Normally I’d leave about 15 minutes beforehand, worrying myself silly about finding parking, etc. Now I was living recklessly – I left with only ten minutes to spare!  There was no way I would find street parking during lunch hour, so I’d have to walk several blocks or park in a garage. There was no way I’d be on time, let alone early.

Except…the universe hates me. Or loves me. Whichever way you wanna look at it. Because just as I was growing tense, feeling a little fearful as the clock crawled towards noon, there it was, the nearly-unheard of phenomenon in downtown Ann Arbor during lunchtime: princess parking. A prime spot directly in front of the door to the restaurant. On my first pass. Didn’t even have to turn around.

I was parked and inside the restaurant a full five minutes early. Seriously! Why, oh, why! I shook my fists at the sky. My life is so difficult sometimes.

Now, that evening I had a meeting to go to. This was a large meeting of the recovery variety, which I attend regularly. These meetings are often the playground for my pet peeves. People are chronically late to them, shuffling in loudly whenever they so please, disrupting the person trying to open the meeting, horning in at corners of already-full tables, forcing everyone to scoot around.

Me? I get to meetings unbelievably early to ensure I’ll have a seat and that I won’t upset anyone else with my behavior. In fact, I’ve been known in the past to skip a meeting entirely if circumstances made me late. Yes, I’d rather risk my sobriety than bother someone by coming late. I have excellent priorities.

I would like to say that I really challenged myself by giving being late a shot. I did want to teach myself that sometimes people can’t help being late to meetings – because of work or transportation issues. That it isn’t just a lack of respect or consideration. I wanted to teach myself that it was a forgivable sin, hoping to gain more compassion for others by understanding that lateness sometimes happens. People aren’t being late at other people and certainly not at me. They’re just late.

But I couldn’t do it. Why? Because it turns out I do believe it’s disrespectful to show up late if you can avoid it, and this would have been manufactured tardiness just for the sake of a blog entry. It didn’t seem worth it to me.

The next day, I tried again, leaving for my lunch date later still … but somehow not early enough. I was beginning to suspect that there was a strange rip in the time-space continuum somewhere between my house and my car. How could I arrive somewhere around the same time I thought I left? Was the universe just gas-lighting me? So I began circling the block, passing up primo parking spots in order to kill time.

I wasn’t panicked or anxious. I was frustrated. I felt like an idiot. How was stalling and burning gas really preferable to the “shame” of being early? I gave up. Went inside. I was one minute late and, of course, the first to arrive. Frankly, this trying to be late thing was exhausting.

The next day was my final lunch date of the week. This time I left with only five minutes to spare. THAT IS INSANE, PEOPLE! And, sure enough, there was no parking to be found. Even the parking structures were full. I was already two minutes late and still driving around aimlessly. My stomach was doing flips, I tell you, anxiety building. I was being CRAZY. It didn’t feel good, but it felt WILD. Wild, I tell you! There was NO WAY I could possibly be the first to arrive.

Except, as I was circling, I got a text from the friend I was supposed to be meeting. I assumed she was wondering where I was. But, no. She was running a few minutes late and was now circling looking for parking. Dammit! I slowed down my search for a spot, finally pulling into a garage and snaking my way to the top. My heart was pounding and I had to fight the feeling that I was going to be in really big trouble. Finally, I found a spot and took my sweet time strolling the two blocks to the restaurant.

And when I arrived, I was a full ten minutes late…and my friend was nowhere in sight. She arrived a few minutes later, apologizing like crazy, explaining her own struggle for parking. Crap. Fail. I mean, yeah, I was late, but she was later.

Sparing you the details, so went the rest of the week. I tried to be late for stuff and felt like a dolt. It was seriously as though I wasn’t able to figure out how to do it. I’m smart enough to lace my own sneakers, but I can’t figure this out?

I think, in conclusion – and I’m quite certain my more scientific friends would wholeheartedly agree – that this was a really poorly designed experiment. The parameters were unclear. I know plenty of people who are habitually late and I didn’t consult a single one of them for pointers. And halfway through it all, I couldn’t remember why on earth I thought this was a change for the better.

After all, I don’t hate being punctual. I hate the panicky feeling I get when I think I’m going to be late. I hate being a person who feels like she has to be punctual. And nothing I did this week really addressed those feelings or attempted to change them in any way. I never wound up having the earth-shattering opportunity that taught me that I could be late and the world would soldier on, friends would laugh and forgive me and somewhere in an alternate universe, a shy eight-year-old would not turn beet red and crumble with shame when the eyes of her classmates fell on her.

In other words, on the whole, I think this week was a failure in that I didn’t really end up changing much of anything. I’m counting it as a pseudo-win thought, because it turns out I don’t actually mind that much.

In short, here it is: sometimes I make myself throw up. For the past seven days, I haven’t.

It terrifies me to write about this. I’m so afraid of people’s reactions, so addled by fear about what you’ll think of me, how you’ll judge me. Whether you’ll ever be able to look at me again without picturing my head in the toilet. How I wish, wish, wish that there were some other far more frivolous, far less personal change to write about this week. But sometimes these things are born of necessity, and this is one of those times.

Perhaps I should backtrack a little. I have, as you have probably garnered from reading this blog, always had a difficult relationship with food. I’ve always been an emotional eater, always struggled with my weight. I carry with me an inherent sense that I’m simply not okay much of the time and I’ve historically turned to food – if not to make me feel better (because it never really does, not in the long run), then at least to numb and distract me from whatever I’m feeling.

At some point in my binge-eating history, the shame of what I had put in my body, paired with the physical discomfort of having over-eating so heinously delivered me to a place I never thought I’d be: making myself vomit. I know. It’s horrible to even write the words, but I don’t know a more delicate way to put it.

It’s hard to explain if you’re unfamiliar with this particular brand of desperation, but at some point, the absurd becomes completely rational. It becomes a totally logical line of reasoning to choose to get rid of that which is causing you pain. It becomes a rational, sensible solution. You eat too much, you lose it. When your relationship with food, eating and your body is already screwy, it’s really that simple.

My worst struggle with this was more than 10 years ago, a time when things were changing rapidly in my life. I was filled with stress and anxiety and it seemed to be one thing I could control – or at least, one thing I could do to mitigate eating behavior that was out of control. Once you start, it becomes really, really difficult to put an end to it. Every time I’ve relapsed with this behavior – which you might notice I’m going to great pains to avoid labeling as “bulimia,” lest we make it real – has required the help of a therapist or shrink to help me stop.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, and with her help, I’ve been really good at remaining healthy on this front. Then I took a break from therapy, exhausted by the constant effort of introspection and navel-gazing. And I was doing fine…until a few weeks ago, when out of nowhere, I had what I suppose I can’t avoid calling anything other than a relapse.

The things I understand about this are as follows: anxiety, fear and stress are my triggers for seeking comfort in food. If that builds up long enough, untreated, old habits kick in. A voice inside of me reminds me how hard my life is, how deprived I am. It convinces me that junk food and copious amounts of edible comfort are the best solution. So I eat. And eat and eat and eat.

Within a few days, I’m filled with shame, coupled with the physical discomfort of overeating. Which is when the thoughts creep in: you know how to deal with this. You know the solution.

I don’t know if it was the fact that I had an awful Christmas, with my mother-in-law collapsing, spending Christmas Eve with her in the ER, waking up Christmas morning with stomach flu and spending the day alone in a hotel room, throwing up. (Yeah, I know. Irony.) Maybe it was the stress of heading to New York shortly thereafter, when I wasn’t really well enough to do so. Plus the fact that my fear of flying was insufferable, a good indicator of my overall mental health and anxiety level – which I ignored. Perhaps it was the cold, awful weather in NYC or the fact that I injured my knee and could barely walk, leaving my spirits dampened about missing out on all the city had to offer. Maybe it was the horrible cold virus I brought back with me, and the fact that it meant I felt ill in one way or another for nearly a month.

Probably, it was all of those things. I was depressed, stressed and frustrated. So I ate. Then I ate some more, and before I knew it, I was making myself throw up again. It is humbling – if not downright humiliating – to find yourself at an emotional bottom with behavior you’re so, so sick and tired of and recognize your surroundings so well. It is dispiriting and painful to look around and think, “How the hell did I get here again?”

But I did get there. I was there and, at least, I knew I didn’t want to stay there. I reached out and told a friend what was going on. I picked up the phone and called my therapist and got myself back on her schedule. I knew, that in the meantime, I was going to have to do one simple thing: stop making myself throw up.

I realize this sounds either a) obvious or b) easy to those of you who’ve never dabbled in an addictive, destructive behavior. For the rest of us, it’s a big nightmare. It becomes so hard to let go of those old, familiar habits, no matter how harmful they are. The devil you know, etc., etc.

It did occur to me that if this blog has given me anything – and I actually think it’s given me lots – it’s the basic stepping stones of how to effect just about any change. Even scary, difficult change. All I have to do is aim for seven days in a row. That’s it: not throw up for seven days in a row.

And that’s exactly what I did. I won’t pretend the first couple of days weren’t difficult, but mostly it was because I had to live with the consequences of what I put in my body. You eat that burger and fries with the ice cream chaser, you keep that burger and fries with the ice cream chaser. Even if you’re mad at yourself. Even if your stomach hurts.

After a day or so of painful white-knuckling and sheer will, I found I no longer wanted to accept the consequences of eating that crap. I couldn’t ignore the fact that my body doesn’t feel good when I eat that way. I gave myself a rather grown-up talking to, about choosing food that I won’t struggle to keep, food that has food it in it, things that will fuel me.

It took a couple more days to get back on the horse with positive eating, for the resentment to eek away. (If that’s not proof of how sick I am about food stuff, what is? I resent eating in a way that is not self-destructive. At least, initially.)

Then, before you know it, a week had passed. I’d been in to see my therapist. I had a plan in place. I was practicing mindfulness where food is concerned and, suddenly, the idea of throwing up was as absurd as it had been sane just a handful of days ago.

I don’t know how that all works. There are too many moving parts for me to stop and analyze them, especially when I’m, if you’ll pardon the expression, dancing as fast as I can just to keep my head out of the toilet.

So I guess that means I did it. Success! Which feels good, although it’s dampened by, as I said, the fear of talking about this publicly, of showing you yet another skeleton in my already-cramped closet. But what else can I do? This is, after all, the change I made this week. The only change I made this past week. Seven days without throwing up. Now I’m working on the next seven.

I blame Patti Smith. Not for her music, because I have to confess I’ve never been the biggest fan. No, I blame her for her book, “Just Kids,” in which she writes about her enduring friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, leading up to his death from AIDS in 1989. Though the prose is often a bit flowery and dramatic for my taste, there remains at the book’s center this passion, this certainty that life is to be lived for art.

Maybe it’s a largely youthful exuberance, the luxury of a certain age, but as I read the book I found myself wistfully remembering my own late teens and early twenties, when it did seem like art was everything. Or, if not everything, then something large and looming and ever-present, something to be discussed and worshipped and debated.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 13, but there was a time – shortly before I went to college – when I also wanted to be an art historian. I loved, loved, loved museums. I loved paintings and sculptures. I wanted to surround myself with art for the rest of my life, tell its stories, help other people understand context and what the artists were trying to achieve.

Some of my earliest memories are of spending rainy days lying on the floor in my parents’ living room in Glasgow, leafing through enormous art tomes, poring over glossy color plates, tracing the figures with my fingers. More often than not, I had no idea what the pictures were all about – but I knew they were magically able to make me feel something – sometimes contentment, occasionally fear and confusion. I understood early on that art was important and it was powerful.

My parents surrounded us with art in a number of forms. We took frequent trips to museums, both in our own town and while on holiday. My father worked in the world of opera and our house was frequently filled with singers, musicians, conductors, directors, loud and rowdy, celebrating music and theater. We understood the performing arts to be like other art forms – essential, fragile and threatened by a world increasingly unwilling to keep funding their pursuit.

As I grew older I was drawn, in particular, to the work of the Impressionists, which I feel a bit sheepish admitting. Because while today it’s probably the safest form of art imaginable – the stuff of waiting rooms and souvenir mugs and posters for children’s bedrooms – what actually drew me to the movement initially was the fact that it began as a complete and total rebellion. The soft focus and irreverent lines – which today seem soft and benign – were considered at the time a terrible insult to the previous generations’ insistence on realism in perspective, lighting and form.

The Impressionists basically said, “Screw that” and instead sought to capture an instant of light. A glimpse. An impression of a single moment in all its fuzzy glory. And something about that, believe it or not, felt so…rock ‘n roll to me. Even if you scoff at the Impressionists today, it’s impossible to ignore that their rebellion was as crucial to the evolution of all art to follow – from Picasso to Warhol to Koons to, yes, even to Mapplethorpe – as any other movement has been.

But I digress. I mean, I really digress. (Thank you for indulging me.) My point is that thinking about all of this made me really nostalgic for a time in my life when art was a really central passion, when I surrounded myself with it and talked about it and thought about it. It was like suddenly realizing I’d left some part of myself at the airport, years ago. I wanted to get it back, if only to some degree and if only for a short time.

Seven days, to be precise.

So that was the goal as I, coincidentally, headed to New York for a handful of days: to find art every day. To experience it and think about it. And where else would be better to do so than in the Big Apple, surrounded by some of the world’s greatest museums, not to mention the galleries and public art? Talk about a breeze!

As we know, however, these things are never as easy as I imagine. I feel like every week I sit down to write my blog entry and wind up making some excuse about how this ailment or that ailment prevented me from fully pursuing this week’s change. (I’m actually beginning to think I might be jinxed, in which case I blame my husband, who has rampant disregard for the power of jinx.) Well, this week was no different. At some point upon arriving in New York – somewhere between the airport and our hotel – I wrenched the hell out of my left knee.

It was, as the kids say, a game-changer. Walking easily was a key element of my master plan. While I’d taken it for granted that I could head out of our hotel in Midtown and hoof it up Central Park East to the Met – or even just a few short blocks to MOMA – walking was excruciating. Stairs were out of the question. Even if I got to a museum, the idea of wandering around for hours just sounded like punishment.

But just maybe, I thought, this could be better in a way. Perhaps the big museums were a cop out. Perhaps my injury would force me to find and consider art within even tighter constraints. Like, on the first day, within my hotel. Yes, that’s right. I started off considering hotel art, which is, to many, an oxymoron.

We were, fortunately, at a nicer hotel, so it wasn’t like I was staring at a basket of fruit purchased for $20 at an airport hotel art sale. There was an abstract painting of some sort hanging above our bed, big slashes of red and grey and brown – possibly representative of how my knee felt. There were twin black-and-white photographs of the building of the Eiffel Tower and the Chrysler Building. In the elevators were murals of the Arc de Triomphe and the Empire State Building. (Our hotel is French-owned, in case you hadn’t guessed.) The lobby was even attached to a gallery featuring the work of a single artist who seemed terribly fond of red-clad dancing ladies.

All of it earned the same reaction from me, by and large: huh.

So maybe what I needed was public art. Art for the people, yo! Nothing like the idea of bringing the goods to the prole to really stir up a little passion! So on day two, I set my sights on a very tight perimeter around our hotel, hobbling around looking to be dazzled. Sure enough , it’s hard to go a block in Midtown without running into some kind of sculpture.

In fact, it seems to be practically a requirement for every office building to try to offset their worship of commerce with a really big, really expensive sculpture. There were strange shapes, busts, headless torsos. None of them, unfortunately, really did anything for me. Nor for the people dashing past them, apparently. At that point, this wasn’t art so much as it was an extension of the building.

The only sculpture I saw people stop and take notice of was Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture at the corner of 6^th Avenue and West 55^th. Yet I somehow doubted that those cute couples were posing in front of it because they knew it was an iconic piece of pop art from the seventies. Perhaps I’m just being cynical. My own reaction to seeing it – and I should confess, I’ve seen it before – was that I kind of like it better on a stamp. Seriously. That was my reaction.

I started to wonder if maybe I was art-broken.

Back in the hotel that night, finishing “Just Kids,” I got it in my head that if I went to the source where artists dwelled, then I’d magically be infused with passion – and surely stumble upon art at its core. Taking a cue from my book, which had started all this nonsense in the first place, the next day I hobbled my way down West 23^rd street to the gigantic, domineering Hotel Chelsea.

I’d never actually been to the hotel before, although I knew well its connection to some of the great works of literature and art – countless of big names passed through the doors and wandered its halls in pursuit of their own passions. In “Just Kids,” the hotel itself is an artistic force and the tiny room Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe share is central to their commitment to a life pursuing art. I figured creativity would be vibrating from its red brick façade.

Alas, no. It was cold and grey and my leg was throbbing. There was no way this giant structure could live up to my fantasies. I glimpsed into the brightly-lit lobby, walls covered with, well, you guessed it – art – but somehow couldn’t bring myself to step inside. There was too much expectation. I was too tired. Maybe there was something to the theory that this was a young person’s game.

Defeated, I crossed the road to try to get a better picture of the hotel, something that would capture its sheer size and found myself in front of an art supply store. In the corner of the display window, I saw this:

And it made me laugh. Absurd, nonsensical and totally hilarious. Hands down, the biggest reaction I’d had to any “art” the entire trip. Maybe because I wasn’t expecting anything, maybe because it caught me unawares or maybe because I’ve become an idiot who laughs at cat drawings. Either way, it was what it was.

I won’t bore you with the moment-by-moment details of every attempt I made to seek out art in the following days, but I will tell you it wasn’t as easy as I thought, nor was it as meaningful as I had hoped. Yes, I found art in a lot of places. I looked at it and I tried really hard to feel something, but mostly I just felt like I was checking some box on a To Do list.

That said, my biggest A-HA moment came when I was back home, uploading and editing the pictures from my trip. Browsing through the images I’d chosen to take, it started to dawn on me that I’d been seeing and responding to art the entire trip. It’s just that the kind of art that I find myself drawn to today, naturally and without effort, isn’t the same as it was twenty years ago.

Today, I’m stopped in my tracks by stunning skyscrapers or old buildings with ornate touches. I love decades-old tile work in the subway or glittering patterns on the ceiling of an Art Deco hall in Brooklyn. I’m moved by the sweetness of a pile of vintage valentines for sale at a flea market or hand-crafted fabric pine cones in a store window display. A quick flash of the Theater District lights as we fly by in a taxi or the perfect espresso in a beautiful glass cup. A photo of tacos, with the depth-of-field just right or a musician playing across the platform in the underground.

I realize I like art – and that’s art with a small “a” – when I’m participating in it somehow, trying to take the perfect shot or looking up to notice something unusual I might have otherwise passed by entirely. I’m not so much a “museum and painting” gal these days as I am a “pretty things in my real life” gal. Those are the things that bring me, if not a sense of passion and stirring, then a deep sense of contentment and happiness.

I still have and experience art in my everyday life, although the college-aged me would probably scoff at my definitions, dismissing them as middle-aged ennui and a surrender to the bourgeoisie. Strangely, I’m okay with that. It’s possible she was right. It’s also possible she was kind of a pain in the ass.

Why am I bragging about my Cathi/Kathi wealth? It’s relevant, I swear. Because another thing they have in common, although to different degrees, is the openness to alternative ways of thinking about how our mind and spirits and energy interact with our bodies. And they’ve both influenced me to be less skeptical and more open and to try things I mightn’t have otherwise.

Like trying to heal myself of fibromyalgia.

See, when you have a condition like mine – there’s no clear cause, no unilaterally effective treatment and certainly no sure cure – people develop all sorts of ideas about how to treat it. People, I should note very clearly, who mean very well. They suggest to you this one thing they heard on the radio that they’re certain will make me better. It’s both really lovely and really annoying. Because my general, pragmatic sense is that if someone had found a way to make people better from fibromyalgia, we’d all kind of know about it.

Thus, in general, when people offer me their groundbreaking methods to heal myself – biofeedback, reiki, etc. – I thank them as kindly as I can and stick to my largely Western medicine approach, even as I admit it isn’t entirely successful.

For my 40^th birthday, my Cathi sent me a box of tricks, so to speak, that she hoped would help ease my pain, if not cure me of fibromyalgia entirely. Knowing me as well as she does, she asked that I try to have an open mind about the things she was sending me. Her package included sage with which to cleanse myself and my environment, a beautiful green tourmaline necklace meant to help heal me, a book of physical ailments and the corresponding mantras to ease them and a CD with a meditation for self-healing.

I was so struck by the love with which her gifts were selected and the obvious strength of her own beliefs, that I decided to give it a try. All of it, piece by piece. I decided to spend one week opening myself up completely to these – and other – approaches. After all, what’s the worst outcome? I actually get better and have to swallow my pride?

The first thing I had to deal with was my skepticism, but it wasn’t as big an obstacle as I would have imagined. It seems over the past decade I’ve become increasingly open to different ideas. In some areas of my life I’ve had great success setting aside my prejudices and instead believing what other people believed would work for me – as kooky as it may have all sounded. Why, then, not try it with this?

Day one, I decided to start with the big guns – smudging myself with sage to clear my energy. The booklet that accompanied the sage said it was possible to smudge oneself, but I didn’t have an ounce of confidence in my ability to do so. That’s where the other Kathi came in. There are few people I trust enough to ask to smudge me – and probably even fewer in my life who’d be game – but I knew Kathi would.

And smudge me she did. I stood still while she waved the sage along the lines of my body, following the directions in the booklet to the letter. She was open to smudging someone for the first time, I was open to being smudged. I am certain of little more than I am certain of the limits of my knowledge. So if some burning herbs can help clear my energy, who am I to argue?

Kathi pronounced my energy clear after the first go-round, which surprised me. I assumed I’d be a two- or three-timer. But no. And I can’t say I felt much different, but I did feel a strange kind of excitement, I think just at having had the openness to try it.

Day two, I put the tourmaline necklace into action. I had to smudge it first to clean any residual energy off it, which I did by lighting the sage again and passing the necklace a few times through the smoke. Then I put the necklace on with, I am sheepish to admit, the hope that maybe I’d feel better instantly. Like maybe it was a magic necklace. Then I remembered I don’t live in a Harry Potter book.

Day three, I started tapping. No, not tap-dancing, self-tapping as an “emotional freedom technique,” designed to help rid you of negative thought and energy. It wasn’t part of Cathi’s gift box, but it was a suggestion made by Kathi. She showed me how to do it, selecting a phrase to repeat as I tapped myself repeatedly in various areas of my head, face and upper body – energy points – to resolve the feelings. For me, I focused on relief from the pain and fatigue I felt.

On the one hand, the tapping was weird. It just seems so random. On the other hand, the fact that I found myself giving it a shot – I mean, really trying it – was indicative of how seriously I was taking this whole effort.

As for progress, I was nearly halfway through the week and, physically, I wasn’t feeling any better. But I wasn’t sure I was supposed to yet. It’s not like these alternative healing methods come with a timeframe for success. What I did notice, though, was that I was feeling more calm and more centered, maybe a little more positive – and on that front, it was hard to make a case for giving up. That was a definite improvement.

Day four I started with the meditation CD. The fact that I procrastinated on the meditation should tell you something. I’ll be frank here: there is no question that regular mediation makes me feel better, if not physically, then spiritually and emotionally. So why don’t I do it every day? Because I’m a moron.

By day five, there was nothing new to add, really. Just a few more days of trying to think positive, wear the green tourmaline necklace next to my skin, tap away and meditate. Think positive thoughts. Breathe. All that good stuff.

But I also battled my own nature – the impatience at not feeling any better, the frustration on the days when I actually felt worse than I had the day before, the self-pity that creeps in at having a condition that seems so hopeless at times.

I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from the past seven days of trying to heal myself. The skeptic in me says: I didn’t. But there are voices in my head that, even as I type those words, know that seven days isn’t enough time to resolve that expectation. Do I believe, then, that these things I tried could ultimately cure me? I think I’m too much of a pragmatist to say yes.

However, I think they helped me, in a number of ways, even though none of them was (thus far) easing my physical pain. They helped me be more open-minded. They helped me slow down and focus on my thought patterns and my mindset. They helped keep me calm and focused and helped keep my innate negative thinking at bay. There’s a lot to be said for anything that makes you feel like you’re doing something, rather than sitting by idly, feeling powerless about a situation. Maybe taking action is the healing part.

Maybe that’s what this was all about. Maybe I’ll keep at it with some of this stuff, if not every day, then from time to time. Maybe one day I’ll wake up, completely cured – free of pain and with energy to spare. I think what I’ll do is more forward, slowly, trying to have hope but not expectation.

Holidays are tough. There’s stress, travel, anxiety, craziness, family. Each year, I try to come up with some sort of coping mechanism for all of it and each year I basically fail. This year, I found myself – for reasons I cannot explain and do not care to explore too deeply – wondering if there wasn’t some aspect of the religious celebration that I could incorporate into my own life. At least for, like, seven days.

And that’s how I settled on a genius new approach to a stress-free, peaceful and calm Christmas week: I would endeavor to be more like Jesus.

It sounded like a good idea when I first came up with it, although it presented a rather large problem: I don’t actually know much about Jesus. Mostly anecdotal stuff, whatever I see on TV, read on billboards. When I was a kid, there was a minister who would come to our school every once in a while and tell us stories of Jesus, but who was listening to that?

Settling the question of what it means to be like Jesus quickly and neatly is a bit like trying to scale Everest in an hour. It’s simply not going to happen. People on all sides of every issue have been asking this question for centuries and then twisting the answers to fit their agendas. (Although, it occurs to me as I write this, I was also creating an answer that would fit my agenda.)

I knew I didn’t want the Jesus of the Tea Party. Or of bigots and homophobes. (I’m pretty sure their Jesus isn’t the real one – whatever that means.) So which Jesus did I want? Thankfully, there’s the Internet. I Googled “how to be like Jesus” and figured there’d be step-by-step eHow article. One of the things that popped up was this article about a pastor in Grand Rapids who tried to live like Jesus for a year. There’s always someone out there trying to one-up you, you know?

I loved, loved, loved that there was a Yahoo! answer for my question. The winning response was: “Be very caring and love everyone just for being themselves. It really pisses off your enemies…” And it was written by a guy with a beard, which seemed incredibly Jesus-like to me. Done and done!

I realized that it was a losing proposition to try to figure out what other people thought it meant to try to be like Jesus. I was going to have to stick with what little I knew, or thought I knew. I was going to have to rely on my own limited concept of what Jesus was probably like.

There’d be none of the eating or living restrictions. No robes or sandals for me. I was trying to be very, very, very mildly Christ-like. Emphasis, in case it has been missed, on very. This is how I would try to be like Jesus for seven days: by trying to be kind, by helping others, by being patient and loving.

As simple as it all sounded – compared to how this challenge could have been defined by a more devout, less lazy and blasphemous soul than I – it was still a tall order.

The first couple of days of this week’s change involved making the road trip to my sister’s house in Indianapolis for Christmas. I found myself wondering: how would Jesus behave on a road trip? Would he ask if we were almost there yet? Would he whine about being bored? No, he’d probably sit quietly, try to be calm and patient, and distract himself with his knitting. Figuratively speaking. So that’s what I aimed for and I think I succeeded. But you’d probably want to ask my husband for sure.

The next couple of days were those leading up to Christmas Eve and I spent them just hanging out with my sister’s family and enjoying the company of my nieces and nephew. We played games, sang songs (seriously – there was Christmas karaoke on the TV), ate and made stuff. It was a pretty peaceful time and I couldn’t help thinking Jesus would be pretty proud of me – before smacking me for my hubris.

But then, just as Jesus was tried, so was I. On Christmas Eve, my mother-in-law collapsed in a very frightening – but ultimately not serious – episode. There was no calmness initially, just much heart-racing and panic on my part. We had to call an ambulance and then Chris and I spent four hours with her in the ER of a small but splendid hospital in the suburbs of Indianapolis.

Yes, I was bored at times, but I also was feeling tremendous gratitude for the paramedics, nurses and doctors who gave up Christmas Eve with their families to take care of ours. Even as I realized that as midnight delivered us into the first hours of Christmas day in a dingy hospital suite, I felt surprisingly at peace. I just had a sense that this was the right thing to do, the right place to be.

Is that what Jesus felt when he was just hangin’ out being all like himself? A sense of peace and calm? Knowing that this is where you’re supposed to be? Instead of feeling sorry for yourself at the prospect of ringing in Christmas at a hospital, just feeling calm?

And did Jesus also feel indescribably tired? And maybe a tad queasy?

We left the ER around one in the morning and the next test befell me around 2:30 AM, when I awoke with what would turn out to be perhaps the worst stomach flu I’ve ever had. No, now that I’m not being Jesus like, and back to my usual hyperbolic self, I’ll say the worst stomach flu anyone’s ever had. In all time. Ever.

By the time dawn rolled around, I hadn’t slept at all and when I finally drifted away, I awoke to the smells of Christmas morning breakfast wafting upstairs. That was not going to work. Even Jesus couldn’t hack the waves of nausea. So Chris took me to a hotel and that was where I spent Christmas day, with my head in a hotel toilet, tears streaming down my face, while everyone else celebrated the season at my sister’s house.

I am, as you likely know, a person prone to self-pity, and this should have been the end-all, be-all. But, for some strange reason, it wasn’t. Sure there were moments when I was dry-heaving and writhing in stomach pain and the thought circled somewhere around the outer recesses of my mind: what would Jesus do? Oh, if only there were a bracelet or a bumper sticker to help me with my inquiry!

But I’m guessing Jesus’ suffering probably made my bout with the stomach flu seem like a walk in the park. So, somehow, despite being so incredibly not okay, I was okay being not okay. Does that make sense?

Even the next day when the stomach cramps had subsided enough to leave plenty of room for self-pity, I instead felt grateful to recuperate on my sister’s couch and at least get in some QT with my nieces and nephew. Sure, everyone talks about Jesus performing miracles, but this was a true Christmas miracle. I had perspective and gratitude.

I carried it with me like brave little soldier even after Chris left to escort his mother home to Iowa and I had to drive myself back to Ann Arbor, still not feeling much improved. I dreaded the drive, but immersed myself in podcasts, somehow staving off boredom…and still no self pity. What the what? When I arrived home, I even found myself thinking, “Well, I made good time. Didn’t have to stop once on the way home. Guess there is a bright side to being severely dehydrated.”

And I carried it with me right into the last day of my challenge, when I finally broke. And when I break, I break big. I won’t go into too much detail, but one of my Christmas gifts from Chris was having a cleaning service come in and do the baseboards and floors and other stuff that’s just too painful for me to take care of. The owner of this service was – is there even a Jesus-like way of putting this? – a wench. She was rude and bullying and I was tired and depleted. It just undid me, sending me into a fit of rage, accompanied by embarrassing onslaught of tears that I couldn’t stem even as the day progressed.

Thus, I thought that while I’d given it a good run, I’d ultimately failed on the Jesus front. But when I said so to my friend Kathi yesterday, she said, “It’s like when Jesus freaked out at the money changers at the temple. You know that story?” I shook my head and tried to explain that I only really knew one Jesus story and it involved a big cross.

So she told me, albeit briefly, of how Jesus found merchants selling stuff at the temple and was all, “Yo, don’t dis my house of workship by turning it into a Wal-Mart.” Or something like that. Dude got crazy mad and knocked over tables, driving the bad guys out. He was super-pissed. Wicked.

This surprised me because, as I told her, I didn’t think Jesus was allowed to be upset or get angry. She gave me that look people do when you’ve been raised heathen and are kind of missing out on a lot of information. “Well, that’s the point,” she said. “Even Jesus got angry.”

Huh. As soon as she said that, I thought, Damn! I could have been pissed off this whole time? I could have been mad about being ripped off about my Christmas and I could have felt totally sorry for myself? But I knew that wasn’t really what Kathi was telling me. It’s also how I knew that the seven days were up and that I was, slowly but surely, going back to just being me.

How on earth, I wondered, could a person make a change for seven days in a row and then, within two weeks, have absolutely no recollection of it? Many weeks, I jot down notes on my changes as the days go by, but not this time. I was drawing a complete and total blank which, as an aside, is a terrifying thing, proof positive to one as anxiety prone as I that I am finally losing my mind.

It was bound to happen. I just thought I might make it to 41.

Then, about ten minutes ago I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, berating myself in the mirror for forgetting, thinking about how I was going to have to write a sheepish mea culpa promising the “lost” entry whenever (if ever) my memory returned. I thought to myself, I swear to God I am going to start keeping a list.

Oh. My. God. That was it. Seriously. I’d spent the week making lists. Apparently, nothing will jog my memory like completely forgetting.

It started out like this: as Christmas crept closer, all my bragging about being ahead of the game came to bite me on the ass. There were a million things that still needed done and I was feeling completely overwhelmed. I had to come up with a coping measure or else hide in closet until New Year’s.

Now, I understand that this concept of making lists in order to manage one’s chores is hardly revolutionary. People have been making lists since the beginning of time, Ogg scratching his To Dos on the side of his cave. My husband is an inveterate list-maker. Or so he says. Frankly, I can’t read his writing. He could just be scratching doodles on index cards and claiming to be organized.

I, for some reason, am not and have never been a list-maker. It’s always got me in trouble, especially considering I have the memory of a sieve. Even as a child in school, I would get scolded for not writing things down, forgetting deadlines, failing to bring in this or that.

I always have good intentions to be a list-maker and I have certainly tried. I figure I must have made some lists in college, since I managed to graduate. And I know that in my professional life, I had to keep lists or else I wouldn’t have kept jobs. (Although, truth be told, things always fell through the cracks).

I like the idea of being organized and the sense of accomplishment I imagine comes with crossing accomplishments off a list. To that end, I’ll download apps to my phone or programs on my computer. I’ll keep scratch pads on every surface and I even bought a mouse pad that doubles as a notepad so I’d have somewhere to jot down all my items. But I’ve never found any one system that works for me. I’m always crazy motivated for about half a day and then start telling myself that I’ll “just remember” to do this or that instead. Needless to say, more often than not, I don’t.

So when I say I decided to be a list-maker for seven days, I mean I decided to go whole hog. I was going to make lists for everything. It was going to be INSANE list-making around here. My goal: not a gift would go unpurchased, a dish unmade, an item unpacked for our Christmas trip to Indy. If I played my cards – or my lists – right, this could be the elusive key to the perfect holiday season.

I started out by making a master list of everything I had to do for the week. Within said master list were subdivisions – things to buy, things to make, things to wrap, things to pack. No item was too small. I was not going to find myself knee deep in would-be cookie dough only to discover I’d no vanilla. Nor was I going to have everyone gathered together for the perfect Christmas photo only to discover I’d forgotten my camera battery charger and there wasn’t enough juice left to pull it off. No one was going to feel left out on Christmas morning because I’d once again failed to notice a small package sitting under our tree at home.

In addition to the master list, I made small hand-scribbled lists every day of household things I had to do. Pay bills. Write checks for the house-sitters. Pick up extra litter. Send this email or that. It was all written down and it was…completely overwhelming.

That said, I must also admit that it was kind of exhilarating too. I felt like a machine. Santa may make his list and check it twice, but my master list became my obsession. I was constantly checking it, adding an item here or there, specifying, creating new categories, dying to cross things off, making sure that nothing had been left off the list. I needed my list to be perfect. BECAUSE WHAT GOOD IS A LIST IF IT’S FLAWED?!?

On paper at least, I was together, man. I was the Empress of Holiday Organizing. I did it. Every last thing. Every present made it to Indianapolis with us. No one was forgotten. Everything was in place that needed to be while we were gone. I had every item of clothing I needed, every power charger, every camera lens.

Also, I was kind of nuts. And completely exhausted. Part of why I’m not a list-maker in the first place, it seems, is because I operate at a very high level of denial about how much stuff I actually need to take care of. I don’t like to think about it. Sure, the price for this denial is that a lot of crap doesn’t get taken care of, plans fall apart, dinners don’t get made and people get angry with me.

But the benefit is that I worry less, and I can guiltlessly sit on my rear and watch a Top Chef marathon without a pages-longTo Do list nagging at me. And if that isn’t worth letting your life slowly fall apart, then I don’t know what is.

I know, you’ll somehow manage. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy happiness to those who don’t!

First, before we get to this week’s change, I just have to say: how are we possibly only on #44? It feels more like 74. Is there room for negotiation? Could we call it 50, at least? No?

Good Lord, you people are unrelenting. Always trying to hold me to my word.

Anyway, back to business.  Friends, a funny thing happened to me this past week. I had in mind a change to make but the universe, as it sometimes does, had other plans. A different approach emerged. And what struck me as most interesting about this change is that I think it was the direct result of my last two changes – advocating for myself and getting ahead of the game. Like, change begetting change. Yeah. Take a moment to let that sink in. Dag!

As a result of advocating for the right medical treatment and proper adjustments from both my physician and my orthodontist, I experienced a rather sudden and significant reduction in pain. I mean, less pain than I remember being in well over a year. It was weird, frankly. In accordance, I also experienced a sudden uptick in both energy and enthusiasm, a lifting of the mild physical and emotional “depression” – for lack of a better word – that I’m used to having as my baseline.

As a result of the other change – getting ahead of the game – I had so much of my Christmas stuff done, I wasn’t bogged down with To Do lists, nor was I freakin’ out or stressin’ about obligations. Instead, I found myself with the rare combination of a lot of time on my hands plus the energy – and the desire – to do things. To get stuff done. To participate more fully in my life. And while it may be the most boring change of mine you read about to date, the combination inspired me to spend seven days – assuming the relief would last that long – simply making the most of it.

So I did. Boy, did I. I found myself ready and willing to do all the things I wish I felt like doing the rest of the time. However, I got off to a bit of a slow start. Like so many who are granted superpowers, I didn’t know how to use mine in the beginning. I was over-eager, clumsy and unfocused. I rushed into getting organized, making something, getting things done. I proceeded with hubris.

The first thing I decided to get done was building myself a fire, just the sort of thing I wouldn’t bother doing under normal circumstances — not worth the energy. This required bringing in firewood, a task I’d normally leave to my husband. Except he was out of town. So what? I felt strong and capable! Confident! I could do it myself! Except…I tried to bring in too much wood at one time with one arm, while also trying to close the door with the other hand. I promptly dropped four logs on my foot, all of it somehow landing on the same toe.

My toe swelled up like a small plum and was excruciating to walk on. I assumed it was broken. I felt like I was losing a day, but damn if I didn’t feel good while I was lazing around. In fact, I was impatient, itching to do things. So when Day Two rolled around and my toe had returned to somewhat normal size and appeared not to be broken, I was able to get a pair of shoes on and get to work. A little more carefully, this time.

And then, you know what I did? Things! I did things. I made things. I hung out with people without wishing I were home with an ice pack on my neck. I entertained. I sewed. I knitted. Here, for your edification, are some of the things I did. (Warning: your sense of wonder and amazement over these items is not guaranteed. In fact, it’s not really likely.)

• Met friends for dinner and donuts, in that order.
• Shopped for cookie-making ingredients and supplies at Meijer on a busy Saturday afternoon, without wanting to kill anyone at the stores. No, really!
• Made a homemade melty, rich dark chocolate sauce. Took said chocolate sauce to a friend’s house for dinner. That’s two nights in a row of socializing.
• Planned a dinner party for some special ladies in my life and drove all over creation picking up this ‘n that, that ‘n this in preparation.
• Spent an entire day making and decorating Christmas cookies with friends. Mixing, stirring, rollin’ out some dough. Decorating. Talking. Laughing. (I never make Christmas cookies! Also, while we’re counting, that’s three days in a row of hanging out with other people.)
• Worked out without even whining too much about it.
• Learned how to make peppermint stick ice cream for the aforementioned dinner party and loved every minute of it.
• Decorated my house for Christmas. Usually this involves the bare minimum – dragging my little silver Charlie Brown tree from the basement and hanging a few ornaments on it. This time, I did my mantle, took more care with the tree, put together a centerpiece for my table.
• Cleaned the heck out of the house for said party. (Okay, fine, Chris did the bathroom, but he’s better at it than me!)
• Wrapped, packed and shipped off Christmas presents to relatives in Scotland – to arrive in time for Christmas.
• Decided that what the dinner party really needed was a festive table runner. Dusted off the sewing machine for the first time in more than a year, dug up a few scraps of holiday fabric and in an hour or so whipped up a passable version! Who. Am. I?
• Enjoyed said party! Laughed my ass off for hours with women who mean the world to me and to whom I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. To have the energy to give back, even in a small way like that, was the high point of my week.
• Sat down in front of a roaring fire with a big mug of tea and got all my Christmas cards written and mailed.
• Saw some more friends and was so energetic and upbeat, I think I actually annoyed them with what I would be like if I didn’t have pain. They had no idea what to do with me! Awesome.
• Made jam. Lots and lots of cherry jam. Screwed up some batches. Didn’t flip out about it. Kept going. Triumphed.
• Bought stuff to make more jam, because I am a jam-makin’ fool.

Then…another funny thing happened. After precisely seven days, I awoke in pain, feeling hit by a truck once again, exhausted and drained. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising, considering everything I’d done the past week. In addition, I’d been to the orthodontist and had some new equipment installed that was messing with my sleep and triggering more pain.

Still, I felt a bit like Cinderella the day after the ball. I mean, I knew this crazy burst of what I imagine is normalcy for some people – but felt like fantasy to me – wasn’t going to last. After all, wasn’t that the whole impetus for trying to make the most of it – the understanding that feeling this way was temporary?

I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed, because some part of me had secretly hoped that it might last longer. Maybe even, like, forever longer.

I suppose I could cry like a baby over the loss of Energetic Me. Instead, building on this week’s change, I’m trying to make the most of having had that week. I’m trying to be hopeful that perhaps there’ll come a time when I live like that, a person out in the world, fog cleared, no weight dragging me down.

Maybe even just a few days, every once in a while.

I think even my friends could handle that.