Out of Breath – We all seem to insist on how busy, busy, busy we constantly are. Let’s put things in perspective: tell us about the craziest, busiest, most hectic day you’ve had in the past decade.
The craziest, busiest, most hectic day I’ve had in the past decade? I can’t remember what I did yesterday, much less in the course of an entire 10-year period. I know recently we drove a lot, through mountains, past rivers and lakes and countryside so beautiful it filled up all my ooh and aah synapses and put me into a near coma of aesthetic appreciation.
Was that hectic? It felt hectic.
I’ve been in and out of hospitals, had more surgery than I can remember, which may be a good thing. Hectic? What’s hectic? The decades have all been riddled with crises. Financial, medical, personal. I don’t remember the sequence of a particular day, not even yesterday. Or this morning. It’s nearly one in the afternoon. I’m still answering email and trying to get this silly little post written.
Maybe I should think about this in bigger pieces, like decades? Anyone who asks this question obviously hasn’t lived many decades. I’m sure having fewer decades to remember might make the whole memory thing more … memorable. By the time you’ve survived seven or eight decades, you would never ask this question. You would know your friends feel lucky to get to the end of a sentence without have to pause to remember what word comes next.
I can tell you — I think — which period in my life was the most hectic. It started in 1963 and slowed down … when was that? Wait for it. I’m thinking. Okay, got it. It hasn’t slowed down. But it would be okay with me if it did.
Life is, as the beaver said, just one dam thing after another.
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Categories: #DamsAndWaterfalls, Cartoons, Daily Prompt, Humor
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Hahaha, I love this. Even though I write days, even months or years after the Prompts originally post, I never read other’s posts before writing my own. I am not surprised that we both had similar viewpoints insofar as thinking about the last decade though! I really enjoyed this! 😀
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My son used to have a tee shirt that had a beaver on it and said “One dam project after another!” I always loved it. So I stole it 🙂 I have no idea what my most hectic day was. Probably the day they were doing 4 heart surgeries on my carcass — but I had the grace to be unconscious.
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Exactly! By the time I reached my 60’s, hectic and stress were like old, unwanted companions. 😉
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I think when it never ever goes away, it’s time to reclassify it as “life.”
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Love your cartoons. And who wants to remember the days that brought us more stress than usual? The most hectic? Would rather think back to the best relaxing times ! 🙂
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And seriously … I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it. Life runs together, good, bad, everything.
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Reblogged this on frijasroxanne.
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My most hectic day was when I suffered congestive heart failure. It happened the day before a disaster struck the town where I lived in Graniteville, SC. Here I was in intensive care with tubes and IVs stuck everywhere and I looked at the TV in the corner of the ceiling to see a massive train derailment 1 mile from my home with a chlorine tanker gushing out super toxic chlorine gas everywhere. Had I been home I’d be dead. Now that was not only hectic but extremely complicated because the town was quarantined so I had no place to go when I was rushed out of my hospital room because they had all these trauma cases from the derailment heading their way. 🙂
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Ugh. That sounds kind of horrible. Like getting caught in a war. Glad you survived. I’m sure there’s more than one really scary story there!
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A no stress life doesn’t exist. I don’t think humans could survive that, anyway. Apparently stress leads to evolutionary advances so I guess we’re stuck with it. I had the same feeling this morning, though. In high school I figured when I understood stuff and was in control of the world (inevitable by the time I was 25) I’d have this whole thing righted and everything would be calm and good from then on FOREVER. Now I know better… I thought of writing about riding with my dad in the ambulance, but then I thought better of it. I thought of writing about pushing my procrastinating attorneys (I was a paralegal) to make court deadlines, but then I thought better of it. I thought of a lot of things that seemed like one time shots but weren’t. Now I know I can unload all those boxes slowly because nobody cares but me. 🙂
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No one cares but you, but you can mine these memories for terrific anecdotal material. I KNOW no one cares. I can’t even say I care any more. It was a long time ago. Stuff that seemed the end of the world back then obviously wasn’t because here I am, alive if not well. But I can write about it. And maybe it will make someone in a similar situation laugh or feel a little better. Maybe it’ll make ME feel better. That’s better than nothing.
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All I meant was that I don’t have to unpack all my stuff in one day. No one cares but me how quickly or slowly or what gets brought into my house or when. My point was that at a certain stage of life (long before this one, actually) many of us realize that the pressure we feel is often coming from ourselves and we have some choices about how we’re going to deal with it. 🙂
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I’m pretty sure most of the pressure in my life came from me, then and now. It just took me many years to figure it out. I treasure the memories anyway. So should you. All this stuff, all this “luggage” we haul around — it’s what makes us “us.” Stupid, misguided, flawed, nuts. I try very hard to not behave like that any more because my heart doesn’t like it and neither does my husband. It’s hard to change. but I have and a lot. All the fear and surgery and sickness and disasters have worked a weird magic, forcing me to make long deferred, necessary changes. I DO understand. I struggle with the same issues. Many of us struggle. I’m not sure the struggle ever ends.
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Such a cutie … 🙂
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🙂
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Exactly. Most “hectic” time in a decade? Did I have lunch today? The last 5+ years have been a stress-filled blur.
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Stress? I don’t know what a no stress life would feel like. And I don’t remember if I had lunch today much less a hectic day ten years ago? Really?
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But think of all the things you can tell your grandchildren or nephews or nieces, if you find the time. What grandchildren? my cats cannot even have kittens.
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I have just one grandchild … and as of right now, she isn’t all that interested. I have a feeling she may be edging back into my life, which I would like a lot. Hopefully, I’ll be able to REMEMBER SOMETHING when she finally does. She is at the 18-year-old “who wants to hang out with OLD people stage.” Except when she needs help with her camera or computer. Then I’m Super Old Geek.
My brothers kids don’t seem to know I’m alive and my brother passed 7 years ago. I have a sister … somewhere … but she dropped off the grid almost 20 years ago. Families are not like on television.
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