Mind Games

Today has been a frustrating day with my laptop computer not connecting to my husband’s cable modem in his room at Fort Rucker, Alabama where he’s stationed for a few more weeks until he’s deployed to Iraq. As I am temporarily out of work due to the destructive flooding in our area, I opted to visit my husband for a couple of weeks knowing I could take my work with me on my laptop. Unfortunately, that hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped. Life’s frustrations seem to have found me all the way down here in lower Alabama despite my best attempts to escape.

In muddling things over, I notice the sum of the numbers in today’s date is 23, which my oldest son would say is the reason for my misfortune. Lately, my son subscribes to this theory about the number 23 as this dark force that imparts negative energy into situations and people. So per his theory, it’s just a temporary force that will pass I guess. I have learned from this book I’m reading titled Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson that emotions and feelings are automatic signals our minds send to our body in reaction to our thoughts and experiences (like the hair on your arm standing up when you are scared). These are signals our bodies give us to warn of potential threat to prompt us to action (like running away from danger). If we determine there’s no reason to flee or change what we’re doing, then it becomes a waiting game until our bodies return to normal and the emotions/feelings pass.

The secret to waiting lies in redirecting your energy/thoughts to keep you from obsessing over the problem at hand. For me the only things that distract me successfully are gardening and writing. Although, admittedly, writing is my way of working through a problem rather than distracting me from it. Gardening, on the other hand, consumes me especially pulling weeds. Frankly, weeds piss me off and despite my many attempts to dig up crab grass roots year after year, I always seem to have just as much left betwixt my beautiful flora and fauna. Even so, I find myself grateful to these weedy denizens for the essential, therapeutic purpose they serve in my life.

Writing and gardening also provide ways for me to manage life without my soldier/husband for another deployment. When hiding in the garden deadheading and pruning plants doesn’t do the trick, I crawl in bed with my laptop and write it out. Somehow, journaling or blogging about my frustrations helps me regain focus on the bigger picture that the daily grind of life tends to obscure. My recent stint as the Family Readiness Coordinator for my husband’s National Guard unit has also helped me to focus on helping other families with deployed soldiers. This experience has helped me realize that dealing with deployment is nearly impossible to do on your own…you need comrades (or a close-knit group of people in the same situation that you are in) to help you navigate the tormented seas of deployment and perhaps even become a stronger person in the process.