Category Archives: stress and MS

appreciate the good life, good life, happy life, introspection, isolation, life with MS, MS, MS travel, stress and MS, Uncategorized

A Screwdriver in a World of Nails

Cloudy or not, life's views are often still beautiful.
Cloudy or not, life’s views are often still beautiful.

There is a saying, “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”  That’s a fine saying. For even a screw can pass for a nail, if one is willing and able to put in the extra effort to pound away. But what if one’s only tool is a screw driver?

As I look back on the week, I see many things which turned out well, but seemed so much harder than they should have been.  I find myself more and more having to throw effort and elbow grease at problems until they yield.  The thing is, I am not using a hammer to pound away at screws.  I’m using the handle of a screw driver as if it is a mallet, all the while ignoring the cracks and dents each nail imparts upon the handle.

Have you ever felt like you could solve problems only to find more and more problems for which you are not ideally prepared?  That has been my feeling all week long from having the wrong screws to rebuild a broken swing set to securing a computer at Miami airport only to find it could not load Adobe Connect.  I was able to solve both problems, but each took more time and effort while making me feel foolish for not anticipating the problem until it needed solving immediately.

This whole week has been exhausting and rewarding.  My work published our fourth publication of this cycle.  I went to St. Thomas and met with the Governor, and on the way back, I stopped in Miami airport to use the Ambassador’s club to participate in a webinar for the American Board of Internal Medicine.  To top it all off, I came home to family happy to see me.

I’m tired, but I still feel relevant, less isolated and more importantly, appreciated.  For a guy with a fairly aggressive MS, it reminds me how I should define my luck to appreciate what I still have. It has been a good week to remind me to use other tools as needed, and not to panic if the first tool grabbed does not work.

Not every problem is a screw.

I love talking with data driven politicians. This week, I was lucky enough to spend time with John de Jongh, Jr., the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I love talking with data driven politicians. This week, I was lucky enough to spend time with John de Jongh, Jr., the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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Christmas, expectations, kids' imagination, kids' perspective, life with MS, MS, MS fatigue, stress and MS

Rush of Expectations

The hardest part of the holidays is dealing with the perception of there being more which can be expected.  From the time we are children, we look forward to the holidays.  We expect our family to give a little extra.  No matter how much comes our way on a normal basis, we expect more.  In a lot of ways, I think this is the cruelest part of the holidays, that we should be so set up.

As parents, we try ever harder to come up with the perfect gifts for our kids to preserve their enjoyment and create a base of good memories to associate with time spent with family.  Sometimes, the wishes just become laughably extreme.

“A, how exactly do you expect Santa to get the BMW mini under the tree?”

“Well, you told us the story of Jimmy and Jen wanting horses.”   http://thelifewelllived.net/2011/10/07/positives-from-negatives-and-a-christmas-story-2/

Lest one think this is a problem only for kids, I have to admit I too fall victim to expectations game.  With more time off from work coming, I expect to feel better with more rest.  I should know better.  This is not how the game of life is played.  More time off work is more time in a loud home surrounded by excited happy kids, more time trying to meet expectations of family, more time thinking about deadlines I cannot meet at work, more time spent trying…  While holidays mean more of a lot of things, it is rarely more rest.

The problem comes when I try to live everyday doing as much as I can.  By the time the holidays come, I feel like I should do “more,” but there simply is no more.  If there is a change, there is less not more.  Anyone who has had MS for as long as I should know expectations are a fool’s game.  Still, my wish list for the past few Christmases and birthdays remains the same.  My wish list has remained virtually unchanged for longer than I have had MS.

On the funny “For once, I didn’t do it” list for this Christmas is our Christmas card.  Walmart’s card ordering web page is not very clear when it asks for names of family members in the cards.  So when J ordered the cards, she missed the field.  As a result, we got cards with all the right pictures and words until the names part.  I have no idea who Nick, Tami, Emily and Cole are, but I know the card doesn’t have their pictures on it.  We have 50 that match this post’s image, and we are thinking of sending them to people in an effort to find out just how many of us actually read the Christmas cards.  To Walmart’s credit, they replaced the cards for free with our correct information.  It is nice to see some good customer service.
Chistmas card 2013

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