Feeling A Little More Normal

Just the act of walking Johnnie to school this morning and then heading off to work made things feel a little more normal today. Taking that pic of Johnnie on his favorite tree root makes things feel ok again. At least Johnnie is back to normal I think. And when I walked back to my car I reflected on yesterday. I was gifted a fully-paid day off where I can experience yet again how it feels to have a day where I can do what I wanted without nary a care in the world except to be with my son and hanging out together. Now I can create that same feeling of that day EVERY DAY of not having to go to work to a job anymore. I've got all the money I need to sustain my current lifestyle and then some. I can once and for all line up all the lessons I need to learn and then embark on the path I can as a healer without having to worry about money because I'm already fully taken care of. And then I can have the biggest smile on my face just like Johnnie has on the pic. However, current reality also demands that I make it to work today and today is also the monthly Communications Meeting after lunch. And I'm supposed to present something. I had nothing prepared. But I didn't have anything to worry about. In fact, I ended up simply recycling my Tech Council presentation and massaged it into my Communications presentation. It took all of 15 minutes to do that. I was done before it was even time for lunch. As far as the meeting itself, it was kind of same old same old. I think it's pretty good that we all sit around talk about what every department is doing. That by itself is good from a team building point of view. But as far as the actual content, it wasn't really all that interesting. Yes we keep looking at the performance of the clinics. But really can they be prodded to do any better? If they could, wouldn't we have already? Isn't everything still a matter of getting clinicians and providers in to see patients? We don't have a problem getting patients. We have a problem seeing those we have. Same old issues from years ago. It does appear as if we're doing well as a company though, except that we seem to keep missing those blasted visit goals and hence keep missing those financial targets. In my world, I'm just glad I haven't been blasted ever since that faux pas I did a week ago that manifested us having downtime simply because I had mentioned jokingly and in passing that IS is the villain. And so I spoke it into existence without ever having a need to do that except to get attention. And today I did it again. I mentioned jokingly and in passing that we had a 10-year retention period of all the files in O365. And I said I'd be long gone before that. I'd meant that I'd be retired of course. I hope THAT doesn't cause negative repercussions. I mean with regards to speaking something into existence. I'm going to need to get better at being aware of my thoughts and words. Anyway the meeting came and went uneventfully otherwise and before I knew it I was headed home to pick up Johnnie. It's Panda Express night after all. I remember taking a picture of him running to me 2 years ago at Carmen's Daycare. One of my favorite pictures. He still does that today when he sees me. He's bigger now obviously but it's still the best feeling when he sees me and hugs me and chirps out "Dad!" "Dad!" As it was we did go to Panda Express and he ate most of his chicken actually! It virtually guaranteed that he would be drowsy in the backseat on the drive home. And he was out before we even got to Sepulveda. Oh well, at least it gave me some time to do some errands. As in go to the ATM and get some cash. As in get my steps in. I started at 4000. By 7 PM I had gone all the way to 10600, leaving a little for when Johnnie woke up. that's 3 miles I did simply walking around the perimeter of my apartment, not even venturing outside. I did a lot IN the apartment actually as well. And so when I woke Johnnie up at 7:45 with some dinosaur videos playing on the TV, he didn't resist much. And he did get to watch about an hour's worth of videos until it was time for his shower again. AND got to play with his dinosaurs. You know he's himself when he does his little dinosaur arrangements and vignettes all over the living room floor, like he was doing a movie shoot or something. I thought about letting him sleep through but I figured it would be better not to risk him waking up in the middle of the night and then waking ME up. After all, I have finally caught up on some good sleep the last couple of nights. I'm not going to lie, you still can't escape the Kobe tragedy, whether it's getting on the Internet, YouTube, TV. His reach has turned out to be really massive. His influence, far greater than probably HE himself would have imagined. Anyway I do know that for all grief, for all wounds, for all sadness, all we have, all we really need is TIME. For me specifically, I'm going to continue to be Johnnie's dad which is the best job I could ever want. I go to sleep tonight knowing that today we had a good day. And that is all I can ask.