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The fern trees outside my office have tiny new bright green baby leaves. All around I can see the coming of Spring - I can feel it in the warmer air (although I'll always miss Richmond's soft air in the Spring...it literally feels like feathers brushing your skin. This doesn't happen in climates where it never gets really cold...), smell it in the great big wild rose bushes I pass on my daily work walk. They infuse the whole sidewalk next to their yard with the delicious smell of living flowers - I think I could get drunk on it..., and I can hear it in the birdsong that seems renewed with a brighter tone and quicker pace.
Today's whiteboard quote is:
"True inward quietness, is not vacancy, but stability, the steadfastness of a single purpose."
~Caroline Stephen
And inside me too, there is a new quietness. It's like a germination. And what's growing in me right now are thoughts, and ideas, about something seemingly mundane (my new work), but to me it's so important and needed, even spiritual. I think things always feel like that when they speak to your soul, and this is something I've known I was meant for since I was about 10 years old.
So I'll wait for everything to mature until it's ready to be presented to the world, the same way that nature does. All is quiet, then before you can blink, the world is suddenly full of a riot of colors and other signs of life that seemingly came out of nowhere. But they didn't, they were preparing the whole time.
The first day of Spring is Friday - what will you be doing to feel it within you?
This is my workspace this morning:
Why, thank you, it is amazing, yes I know.
Oh the day that I can get up and dressed and make my morning commute of....downstairs and into the library where my little "reading corner" is set up, and where I took the pains, upon initial move-in, of installing the lovely canopy and pictures, centered just so, because my bedroom ceiling (where the canopy would ordinarily go) is too high.
(that also means it's undustable. And there's popcorn. Blech.)
In other news, I got off work a smidge early yesterday, and wanted to surprise T (who has Fridays off). I clipclopped over to my car and sped out of Pasadena, just to wind up stuck on a gridlocked 101S.
....argh...
(of course there was nothing on the radio traffic updates about it...there was no accident or anything, just too many people on the road. Stupid overpopulation. It's what we get for settling in a land that has no natural water tables (CA). That means everyone has to live close together, really)
But back to the point. I was stuck and I started to feel the red haze creep up from my toes (red haze = road rage). But, I'm also aware that getting spittin' mad does not traffic move, so I thought of a practice that we were given in an Akido presentation at my last school seminar.
you can try this at home, folks!
Two people stand, face to face. One points his/her finger at the other's throat/chest and moves toward them, with the finger leading. This is supposed to simulate an attack, so that should be the focus of the pointer's attention. The pointer moves at a slow walk, and of course stops when the pointed finger is a couple inches away from the other's throat.
Notice how the pointer felt the "attack" went. Notice how the receiver felt.
Take II: The receiver, before the pointer starts to move, takes a couple of deep breaths to center herself/himself. You can close your eyes if you want, but don't think of protection or anything. Just make it so that you are full present, aware, and relaxed. All of you is with you, not thinking about this or that or being pulled in random directions. Center.
Then the pointing and walking is repeated, and you'll (the receiver) will feel protected and not worried about the finger anymore. The pointer may feel something too.
When I did it, I felt the air around my classmate thicken (only toward my finger, the attack "weapon", I guess) when I moved within about a foot of her. It was amazing! Why knows how this works, I won't get into it here - maybe you can just tell by small body language signs (tightness in the face and body, eye contact - oh, one more thing, hold eye contact during the exercise) that they're not afraid of you and it takes some of your mental strength away as you get closer to the point of actual contact. On the other side of the spectrum, maybe you're aware of a strengthening of their electrical/energetic/whatever "aura", once they feel centered. Whatever you believe, it's a cool exercise.
But, back to traffic.
So I was sitting in traffic, and when I started to get angry, I centered. My anger instantly subsided. And not only that, but (you can feel the palpable road range on LA highways) I felt myself a calm island in a sea of annoyance! It was kind of cool, in a freakish way.
As I was inching along, I noticed an archway above the road that I never had before:
You can't see it in the picture, but there is graffiti on the mini pillars below the road there. How did that get there? The guys spray painting would have had to hang upside down. And that's like 5 stories up. Man, what people will do in an effort to be heard....
I'll take blogging, thanks.
So, as far as my prototype weekend goes, it's on track so far! Then again, it IS only 7:39am. There's still a lot of day before me. We'll see...
Happy Weekend!
Tomorrow's Friday.
Woohoo!
I am deliciously unsure of what I'll do this weekend. At the beginning of each weekend I (if I don't have some crazy travel or similar booking planned) plan on using the two empty days as prototypes of what my life will be like on that glorious day when I work from home... I say I'll get up early, get dressed, and start on whatever work I have to do right away (my best brain hours are between 7am and 1pm. After 4:00 my IQ drops by about 45 points...). I say that, after this early businessey type stuff is done, I'll use the early afternoon hours to either go do something fun, or clean the house, or do artwork that's being perpetually worked on (I have a folder of silhouettes to do from January that I should have mailed off long ago), or travel to wherever and do Reiki treatments, that sort of thing. In this perfect world, by 4 or 5pm I'll be done with my daily tasks and can lay back and relax for the rest of the evening with T.
So, that's the goal for this weekend. Perhaps, since I wrote it here and can therefore be rightfully called out if/when I post on Monday that I did what I normally do over the weekend:
-Wake up, think that I should get up and dressed
- Realize that there's a warm and cuddly T next to me
- Go back to sleep (although it's not so easy. I bounce up at 7 or 8, even if I went to bed at 3am. It's infuriating. To me AND those around me...)
- Wake up at 10ish, lazily get breakfast, lie around, read a book, or watch a movie, or talk with T about silly things, and before I know it, it's 4:00pm. IQ's gone.
- Spend the rest of the night laying around (like I would in the perfect day....) but guiltily and will a constant weight on my head because I know that things aren't done that should be...
This goes on for both days, until roughly 6:00pm on Sunday night when I am caught up in my mad scramble to (half-assedly, mind you) do all of the things that I was supposed to do over the course of the abundant weekend free hours....
This just won't do. How will I EVER work from home effectively that way?
So, this weekend is a start! We'll see how it goes....
In other news, my new bamboo crochet hooks arrived yesterday! They're impossibly light and lovely. No sore fingers here! And bamboo gets smoother and nicer over time because of the natural oils in your skin, so it's smooth sailing ahead. And that also gives me more incentive to use them, so they'll get smoother faster. I'm currently working on a hat for my old office mate, Mason. She's a runner now, up in Indiana or somewhere cold. The hat'll have a glow-in-the-dark flower on it. I'm excited.
Alrighty tighty, I'm off to a (hopefully) productive Thursday which (hopefully) won't derail like every other day has so far this week, which means I'll actually do what I set out to do :) Wish me luck!
What are your goals for this weekend?
The fern trees outside my office have tiny new bright green baby leaves. All around I can see the coming of Spring - I can feel it in the warmer air (although I'll always miss Richmond's soft air in the Spring...it literally feels like feathers brushing your skin. This doesn't happen in climates where it never gets really cold...), smell it in the great big wild rose bushes I pass on my daily work walk. They infuse the whole sidewalk next to their yard with the delicious smell of living flowers - I think I could get drunk on it..., and I can hear it in the birdsong that seems renewed with a brighter tone and quicker pace.
