I have owned that I slingshot. Fling myself at life and people and events and the like. I do this. I always have and have accepted that I likely always will.
What I am attempting to become better acquainted with is my launching process...
Why do I do it at the time I do...why do I do it at the people and things I do? Why do I do it at all?
Seems like I might benefit from some sort of launch protocol if this is going to be how I am living my life. Like I should be involved in the preparation for launch process instead of how it feels now that I just become aware of the process as I am hurtling through space and time.
Right now it feels like I am always in trigger mode, like my blast off can and will happen at any moment. I am going to be orbiting soon, I am just never sure when and how and where and what the underlying reason is...
And it seems, at least as I sit here at 4 am drinking my coffee, I should have more notice of my own impending orbit.
And now, in this moment, I can see I really should have a launch protocol...
I am sure that slowing down my activity and stress levels would do wonders is being able to better establish a launch protocol...but so far, I haven’t done a stellar job at either of those things.
I haven’t done a great job at watching my mind or body in this regard either, like I said, I usually become aware I have launched as I am spinning through space and time...which is an improvement because I used to only know I launched when I landed with a thud or splatter.
Sometimes the signs of progress are infinitesimal...sometimes they are large, loud and self evident. Mostly it has been a varied sort for me.
So what would my launch protocol be?
No action without meditation?
No action without talking to my sponsor?
No action without prayer, meditation and a call to my sponsor?
I have to say that my sponsor doesn’t have time to be part of my launching protocol on the daily...no one does. Like not even someone retired and content with doing a great deal of nothing. The launches happen over here far too often for any mere mortal to be consulted prior to every test run.
And to be honest, I kind of like the free fall...the springing into action and then flying through space and time with no net, and only limited safety gear...to create some mechanism whereby I had to consult with someone else first would be a set up for all involved. They wouldn’t love it and I really wouldn’t do it. So scrap that idea.
Now the prayer and meditation idea is a good one and one that I do utilize currently. I really do speak to my God and then sit quietly while I await for feedback. But I could do this more often. I tend to think of meditation as something that has to be done on the cushion whereby prayer is something that has free range in my life...perhaps I could expand the meditative process to be more available to me in the moment in the day so I give myself permission to sit down, breathe and just observe myself and the situation without all the thinking and acting and launching.
Well so far, that is all I have. Otherwise I am going to launch every damn time. And this is mostly because I like the effect produced. I like my tendency to launch, I like the sailing through the air, I like the results I get more often than I do not like the results I get...so perhaps all this talk of launch protocols is purely academic. Just another exercise in futility. Another attempt on my part to change who I am and how I show up that really isn’t all that viable because I do not want it to be.
Still there seems like there can be some forward progress...if not a protocol, a checklist? Yeah, that feels unlikely also. I know that I really do seem to love the sudden leap into action, the daring assent and the free fall that comes after...the only thing that I do not really enjoy is when I can’t stick the landing. I have, more than once, found myself splatted all over the side of some human like an egg on the side of a building or edifice. That is totally not my favorite. But the rest of it I do really enjoy, love, perhaps even.
And sitting here in my nice comfortable home as I write this it is easy to assess that those times where I have landed flat or with a thud haven’t really hurt me all that bad. I mean, I am not like Evil Knevil who has broken every bone in her body, thrice. So in the right here and now, I am trying to remember why my tendency to launch is such an issue...
Oh yeah all those hard landings.
I remember now.
Apparently hard landings are just the cost of living to me. And I have been willing to pay them, repeatedly as a life long flinger, launcher and orbiter of beings, causes and ideas.
I do see progress though...there is often a pause in my launching sequence, sometimes momentary, sometimes not so much. But I do have the skill to be fully committed to a launch and then abort...so that feels like progress. Or at least provides me with the delusion of control and progress. The idea that I can now do something differently. No longer is the idea that I shouldn’t launch, only something that comes to me as I am careening through the air. Sometimes I can be in full launch mode, and just abort the whole mission and move on with my life.
And sometimes I still can’t.
Which feels less like progress and more like an indictment. But I guess that is living right? We live, we make progress, then we don’t and then we have to begin again. Always having the opportunity to double back and review that which just transpired from the vantage point of the current future.
And I can tell you that allowing for some grace to be infused with all the launching has given me a better way to live.
Again.
Still.
