I’ve never been comfortable in my own life. It never felt like it was mine. I’ve been living for others, not for myself. Nobody asked me to. Perhaps I received the message from the great collect. I absorbed it through osmosis through the years. And now, realizing that my years has a finite number, I’m having a lightbulb moment. Hey, this isn’t how it’s suppose to be! Where is my life, my legacy? I have no moments for my video of highlights. In this moment I can only think of compromises and good enoughs.

Still, sitting here, tapping away on this beautiful August morning, I’m pretty satisfied. I hear the caw caw of a crow. Sheba’s laying at my feet. It is warm. I have the laundry hanging on the racks – one on the deck and the other out in the yard. It is still relatively comfortable in the shade. But if you catch the sun bouncing off a surface, it is so hot. The earth is burning up. We are still here. It is good to be living in this moment in time. I hope there is time to rescue our planet. I hope there is time to live my own life.

I’m ruminating, chewing my cud, on what is truly of value to me. It’s a worthy subject to come back to, again and again. It’s a question that I’ve been unconsciously avoiding with all my busy doings. The chaos of summer drove me to seek counsel and wisdom. Its very nature demanded attention and action. I have often found much wisdom from Caroline Myss. Now days after her 9 day online retreat, I’m not all that much wiser.

I’m not wiser but I have taken the time off from my usual routine of do this, do that and do this again. I sat still and listen to the quiet. I fasted. I returned to the part of me that loved stilllness and doing nothing. In doing so, I realized how relentless I’ve become in ‘creating’, doing, exercising, so on and forth. I had a busy schedule in retirement. Life was a frenzy. Somehow that was okay. My mind and physical being were occupied. I didn’t have to think about the hard stuff – the uncertainties and anxieties. I was busy.

Being ‘busy’ and ‘creative’ gives legitimacy to being distracted and absent from my life. I didn’t smell the coffee or the flowers. I THOUGHT I did. I hadn’t tended my garden or myself regularly. I did it haphazardly, by gosh and darn – like everything I do. Now that I know better, I’ll try to do better. But it is difficult to break out of set patterns. Having an addictive personality doesn’t help. Already I want to sign up for another course given by Caroline Myss and Andrew Harvey on our shadow selves. It would not be a bad thing but it would be another thing I’ll be chasing, being distracted and busy.

I will resist, staying in the here and now. I have enough. I am enough. It is time to bring in the laundry. It is time to push the stove back in its place. It took something falling behind it for me to clean underneath. What alot of dust, grime and dog hair! Now it’s all swept, washed and dried. Good for another 10 years.