Tag Archives: staying with it

Staying With It

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Thursday, April 17. Day 17 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I took a rest day yesterday. I was busy and did not feel the need of ‘I must.’ I took a rest from my 100 days of teacups and April Love as well. Now I must jump back on the bandwagon. No easy task.

A rest sometimes leads to more and more rest. Pretty soon, it’s “Oh, what the heck. Do I really need this?” So I am curbing that urge and getting on with things. I’ve already mopped the kitchen floor and washed the breakfast dishes. It’s my way of breaking the ice in the morning. Now, I’m on my second cup of tea. Lunch will be a salad, garlic ribs and rice. The hard decision made for the day.

I have an urge to work on changing the theme for this website. I will resist the urge, remembering my goal of keeping things easy and simple for April. Messing around will no doubt waste a lot of energy and time. I need that time for the garden, coffee with my father, clearing some of my mother’s things and filing my income tax. That tax thing always sits heavy on my mind every year. I should just get over it. 13 days left till the deadline. Yikes!

SUNBEAM ON A SPECK OF DUST

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Sunday morning. The sun is coming through a smoke filled sky. Grass fires were burning outside the city yesterday. I hope they are under control. I guess we are into the brush fire season. I am stiff and sore from my efforts cleaning the deck yesterday. I have this urge to sit and lounge. I don’t but I am not in a rush. I am my usual slow motion self. Slow and steady can work miracles. I suprise myself at how much can be done. It encourages me to carry on with what brings results.

Sometimes I have to work harder to stay with it. The urge to revert to the old and familiar is strong. I try to do my morning and evening stretches to limber up and down. Mornings are easier. Evenings are not, now that the urgent need of pain relief is gone. How quickly we forget pain once relieved. Perhaps I need to change up to a late afternoon stretch instead. By evening I am quite happy to be just a couch potato. Timing can make or break a habit.

Can you believe it? I am already getting sleepy. It is not yet 10 am. Time to stand up, stretch my legs, make my decaf and maybe do my index card art. A change of posture is what is needed at this moment. See you later.

It is after lunch. The dishes are dealt with. I can’t say that I’m more wakeful. The sky is still grey. Sheba is curled up on her bed. I feel the pull towards it myself. I’m sounding like a bore, droning on and on about the same stuff daily. Sorry! But this is my sounding board, my to-do list and my decompressing room. It’s my think tank. I’ve met some awesome fellow bloggers through this room.

Today I’m reading Julie Yip Williams’ chemo experience. She has passed away in March/18. No, it is not depressing but rather enlightening and inspiring. It is learning about life. Dying is part of it. We can learn and gain much from those who went before us. Another brave journey I have followed is Stage iv. I’m not obsessed with death. Just getting serious about living and comfortable that nothing is forever. Maybe it is the nurse in me, the one who have seen death many times. Even after all that, I have not really understood that part of living. Now I am getting acquainted. It makes life all the more sweeter as they say. All those every day small moments are as precious as a sunbeam on a speck of dust. Can you see it?

 

STAYING WITH IT – DAY 78 in a year of..

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Day 78, October 8, 2016 @9:24 am

xgtj2464Staying with things is not my forte.  When things get tough/unpleasant, I like to jump ship and abandon.  I have a trail of unread books, unfinished projects and unresolved relationships.  Who doesn’t, though?  I’m proud to say that I have toughed it out and finished reading The Crime Writer – a novel about Patricia Highsmith.  She is described in the Guardian:

“She seduced a string of women, bred snails, suffered from severe depression, became an emotionally avoidant alcoholic and was variously viewed as kind, witty, and a nightmare.”

Nothing pleasant in the psychologic study of this woman or her life. It left me feeling as I had after watching the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley.  But I stayed immersed in the unpleasant, dark and sinister possibilities of our humanness – what our thoughts can lead us to do. Not everything is life is pleasant. Everything is plausible.

I’m hoping this exercise of staying with the unpleasant/difficult can strengthen my fortitude and not run for the escape hatchet tout suite.  I wonder how many opportunities I have missed because I left/gave up too soon.

It’s tough showing up here every day even though I love the tap, tap of my keyboard.  But consistency makes it easier.  It’s becoming a habit.  Habits do make life easier but I still have to make a conscious effort.

What ship have you left lately?  I’m off to search for a pleasant read. It is Saturday, a day to sooth the self.