Craft of Writing: It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

 Dear Reader,

Life's been hard and complicated due to health reasons for me. It has lead me to doing a new form of journaling that is hard for me. As I have been working very hard on this stuff to try and glue my head together, I am reminded of a military expression that's been thrown around in my family for a long time.

It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

I'm not sure if this came from the Marines in the family or from the Army soldiers. It's one of the things that I try to apply in my life when I have to stop, step back, or otherwise change direction on a project (or pretty much anything else in my life). You're not giving up when you have to change position, you are simply changing position and approaching your problem/enemy from a different front. This little military bit of wit has been a profound source of comfort when things get hard. (Sounds strange, comfort from the military?) I haven't been defeated or failed because I had to change what I was doing. I just had to change and attack from another direction. That direction might be back forty yards from where I was initially standing, but it doesn't mean that I'm not still fighting.

Doing anything as a disabled person can be exhausting. You get a limited amount of energy to do things. The way I try to work around this is scheduling my day extensively. The fairly rigid structure of my day is somedays exactly what I need to carry me through when I'm not doing well. On other days, it is oppressive and it makes things harder. Those days, I back off and try things from a different angle. And on the days that I just can't do things, like when I had migraines for three days in a row last week, I rest secure in the knowledge that hiding behind a shieldwall for a moment to catch your breath doesn't mean that you're out of the fight. It's making a tactical maneuver to reserve your energy for when you can strike.