Archives for the month of: September, 2018

I am relaxing over one final coffee for today. (More after this time of day reliably disturbs my sleep later on, so, generally, noon is my cut off for coffee unless I am planning to “make a night of it” for some event or activity.) I am feeling content and thoughtful.

I took my first Qigong class today. The main focus was on some basics: “four count breathing”, “horse stance”, and a very slow walking meditation. It was fun, comfortable, challenging without being frustrating, and “harder than it looks” to do quite correctly – which means room to grow and push myself. 🙂 It seems a good fit for my needs, generally. I’m pretty eager to make it a practice; that was sort of the entire point of undertaking today’s exploratory lesson, at all. 🙂

How is it I’m feeling sleepy? lol I also feel, generally, pretty well-rested.

Change is work. Sometimes it’s physical labor, sometimes just cognitive effort, but regardless; changing requires some verbs, and verbs require effort, and effort amounts to work. 🙂 We become what we practice, whether by force of will or happenstance. Each time I’ve undertaken some specific change, and followed through on my intentions with actual effort and commitment, doing so has changed me. We become what we practice. Our practices change our thinking, as well as our physical selves.

Where will your path take you?

I hear from my Traveling Partner, off somewhere or another, doing his thing, living his life, enjoying the day. I smile when I think about him. It’s a sunny day at the end of summer, neither hot nor cold, with a soft breeze that touches my skin quite gently. A good day for leisure, for contemplation, for gardening, for housekeeping, for errands, for exercise, for hiking, for napping… just generally a pleasant day. I finish off my coffee with an enthusiastic commitment to enjoy it fully.

…And now? Why, yet another beginning, most likely. I could begin laundry, or begin the dishwasher’s wash cycle, or begin tidying up the container garden for autumn, or begin studying a new language, or begin reading a new book, or begin work on a new canvas. I could also use this moment to resume something – a new beginning on existing endeavors is still a new beginning. There’s pretty nearly always some convenient way to step forward into a new moment, energized, renewed, and ready to move on with things, generally. This seems the sort of moment for it…

My coffee is finished. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

I don’t honestly feel at all like sleeping on the ground, or dealing with overnight chill, or having to use vault toilets or a hole in the ground… or… any of the things that go along with camping, really. Not this weekend. I do, however, very much feel like hiking a few miles alone with my thoughts. 🙂 It’s nice having the car. It’s nicer that it is my own, and of the sort far more appropriate to trail heads and rougher roads than the luxury sedan I’d been driving. (None of that diminishes my gratitude for having the use of my partner’s car for a year; I needed it, he was right.) The weekend is my own, and I’ll go where I please, travel the roads I like, and find the miles that suit me most to wander.

I sip my coffee and consider my rather lengthy list of hikes I’d like to take. I decide I’d rather not drive more than an hour this morning, having slept a bit later than I expected to, and also wanting to go to the Farmer’s Market this morning. My smile becomes a grin contemplating the luxury of being able, if I chose, to also just get in the car and drive down to my Traveling Partner’s location, and visit him there. Any time. There is nothing to stop me doing so, and no one to whom I must answer. That feels amazing. I sit with the feeling and the awareness awhile longer; I haven’t always truly had the freedom to be accountable primarily to myself, only, and it’s an intoxicating level of adult freedom.

This is a weekend of choices. One of those is that I chose to invest in my longer-term emotional and physical wellness by making this particular weekend mostly about self-care, also. Yesterday was spent advocating for important social issues as a citizen, and getting ample rest as a human being. Today? Today I want to get out into the trees, put some miles behind me, take some pictures, find some solitude and relief from the din and background noise of the world. Tomorrow, too. Even Monday (after my first Qigong class, fairly early in the morning). Something about the car I’d been driving was keeping me from hiking in some subtle way. (I think perhaps my reluctance to leave a largish luxury car parked at a trailhead and at risk of break-ins, when it wasn’t even my own car, was a bit of baggage I didn’t manage well.) The Mazda fairly begs to be left-along-the-side-of-the-road-back-soon-I-promise at every trail head I spot on every drive I take. lol I literally want to just park it, however abruptly, hop out and walk down each unexpected mystery trail just to see where they lead. 😀 This bodes well for future fitness, and I’m not inclined to fight it – I just want to get out there, and explore the world on foot, with a significant lack of human companionship.

New beginnings aren’t just an assortment of lovely sunrises, or yet another work shift, or one more morning waking from one more night of sleep; there are opportunities here for growth, change, and transcendence. These are chances to work through past pain, to set down more baggage and walk on – both metaphorically, and for real. What was yesterday about? Can I do better today? What choices does that take? How does this particular morning hold the potential to see me become more the person I most want to be at the end of this particular day? It’s a process filled with verbs, and my results vary. Still, I get as many chances to begin again as there are sunrises – or moments. There are choices involved.

I’m ready. It’s time to grab a map. 🙂