This morning I am enjoying my coffee with cream and sugar, a rare treat. I am relaxing contentedly in this safe quiet place and making room in my heart to wish the world well.

Just morning coffee and a quiet moment.

I listen to the sound of the last freight train to pull past the commuter platform, some distance away on the other side of the park. The track is shared during business hours. The freight trains are much louder. The sound doesn’t trouble me; it is somehow a sound of ‘home’. 

I listen to the rain tapping on my roof, my flue cover, and the windows, and feel the luxury of bare feet, tickled by clean new carpet, before pulling my legs up to sit cross legged on the love seat. I hear the aquarium trickling gently, and watch the fish swim calmly. They drift seemingly without effort, adding to the calm of this lovely morning.

I started this comfortable pleasant morning with a voicemail from my traveling partner; tender loving words are an excellent start to the day. I will, if I am properly adult, finish this one with laundry.  There’s really nothing extraordinary about this morning or this day… It is one of many, worthy of savoring, lingering over the best bits, and wholly enjoying, awake and aware.

It doesn’t require so many words to enjoy a lovely morning, it’s the sharing for which language was built, and continues to thrive… Sharing completed, it’s my choice to invest entirely in having the experience of this lovely morning, and leave you to invest in yours. I hope you have also chosen to have quite a lovely morning…even if there are some verbs involved.

With our choices we change the world.

Back to work today; adult choices about quality of life don’t pay for themselves. 🙂

I sip my coffee and consider one ‘wrong note’ in life’s song in a very long while. A moment of utter rudeness that itself stemmed from my impulse control issues, and quickly deteriorated into a difficult to manage experience, in part due to simply feeling ashamed of my own rudeness. It was a common enough thing, but also one I strongly object to in my associations, and endeavor always to avoid – I allowed myself to be distracted from a flesh and blood live human by a text message from elsewhere. Poor form. Disrespectful. Inconsiderate. Yeah, just frankly inexcusably rude.  It’s also incredibly rare for me to do that. I did though, and it’s still on my mind, not because it occurred, nor even how I handled acknowledging my error, or the immediate apology – which seemed immediate to me only because it was what I did first after completing my reply to the text message from work. It was not truly timely. It’s on my mind this morning as a reminder of an entirely other sort.

I find living with other people very challenging. I enjoyed my rare week living with my traveling partner, and spent the move feeling fairly self-congratulatory that it was so easy. We treated each other very well, and mindfully so on this whole other level than typical day to day living is so often spent. He was hurting, I was offering a haven, and a listening heart. It was an extended period of heightened acceptance and intimacy, and although an indication of profound progress… I live best alone, at least for now.

Yesterday, my rudeness in a very ordinary 21st century moment was a very abrupt wake up call, and reminder that I have chosen this day to day comfort and contentment to heal myself. It hurts some to acknowledge that I am not ‘there’ yet, however far I have come. Still, how sweet to make the discovery in a moment of simple rudeness, instead of something much worse?

This morning I sip my coffee profoundly grateful to begin again, so many times, to experience so much and gain such broad perspective, to love and be loved flaws and all, while also enjoying the luxury of minimizing the collateral damage to the heart and spirit of the ones dearest to me, by living alone while I sort myself out and find my way.

Whatever the writing utensil, the words matter, particularly the verbs.

Today is a good day to be my own cartographer. Today is a good day to live and love well – and mindfully. Today is a good day for acceptance and contentment, and practicing the practices. Incremental change over time continues – and I am still quite human.

In the distracting stillness of my solitude,
I remember all that I really want and
it is enough.

Another rainy morning, after another good night of sleep. Another good cup of coffee, watching another dawn unfold contentedly. Another day of moving? Not so much, no; although some amount of moving in remains to be done, the moving out is completed, except for cleaning and vacuuming.

This move has been about self-sufficiency, simplicity, and minimizing emotional and cognitive disruption. I am finding it has been wildly unimaginably successful, rather as if every calorie additional personal effort expended has been directly invested in my continued contentment and comfort. I guess it has. It was a good choice to make, for me. I have lost count of the verbs involved. 🙂

I have found opportunities to balance the needed effort and commitment to the task at hand with day to day good self care, and remained fairly mindful of basics like adequate rest and healthy well timed calories. I even worked things out to minimize time spent in the limbo between places, and mostly avoided angsty weird moments of peculiar loneliness or feelings of displacement. I am feeling accomplished and comfortable, even knowing the first [bigger] rent check is due tomorrow.

Enough

Incremental change over time…and I am here, versus somewhere very different in life.  Today is a good day to appreciate progress, and change.

As if I had also planned the weather, I managed to get my moving done without ever being out in the rain. The storms and showers swept past, not quite continuously but definitely frequently these past four days, and somehow, and without any particular effort, every load of household goods was loaded up, then unloaded yet again in actual sunshine. From indoors, again and again I have watched the rain come down while I packed or unpacked another load, making a mindful focused effort to move in just as much as I am moving out.  Again today, showers passed by while I had breakfast with a friend. (There was no way to move the aquarium without help, breakfast turned the experience into straight up fun hang out time.)

After the aquarium was moved, the only thing left was the patio garden, and although it felt daunting to tackle one more thing, the move wasn’t going to finish itself…and it turned out to be only a half hour more work to get the roses and herbs down the hill, and crowded near the front door. My idea to use a garden cart to haul everything around back directly to the new patio didn’t account for the many-days-rain-soaked lawn across which the cart was intent on cutting furrows rather than rolling over it; each pot will be cleaned carefully, soil allowed to drain and dry out a bit, then be carried through the apartment. Over my brand new carpet. Still, with care it won’t be a mess. I can take my time with it, now. I live here.

The fish survived the move. Nothing got broken. I feel as safe and at home here as I did in the one I moved from. The dishwasher is quieter.

I see a crane fly into the marsh on the other side of the meadow outside my window. I am home.

Definitely enough.