On Feeding the Creative Soul

Not sure what I will write about.  All I know is that after being back to work a week, my soul misses waking up and spending the first few hours meditating, thinking, reading and writing.  Even now, on my second day off I feel the call of responsibility - bills, grocery shopping, ironing, vacuuming, brushing the clumps of hair calling to me off of my dog's back and hind quarters, filing, culling through closets and cabinets and drawers in preparation for moving next spring, setting up the external hard drive for backups, retrieving files from the now dysfunctional  laptop's backed up drive and installing them onto the desktop and how about getting reimbursed from the flexx spending account?  When was the last time I balanced my checkbook?  On and on and on.

Meanwhile, it is probably the last week of eighty and sunny.  How much more would I prefer to be hiking in the Olympics?  Let's not go there.  All of these responsibilities seem so much more agreeable when I have my thinking and writing time.  What must I do to feed this need in the midst of real life?  I haven't the answer yet.  What I do know, is that this is a need.

Hey, this Imagine Dragons CD  I downloaded last night is hitting the spot.  Just another day in the life.  In this, too, there is something to be learned.  It's just another wave under the paddleboard.  Sigh.  Though it's not the amount of time I'd like to have spent writing, the 17 minutes it took to write this is enough for now.  It is a rough draft of perhaps something that will become something more in time, in time.  I am grateful to be in a place where I can recognized a need and honor myself enough to carve out 20 minutes to feed it.

On myself

Whenever I am finding fault in another,  I must turn it back onto me.  If I find your behavior disrespectful towards me,  then I must reflect on how I disrespect myself in the relationship.  When I am tempted to nag my son about going to bed earlier so that he has less difficulty getting up for school in the morning,  I must look at myself.  Am I not guilty of the same offense?  How much more fruitful would my efforts be if they were exerted on my own behalf. Just for today,  let it begin with me.

On Excursions

Why must I go into the world,  together or alone, to BBQs, go sailing or watch passersbyes small or grown?

Perhaps a conversation starts,  or maybe I'll blend with the wall.  Neither of which matters,  it's all ingredient from whose mixture something evolves.

Sometimes hours pass,  sometimes a day or more, but I always get a feeling when the ingredients will become something more. 

Like the nauseated is to a commode,  I am drawn to paper and pen.  As a lady in labor must push,  so I must expel that which is within.

On paddleboarding

Yesterday was a beautiful end of summer day. I had waited around in the hope that my son would decide that he finally did want to go do something summerlike with me or even just go get a haircut. At 3:30 I could wait longer. I went paddleboarding.

Log boom Park sits at the northern tip of Lake Washington. The water there is fairly protected so it remains calm even with the passing speed boats and occasional jet ski. The conditions were great for paddleboarding and afforded me an opportunity to be with myself and observe my thinking.

I recently heard that the ego does not exist in the present. It only exists when we are reliving the past or worrying about the future. It came to my attention while paddleboarding that I was spending and awful lot of time thinking about the past, which means I was spending a lot of time identifying with ego. So I positioned my boat upwind of the landing and floated. I placed the life vest under my head and relaxed into the board with one goal - to be here now.

I closed my eyes and paid attention. What I noticed was a wave coming on the right side of my board and exiting on the left, coming on the right and exiting left, coming on the right, exiting left, while I floated effortlessly above.

Like the waves, situations, people, thoughts and feelings enter our lives and like the waves, so will they go. I am as powerless to prevent this as I am the coming and going of the next wave. What I can do, is try to place my board in a favorable position, then lay back and experience the now.