A watermelon, from my garden!

1. Truth: I’m back at work at CSU. *sigh* Students are moving into the dorms today and tomorrow, but classes don’t start until Monday, so it’s still relatively quiet — unless you count the construction on the new stadium and elsewhere. I am always amazed in the first days back how tired I get working. My days are full up just taking care of the regular stuff — meditating, writing, blogging, walking and training the dogs, doing my physical therapy, going to the gym or yoga, doing laundry, paying bills, making and going to various appointments to care for my body or car, grocery shopping and cooking, cleaning and maintaining the house, tending the garden, cultivating a marriage, etc.  Add eight hours of intensiveness mental, creative, social work to that, and by the end of the day all I want to do is eat dinner and go straight to bed.

2. Truth: It doesn’t help that I take on extra things. This semester, I have a Wild Writing class, am getting certified as a meditation instructor through the Open Heart Project, am doing a Canine Parkour class with Ringo, got a trainer for both Sam and Ringo to come and do private sessions at our house and am doing lots of extra work with them in general, am subbing some yoga classes, got the crazy idea that I could do a Wild Writing, Crazy Wisdom class at my house once a month with a smaller group of women, am the officiant of a wedding next month, and want to start running and weight training again now that my foot is better.  And I need to paint our house and have a couple of smaller trees in the backyard taken out and hopefully plant a new tree before it gets too cold. *sigh*

3. Truth: Maybe rather than trying to refine my effort, I should consider surrender. There’s a calm, a confidence I generate during the summer, a certainty about what needs done and what can wait, about who I am and what matters to me and what I want, a general and overall well-being that is so clear and easy — and somehow begins to erode as the semester wears on. Instead of feeling bad about that, I’m going to get curious about it. I’m going to lower the bar. I’m going to ask for help. I’m going to eat and rest and exercise even if it means other things don’t get done.

One wish: No matter our circumstances or particular struggles, may we relax with what is, not forget ourselves, not give up, and most importantly maintain our sense of humor.

From our walk this morning

1. Truth: It’s good to be home. I was sitting on my meditation cushion this morning while Eric and the dogs lounged on the couches in the other room, with John Jay & Rich on the radio in the background and the whole house fan pulling fresh cool air in from outside where a warm wind was blowing and the birds where singing, and it washed over me, “I’m so glad to be home.”

2. Truth: It’s hard to let go of some things. I’ve had the urge to purge ever since we got back from vacation, and yesterday I tackled a small built-in bookshelf in our living room where we keep DVDs, CDs, old VHS tapes, and apparently remotes to things we don’t even own anymore. I dusted and got rid of two shelves worth of things. It was hard to let go of some of them. For example, even though I know I can access just about any music I want online and only one of our cars has a CD player, it’s still hard to get rid of the CDs I’ve been collecting for so many years. As I looked through them, there were bands I’d forgotten about, that I loved, still love — K’s Choice, Everything But the Girl, Luther Vandross, LTD, Donna Summer, Go West, and so many more. Last year for Christmas, Eric burned almost all of those CDs onto one of our computers so I’d have copies of everything without needing to keep the actual hard copy, but I hadn’t been able to get rid of them yet. Yesterday, I did, along with a bunch of stuff that hadn’t made it back into our linen closet yet after having redone our bathroom.

3. Truth: Even though letting go is hard, I usually feel better once I do. I feel so much lighter, clearer, more peaceful without all that extra shit lying around gathering dust and making me feel bad. If I really don’t need it, letting it go makes room for something else, even if that something else is simply space. And if I lose a memory because I no longer have a thing to remind me, I supposed I have to be okay with that too.

One wish: May we all have a space to go home to, that feels comfortable and safe, that contains the things most precious to us, and may we let go of everything else with ease.