Normally I am not someone who likes anything that goes slowly. My wheelchair is always cranked to the highest speed. I expect my internet connection to be lightning fast. I am thrilled when the elevator doors open right when I push the button. And I am usually fervently praying that the person in front of me walk faster.

It's not so much the speed that I'm so obsessed with, it's efficiency. I like when there is progress and no hindrance to my goals, or tasks that I need/want to complete. Don't worry, I fully realize what a maniac this makes me sound like. I have come to mostly embrace my maniacal insane goal-driven-ness; my friends openly tease me about this all the time! "Sandy would it really throw your whole day off if I changed your color-coordinated to-do lists?" (For your information, yes it would.. a lot). But more importantly I have also come to realize the downfall this can have on my interactions with others, or even in just simpler day-to-day activities. The reality of life is that things do not move and progress at 'Sandy-speed' (and maybe that's a good thing!) - things happen at the speed of.. well, life.

Finding the point at which my expectations and real-life happenings mesh can sometimes be frustrating, but I have learned a lot about compromises - thanks, or no thanks to having a disability.

Take for instance when I am having a 'slow day.' These days they rarely happen and if they do they usually don't last the whole day. But a slow day is when I wake-up with one of those aches. These are the aches that feel as if that aching bone is going to give way and become my next fracture. These are the slow days when it feels like I am sitting on egg shells all day long; constantly in the back of my head I am thinking: is it going to break if I do this? Is this the moment when everything goes haywire today? 
I'm sure many of my readers know what a day like this means. Whether you want to call it a 'slow day' or a day of 'less activity,' or a day spent in a wheelchair - in my mind all of that translates into: compromise galore! Compromise doesn't mean that I still can't get the same things done that I set out to do, but it may mean that I ask for more help in getting them done, or that I take a bit longer to complete tasks. What it doesn't mean is that I get nothing done at all. 

It's days like those where I have to remind myself of my own reality. And this is when the trouble begins: I don't always like owning up to the reality of my 'situation.' The idea that I sometimes have to slow down because things hurt is totally disappointing to me. That's an idea that I don't want to accept, am terrified of having it suddenly 'define' me - even if it's only for a day. And it's an idea that I don't want to have anywhere nearby! Often I would rather ignore the facts and continue to plow through my day as usual, and of course the consequences of this can be quite painful.
And that's just it, isn't it? There are consequences when we don't accept ourselves, particularly the parts that we loathe to own up to. I haven't figured out how to do this (in a way that's as painless as possible with ego-still-intact) yet, but when I do you'll be among the first to know! I have high hopes for myself though - hopefully someday I'll learn how to get the entire ensemble to play at the every wave of my baton. (Hey a girl can dream okay?) In the mean time though.... outta my way I got places to be and things to do, HAPPY MONDAY!