Is there more to life than this?

I work at the Nursing Home on a Monday and Tuesday evening. As I sat down to feed a resident on Tuesday night, a resident I had fed the night before, I thought to myself, "Here we go again, feeding the same person in the same bed the same vitamised meal. Is this what life's about?" I was thinking from my own perspective, but then I managed to remove myself momentarily from the centre of my own universe to think about it from the resident's perspective. She lies in the same bed, day in, day out, unable to communicate, having people do everything for her, including encouraging her to swallow. Is this what life's about for her? Does she have a different sort of life in her own mind that we are totally unaware of? Hhmmm....the thinking got all a bit too hard. Maybe that's why staff don't do very much thinking here, the job just gets all too hard if you think too much.
Sad.

More of Habit

Today I was talking with a couple of workmates - at work, but not about work! One of them, A, has recently had her relatively new partner move into her house with her so we were talking about how that is going. The other, G, then said to me, "So now we need to set you up with a man". "He's already got one!" says A. G then squealed "oohhh tell me, who, who?" My reflex response was to shhhsh her. I regretted that. It came across that I was wanting to keep it a secret, which isn't true, as many people at work know - I just pick and choose who I talk to about my personal life, as I'm sure we all do to varying degrees.
Again my response was one of habit. Whilst I was disappointed that that was how I reacted, at least I was aware of it pretty quickly, which is the beginning of changing habits that we want to change.

Habit

As I have eluded to before I am currently enjoying the company of a special gentleman. Over recent weeks and months we have been doing the meeting of the families, which has all gone well, despite some anxiety on my part. The most anxiety producing meeting for me was that of my ex wife, which occurred last night.

As I was thinking about this anxiety during the week I realised it was different to normal. It was more in the head than in the gut, more of an intellectual anxiety. I used to compartmentalise my life a lot more than I do now and so used to get anxious at various compartments mixing. What was happening for me in these events was that I had two compartments mixing and so my natural response of habit was to get anxious. To a large degree however, that’s all it was, anxiety of habit, not the real gut churning anxiety. So it wasn’t real anxiety that had an effect on me.

That was a little light bulb experience, to realise how I’ve changed over the years.

Part of my lack of anxiety was also an indication of how comfortable and ‘right’ it feels to have this man in my life.

Oh and last night went off very well.