20190814.0430

I often run into a difficulty when I try to work at home, as I am doing as I write this. The difficulty is distraction. When I am at work, I can focus on work; when I am away and working, I can focus on work. When I am at home, however, I cannot focus on work, even when I really ought to be doing so. Ms. 8 will come in with something that needs my attention or just to say she loves me, and I cannot refuse her that, or the dog will need to be let out or in, or there will be a sudden need for me to get up and saturate a new nest of yellow jackets with chemicals that will kill the little fuckers and dissuade others from coming in to take their place. I will respond to the concern of home--because home is home and comes first--and lose the thread of work that I had meant to do, that might have actually helped if I had been able to do it, and I am rarely able to find it again among the tangled skeins.
I am glad, of course, that Ms. 8 comes to me to have me in her life, and I do not dare let the dog linger too long unattended; poor as the state of my carpet is, I have no desire to let it be made worse. And the fucking yellow jackets do need to die--how do they build so large a nest in so short a time? I am glad to be in the position of trust and love and honor I hold in my home, and I work to be worthy of it daily; I do not trust that I am or remain so, ever. I dare not, lest I become complacent and deserve to lose what I have. But I am aware that doing what I need to do to be worthy of love sometimes conflicts with other things I need to do to be worthy of love, and I confess that I sometimes grow aggravated by the tension between the two.
I strive to balance the many needs I must fulfill, and it is right that I do so. I know that others do more with less, and that I am not so mighty a person to do so little well as I do with as much as I have been given. I know, I know, I know, and the knowledge brings neither comfort nor clarity; however much I know, I do not know the thing that I really need to know: how to be enough. I do know that I never have been so, am not now, and am not likely to be enough to meet the needs of the moments in which I am. I know I am fortunate that that matters less to some whom I love than it perhaps ought. I know I am not worthy of the love I am shown by them.
I do not deserve what I have.