recipes for happiness

a walk early in the morning, that was so great, I turned around and did it again...

cool breezes during the walk, enough so long sleeves were in order...

a home made iced decaf soy chai latte served to self with straw...

a very smart momma who taught me early on to close a house on a hot day, pull the windows down (I have no shades or curtains), and the house will stay cooler. I did, it did. It probably saved my life today...

two paintings that came out as if they'd been waiting...one that I love...

cleaned paint brushes drying in a jar by the sink, paints still on the table, I don't think I'm done...

a day of peacefulness- no chaotic need to Do or Accomplish or Achieve...

a whole book read in a day....

a cat who wanted to snuggle in spite of the heat...and for a while lay across The Belly while the baby moved around...

two servings of the best possible gluten free peach crumble (it started its life as an attempt at pie, and, well, you know.... crumble happened)...

a cool evening, windows thrown open, fans on, all new air....

sitting on the stoop talking to my sister, who, two states away, was sitting on her deck...solace in sharing the same evening...

another walk, this one slower, but a walk...blessed movement...

a thrush singing right now in the woods as night falls...

independence day indeed.

meeting in the middle

Sometimes you meet someone and it feels as if they are already familiar to you, a missing piece, some sort of recognition, some easy meshing of gears, yours to theirs. Words just spill and silences feel like comfort or possibility not like awkwardness.

Last night I got to meet someone I've liked for a very long time--long ago in the strange place that is the internet, I had stumbled on her blog somehow and found the most remarkable, honest, amazing, beautiful writing.

As I told her, her writing almost always knocks me flat and leaves me breathless-- Maya Stein was in town and we shared a couch and an hour of truly wonderful conversation--

I am lucky in that I do not get star struck exactly, I get almost the opposite-- star avoidance?

But Maya invited me, and I said yes. And as I walked barefoot and brave into the house, I found she is real and present and just simply wonderful to spend time with. I feel really lucky.

She's going around the country starting in September, taking her 10 line tuesdays work/play on the road for readings and workshops. I encourage you to keep your eyes open for a workshop or reading near you--I promise you, I promise, it will be worth it.

Thank you Maya!

opening

I am an inherently resilient person, with a gift/curse of emotional amnesia. I do not like feeling bad, and quickly (quickly!) can take an external hurt and hide it somewhere. It is how I made it through over a decade of mostly (NOT Jane) abusive relationships. Once the incident is over and calm returns, I am so relieved by the calm that I move from the hurt as fast as I can.

Now, in my current much more healthy life, I do not have to experience this as often since the hurts are different- except at work.

This work transition left me reeling, hurt, angry, and feeling very lost. It does not matter than I have been unhappy for the last two years (out of 12), or that I'd been whatiffing, worried about the company closing, a wider layoff, a pay cut that cut too close-- the worry of losing the house, but also the dreams of having the opportunity of opening up to a bigger expression of myself...

it does not matter because This time decrease and This pay decrease, this was Just Me, and phrased in ways it was impossible not to take personally. I can make excuses for what was said but I think I am going to try to choose not to. I am compassionate, but that does not excuse the fact that someone acted badly and I got hurt.

Then, as suddenly as the hurt and craziness came, there was a crescendo, and then, in this moment, I am back to some sort of ok-ness.

I know I am not ok, but I am. Does this make sense? I put the hurt somewhere and am now finding myself looking past the hurt and recognizing the potential gift of a day.

The financial stress is not ok, will not be ok, and has ramifications (meeting with realtor, for example)--

A horrible story to tell/admit to- once upon a time, in a very emotionally abusive relationship, I remember wishing she would just hit me, just hit me so I could go. As if with that tangible evidence, evidence that something so irrefutably bad had happened, that no one could question my leaving.

Well, this was sort of like that. Not a hit, but a *something* a something you cannot turn back from and pretend all is as it was. It isn't. It won't be. This opened me up to step away from some of my own disfunction just enough to feel relief, as if I am off the hook.

Bopping around on the internet yesterday I came across an article about how to keep your employees from quitting (in a shit economy folks stay in miserable jobs .. then the economy starts to improve and folks quit like lemmings)--and found that it was written by this really interesting fellow, G.L. Hoffman, the CEO of LinkUp.com, a new job search site that lists jobs from company sites (not to be confused with Linked In). He's a serial entrepreneur and has a gift of clear communication. He's got a great graphical 5-Second MBA based on venn diagrams and infused with humor that is totally worth the 5 minutes-- there's a link to it on his blog.

Anyway, we ended up exchanging a few emails, and in one I wrote that this job event had taken me off the hook of my capital L Loyalty. Which is another ancient leftover from my dysfunctional days. Loyalty is not a bad thing. But this kind, Loyalty in spite of anything/everything is never a good idea. But my newly healthier self has a battle to fight with my old habits of being and my quest for peace.

So my challenge now, how to keep from getting sucked back in (backsliding) and how to move forward/outwards/inwards toward a more full expression of myself?

I am opening to the idea of finding other types of work. I work in a niche engineering wise, but my actual skills are broader than those. So I am trying to envision how to present myself (like on linked in)- in a way that is totally true to myself.

But this is also about The Day--I will now have one day a week to fill how I wish.

Want to hear about some of my daydreaming? (fed, of course, by input from loved ones- thank you Sarah!)

What about me offering an online journalling course? an e-course? The start of a series, maybe one on journalling, another on creativity, perhaps another on being present...

What would I call the series? (name ideas? bring them ON)

How about a website about later-in-life real life pregnancy/parenting without the annoying assumption of wealth and leisure? (aka Plum which just simply pissed me off)... (this could be the next incarnation of my blog or a broader community effort)...

I can finish my novel! Send it out! Maybe start to really look at the grief project to see if I can let it go or if it needs my attention to come to some sort of book...

See? one day may be the gift I have been needing.

***

yesterday the little one wiggled around nearly all day long, it was magnificent, fabulously distracting, and a great reminder that everything everything everything is changing.

And, while humbling and scary and holyshitwhatamIdoing, it is also wide open with possibility.

Hurt aside, how cool is that?

Adding openness to lightness. I think I am starting to like my list.