sick dreams!
WARNING: Physical healing may affect any levels necessary!
When I get sick, I know sleep is my secret weapon/superpower. I was living in a house with 5 cats and a roommate who worked and slept odd hours. There was a lot of random sound to keep waking me up just when the fever and coughing spells had allowed me to sleep. I took to having a speaker loudly play babbling brook sounds or let classic cartoons run on the tablet beside the bed.
One of those nights, the usual sounds stopped working. I got bored, or the sounds were more distracting than the ones they were blocking. I decided to try a healing frequency based thing I had come across before. 432 hertz or something like that. It was quite repetitive and true to the title, stuck with that one tone while the harmonics wandered a little further. It worked, though! I passed right out.
Still, between the aches and coughing and dripping face, it wasn't a deep sleep by any means. I kept going back to this dream where I was being taught how to solve tough situation type problems with what was around me. The instructor was adamant that I try again and again but that I use something different each time. Each item worked.. a piece of sand, the number 7, a spoon. They took different routes to get to a solution, but they all worked. His examples were intricate and the training felt like it went on for weeks.
Deep in this mode of thinking, my body hurt again and I woke just enough to move a little. I had a strange moment feeling aware of all the infinite cells in my body and all the areas they were grouped into. Many of them claimed they were bored, of all things. I felt bad that I had recently been all up in my head trying to solve depression or motivation or inspiration when my feet just wanted to go walking and my voice just wanted to sing and the muscle memory for countless hymns was antsy to find a piano.
I thought about all this for several days before I sat here to write about it. During those days, I've been playing a set of games from the New York Times people who run Wordle now. The toughest of the daily games is sudoku. In a 9x9 square, each row and column must have all the digits, 1 through 9. There are 9 square areas, 3x3 each, that must also have each of the nine digits. No row, column, or 3x3 square can have more than one of each digit. Every puzzle is seeded with a few numbers and each day I've been reasoning my way through an easy, medium, and hard level. There are several strategies in the solving process. The easiest is when a single number is missing.. all the 9s are there except one, or 1-6 and 8 and 9 are in a 3x3 block. It gets more difficult when a blank space could be any of the digits. Then the strategy is more about eliminating options one by one. The easy level is too easy so I add my own rules, like solving all the 9s then the 8s and so on, or solving every row top to bottom. The medium level is similarly a little too easy so I still add in my own challenges. By the time I get to the hard level, I'm actually relieved to be able to just solve the darn thing!
It was sudoku that put it all together for me. My whole life, if something was repetitive, too easy, or otherwise boring, I would add my own challenges to the activity. I could then maybe forget that the challenges weren't part of the main task. Something like that goes on in my head about getting healthy amounts of physical activity, about sitting down and writing like this, about singing and practicing harmonica and piano, about taking walks and yeah. What I realized is I'm holding myself to solving depression and motivation and inspiration first. Then I can write and sing and walk and play! The thing is, I'm at a hard level in life right now. I'm aging in a body with a disability that was hard enough when I was young and strong. I'm in a new town getting to know and trying to fit into groups that have been tight for years. I can drop my made up challenges. It seems the dream instructor was right.. any little thing I try will work. It will look random and messy. Those bored parts of me are also solutions to depression, motivation and inspiration! There's no reason to inhibit the hidden parts of me that want to play. Everything I try will help weave an intricate life.
WARNING: Physical healing may affect any levels necessary.