Natalie Goldberg: Card #6
The day I wrote about Card #5 from Natalie Goldberg’s Deck of writing “nudges,” it was February 3rd. Now I’m on Card #6, and it’s almost a whole month later. My original plan was to write into the subject of one card per day. Ish. Now a whole month has passed.
Know why?
I know why.
I was being a perfectionist.
I wanted to write about yesterday. As in, the day before today. All zen, like. Just noticing what happened yesterday. But I kept thinking, Wait. I wasn’t present enough yesterday to remember what to write about. I’ll pay attention really hard today, and then I’ll write about that tomorrow.
But I’d forget. And day after day, I kept making more excuses. Yesterday wasn’t interesting enough. Tomorrow I have a brain scan happening. I’ll write about that, day after tomorrow.
It got ridiculous. So I’m calling myself on it, and here I go.
I’m telling you about yesterday.
Yesterday was February 28th, Tuesday. I followed my morning routine, made my bed, showered, dressed, and sat in meditation for a little over 20 minutes.
I’d gotten up early to get to the lab by 7:50 for a blood draw. There’s a remote possibility I’m showing very early signs of possible dementia-like behavior, cognitive decline. A couple of weeks ago, I got home and couldn’t figure out how to get out of my car. Recently I got lost going somewhere extremely familiar. Stuff like that.
So my neurologist ordered a PET-MRI brain scan, blood work, and a neuro-psych evaluation. Yesterday was the blood work.
When I got to Quest Diagnostics, I was prepared to put my palm on the scanner, or fill out stuff on the screen to check in. But my phone went “ping!” and when I checked the texts, there was a message that said, “Just click on this url to check in.” I clicked, and immediately, there was a response message that said, “Great! You’re all set. Someone will be with you soon.”
It was freaky. I got the message as I was walking into the place. But there was no one in the entrace lobby. No one. Except me. It was like someone in the sky knew I was there. And I checked in without…
