Recalibrating

The most difficult part of aging for me is that I don’t know what I can’t do till I can’t do it. I’ve been having more frequent and more intense migraines. Fatigue. Troubled sleep. Awake till 1 or 2 a.m. Awake after a couple of hours, thinking, thinking. Being on the Board of Sisters of the Road has left me with ethical conflicts I try to resolve as I stare at the bedroom ceiling at 4, 5, 6 a.m. 

Is buying and renovating a former restaurant, asking donors for a few million dollars to spend on inspectors, architects, builders, and contractors the best possible way to effect systemic change and relieve the suffering of houseless people? How much should the (housed, educated) staff be paid while building the new place? What level of health insurance should the organization buy for the staff?

Yesterday I resigned from the Board. I said I can be their photographer, but not a Board member. This afternoon I walked city sidewalks, breathing in sunlight, exhaling the torment I brought on myself by trying to be a decision-maker these past three months and two weeks. Not my role in the world. Not now. I could frame this as a failure, but the relief I feel in letting go says it was the right thing to do.

Steve Kanji Ruhl, in the book LaurieT gave me, writes:

Ravens. Faint shower
on carp pool, on waterfall.
Nothing more to say.