Driving My Bus

I've been sitting here for 5 minutes or so, staring at the blank screen of the post editor and watching the cursor blink on and off. Something is nagging at the back of my mind and I had planned on getting it out in the open, but the more I think about it the more I realize I'm flirting with disaster if I do so.

It involves clients and suspected prescription drug abuse. These clients are very internet savvy and if I say too much and they recognize themselves I am violating HIPAA laws which could result in serious fines and the possibility of jail time for me. If other family members, who know I blog, ever stumble across my opinions regarding that situation, there will be major trouble. Sometimes it's just best to keep what I think to myself.

Lately I'm disgusted with politics and the always present keyboard activists who seem to want to fight with everyone at the first inkling their words are not agreed with 100%. This my-way-or-the-highway attitude is getting on my next to the last nerve. The only way to move our country forward is through compromise which will hopefully include the best ideas of both parties. What we have instead is a House Speaker who says that it isn't the duty of Congress to make laws, their duty resides in the repealing of laws. I'm surprised my jaw didn't break when it hit the floor.

I attended a symposium conducted by an acquaintance of mine. She's a licensed psychologist who doesn't agree with the tendency to blame our parents for all the things that are wrong in our lives. She's quite firm on taking responsibility to be a better person and to stop using our past or outside influences to be intentionally destructive in our future. She asked all of us in the beginning of her talk "Who drives your bus?" She then went on to ask if our bus is driven by our TV/computer habits. Do we pay too much attention to the things our neighbors have rather than to the things we have that fit within our individual budgets?

She's trying to address the issue of our increased use of drugs to cope with life or to sleep at night. She said that there are valid chemical imbalances that create the need for these drugs in some people, but many of us fail to accept that we aren't entitled to be happy every minute of the day so we insist on treatment for things that would pass on their own. Some depressions are temporary. Unfortunately we perpetuate those temporary depressions by treating them with one addicting drug or another.

She made me realize that I had been allowing politics and the fear of what's going to happen to Social Security and Medicare to drive my bus. I got a little bit lucky when we flooded here and I did volunteer work which gave me space to forget the fear by replacing it with activity. It was a reminder to me that while the idiots in Congress and their online cheering squad begin to bother me, I can unplug and go do something positive.