What the Heck is the Convoy of Zen?

So what the heck IS the Convoy of Zen? 

In my day job, I am a high school history teacher—and my students know I am a beast about precision of language, which is kind of funny since I am being pretty free in my application of the word “Zen”. 

When I reference Zen I mean the fruits of traditional Zen meditative practices: peace, thoughtfulness, working with intention, acceptance of the present moment.  In my usage, zen (lower case) is mental space, freedom from anxiety—basically the opposite of my normal spastic freak-out default mode.  I have zero success meditating (Z.E.R.O.—my internal voice Never. Shuts. Up.), but the simplicity and “being” of Zen practice make sense to me within the framework of the religious tradition I live by (Catholic—I have not had much success with Catholic meditative practices, either, and by not much I mean super close to Z.E.R.O. Urp.). 

                               *Zen = Not Perpetual Freak-out Mode*

In my one brief and awkward stint with therapy the counselor suggested exploring mindfulness, and I scoffed pretty massively. SCOFFORAMBA galore. 

We were in the thick of medical things then; now I get that I needed a little space outside of day to day medical crises to realize that accepting things and just working through that acceptance is probably healthier than the denial/rage/spastic creativity approach I tended to take to deal with the marathon of aggressive low grade brain tumors...

 (“You need a song about chemo? I CAN WRITE YOU A SILLY SONG ABOUT CHEMO, GIVE ME THIRTY SECONDS”. We were legit the Village People of the oncology clinic, silly hats, hand motions, and all).

But in the middle of everything, I could not do mindfulness. I wanted things to be fixed/better/not a catastrophe every other second.  That is what it is.

(Side note, therapy is a super useful thing and I really should have kept going more than like, 3 times.  Some things really require professional help. I will um, add that to the zen list. Yes. Ergh....)

---------->ANYWAY, keeping up the near frenzied holding-it-togetherness of those years proved unsustainable once the dust settled and I had to actually process “What the Heck Happened Here?” and more importantly, “Now What?”

I also tell my students that history rarely works as a strict chronology. Timelines are a tool, but one little line with date dots does not a history show. History is much more of a tapestry or web, interconnected fibers crossing and recrossing and affecting the paths of other fibers…

My own zen trek is kind of like that. A little all over the place, but ultimately moving forward, hopefully.

Remember those old Family Circus comics where the kids would march all over the neighborhood and leave a little dotted line trail criss-crossing everywhere behind them? THAT is what it’s like.

So as I try to put all this into words, I ask for patience and an awareness of the tangly wiggly all over the place-ness of how I am figuring this out. Ideas overlap. Some things I have discovered very recently have been so helpful I WISH I had started them earlier, so I will reference them earlier (Bullet Journal, I’m looking at you).  Some things will take longer to flesh out.

I make zero claim to having any deep insights—I feel a little like an ancient explorer discovering a new world in which an awful lot of people already live. Uh, yeah. “Discovery”.

If you already live on the islands of zen I am just learning about, Hello! Glad to finally get here! Let’s have an umbrella drink and enjoy the possibility of sunshine! If not, I hope you enjoy the exploration, too.

Movin’ right along really is better with friends. Thanks for jumping in the figurative Studebaker and coming along for the ride.

Serious Side Note: If you are seriously depressed, or really struggling with getting through each day, please talk to a doctor.  Please talk until a doctor can HEAR you and help you figure out a plan. These ideas here might be helpful, but a lot of them only helped me AFTER I talked to my doctor.  That is another story for another time…but take care of you.

Movin' Right Along -- Back on the Road

Movin’ Right Along is a Muppet Movie reference. I love the original Muppet Movie so very much. When I first started blogging several years ago, as a way to separate my medical writing from other writing, I bounced around a lot of different titles (most of which were taken already) before I settled on this. Movin’ Right Along pretty much summed up what I was trying to do—in the face of a pretty devastating medical reality, I was trying to create some space and keep moving, while randomly bursting into song or terrible puns (It’s a Myth! A Myth!... Yeth?)

The way my brain works—kind of like a giant catch-all junk drawer-- I kept this blog and my medical writing separate for about 3.2 seconds. Here is where I kvetched about manipulative pseudo-science, medical ethics, and eventually told my second born’s story –an entry a day for a month, in honor of NF and Brain Tumor awareness month. Those entries are still up, if you want to read War and Peace of Medical Smite. Urp. Summing up what was at that point nearly a decade’s worth of trauma in one month completely shut down my writing for a year. 

It has been a slow climb back. 

For a long while, Movin’ Right Along in my life has meant sort of a weary dreadmill workout, or more accurately the old camp swim test where you had to tread water for a certain length of time. You knew you probably wouldn’t drown, but you had trouble just moving your feet and arms enough to keep your head barely above water.

The Whooping Cough-tastrophe of 2016, coupled with some pretty intensely bad school situations for my second born, became the final straw on the proverbial camel’s back.  Within a few months of my daughter finally shaking the 100 day cough (spasms that would leave her blue and choking for air) and graduating from high school, I knew I could not just keep treading water anymore. I had to swim for a dock or an edge of the pool or something, or I would turn into one of those creepy underwater swamp people from Lord of the Rings.

So I did. Swim for an edge, not turn into the swamp people.

I wish I could say I then rose up like Jesus and walked on the water. That would make a great story/blog. That would be a bold-faced lie, but gosh it would be a good story.

 Really I just started looking for floaties or lily pads to cling to as I work my way to the water’s edge.  I made some decisions that have given me the space to try and figure out what I am meant to be doing during this medical respite. I don’t know how long it will last. Our family could be tossed into the middle of the sea at any second, always. I know this is true. But I want to be better equipped for that next tsunami.

So in that vein, Movin’ Right Along is really going to tell THAT story—how I am trying to Move Right Along—the books that have helped in the journey, the podcasts that inspire, the practices that strengthen my lungs and my oh so tired limbs, both figuratively and literally.  I am still on the road (heading to New York to break into public television!...er, something like that. ;) ), but I am determined to reclaim the words that left me during our family’s medical crisis, and maybe help build a little caravan of support along the road…like a convoy of zen , or something.

That would be a good band name, Convoy of Zen.

I will try to keep entries short, and twice a week. EEK, putting that into writing is daunting. But I need a goal, and a deadline. I am the Queen of all Procrastinators because I want things to be perfect and can never get things perfect (life lesson)…so I need a deadline—hoping that deadline will be the next floatie I can grasp.

Please join me on the road. I am not sure exactly where we will end up (Bear left! Bear left!—Right, Frog!), but it will hopefully be a positive kind of road trip.

Movin’ Right Along in search of good times and good news,

With good friends you can’t lose

It could become a habit!

Opportunity knocks once, we’ll reach out and grab it,

Together we’ll nab it,

We’ll hitchhike, bus, or yellow cab-it!

Movin’ Right Along—footloose and fancy free!

Getting there is half the fun, come share it with me!

Movin’ Right Along—together we’ll share the load!

We don’t need a map to get this show on the road!

--The Muppet Movie (original)