new blog tagline
This year, Seattle has had tons of rain. I have never had seasonal affective disorder before, but many in Seattle do, due to the darkness and the rain preventing enjoying even daylight hours outside. One physical indicator of S.A.D. is a drop in Vit D compared to normal ranges. After being really mopey throughout November, I had my Vit D tested. Normal range is 32 - 100 (granted, I do not know the unit of measurement, centoids or whatever). I clocked in at 24. So I'm taking a little green pill once a week.
Ever since then, I am like a 1950s housewife who has been prescribed "energy" or "weight loss" pills by her doctor. I get tummyaches from rich food, and I can't go to sleep at 8:30 like someone who has to get up superearly really should. This phenomenon will eventually save my life, but right now it has led to more TV watching. Scrubs, Everybody Loves Raymond, Sex and the City. Once the commercials get really obnoxious, I take that as a cue to turn off the TV, usually around midnight. I suppose this does not sound unusual for most people but it is completely uncharacteristic for me. Even more surprising, I am fine the next day. What's up with that.
Commercials. Lots are for fast food. There is a theory in the fast food business that there is a big market for something called the fourth meal. This is a meal consumed in the evening that is not breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You have already had those meals. This one is extra. There is something more about the fourth meal, though. In the evenings, after our responsibilities have been disposed of either by psychological exhaustion or the hour no longer being appropriate, we can look to our own cravings. Now is the time to ask, what do we really, really want? If we have been depriving ourselves of something all day, being too good, eating carrots or whatever, then what we want is the opposite of a carrot. Indulgence. But there is another desire underneath that, something that we can only notice if we have been nurturing to ourselves all day, not depriving or indulging, and maybe busy but when we get that time in the evening we can check in. What do I really need? This is the fourth meal I am talking about. That which feeds us, in early stages of development to compensate for the essential pain of the day, but later a more balanced stage evolves which allows one to use that time to celebrate the earned rewards for being alive.
I grant you completely that I am not at this second, more balanced stage. I still do not nurture myself during the day in a way that lets me turn off the TV, or turn off the urge for a pizza. Lately it has been pomegranate martinis, alone, in front of the TV. (This is big fun in my book. It's possible you have to be a parent to understand.) But it is interesting how eventually, if I am persistent enough such as discovering and remedy-ing my Vit D shortage, new rooms of energy open up in my day and it is just a matter of how to furnish them. Right now that room is furnished with old boxes and junk, but I am happy the room is there. Eventually it will look like a decorator spent weeks. This all is metaphor - eventually I will be doing what I really want with this new time and energy that I have earned, not just using it to react to the rest of the day's losses.
So. The fourth meal. That which truly feeds us at the end of the day. That which has a spin of fun on it, that which you would do if you had no other responsibilities. That sense of flow which is unseperable from your being and yet still has a lightness, for you can change activities anytime, it's no big deal. I think this more closely drives at what I am going to be writing about. Only please, don't get confused about my also having my name in the tagline. It looks like I am going to be eaten up at a fast food restaurant, as my own combo meal. This is not the case. Names in taglines are important and hopefully people will get used to not expecting recipes on how to fry up various parts of my body.
Enjoy.