steps

HOW TO GET ANYTHING DONE

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Friday. The sun came out. The temperature went up. It’s 26℃ and the wind is blowing at 47 km/hour. Super crazy, eh? from a cloudy cool 17℃ of yesterday. It is what it is. My body is liking today better than yesterday. I’m taking an extra strength Tylenol tid, that is 3 times a day to help me roll with the punches. No matter how I feel, I want to move and get some things done. That’s another challenge I’ve adopted. If I feel lousy not doing anything, I might as well do something and have something to show for my suffering.

Procrastination and avoidance have their own pain. They don’t work. They’re like the elephant in the room, weighing heavy on the back of my mind. I’m going to put on my thinking cap. Maybe I can conjure up a workable manual on how to get anything done. A good starting point is to identify what it is that I want done. Then I need to identify what steps I need to take to accomplish that task. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Apparently not, for me.

I’m sick and tired of how I’ve been. I find it hard to do stuff. I fret, fuss and feel totally uncomfortable, not wanting to get to the task and not knowing how and where to start. I think and worry about the whole enchilada. It’s one huge blob/problem in my mind. No wonder I feel overwhelmed and run away. I made a new start today. NO MORE OVERWHELM. I had an hour this morning before heading out to our exercise class. I asked myself, What do I want to do with that time? I had plans of doing more seeding. The seed packs had been sitting on the dining table for a few days now. I willed myself to the task. I willed myself to put the seed packs away after. It didn’t take all that long. I had time to plant a few left over peas I had sprouted awhile back.

It’s a small step in the right direction. I have to keep asking myself, what do I want to get done. Then I need to think of each step I need to take. I also need to stop having a cuppa/break before I do anything. I need to do first and then have a cuppa. As you may have gathered, I have many cuppa in a day.

NOT SO BAD AT ALL!

At long last, a warm Saturday morning! I am basking in the sunshine, sipping my tea and tapping on my laptop. Sheba is laying at my feet. I feel like tap dancing and breaking out in song. If only I can dance and sing! Never mind, music is playing in my head again. I have to sit and listen to Roger Miller sing before I can go on tapping.

I’m obviously feeling better, eh? It’s good to know that I’m not always down in the dumps, no fun to be around. It’s also important for me to document it as proof. Sometimes I don’t remember or believe myself. It feels absolutely wonderful that I am doing this Ultimate Blog Challenge. This time around, I have a clearer vision of what I want to accomplish using the challenge as a tool. Let me put it down here again.

  1. Be mindful and in the present moment.
  2. Getting up, dressing up and showing up here every day.
  3. Work on content, construction, proof reading of posts.
  4. Striving for improving mental and physical health – eg. losing a few pounds.

What works for me is to do the small of everything. A few words to get an idea  to form. I do not have or work in concrete ideas/forms. I’m one whose head is in the clouds and whose thoughts are as nebulous as the mist. It’s only when I tap on the keyboard, when I see the words march across the screen that I can see my way out of the woods. It’s a big ahah moment. Until I can see and understand my handicap, I can’t make a correction or make an improvement.

Ad libbing, off the cuff will not work for me. I need to put my thoughts into words on a page. I need to brainstorm onto the page. I need to break things into small steps. My brain goes into a soupy fog even thinking of doing the lunch dishes. I want to dump everything and run away. It’s only after I slowly and mindfully start scraping off the plates, loading them into the sink/dishwasher, putting in soap, turning on the water…that my brain starts to relax. My hands and mind connect, gets into a rhythm and somehow the dishes are done. I go, “Well, that wasn’t bad!” I go through this every day.

I can also say that this wasn’t at all bad  for the 6th day of this challenge. I get to do this all over again tomorrow.

 

PERHAPS AND PERHAPS

Life is strange sometimes. The more I try to change, the more I stay the same. Perhaps I am trying too hard. Perhaps I’m trying in all the wrong ways. Perhaps I should give it a rest. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Nothing is of certainty. Has it always been so?

I am doing it all wrong. I research, read and google on the how of things relentlessly. The information remains the same. I know it already. I have difficulty putting them into action. I am stuck on go. I forget this over and over. How many times have I been in this place already? Many. Are you tired of reading it? I am tired of writing it.

I am not completely hopeless. I have made some improvement in overcoming being overwhelmed. There are a few positive steps I have taken lately. It’s a long time coming but better late than never. It’s been exhausting the way I’ve been all these long years. It’s wonderful to find a way out.

  1. I try to stop berating myself over what has happened.I see that nothing can undo the already happened.
  2. I know fretting over it will only waste more energy.
  3. I breathe and try to let it go.
  4. I practice these steps each time that I regret what I have done or not done.
  5. I am trying to stop looking for more information when I know what I need to do.

It’s been a good day. I’ve learned that I can be patient and listen without interrupting. In doing so, I see that there are many things that I don’t have to say or ask. They don’t add to the conversation and I know the answers to the questions. In being in the moment, listening in attention, I am saving time and energy. I am bringing calm and clarity to myself. I think it is call discernment. A breakthrough if I may say so.

SWEATING ALL THE STUFF

I have a confession to make. You probably know what it is already. I don’t handle stress or change well. I sweat over the small and big stuff. I go into distress and fret mode. I obsesse about it. I exert more energy than it is necessary. I tire myself out. I’ve been observing and paying more attention lately. It’s a by product of my morning meditation that I’ve come back to. If you listen to a recording enough times, the drill comes back to you. So I hear Mark William’s or Jon Kabat-Zinn’s voice telling me to sit erect, at attention, being in the present, watching as each moment unfolds, with no need to change anything.

I find their voices and instructions very comforting. They play in my head as difficult thoughts and situations come up. I tell myself to take each moment as they come. What do I need to do in this moment,  the next moment and the next one, to make things work for me? It is in the breaking things down in small do-able steps. It frees me from being immobilized with overwhelm. Then I can problem solve and see that it is not that difficult. I am not efficient at it yet. I still first go into overwhelm. I am stuck. I breathe and then the instructions play in my head. Then I do one step, then 2, 3 and so on.

Man, life sure is tough though. I relive this scenerio time and time again. I think this is for life. I see it as a thought in a cloud, drifting by my window. It is passing. There is no need to do anything but observe. And so another day in this challenge of living my life.

MAKING BREAD

April 2, the day after Fools Day, the second day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. It is well into the evening. I’m almost ready to call it a day but I have not put down many words. I have not made a great beginning at all. The desire is in me. I’m lacking in get up and go but I’m pecking away on my keyboard.

I haven’t been resting on my laurels at all. I’ve been busy as a bee all morning,  making bread and soup for lunch. Bread is something I’m good at now. I make 6 loaves at a time. I have the recipe and measurements etched on my brain. I have all the steps down pat. No need to look up anything.

  1. In large bowl – 6 cups of warm water, 2/3 cup honey, 8 teaspoon yeast. Stir to dissolve.
  2. Stir in 8 cups unbleached flour. Let sit and rise for 30 minutes.
  3. Stir into mixture 2/3 cup honey, 2 tablespoon salt, 6 tablespoon butter. Gradually add and mix in 9 cups of whole wheat flour. Place dough on lightly floured table and knead till well mixed and feels slightly sticky.
  4. Shape dough into a ball and placed in greased bowl, rolling it around bowl until dough is greased. Covered and poof for an hour in oven.
  5. Take dough out and place on table surface. Punch it down and divide into 6 loaves. Put into greased pans. Covered in oven and poof for 40 minutes.
  6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes.
  7. Lightly butter each loaf on top. Take loaves out of pans. Cool on rack.

I have failed only once. The water was too hot and killed the yeast. It was not really a failure. The dough made many doggy biscuits for Sheba and delicious flat bread for us. Nothing was wasted. Failure of one thing morphed into a success of another kind. Not a great post but it’s a good practice for writing up steps and directions for making bread. Another day, another post.

GLORY DAYS – Day 13 in a year of…

Day 13, August 4, 2016 @4:05

IMG_4303These are truly the glory days of August.  My garden is flushed with delicious vegetables.  Let me not squander the days away with stinking thinking, bad attitude, foul mood or low blood sugar.  Afternoons can be treacherous.  A cup of tea and a couple of chocolates to make me more agreeable.  It does not help that Sheba is dogging in my footsteps wherever I go.  Possibly she is also seeking sugar replacement.

IMG_6920Mornings are the best for setting intentions.  And so I sat with Melli O’Brien and Tami Simon of Sounds True and learned about total body breathing.  It is an episode from the Mindfulness Summit, October 2015.  Today I am focused on learning to enjoy the process of sewing a blouse – being patient and deliberate with each step.  In the past, I have rushed through to the end product, missing the beginning and the middle – missing the joy, missing a lot.

IMG_6936Now I see it is really not my stinking thinking or low blood sugar.  It is really a storm brewing in my head.  It has just burst open.  I’m tap, tapping to the rhythm of pounding rain on the aluminum roof of the deck.  It is very strange and beautiful.  The rain came raging out of nowhere.  I am very fortunate to have this wonderful space to sit and watch, surrounded by it all.

The rain have passed.  I can show you the glory in the garden.  Come, let me show you. It is my rainbow after the rain.

 

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