Day 850: Drowning in the sea of ____.

Because I never learned how to swim, perhaps it’s easy for me to feel like I’m drowning in seas, sometimes.

Because, in four days,  I’m having surgery — which could prevent my very unusual heart from drowning in the sea of heart failure  — I could be drowning, now, in the sea of:

• anxiety,
• fear,
• worry, and
• other uncomfortable feelings.

However, I am staying bouyant, well enough, to notice the many different  seas all around me.

Here’s the sea of music I was pleasantly drowning in yesterday morning:

As I was drowning happily in the musical sea of Donald Fagen, Boz Scaggs, and the rest of the New York Rock and Soul Review‘s “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” I drowned in the sea of …

… hot dog rolls, near Fenway Park, and

… trees, in the Longwood Medical area of Boston, Massachusetts.

Then, I did a therapy group at work, where people talked about drowning in the seas of

• financial worries,
• medical problems,
• confusion,
• isolation,
• troubled minds,
• judgmental people,
• self-doubt,
• guilt,
• shame, and
• other overwhelming problems.

However, the mutual support of the group kept everybody afloat for a good while.

Later that day, I was drowning in the sea of Starbucks

  

where I said goodbye to the wonderful barrista, Erin.

Mosham

— who also works at Starbucks and who was trying not to drown  in the sea of beverage orders — helped me not drown in the sea of sadness about Erin’s leaving by giving me this:

It’s a new chocolate cookie straw at Starbucks, which was soon

drowning in the sea of chai tea misto, in my office.

Those flyers —  on my desk, next to the tea misto —  are for a Group Therapy Conference in June, where I’ll be drowning in the sea of other group therapists and amazing learning.  I will be giving a workshop there on June 6 about my therapy groups, so I hope I won’t be drowning in the sea of  presentation jitters.

Yesterday, I was also drowning in the sea of

      

construction work,

cups,

cupcakes, and

pet supplies.

Don’t these guinea pigs

look like they’re drowning in a sea of colored paper?

Here’s to everybody staying above water for another day!

I am drowning in the sea of gratitude for everything I witnessed yesterday and for you — of course! — for drowning in the sea of this blog post, here and now.