Somehow survived my second day back at work after my vacation – but I seem to have picked up a stomach bug. No matter – tomorrow is a telecommuting day and the weather is looking amazingly good. Or at least warm. Dare we think that spring may finally have arrived? One can only hope.

While driving home today, with my usual assortment of story ideas, blog post ideas, song lyrics, and frustration with/amazement at those that find it necessary to use the left lane of the interstate as a relatively slow cruising lane during rush hour (special note to the drivers of the 2 minivans from neighboring states that seemed oblivious to the stream of cars passing you on the right, and to the small white car that cut me off while exiting the Thruway & again while coming out of the tolls – I sincerely hope you all reached your destinations without anyone succumbing to the desire to damage your cars), and wondering again why there seem to be so many truly bizarre laws making their way through state legislatures (more on that on Sunday – probably too much more), I found myself pondering another Camus quote that I came across while I was on vacation:

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

It’s true – it takes an incredible amount of energy to be normal. Between that and the amount of energy that being around people sucks out of me, it’s a wonder I get out of bed in the morning…

But in all seriousness, it really is hard to make yourself fit in when you don’t quite manage it without work. And that’s okay – I wouldn’t be me if I were normal. Whatever ‘normal’ is. I’ve always told my kids that it was really fine to be abnormal, since abnormal is merely ‘departed from the norm’, and ‘normal’ is a relative concept. And is anyone truly ‘normal’?

And that got me thinking about mental health in general, the specific rate of occurrence of behaviors resembling mental health issues in individuals with very high IQ scores and the actual rate of mental illness in geniuses. And then I wondered whether being female, and motherhood specifically were enough of a basis for this month’s compassion blog post, which is meant to be focused on nurturing. And how does nature versus nurture versus basic brain chemistry come into play in how we relate to each other. And then fortunately I got distracted by the wonderful Queen/David Bowie song “Under Pressure”:

“‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure”

Which somehow fit quite nicely…