Today’s the official first day back from the government shutdown, and I’m fitted with a sword and shield for the tidal wave ahead. During this morning’s meditation, the familiar distractions crept in for the first time in weeks – mind wandering to the things that will be waiting in my inbox, the ways I’ll need to pay tetris with my time, the commitments that I was unaware that someone else had committed me to. Once again I’ll need to come to terms with the fact that my attention is a timeshare, and even though I have the choice to say no to things, it takes energy to express even that.
I’m reminding myself that I can, at the very least, give myself these 20 minutes each day to unload. I hope it doesn’t come down to it, but if I need to I’ll schedule emails to myself just so that I feel like I’m going through the motions of responding to something. But let’s hope I don’t need to resort to band-aids of that sort.
The news outlets are saying that nothing came out of this shutdown, but I beg to differ. It might not have been a political win for anyone, and even those of us on the side of resisting that stupid wall recognize that we just spent the past 5 weeks fighting for a status quo. Looking out the window, it looks nothing different than it did the past few weeks. Maybe this is what it looks like to start fresh without the climactic-ness of an actual fresh start, to feel excited, rusty, unsure, and ready all at the same time.