Sorry to blog again about how I want to blog more and am starting up again with a renewed commitment - but this time, I really AM. I hope. There are over 150 million blogs out there, although I read that something like two thirds or more are dead, meaning they start with gusto and end, 2 - 3 months later, with indifference. I'm thrilled I have not fallen prey to that scenario but I've really coasted here on the weight of the last few years (started in 2010) and slacked recently.
Why? Well, excuses are legion and reasons numerous, the most obvious being time, the close runner-up being energy. I also have a slew of drafts that never got done because I write long entries. So I am going to experiment and change my ways, and try and post shorter things more often (again).
First of all, I have the summer off. Yes, that's right - I am not a teacher or student or worker in any other seasonal job, but rather I work for a company that allows one to take a sabbatical every few years, for up to 12 weeks, depending on your years of service - and I have reached the max at this point. It's Week Five of Twelve (sounds very Borg-like). I'm already concerned that I frittered away these first few weeks because with only three months off, every second counts! When I will get this much time again? The pressure, the pressure is on - to write (blog and novel), to clean (paperwork and other deep organization has been basically ignored for the last year), to get creative in other ways, like sewing and painting and drawing, to paint a couple rooms in the house, to take care of the garden and oh my god those other ten thousand things and already I'm behind when I had the whole summer and when I was a kid the whole summer was forever and now it's almost gone and I better get on it right now and---
Calm down, Kar. Breathe. Ok. But you see where my mind goes right away - pack every second with something. BUT the whole point of this time off is to find out what life is like when it is NOT packed. Or rather, not planned, scheduled, with time lines and deadlines and pressure, which is what my life had become when I was working: a series of endless to-do lists. I am not alone in this; google "endless to do lists" and you will get 53 million hits. It's absurd.
To combat this tendency I and millions of other people have (perhaps I should say, suffer from, because it IS like a disease), I thought, well, I'll start the summer by doing a few activities that force one to be relaxed, that are planning-adverse. I started by taking a few days to soak at Harbin Hot Springs, which was a lot of doing nothing (my true goal) - not nothing literally but not much other than sit in perfect temperature water or go lay on a deck and read. The decisions were along the lines of "When I should go to dinner?" and "Is it time for another dip in the pool?". These are my kind of decisions.
After that, I took the train from San Francisco to Chicago (the California Zephyr - the trip is a whole story in and of itself), another activity which requires one to do not much more than sit for three days and watch scenery go by. Then I visited family and drove around my old stomping grounds in Ohio, also at a "mosey and wander" pace. These were my first couple weeks, and I must say I did reach a state of mellow slowness. I had some timetables to keep (as traveling and meeting people inevitably will require) but in between, my time was my own, and more importantly, my thoughts were my own. My mind got completely disconnected from work, and something happened that I had not experienced since the last time I took more than two weeks off: I started to think about nothing. Or rather, I was able to exist in periods of time where I was just looking at and experiencing my environment and not otherwise engaged. There were the birds or the sea or the trees or whatever. I looked out a lot of windows and either thought about something (which was pleasant, because I had all the time I wanted for any thought I cared to have) or just looked at the world (which was also pleasant because the world is beautiful, and plus, I was listening to great music lots of the time). I believe the times I wasn't thinking is called "living in the moment" and I am all for it.
Now, I must say here that I was skeptical this was going to happen. Before my time off, I had reached a point where I was thinking about many things too often - not just work, but also family and other troubles. You know...the difficulties of life. They demand our time and attention, and when they get overwhelming (as mine did in the last few months / past year), it can seem like there's no other state one could possibly be in but this minute to minute, what's next endless cycle of go go go and do do do. Be productive. Make it happen. I'm a make it happen kind of girl.
But now, I'm sort of a let it happen kind of girl. I zone out. I stare out the window. I pick up and browse a book. I close my eyes and enjoy the sun. I linger. I stay in bed and read. I eventually get around to whatever but it's that eventually part that I really like.
But I was traveling a lot - almost straight for four weeks. After Ohio was New York (where, incredibly, I managed to keep the laid back, stress-free vibe going and didn't try to pack in every little bit of New York into five days) and then Southern California. Suddenly, I was home this last weekend and there was no travel planned. It really felt like the beginning of my time off because I was now forced to plan and decide on what I would do next.
Circumstances dictated that somewhat - my possessions are taking over too many areas in the house and need to be attended to (I've started on that but more, oh so much more to come), and then the garden was in sad, sad shape. It was in fact so clearly high priority that I spent Sunday, Monday and today, Tuesday, working on it. Unfortunately, gardening is tiring, and this was the hardest stuff of all (shoveling, hoeing, raking, heavy weeding, heavy pruning, etc) so I was exhausted every day and clicked right back into my slow moving zoning out mode once the work was done each afternoon.
And it was just today that I have realized I am NOT going to be able to do a close to half or even one third of what would I would like / secretly had planned in my head as something that would happen this summer. I will be lucky if I get to 20%. However, there was one BIG GOAL - bigger than learning to cook, getting into exercise, writing my next novel, getting that garden in shape, painting that room, etc - and that was to remember was it was like to be me, just as a human being who lives on this planet. Who I am without work and without outside timetables and references and lists and plans and blah blah blah - all this stuff that doesn't, in the end, have to be part of being human but happens to be so in our modern society.
Now, four and a half weeks is not long enough to fully remember and/or discover what it's like to just live, but I've got a real good inkling. If I'm not there yet, I'm close enough to have a pretty good idea of what it would be like. I get glimpses. I can taste it. I can tell, I'd be just fine at being just human and just being. It's a bit of a relief.
Why? Well, excuses are legion and reasons numerous, the most obvious being time, the close runner-up being energy. I also have a slew of drafts that never got done because I write long entries. So I am going to experiment and change my ways, and try and post shorter things more often (again).
First of all, I have the summer off. Yes, that's right - I am not a teacher or student or worker in any other seasonal job, but rather I work for a company that allows one to take a sabbatical every few years, for up to 12 weeks, depending on your years of service - and I have reached the max at this point. It's Week Five of Twelve (sounds very Borg-like). I'm already concerned that I frittered away these first few weeks because with only three months off, every second counts! When I will get this much time again? The pressure, the pressure is on - to write (blog and novel), to clean (paperwork and other deep organization has been basically ignored for the last year), to get creative in other ways, like sewing and painting and drawing, to paint a couple rooms in the house, to take care of the garden and oh my god those other ten thousand things and already I'm behind when I had the whole summer and when I was a kid the whole summer was forever and now it's almost gone and I better get on it right now and---
Calm down, Kar. Breathe. Ok. But you see where my mind goes right away - pack every second with something. BUT the whole point of this time off is to find out what life is like when it is NOT packed. Or rather, not planned, scheduled, with time lines and deadlines and pressure, which is what my life had become when I was working: a series of endless to-do lists. I am not alone in this; google "endless to do lists" and you will get 53 million hits. It's absurd.
To combat this tendency I and millions of other people have (perhaps I should say, suffer from, because it IS like a disease), I thought, well, I'll start the summer by doing a few activities that force one to be relaxed, that are planning-adverse. I started by taking a few days to soak at Harbin Hot Springs, which was a lot of doing nothing (my true goal) - not nothing literally but not much other than sit in perfect temperature water or go lay on a deck and read. The decisions were along the lines of "When I should go to dinner?" and "Is it time for another dip in the pool?". These are my kind of decisions.
After that, I took the train from San Francisco to Chicago (the California Zephyr - the trip is a whole story in and of itself), another activity which requires one to do not much more than sit for three days and watch scenery go by. Then I visited family and drove around my old stomping grounds in Ohio, also at a "mosey and wander" pace. These were my first couple weeks, and I must say I did reach a state of mellow slowness. I had some timetables to keep (as traveling and meeting people inevitably will require) but in between, my time was my own, and more importantly, my thoughts were my own. My mind got completely disconnected from work, and something happened that I had not experienced since the last time I took more than two weeks off: I started to think about nothing. Or rather, I was able to exist in periods of time where I was just looking at and experiencing my environment and not otherwise engaged. There were the birds or the sea or the trees or whatever. I looked out a lot of windows and either thought about something (which was pleasant, because I had all the time I wanted for any thought I cared to have) or just looked at the world (which was also pleasant because the world is beautiful, and plus, I was listening to great music lots of the time). I believe the times I wasn't thinking is called "living in the moment" and I am all for it.
Now, I must say here that I was skeptical this was going to happen. Before my time off, I had reached a point where I was thinking about many things too often - not just work, but also family and other troubles. You know...the difficulties of life. They demand our time and attention, and when they get overwhelming (as mine did in the last few months / past year), it can seem like there's no other state one could possibly be in but this minute to minute, what's next endless cycle of go go go and do do do. Be productive. Make it happen. I'm a make it happen kind of girl.
But now, I'm sort of a let it happen kind of girl. I zone out. I stare out the window. I pick up and browse a book. I close my eyes and enjoy the sun. I linger. I stay in bed and read. I eventually get around to whatever but it's that eventually part that I really like.
But I was traveling a lot - almost straight for four weeks. After Ohio was New York (where, incredibly, I managed to keep the laid back, stress-free vibe going and didn't try to pack in every little bit of New York into five days) and then Southern California. Suddenly, I was home this last weekend and there was no travel planned. It really felt like the beginning of my time off because I was now forced to plan and decide on what I would do next.
Circumstances dictated that somewhat - my possessions are taking over too many areas in the house and need to be attended to (I've started on that but more, oh so much more to come), and then the garden was in sad, sad shape. It was in fact so clearly high priority that I spent Sunday, Monday and today, Tuesday, working on it. Unfortunately, gardening is tiring, and this was the hardest stuff of all (shoveling, hoeing, raking, heavy weeding, heavy pruning, etc) so I was exhausted every day and clicked right back into my slow moving zoning out mode once the work was done each afternoon.
And it was just today that I have realized I am NOT going to be able to do a close to half or even one third of what would I would like / secretly had planned in my head as something that would happen this summer. I will be lucky if I get to 20%. However, there was one BIG GOAL - bigger than learning to cook, getting into exercise, writing my next novel, getting that garden in shape, painting that room, etc - and that was to remember was it was like to be me, just as a human being who lives on this planet. Who I am without work and without outside timetables and references and lists and plans and blah blah blah - all this stuff that doesn't, in the end, have to be part of being human but happens to be so in our modern society.
Now, four and a half weeks is not long enough to fully remember and/or discover what it's like to just live, but I've got a real good inkling. If I'm not there yet, I'm close enough to have a pretty good idea of what it would be like. I get glimpses. I can taste it. I can tell, I'd be just fine at being just human and just being. It's a bit of a relief.
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