How do you become a master of change?

The end of fire season staring me in the face, how do I avoid panic? I look through quotations on change. None of them seem to help.

Life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it. Boris Pasternak

Everything flows. Nothing stays the same. Heraclitus 

As true as these things are, i still find it hard to roll with the punches, even with changing habitats at least two hundred times in my life.

My family moved 32 times by the time I had left high school. This included California (many times), Montana, Washington, Indiana, Utah, Wyoming, and finally Germany. So, i should be used to it. alas, moving with my family not the same as being on my own. now, the lookout job accounts for 114 moves, back and forth every year. and my determination never to buy a house has kept me searching every winter.

my passion for theater took me to new york city several times. with the help of friends i found places to stay and classes to take. memories of europe pulled me off the lookout for two years. i lived in greece, germany, and england, pursuing art and literature. (and girlfriends - yes, they led me a merry chase). for some reason i never questioned my ability to cope.

i started using chico, california as my base in 1981, making good friends and taking university classes, plus taking millions of photographs: dance, theater, the community. at certain times i did travel: bali, india, adventures with my friend berta: five months in europe, time in central america, sri lanka, thailand. her death really deprived me of a good friend and a great travel companion. i did make a trip to japan with my friend marilyn and one last gasp in europe: amsterdam and paris.

911 put away any desires i had to travel for 16 years. finally, several years ago, the urge, even necessity for change, took me twice to australia and twice to mexico. it took me awhile to get into the rhythm of it. my first days in australia i felt afraid and depressed, not finding solace in youth hostels and museums. eventually i did get going and after a month i felt more confident and full of vivid and creative culture. i spoke the language and had some great conversations.

there's  the key: people.  my mother said once i played so much alone she never thought i'd have any friends, plesantly surprised when i did. despite so many years on the lookout, i've rarely felt lonely, only in the first days when i felt horny, and then i couldn't wait for the season to end. unfortunately, the covid scare has changed things. i can't have visitors in the lookout. for 20 years i spent my days off house-sitting in chico while a friend spent the summer at her house in france. these days she doesn't want to get on an airplane.

many countries won't allow americans into them. i can go back to mexico city, and am looking forward to it once the museums open. i have missed friends a lot, and i think that accounts for the depression coming and going all summer. alas, i need people and conversations. though i'm frequently seen as a loner, especially by fellow forest service employees. now i want to take a swing east, visiting friends and family in nashville, atlanta, south carolina, maryland, washington, dc, new york, and finally for some warm weather, florida. please wish me well!

Any virus calls the body into question

i resist at the facts about my body. they're too astounding. i lose all sense of control. 

      my veins are a 60,000miles long

      my blood travels 60,000 miles a day

      my blood travels through it three times minute

       my stomach lining replaced every seven days

       my eyes focus 100,000 times a day

all this goes on while i'm trying to cook dinner or solve a math problem. i have absolutely no awareness of what's happening. my body is on automatic pilot.

for someone like me who likes to be in control, this is a disaster! i feel terribly vulnerable, not just to illness but to fate. every move i make could disrupt the system. what if i accidently poison my blood?

     platelets created in my blood: 200 billion a day

i can't even grasp that. or 

     15 million blood cells destroyed every second

     2.5 million created every second

hmm, how is that disproportion solved?

some are more fun, like those of sleep. supposedly i think more in my sleep and am smarter. my body paralyzed while i'm in deep sleep. and i am to have erections every hour and a half during the night, even though i don't know it. what a shame, since a prostate operation destroyed that ability. it would be nice to be aware of them. if i were intelligent,  i would have more dreams. and my body is 98% replaced every year, which gives me hope of improvement.

unfortunately it seems to be working the other way. my brain 80% water and getting milkier, even though it's the most powerful computer, 3000 Ghz, even if it stops growing at 18. and the body can function without a brain, very evident in politics. and it's claimed it can have more ideas than atoms in the universe. if that is the case, no wonder i'm driven crazy by thinking and get very confused by all the contradictory things it invents. paradox and ambiguity seem to be my natural mode. 

given all this, with my skin shedding 600,000 particles an hour and it replacing itself every 27 days, my stomach acid able to dissolve razor blades, and my heart beating 100,000 times a day, holding myself together in the midst of the ordinary, not to mention a crisis, is no small task. yes, mindfulness is not all it's cracked up to be. as the chinese saying goes, you are blessed if you have a bad memory.