She turns a scrutinous eye on herself, looking for opportunities to grow, and taking cross sections of herself to examine her growth rings through time.
It isn't fate, nor is it environment, that determine the imprints left behind. It's her intent. It's her ability to provide what's necessary for thriving, rather than simply surviving.
Survival is body-driven, and her body acts from instinct. It has no logic, no passion. It seeks out whatever is able to deliver her a bit of fleeting comfort to keep her propped up, rather than the things that flood the heart with deep satisfaction.
It allows her to fly.
Self-care is something they emphasize a lot at massage school. To care for others, we have to know how to care for ourselves. This program is an intense one and is, by far, the most challenging educational experience I have ever had. The material is not more difficult than what I experienced in college, it's comparable to that. The part that is hard for me is the pace.
When I took classes at the college, I made sure I never signed up for more than 12 or 13 credit hours per semester. That was my own means of self-care.
Currently, I am cramming a program that provides 1,000 hours of practical hands-on experience all into about 6½ months. Massage school includes hands-on experience as well as a number of science courses.
The information presented to the time allotted is sometimes a bit of a top-heavy ratio. Tests come at me rapid-fire style. In my spare time, when I'm not studying, or staring into space as my brain airs out and cools down after overheating, you might find me doing house chores. Sometimes I even cook in that scant amount of spare time.
Winding down from the day is definitely a piece of my survival and my sanity. When my brain can't function anymore, I get on Facebook. Where does that leave me? It leaves me like a zombie couch potato, wasting my time that I could be using to do something that could be making me fly. But since I can completely shut my brain off and surf Facebook, I do it because it's the easiest option at the time. Or is it? It sometimes feels like self-care, but it hardly works out to be that way.
To be honest, Facebook annoys me, but it's sometimes the perfect mindless activity to engage in that I can't help logging on. But after looking back at all my growth rings, I realized the days and weeks that I've wasted the most time on that website show up as the smallest rings of growth in my life. And that is very disturbing to know that it impacts me in that way, to that extent.
The other day, instead of logging onto Facebook, I grabbed my hand cream and just stared blankly into space while rubbing the cream into the dry skin on my hands. I mindlessly noticed the sensations felt while massaging my own hands. It felt great.
Putting the hand cream on my hands was definitely a survival thing, but it was so much more than that then. I wash my hands constantly as a massage therapist, and they dry out easily and quickly. So the cream was necessary, but the intent was different. That time, I didn't just slop on some cream and rub it in while running out the door for school. I wasn't even mentally replaying my day in my head when I did it. I was certainly experiencing fried-brain syndrome when I gave myself that hand massage, but I was present with my fried self right there in that moment. And that made all the difference.
It's not easy to make large adjustments to my schedule so that I have time for more than the basic elements of survival while I'm here doing school, but the two things that I'm finding make a difference are the element of playfulness and also the feeling of love that I give to myself by doing the basics for myself.
As I keep rediscovering myself along life's pathway I am re-reminded that my intent is not to trudge through life, barely surviving. It seems obvious, but my patterns easily retract into a pattern of stern seriousness with myself that leads to feeling less inspired and less motivated. All it takes is remembering to keep a little playfulness in the mix, and feel the satisfaction of showing myself some love when I do something for myself.
That is when I begin to realize that flying isn't so impossible to do, even with the full platter of survival activities I'm carrying around with me right at this moment in my life.
Kate Pavlacka, a graduate of the State University College at Oneonta, has been totally blind for about a dozen years. Her columns can be found at www.thedailystar.com/disability
disABILITY
disABILITY: Flying is possible, even with full plate, if you take time for yourself
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Living intentionally helps bring life under control
By Kate Pavlacka Life calls a lot.
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disABILITY: Breaking free of schooling 'rules' opens new avenues for learning
By Kate Pavlacka I went back to school for massage in April, and, already, I am halfway done with the program and my 1,000 hours of hands-on experience.
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disABILITY: Varied interests not a sign of unfocused life; it's about self-awareness
By Kate Pavlacka Recently I was challenged to come up with my biggest passion in life, and while it took me 2½ weeks of extensive consideration of what that might be for me, I came to the realization that my big passion in life is self-awareness.
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disABILITY: You can’t live your life according to the labels placed upon you
I sit down to read an article of interest online and my nervous system trips over itself. I try to hear my teachers lecturing at school, but my nervous system hums and crackles while the words drip through my mind like thick muddy drops. The information isn’t fully processed.
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disABILITY: 'Disability' is all a matter of how you look at, define it
By Kate Pavlacka
Don’t believe your thesaurus; it lies to you. -
disABILITY: Q&A on math, dreams, beauty, fear
By Kate Pavlacka
Here is the last edition of questions and answers. These are questions I’ve been asked by people of various ages through the years. The answers I share are from my perspective, experience and what I’ve learned over the years. -
disABILITY: Painfully updating my computer skills
As a blind computer user, I don’t use a mouse to navigate my way through program functions, menu systems or web pages. Instead, I use the keyboard for everything. I am able to use the number pad for a lot more than writing calculations. I also make use of the function keys and hot key combinations to get to different elements on a page.
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disABILITY: Make people focus on personality
It all started back in September. I was sitting on the floor of my living room with one of my female friends, moping around and exchanging stories of prior man troubles we both had experienced.
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disABILITY: Fear of change can be crippling
It may seem like an oxymoron, but within nature and life, change is a universal constant.
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disABILITY: Find child-like magic lost as adults
The price of having a child is high, but the rewards surpass any monetary value put on your little bundle of joy and energy.
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disABILITY: Disabled, able-bodied very much alike
Growing is a skill that takes time and effort; groaning, however, is only a reflex.
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disABILITY: 'Disabled' doesn't mean 'unskilled'
Did you know that blindness is the third-most feared thing in this country after AIDS and cancer, and keeps employment of the visually impaired limited to 26 percent of those ages 21 to 64?
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disABILITY: Perception, not sight, important in life
Would you rather be deaf or blind? That was a question posed on a website I was on recently.
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Living intentionally helps bring life under control
