Zen
Even before my life became this hectic, I always aspired to be more Zen. . . if only for a day. Everything about me is cluttered--my home, my calendar, and as a result, even my head. Add the resulting inner dialogue and the ability to crank out maybe 1500 lines a night, and I can't even write a simple email without tripping on the autopilot and spewing a novel in short order. My only saving grace might be that I'm a laid-back introvert in real life and am happier as an observer. I'm opinionated, but I suspect the keyboard is the vehicle that enables me. Stream of consciousness can be dangerous, unleashed!
I admire my friends who are such masters of pithy witticisms, but they know that no matter how much I aspire to learn the art of The Quickie, it ain't gonna happen. Oh, I get close, but the obvious effort it takes is still good for a laugh. The same is obviously true of this blog business. For someone who was reluctant to agree to the gig, once I get a burr under my saddle, it's hard to pare the resulting rant to a manageable size. Anything over a couple paragraphs and my daughter starts groaning, "Wall of text. . ." so I'm aware of the limitations of my audience. You may not have the attention span of today's youth, but you undoubtedly have work, school, and families cluttering your own lives and probably need more Zen, too. Yet here we are, mesmerized by the intertoob.
Zen isn't likely to happen anywhere for me, sadly. Now that my kids are threatening independence, I am enjoying the feeling of letting material things go to help them start their own households, but it's a constant battle to resist filling those spaces with something new. My goal is to lighten my load so that it will be less painful to pull up stakes and get the heck out of Dodge once I finish my training and start looking for a job. I don't care where, particularly. I just know that FL really isn't my choice and I'm dying to bounce back to a land of four seasons, though probably not tundra conditions like I left behind in the Midwest. Surely, a willingness to relocate can only help me succeed more quickly, and why not reinvent everything in my life at once? I've still got some stink to blow off after the bad marriage and besides--change is rejuvenating!
I can't even manage the clutter I have without always collecting more. I should be studying (just one more unit test and I can study for my Terminology final!), but I'm writing, I'm looking at every dumb link my kids send me (YouTube is E-VIL), staring at food porn, and organizing my own recipes into Bento (the cool database app I discovered back in my Computers course). This month, I'm also sidetracked by the Olympics--and to be honest, I don't think I'm really all that interested in tandem diving or beach volleyball. . . yet I'm watching.
In an attempt to analyze myself and perhaps fine tune my shaky self discipline, I even found myself watching motivational lectures for two hours today. This stroke story makes for a fascinating look at the brain, though I'm not sure recognizing that I lateralize toward the wonderful (if sometimes flaky) right helps me figure out how to buckle down. In fact, pondering the differences just led me back to YouTube because I knew there was a cool video that illustrated the Alan Watts lecture on the same dichotomy.
Mine is a wiggly and very cluttered world, and this is as close as I get to a quickie for now. Guess I will aspire to my ideals of perfection later when a space opens up on the itinerary. Better yet, maybe I'll just let myself enjoy the trip.