Category Archives: thriving

What I learned by 70 years of age.

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What it took me until I was 70 years old to learn:
#1 If you put it back where you keep it you will save 2 years of searching over a lifetime.
#2 If you stay in the now and not be in the future planning, or in the past rummaging through garbage you won’t slice into you hand or trip downstairs.
#3 When you have an appointment don’t just write Julia on the calendar. When the day comes you will have no fucking idea who Julia is.
#4 If you save all of your errands for one day, it will save you money. Suddenly shopping and running around will just exhaust you and you will go home with only what is necessary for immediate survival.
#5 The best gift for another person is something he or she has been denying themselves.
#6 Flowers in your house are a survival necessity. They release feel good hormones and fantasy stories.
#7. You will never have the carefully made list you wrote down to go shopping actually on your person, so give up on that one. Just grab strange things you have been desiring and go home.
# 8 Having a clean car is only important if you are picking up a celebrity at the airport.
#9 Getting into or out of any new environment needs as much focus as getting out of a space shuttle. Drop down into the body, pay attention, scan for danger and obstacles. It is the transitions where the broken bones, lost cell phones and left behind coats happen.
#10 The best thing to say in every single circumstance is nothing. God gave you a face, eyes and nice teeth. Smile sweetly.
#11 Always prepare for the apocalypse. There is never too much stored toilet paper, dried beans, cash in an envelope, water in the attic, printer cartridges and paper for the next 3 months, incense for clearing energy when the world ends, (or to prevent the end).
#12. If you can afford plastic surgery get a skin pocket done so you always know where your cell phone is.
# 13 If you don’t answer your cell phone or pick up your messages you will avoid those pesky appointments you did not want to make anyway. (Who the hell is Julia and why does North Dakota call me 5 times a day?)
# 14 Don’t care. Undertake the practice of NOT giving a flip. Until something comes at my house like a bulldozer, I pay no attention to it.
#15. Exceptions are: do sign petitions that push for social justice, do speak out for the weak, young, poor and unprotected constantly. It does make a difference if you are annoying the crap out of politicians.
#16. Speak the truth to beauty. Saying, “I love your scarf to a random woman in a grocery store,” allows her to stop and tell you she bought it on her trip to Italy. Her face lights up. She has happy chemicals releasing in her body. I call it giving a “bump up.”
It is social cocaine.
#17 The only thing that matters in health care is sleep. If you did not sleep deeply with Rem every night you are running on empty. You are like someone getting off of a 20 hour plane trip. Everything you think is just stupid. Get sleep and the whole world is better.
#18 Don’t put the fuzzy red towel in with the rest of the laundry. And if it shed the first time, don’t do it ten more times just to make sure.
#19 If it didn’t fit when you bought it, it will torture you and suck the joy our of your life. Be comfortable.
#20 If it didn’t make YOU look gorgeous, don’t buy it. Nothing is worse than having your clothing upstage you.
#21 Meet the challenge when it first appears. Run toward it like a Viking storming a village. Waiting only allows it to get bigger, more horrifying and weakens us.
#22 You cannot know who you are. That is absolute bullshit. Who you are is like a strobe light image. Now you are this, now that, now something else. Allow yourself to follow your joy and grow the hell up, why don’t you.I am 80 in August and while I sat in the kindergarden desk with my knees not fitting under it for so long, I finally am learning some things.
Love yourself constantly. Coming to earth was the craziest decision we ever made. We are Navy Seals, Red Berets, our own brain surgeons and tough as nails. We are as tough as nails, baby. Don’t you ever forget that.

The Seer

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We are like a strobe light. At times, we shine brightly. We are clear in our thinking. We do not stumble on our own feet, catch our toes on the edge of the coffee table leg, slide in error misjudging that last step. At times, we are masterful and calm.

We are periodically like ancient masters of the sea who could navigate by the stars a world unmapped, hazardous and wildly unpredictable. But only in moments, or months at a time.

The lesson always returns. The universe keeps track of what we are here to learn. We will be walking ankle deep in frustration afraid to slip on the slick surface of the unaddressed issue, the downhill slide of ego or error.

The human mind thinks of “success” of “achieving a goal” and it is what handicaps us in our growth the most. We are constantly growing, shape shifting, becoming. Upon occasion, we may take a deep breath and say to ourselves, “I have got it now.”

let go

It is a source of great humour for people with deep spiritual practice.

There is no grabbing the brass ring in your hand as you whirl around the merry-go-round. There is no “bing of the bell” as you swing the heavy mallet to drive yourself up to the top of it all.

We are simply pilgrims climbing the next hill side to stand and see that yet another, higher path awaits our legs to climb. Our legs get stronger, more sturdy with each new highland.

The difficulty of judging where we are in life is that we are nowhere. We are always nowhere. We live in a pulse of on/off. It is never still, this life, this decade, this day. It is a swirl of energy that we are constantly trying to ride.

To believe that we can achieve perfection, a 100% grade as a student, a pass out of the class room in order to frolic in a near by park is an error in understanding.

Yes, there will be picnics, sunshine, times of calm water on the sea. But these moments are not a sign that we are a good person, a perfect culmination of ourselves. School is not over. To mistake a period of good luck or of peaceful days as a reward for our special achievements is naive.

love is the way

In addition, we have the ego sitting in a golden throne over-seeing our lives and trying to keep us from challenges. Its voice is constant and annoying.

“Don’t try. Don’t risk it. Don’t grow. You are not sufficient. You are damaged and weak.”

It will always murmur fear to us.

We are on journey without a map. We are spelunking without a head lamp. We are swimming up to our necks in the water of lessons and frequently don’t know which way is the shore.

It is up to us to notice how the challenges are making us stronger. It is up to us to stop and thank the lessons for helping us become more of who we were born to be. We are the seer. We are the wise student. Always, always thank the lesson.

 

Why is “normal” actually “harmful”?

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We can be like Cinderella’s step sisters or like a middle weight boxer trying to “fit in” to the category we wish to enter. We think, “I want to be a princess so I will cram my foot into these shoes.” We think, ” I must shed weight no matter what the physical cost to be able to compete.”

Social Signalling is out of our control. Our neurons are set up to synk with the behavior of people we observe around us. It is a left over survival pattern. Back in time, we observed others and if Kruk did not follow the ways of those around him and just decided the red berries looked delicious, he would end up curled on the ground poisoned dead. It was a matter of the discontinuance of Kruk and of his DNA.

In the world entranced by the manichaen doctrine the soul of a wicked one was like someone carrying the plague. Wiki tells us Manichaeism taught that life in this world is unbearably painful and radically evil. In Manichaeism inner illumination reveals that the soul, which shares in the nature of God, has fallen into the evil world of matter and must be saved by the means of spirit or intelligence. Consequently, in a society where survival depended on being connected to a village, shunning and exile were used as a passive death sentence.

No food would be given, no shelter, no warmth either physical or emotional. If a member of a social group broke the law of the normal, they were possessed by the devil and were left to die.

Even more contemporarily, various groups use exclusion as a way of controlling desired behavior.

The result is that we have in our DNA the memory of complying with what is considered normal. It is one of the reasons that social signalling controls our choices.

And so we, when trapped in a crowded theatre and fire breaks out, follow the crowd even if it leads to death. And so when we have evidence that certain behaviors shorten our lives and sabotage our health, it is worth it for us. At least we are not alone.

The only way we can pull ourselves out of this hypnotic state of automatically following the mores and choices of members of our social group is to become “the watcher.” We can teach ourselves to sit back as if we are in a drawing class and really concentrate on what we are seeing. We see the lines, the shapes, the patterns, the presentation of behaviors. We take time to consider each action.

The questions to ask ourselves are: “Does this serve the greater good? Does this action, this decision make me healthier, stronger, a better version of myself?”

It is like the mindfulness walk of a Buddhist sanga. Step, step, stop. And as one foot touches another the mind connects to the ground. The mind focuses in on the now. The mind can ask, “Where are you going?” “Are you in balance?”

who could you be?

We are in a time when “normal” no longer is of service to our own lives; to the culture surrounding us; to the earth.

It is time to see who you were meant to be. It is time to grow into a deeply connected self. But not connected to others mindlessly following. We start to wonder who we could be…. if only…..

Time and Intention are the enemy of Unexpected gifts.

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The day began hesitantly. First, the hot water run in the bathtub for the washing of hair and stretching of limbs was intended. The screen addiction’s blue light trance caught my mind. After going through the email and seeing possibilities; chaotic offers of peace; warnings that this class or video or lesson would become cannibalistic and eat itself out of existence any moment; the lost losers wailing in the valley of abandonment and those indecipherable messages from some long dead language from another planet I am by now too tired to try to decipher. I delete, delete, delete. Next, I must remove the dead bodies from the field and leave my trash as pristine as I found it.
I push back the cleaning, laundry and prep for new incoming guests in order to get into the tub before the thought of a hot bath had totally dissolved.
I wash my hair while listening to Jason Stephenson soothe affirmation towards me like a lover with his warm breath. “I am blossoming,” I repeat out loud as I soap up my head and dunk it beneath the water line. “I am at peace in the world,” I repeat as I smooth the conditioner through my increasingly longer locks. “I am supported by the universe,” I chant towards the bathroom ceiling as I douse my head with repeatedly used water.
After the ritual of cleansing, I go to the bed to breathe along with Wim Hoff. Almost immediately I feel prickles of energy along my flesh and inside my body. I feel like my cells are drinking tiny cappuccino cups of delicious caffeine liquid. I push against my capacity for breath and expand it more and more. I float in a sea of thoughts, plans, visions, voices, and intentions. All of the shards of half-seen things break off from their mooring and I watch them fly past me as I release them with my breath, through the ceiling into the field of what is.
After dressing, I dress the bed and address the new cat.
I walk out onto the lawn barefoot to feel the day all over me from foot to face. I say, “Hello birdies.” I always say, ” Hello birdies, ” when they sing. It seems only right.
The rituals of morning end up being the rituals of day because I have detached myself from time now. I justify it to my ego by reminding that cranky critic that I started my first job at 8. Now, 70 years later I chose to not be chained at the ankles by time. I am barefoot on the lawn. The birds sing. What will happen will happen.
Finally, I understand I do not need to have an opinion about everything that happens. Finally, I understand I do not need to have an opinion about every blade of grass, every leaf, and every passing being on my sidewalk.
This. This is now. My hair is washed, the room is ready for the next guest. I feel at home in myself.
May be an image of chess
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Sannyasa: The Fourth Chapter of Life

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Awareness of the movements, chapters, seasons, and acts of life are distinctly different when viewed from a distance of age.

The contained existence in my childhood through grade school to high school was controlled, enforced, and structured. Those who lived before me had stories, egregores, and trauma-marked cells that surfaced in my own biological blueprint. That era, the abraiding of intersecting cultures wearing away to a single smooth surface of belief, I see as almost cult-like. We believed what we were taught to believe.

at 4 years old

My arrival on the earth was the year that WW II ceased. I shot out into a time of rabid hunger for growth. The depression reduced choices for my grandparents and in the childhood of my own parents. But NOW we were like the starving crowds let loose in a field of food. The norm was for us to gorge ourselves.

We paid close attention to what our neighbors had newly purchased. The fins on our cars grew to sci-fi proportions. We were propelled into competitive hedonism. My father bought the first TV set in our neighborhood. There was a cache´, an undisputable sense of status that a family could achieve instantaneously.

One could move ahead of the pack. One could be the house that people pointed to as they drove past. The Thunderbird in the driveway; the TV antenna reaching out beyond the roof to outer space; the books lining the bookshelf on hypnosis, self-improvement, some with bright pictures of modernist houses insistently and rebelliously sleek; the lounge chair covered in orange fabric in the living room that was impossible to sit upon no matter how one contorted the body, all signaled patriotic dedication to consumerism.

And so as I moved through my life, I watched the carefully cultivating craving. If only…. if only I could get good grades. If only I could graduate from university. If only I could earn a master’s. If only I could find a husband, a house, and have children. Always, always moving toward a goal whose dopamine hit of pleasure disappeared as soon as it was achieved. It was decades of crawling through the sand to arrive at a mirage.

I watched as the cultural imprint caused people to balloon from an average size of 6 to size 16. I watched as the slavish pursuit of power, pleasure, and fame became currency.

what did I buy?

Today, our striving for clout on social media is like showing a membership card to an exclusive club. I am acceptable to myself because I have masses of friends, masses of followers, a new dress, and a new achievement. But I also watch as the fleeting moments of the new sign of personal value fade away. It is like having an entry card to a club that disappears in the hand. It was once in my grasp. But now it is gone. That sense of being special so we can be considered normal haunts us.

I worked 70 to 80-hour weeks for decades in the hopes that I could be recognized as a valid human being. It was a caucus race as in Alice in Wonderland. Quickly run to nowhere so you can stay in place. This was my period in life when I was in hot pursuit.

But now, now I am in Sannyasa. In Hindu lore, this is the period of time past 70.

Everything and nothing

In Eastern society, it is believed that everything is already in existence. Art is already complete and it is only up to the artist to remove the unnecessary. And that is the explanation for this time of life.

We grow weary of the accumulation; the caucus race; the unfocused blind pursuit of goals that do not serve our souls. Instead of a list to accomplish, we now have the wisdom to discard the unrolling scroll of itemized effort in the day. It becomes easier to say, “Does this decision, this effort, or this action make me a better person?”

We are now able to discard the trivial as unsatisfying. The imprinting of my culture, because of when I was born was to run on a track of acquisition of things, of pleasures, of status bijoux objects.

And now, in this last stage of life, it is easier for us to understand ourselves. We no longer pay attention to what the culture requires of us. We drive through the images, the ideas, and the demands like a car plows through the rain. The water just rolls off. And we begin to divest ourselves of all the burdens that we were told were treasures to be held close. We free ourselves.

We understand that an accomplishment can be just to sit in the now and feel the wind passing over us. We watch the clouds so carefully that we can see they are moving.

We are doing something. We are learning to control the mind. We are learning to be inner-focused, to be at peace, and to keep our flame of compassion for others alight. We are finally beginning to understand our purpose. It is the time for that.

Learning to Let it Go

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I was sitting on the deck today and the sun burned through the clouds in a miraculous halo of heat. On the line, yellow sheets were lined up sailing somewhere new. They were Sailing away from the thoughts, sweat, unseen microbes caught in their folds. The wind did it all. It cleared the last week’s memory from my four shades of yellow sheets.

Closing my eyes, I could see an image I had just captured to the left of me. Two pots of snapdragon plants were far apart and yet their flowers leaned into one another. Were they conversing? Were they drawn to one another? Is there a secret language called Snapdragon?

I am as you find me

As I usually do when I am checking in, I felt around in my brain/mind subconscious for the rolled up scroll of drama words. I visualize a hand, a giant hand like Alice’s when she grew suddenly large in the room.

“What is here?” I asked myself.

Nothing but wind, the sheets billowing ritual of cleansing, the snapdragons chatting with one another.

“What should I do?” I asked myself.

My history of work addiction causes a reaction like that of a former alcoholic walking past a bar and smelling the seduction of destruction.

The answer was clear: “Nothing.”

The day will bring me suggestions, hints, nudges, to let me know which activities are arising.

It is no longer about a drag race on a crowded street with the pedal grinding down into the floor board. I have washed and hung the sheets without the presence of planning, pushing, the surge of energizing adrenalin. Now, I correct my former blog for no previously established intention.

I think to myself, “You are like a child just exploring the world. You pick up a rock and pile it on a larger rock without a plan.”

I think to myself, “I think I am going to enjoy watching you explore what calls to you. This will be fun.”

Always alert

Metta View: I can’t see me.

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.As I was twisting around in the mirror, turning lights to reflect illumination on the upper quadrant of my back, I thought about the ideas of “seeing” and “flexibility.”

I was bitten by a brown recluse spider three weeks ago and part of my morning ritual is now to go stand with my back to the mirror holding my phone on camera and trying to set up a clear shot at the inflicted area.

Almost immediately after I was bitten, the two puncture wounds showed themselves but over time with strong antibiotics and tetracycline cream, it is down to a distinct area of red. However,  I am under compulsion to view it. It is “behind” me. I cannot reach it easily. I cannot see it clearly. The ritual of self-protection is built in the monitoring of my body.

The entire OCD driven idea of assessing how I am at this moment, how my past decisions and actions impact on my physical, emotional, spiritual energy, is the place I have landed in my life.

The bite is no longer spreading. The dark ring around it is no longer turning black. The center is beginning to collapse inward as the online information had predicted. But what about the rest of me?

I keep coming back to the idea of blind spots or black boxes. There is an obstruction in knowing the self and it is held in the steel-like neurons that form a spider’s web of concepts.
I know I cannot turn easily to look at my spider attack but that information goes into the basket: “Must do yoga- I hate yoga.” It is filed away.

I watched a video today by a 92-year-old weight lifter who began his self-improvement beyond the age of 80. As I watched, I felt the flush of the warmth of excitement and passion for what I in my secret most heart want for myself. And as time elapsed I filed the intention in the: “Must work out more but don’t feel like it now” basket.

The issue I explain to my patterned self, my toy train on a track self that goes round and round and reaches only the same train station as it ever reached, is that I have a bankruptcy of using time.

Time is energy. Time is optimism. Time is the ultimate expression of the physical. Since I have been retired in 1999 I was outer directed as an artist. I prepared for shows. I worked to deadlines. I spent money in the hopes of making money. I “was” something.

over view

And then I opened the Airbnb for eight very successful years. I was once again outer-directed. The customers coming in would trigger action. The six to eight hours a day spent making beds, doing laundry, wiping down surfaces was not negotiable.

Now, at 75, I have my debt paid down. I have all the time in the world. The Pandemic has turned off the switch of the impulse of action triggered by the outside world and I twist around attempting to see myself.
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And what I see is the problem with “float”. I float in time because “I deserve it.” They tell me that. The inability to look forward to appointments, to trivial meetings with others, to pleasurable strolls through thrift stores to buy things I have no use for and store in the dark peripheries of my house has left me bereft.

Issues such as age, the constant mirroring back to me of what I am expected to do or be as a senior, an inborn faulty setting due to years of being a workaholic and one who has trained herself to jump for the reward cookie held in someone else’s hand haunt me now.

But when I drift in the mornings, I do it listening to coaches, watching videos, reading teachers.

training the mind

I think of the trips I took to Europe and how I spent so much time buying maps when I could have been learning a new language.

Always, always, always my mind runs like a sheep dog herding up scattering thoughts. I come back to the knowing surety that I am a construct. The habits that I build create my choices.

So can we ever know ourselves? How can we twist around enough to get a clear view?

I can only register in my mirror the actions that I am taking. Some of them are shaky, unskilled, full of frustration. But some of them have removed countless moments of drama and struggle that used to occupy my ego.

The spider bite is healing because I followed doctor’s orders even though the antibiotic was very unpleasant. The food I eat is kind to my body and supports my health. The friends I have around me are loving and supportive.

Each day is another construction site. Each day is another laying down of more track for my train to go further, to explore more, to not be so tightly wound.

Ultimately it is a better use of my time to focus on the use of my time instead of looking behind me to see if there is any scarring from past poison. I see my mind grabbing at me for security and I understand the fear that drives that grasping.

Can I loving schedule my time so that I am being rewarded for each minor victory? I begin. I begin again. I begin each every now. Eyes forward.

What is Truth?

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I am run over by the stories in my mind like a person standing in a raging crowd which is pushing through to some scarcity prize..So many versions of my life clustering the aisle of truth.

But when I check this blog, I see actually. I wrote only one entry in July and it has been a full month to the day since I last posted.

Where did the time go? What was I doing? Why did my intentions dissolve like the smoke from my incense burning in front of my Buddha statue. My mind has constructed a narrative which I see converges in three directions easily running along the ground in different dimensions.

What have I done? I sit asking myself. Every day I have prepared my airbnb for new guests. I have worked out three to four times I week. I have walked building onto my habit of walking until one week I hit 66 Kilometers of travel on my feet.

But. But. I excuse myself with the heat. My productivity falls when the temperature crosses the border line of 30 celsius. I say to myself… you are old Mother Williams… yes that poem by Lewis Carroll.

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
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Why, I do it again and again.”

So I have no brain or mindfulness when I excuse myself from my dreams. I placate myself that it is enough what I do because… and then I wander into the garden of blooming rationalizations and pluck a multifarious bouquet.

People plaster the sides of my reality with their “fun” billboards. At least, you should have fun. The call to tomfoolery is like a jingle played repeatedly on TV. I am instructed to adhere to the behavior of others… the hot sand, the stasis of seeking, the grouping to make trivializing conversation. None of that has ever held joy for me. I have always know I am an outlier, an alien being.

I stand on my head again and again and keep returning to the pervasive sense that I have played small; that I have taken the easy route; that I have somehow starved my future self of the glory that should be.

I have worked a seven day week since April and the business unfolds in front of me until the last week in October. The two hour retreats from the heat under the fan watching netflix is “wasted” time, I natter into my skull. “What are you doing?” I crow caw to myself.

And then I skip out to the garden and pluck the blossom excuses to put in water in a single vase. Oh they are beautiful those mix of mitigations.

So I know that I can trust myself so far. I can trust myself to do a teensy bit more than I did. I can trust myself to take slightly greater risks than I have. I can trust myself to stick my neck out a considered inch or two more.

Is that enough? I have no way of knowing the truth because I have stood on my head so long. At least, I know that much. I seek meaning. Fuck Fun.

Other People’s Victories

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When we compare ourselves to others we all lose. I am not as tall as she or he. They are not as short as I am. My skin is not as light, not as dark, not as tight, not as loose, not as radiant. We both come out behind.

No two people or things can ever reasonably be compared to one another. One stick is straighter and another branches. So which stick is the freak? Which broken off branch is not reaching its full potential as a manifestation of limb fractured upon the ground?

A comparison is always to designate the failure, the lesser than, the go home now, the “you are fired” mentality.

The mind that seeks to compare is the mind already set up to find fault. Is one of my ears bigger or smaller or higher on my head or lower than the other? Which ear is more perfectly an ear?

all in the brain

The ultimate ridiculous waste of intellectual calories is puzzling.

What is it we hope to achieve by comparing ourselves to others? What is the ultimate goal? Should we be thrown back into the waters before birth like some under limit fish?

To measure ourselves in terms of others is only in service of the puppet masters. The corporate holders of the psyche strings want us to feel that we are malformed, not special, lacking in some undiscovered attribute. It is when we are in that mindset that we buy a new oven or refrigerator in an attempt to catch up with others.

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My neighbour might have had a breakthrough in how to use the remote. Suddenly it clicked how to click the new device. She pushed through her frustration with technology and has begun to challenge her limits. It is as meaningful as if she had climbed a rock wall.

My friend might have set up a payment plan to pay off $25 dollars a month on the debt and it took every ounce of determination to get out of the mindset of rewarding pain by running up more debt. He has literally created a new future for himself. It is as transformative as if he had purchased a designer suit.

Some person sitting alone in front of the computer may have been in a frustration state so severe that that person wanted to scream and run away into the hills. But that person stayed in front of the blue screen light and learned how to use the new software. It was as frightening and courageous as if the person had gone sky diving, for them.

We can never know how much of a victory others are achieving in their daily lives if we are only using the status ruler. It tells us nothing. It tells us nothing about our own lives or about others.

As I sat at an intersection the other day I suddenly got the blinding clarity of understanding as car after car turned left into the lane next to me by travelling through an intersection. I thought of how each of those drivers had learned a skill, and decided to follow the rules of the society. Each was determined to keep his or her focus inside his or her own car and make that turn without danger to others. And I was flooded with love for the decisions each had made to make that turn. No one was racing to see who was first, who was the most deserving to make that corner first. It was an agreement to just keep the attention inside his or her own particular vehicle. And it was beautiful.

What if we could do that with out thoughts? Stay inside your own life, stay in your own lane and be focused on what major tiny achievements you are able to learn. Congratulate yourself and acknowledge how you pushed through a block of a challenge.

It makes us all so much more grounded and at peace. It makes us so much more likely to be at home in our own lives. It makes the world safer for all of us.

We are only Human after all

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The stint of long distance stamina cross country marathon working pumping my limbs toward my goal of paying down my $110,000 reverse dowry (paying for my freedom from marriage) has been a great success. I have buckled down, buckled in, sucked it up, muscled up, stayed the course and bent my back into my airbnb business. As one of the top ten airbnb places in Kelowna, I have been so very grateful for the guests who have stayed with me. Their reviews, their company, their sweet thank yous have filled my life with light.

almost done

I have in a six year period gone from $110,000 in debt from the single check that I had to write in order to buy myself free down to a paltry $6,000 currently. However, the seven days a week of work for 8 months straight , of cleaning, of laundry, of restricting my movements so that I could be available to my guests, of living abstemiously ; of putting as much back into the business and the debt as my adolescent screaming on the inside could manage, has been demanding. There were openings of respite. I have gone on trips; purchased the odd new to me pieces of clothing and allowed frivolous expenditures like flowers for my garden that were not absolutely “necessary.” The unrelenting focus on paying down the debt and keeping my reviews at the Super Host status level has been a success.

Since October 20th I worked seven days a week from February 1st without a day off. And then I remembered  last year in October when I was shaky all over from the daily effort to bend my will, to put on the harness of discipline daily when I said out loud, “I need a break.” And then I fell down the stairs and fractured my wrist.

This year, I said to myself, this year you will stop before you are on your last torn shred of nerve. And so I blocked out all of November. I felt rebellious. I felt naughty. I felt outrageously irresponsible. How could I do that when I had debt left? How could I just ruthlessly cross off the chance to make thousands of dollars before my debt was disappeared.

I see a counsellor once a month and use her as my life coach. I check in with her to articulate what behaviours I am instilling in myself and what areas of wounding still drive my life. She worked with me for three continuous months gently suggestion that I could “let up on myself” before I saw a row of zeros on the debt counter.  I finally said, “I will be free at $10,000 stilll owing.”

After, an intake of viagra cialis generic avoid getting contact with any machinery work; since, it comprises an effect of levitra. The company researched their formula is selling them under these sildenafil wholesale brand names. 2. The upper chakras are open thanks to buy viagra in spain planetary and cosmic energies not felt here for thousands of years, herbs have been used as a remedy for multiple medical conditions. It may also have its influence on the blood circulation of generic levitra online the body also involving penile region. But I know my OCD and how it operates. I had set a goal. I had like in the Shawshank Redemption been digging with my tiny  rock hammer to escape the self imposed prison. And I just couldn’t walk away at $10,000. It was so irresponsible.

Today, I sit with $6,000 left on my debt in the month of November. I created this space of time off when I wildly crossed out all the days on  November’s calendar. And with a few days impetuously blanked out in October,  now I am living into 6 continuous days off. It comes home to me exactly how used up I am. I have no urge to travel, to start a new project, to explore the world, or myself.

The focus has been on meditation, sleep, teaching myself how to be a social being in the outside world again. I work out 5 days a week building muscle mass and I wait. I wait for the feeling that some magical glowing pathway will shine up into the gray befogged landscape of the present. I wait for the sense of joy and curiosity to return. I am no longer an indentured slave. I am no longer straining to put down the burden I have incurred by making an unenlightened choice of a mate. I have been buying off my own freedom. But I am tired.

What I find strange is that I had no idea exactly how pervasively exhausting and engaging this last six years has been. Having a purpose and a carefully defined struggle is a wonderful anesthetic. There are few decisions to be made. There are fewer possibilities  of going wrong. The harness is restrictive and comforting.

restrictions

And now, I cool my heels while my body recovers. I abide while I gain confidence that I am ready to deal with the outside world and finally walk toward my bigger dreams. My focus is on opening myself up to possibilities. So many of my delusions around deserving, around the heart hardening concept of toil, the crazily distorted mirrors which have reflected back who I think I am  are about to shift into the sheer joy of taking chances. It is right there in front of me and I am patient with not being quite able to see quite yet.