You know what’s weird? My back and forth, love and hate relationship with blogging. For the most part, I love it. The concept of it, reading other peoples blogs, and even a lot of the time writing and creating my own blog posts.  But then I go through these bouts of not wanting to blog. It’s not even not wanting, it’s not having anything to say. Sometimes it’s just physically not being able to bring myself to the keyboard to write.

I try to think about why that is. It’s not because things get busy. Things are always busy. I’ve blogged more during super busy times than I have during the slowest, dullest days of my life.

For a long time I thought it was a feeling happy vs. feeling low thing, with more blogging when I’m happy and less when I’m low. But I’ve blogged so much about the lower points in my life, I think that it can’t be that.

I think it has more to do with head space, and the amount that’s available for extemporaneous pursuits. It’s about how much mental bandwidth I have free, I think. Or is it emotional bandwidth? See now I’m torn. Maybe they’re one in the same.

Work has been going well lately. I’ve had to step up to the plate a lot more and I feel as if I’m really coming into my own. That’s not to say it isn’t stressful and I guess it’s the industry I chose to spend the majority of my days wrapped up in, but you never reach comfortable. You can’t ever really sit back and just be. It’s like Lucy and the chocolate factory. You can’t slow down for even a second or you’re screwed, and just when you think you’re getting the rhythm of things? The boss yells, Speed it up!

Not that I’m complaining, I’m grateful just to have a job. Grateful to live this nice, cushy life with my husband and my cat and my dog. Are things just exactly as I hoped they’d be at this moment? Gosh no. We’ve suffered quite a few setbacks in our master plan for world domination for life in general. But I guess I’m past the point of being angry about things. I’m at a place of acceptance, which is a beautiful place to be because it gives you the drive for action.

And gratefulness, what a lesson I’ve learned in gratefulness. To allow yourself to feel truly grateful in your bones for what you have, is to want what you  have. You know that saying? Want what you have. For so long it plagued me because I understood in it theory but I couldn’t feel it genuinely, in my soul. I wanted to feel it, but I also wanted so much more. SO much more. I’ve spent years feeling restless.

And now I know, you can have wants, you can want anything. But not having it won’t leave you feeling sad or anxious or frustrated or anything, as long as you feel grateful for your life and the people (and animals) in it, you’ll be okay. Funny how, as leery as I am about organized religion for so many reasons, gratefulness in prayer is the one thing I must say brings me peace.

My prayers go like this nowadays. Thank you for everything. I’d like for this to happen. But most of all, thank you for everything.

And I mean it.

Thanks for reading.

I will take the best care of my body possible. I will listen to my body and I will hydrate, exercise, fuel, and rest it as needed. I will do all this while striving to accept my physical person in all its imperfect glory. I will seek the realization that it is enough, I am enough.

I will pay closer attention to sources of stress and anxiety in my outer environment and attempt to minimize them while striving to recognize that I cannot control other people, things or events, I can only control my reaction to them and their effect on me.

I will more carefully nourish and cultivate my relationships with the people in my life, friends and family, old and new, close and far. I will make bigger efforts to stay in touch while showing myself mercy when life gets in the way.

I will forgive myself more.

I will make space for the quiet. I will welcome it in and become intimately familiar with it. I will continue to learn how to tune out the “have to’s” and “should do’s,” if only for one hour per week.

I will take one step each day toward my future goals, be it reading one chapter, drafting one blog post, organizing one coffee date, or spending just five or ten minutes thinking forward.

I will aim to keep myself organized for I know I cannot have peace of mind without my finances and my house in order.

What will you strive to do in 2012?

One of my most cherished pre-beach rituals since childhood has been stocking up on books. I’m talking going to the library and gathering up a good 10 or 15 books I’d read over a two week span of near constant reading. Wake up, read. Go to the beach, read. Come home, read. Eat, read. Go to bed, read. My family might not be the largest, the craziest, or even the most adventurous, bud goddamnit we can read anyone under the table.

I had planned to gather my beach reads for this year from my own “library” of a good 40 or so books I haven’t read yet (I counted once a few years ago after spending those first few years after college haunting Boston’s used book stores and buying books way faster than I could possible read them). The only book I had really wanted to buy new was Tina Fey’s Bossypants, which I have heard only hilarious things about (so if you know otherwise please don’t tell me). I always find it kind of amazing when a book can make you truly laugh out loud and that’s what compelled me to get myself to a bookery and shell out the $26.99 for it (and that is the main reason I typically buy books used, the astronomical fees for new ones, particularly the hardcover bestseller kinds).

But then I went here. And lost my head a bit.

Literally 20 minutes later, I walked out of there $88 poorer and six awesome (I hope) books richer. Other than Tina Fey’s book, my haul included:

*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.) by Robert M. Pirsig – I’ve heard lots about this book over the years but never came by a copy.

*The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – Heard good things, got great reviews and it’s my only non-fiction of the bunch.

*The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – Supposedly this is the first book of heavy and somewhat dark “children’s” trilogy. Say no more, I’m in.

*The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa – The L.A. Times compared it to Ishiguro and Murakami. Once again, say no more.

And finally, this little Pulitzer Prize winning gem which I’ve already started:

Tinkers by Paul Harding has me hooked 30 pages in and totally mesmerized by Harding’s language and way of describing things. Check out this lovely, lovely description of dusk I just read last night as I was off to bed:

To Howard this was the best part of the afternoon, when folds of night mingled with bands of day. He resisted the desire to stop the wagon and give Prince Edward an apple and crawl into the shadows and sit quietly and become a part of the slow freshet of night, or to stop the wagon and simply remain on the bench and watch the shadows approach and pool around the wagon wheels and Prince Edward’s hooves and eventually reach the soles of his shoes and then his ankles, until mule, cart, and man were submerged in the flood tide of night, because the secrets gathered in the shadows at the tree line that rustled and waited until he passed, and which made the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end and his scalp tighten when he felt them flooding, invisible, the road around him, were dispelled each time he turned his direct attention to them, scattered just beyond his sight.

Passages like that just make me go, “YES.” Thank god there are good writers out there who are published and recognized and put into books for me to read. Thank god it’s not all cotton candy fluff that makes it mainstream. I know I sound like a book snob and I guess I probably am. And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’ll listen to just about any kind of music, eat almost any food that’s good, but I cannot stomach just any book or kind of writing unless there’s some sort of genuine quality to it.

Anyways. Reading rocks. And reading at the beach rocks even harder. And I’ll be rocking out in about three days. And I can’t wait.

The end.

It may seem strange that I enjoy the company of, well, the dead, and I myself admit it seems odd, but this is so much more than just a cemetery. This is a national park, in fact the first landscaped public park in the U.S., and its rolling hills and lush greenery make it one of the most peaceful spaces I’ve ever experienced. And there is something to be said for the solemn silence you sense, walking amongst all those resting souls. Some quite famous ones too. Mary Baker Eddy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Oliver Wendell Holmes. And my personal favorite, my idol, Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Here she rests:

Along this quiet little row of lovely tombs, many unmarked.

I love the old tombstones, some so elaborate and ornate, others simple and humble. Some surprisingly modern looking in design, despite their age. I love reading the old names, love the stories you can imagine when you calculate their ages, the way they used to write the epitaphs, “Born in Boston, Died in Boston.”

The pathways all have these lovely names, Oster, Camellia, Catalpa. We saw rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, countless birds, so much life among the tombstones.

I can’t help but feel happy here, at ease with the circle of life. Andreas and I don’t want our bodies buried in the ground but there’s something to be said for having a physical place where your successors and strangers alike can come visit a part of you. I like to say hello to some of the oldest souls as we pass them. I wonder the last time they had a visit, if anyone is left to visit them at all.

Unfortunately we had to leave earlier than we wanted as we were politely informed by a kindly groundsman that dogs are not allowed, which is fair enough (neither are bikes and joggers by the way though, both of which I think are a pity). But it was still lovely to be there again. I highly recommend this place to anyone who’s never been, and if you’re in the market for burying space, they do (often) take the liberty to point out that space is still indeed available.

We’re happy just to visit for now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you think it can come in streaks?

Last night, I played poker for the first time in my life. Texas Hold ‘Em, to be exact, and though we weren’t in a casino, this was definitely more than a small group of friends playing for fun. This was an organized, two table tournament with 14 players, a $20 buy-in, about three complete novices, the rest with varying levels of experience (some who supposedly play these things six or eight times a year).

To say I was a little apprehensive going in is an enormous understatement. I was downright nervous. I didn’t know the first thing about how to play at 4 pm yesterday. I had a vague idea of the winning hands, through childhood games of poker bingo at my grandmother’s house and yahtzee. Yes, YAHTZEE was my experience level going into this. I knew vaguely of dealing and hands and bets and raising. I had no idea about small and big blinds and checking and nothing really of how the game actually worked.

But, a friend was putting on this poker night in the city and Andreas and I are always complaining to each other how we never do anything fun or interesting way out here in the “country” where we live. So, he, and my friend Matt, gave me a little tutorial a couple hours before the party (including playing a few hands on a computer game in the car, which by the way? I lost every time.) and off we went.

Turned out that everyone at the tables was very nice and perfectly willing to play the role of teacher. I decided that I’d be a winner in my mind if I was able to win just one hand, and maybe, just maybe, not go out first. I was the only girl with five other guys at my table. We got started fairly quickly, playing with quarter, 50 cent, and dollar chips. I lost a few hands, folded a few hands, was really just having fun learning. Then, amazingly, I won my first hand with a pair of fours. I’m not really sure how I did it, but the high of raking in those chips was indescribable. I thought, okay, I can leave here happy.

Now let me pause this for a second to talk about the $20 buy in. Those who know me know that I a. don’t like gambling because I b. hate losing money. I’ve been to casinos (mostly Harrah’s in New Orleans), played the slots, and just hated that feeling of slowly bleeding my $5.00 in pennies to the house. This night, I made an exception, telling myself it was all about having a fun night out and learning a new game. But I was keenly aware of my 20 bucks on the line.

Back to the game. After my first win, which really wasn’t that big of a win, dollar-figure wise, I went on to lose a lot of chips. I was getting pretty low, but still not as low as two other guys at the table, both of whom played quite often. (Two other guys had massive piles of chips in front of them.) It was looking like I was third in line to go out. Then, another win, that kept me alive a bit longer. The two lower guys, they both went out, but one bought back in for another $20. I checked in with Andreas around this point and told him I was “staying alive”.

The plan was at some point, when each of the two tables got down to four players, to consolidate them into a winners table. It slowly dawned on me that we were playing with real money and that someone was walking out of there with quite a bit of cash. If I could just make it to the consolidated table, oh boy, that would be a thrill. That would be something to brag about today. A novice making it to the big kids’ table.

And at this point, it was looking like I probably would make it to the next table. The guy who bought back in went right back out again. (This gentleman, by the way, was my primary teacher and was extremely kind and encouraging to me. I don’t know why he kept losing!) Then, on one of the last hands before the merge, I had queen and a jack and really pushed it hard. One of the guys with the big piles was really pushing too.

I don’t know if you know how Hold ‘Em works, and I’m hardly the one to explain it, so I’ll just say that in the flop there was a queen, a ten, and a two. I had a pair of queens and another high card so I was feeling confident. But this guy was going big, practically all in on his hand. Still, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I had it. Well on the river card, I got a jack. So now I had a pair of queens, and a pair of jacks. I knew then that I won so I forced his hand. He triumphantly turned over two pair as well – a pair of tens and a pair of twos.

I won! Haha. I won. This was a guy who has played at Foxwoods. And it was a BIG POT that time, let me tell you. I was in shock as I raked those chips in and started stacking them up. And much to my surprise? I suddenly held the most chips at the table. Then it was consolidation time. Incredibly, not only was I going to the big table, but I was going as the biggest winner from my table. With $59 in fact, I left my table.

Of course the big table was a completely different ball game. The host was playing there and was doing incredibly well. He had almost double what I went in with. It was much more nerve-racking to play there with 7 other top players (including my husband who had bought back in for $20 more).

I was conservative on the first few hands and my pile dwindled as a result. But two other guys went out fairly quickly. Then I got a hand with a queen and some other low value card. I decided to ride it. It came down to me, the second highest guy from my table, and the host. The host was betting extremely aggressively, almost bullying he was. But I had heard that that was his method of operation. There was another queen in the flop and I had a pair. Not the strongest hand in the world but enough to make you play. And even as he kept raising, I just had this feeling that said, this is his way, don’t let it intimidate you.

Well, it got to be too much for the third guy in this hand in this hand so he folded. The host and I were going head to head. The final card, again, the river card, was flipped. Another queen. He called me all-in, meaning he was asking me to bet all of chips on this hand. It was do or die. So I said, fine. All in. We flipped our cards. He had a shining pair of aces. Now I knew why he was betting the way he was. It wasn’t aggression, it was pocket aces. Those give you all the confidence in the world (I had a pair myself in my first table). But I had three queens. And the room exploded!

Once again, I had won a major hand, and this pot was much, much more serious than my other big win. It must have had $80 in it. And suddenly, the massive columns in front of the host were in front of me. I was actually leading the table. Me!

Everyone was congratulating me, in total awe at how well I was doing. From this point on though, I got very quiet. Inside I was giddy but I was also so shocked at how things were going that all I could do was focus on the game and keep going. From there, players started to drop off (including Andreas). I went head to head with another guy who went all in on a hand. Before the river I was one card shy of a straight, and again, incredibly, I got the straight on the river, the last card flipped (he had a couple of lower level pairs).

It was down to four. And I realized that when I would bet on a hand, the other guys were taking me seriously. I had earned a reputation for following through on my bets. And it was true, I only ever pushed really hard when I knew I had the hand. But at this point, if they saw me betting, they were getting intimidated. I couldn’t believe it. In part I had the luxury to do that, because of my pile. This is where I was able to get some good bluffs in, getting the guys to fold even though I didn’t have a winning hand, just by the way I was betting. I’m telling you, if you’ve never had this feeling before, it is like drugs. It is a high. I am still high today as I’m writing this.

Slowly but surely, the other two guys at the table went out. By this point it was about midnight and I had been playing poker for about four hours. It was down to the host and I and my “teacher” warned me that it was a different game now. That it was easy to bleed out your chips. To be a little more conservative, a little quicker to fold if I didn’t have the cards. When there’s only two players left, you can’t very well go in just to see where a hand will go. It’s truly do or die.

Back and forth we went. Basically passing the blinds back and forth, maybe picking up a dollar or two here and there but nothing much. I did push on one hand that I ended up losing, giving him about $20 in air and blood. It seemed like it could go on for a while. My good friend Rebecca was also there and so wanted to stay to see what would happen but it had no sign of ending soon, so at about 12:30 she left. Then, on the next hand, I got a king and a queen. Finally! Something I could work with. I went for it. The host called me on it. He went all in. And so, what could I do? I said, okay. (There was a king in the flop so I knew I had at least a pair of kings and a queen.)

Over we turned our cards, and honestly? I can’t even remember what he had. All I know is that I won. I won! I won the whole flippin’ thing! First time playing poker and I won, beating out 13 other people over four and a half hours. I was honestly in total shock. Everyone said they were so impressed with me and I was trying to wrap my brain around how impressed I was with myself. Andreas was incredibly proud of me, which was really cool too.

The way it worked, the winner would get half the total pot, then the number two and number three people would two thirds and one third of the other half. I walked out of there with $180, veins full of adrenaline, and one of the best experiences of my life.

So luck. Where do you stand on it? I think I just had great hands for the most part last night, but I did win my two biggest pots on the last card turned, which as you can imagine, involves quite a bit of risk. Was it just beginner’s luck?

What I learned last night is that poker is about chance and skill. People don’t read your face as much as they read your actions. And it also involves a great deal of intuition, at least for me it did. On both of my big wins, I just had a feeling that I was relying on.

But perhaps even that is easier to say in retrospect.

My chips and my jar of "moonshine" (water).

Then other years blow through at gale force, changing the directions of the street signs, rivers veering off into uncharted territory. Everything is changed. Not just your physical world, but you, yourself, down to your very core. This past year has been one those years for me.

I look back at where I was a year ago today. Tearing my hair out at the height of wedding planning, a week and a half from the big day. Trying to nail down the Purchase and Sale agreement on our house. Not yet a wife, not yet a homeowner.

We hadn’t yet flown in a helicopter over Kauai or leapt from a rope swing into one of her rivers.

I hadn’t left my job to go on a personal odyssey.

We hadn’t spent our first round of holidays together as a married couple.

I hadn’t found my other true love in baking.

I didn’t know what it was to decorate my own house.

We hadn’t loved and lost. We hadn’t hit the bottom. That was the big one. Seeing our first pregnancy fade away before our eyes. Hours spent huddled together on hospital chairs. Everything else was easy. Everything else was nothing, compared to this.

This blew me wide open, left me exposed. I tried to draw back into myself, into the part of my world that felt safe. But I still feel raw from it. Easily hurt, brush the surface and I’ll bleed. Yet I’m harder too, more wary. Gone is that last bit of childish confidence that everything will be alright, which I kept up until the very last moment. Now I know that sometimes? It’s not all right.

I’ve always measured my years in two ways. One turning over in January, the traditional calendar year, the other in September, the school year. And now with our wedding anniversary in September, I’m sure that will continue. Except, instead of the school year, we’ll have the marriage year.

For us, this first year of marriage is drawing to a close. It hasn’t been the easiest, no, but that’s not to say it hasn’t been wonderful at times. One year ago, I wrote about how marriage forces you to grow up. Little did I know then how true that statement would turn out to be, what I’d signed up for. Yet through it all we’ve grown closer still. World spinning around us, we grabbed hold of each others hands and dug our toes in. Together. We hung in there.

Just like we said we would.

She was talking about how refreshed and happy she’s been feeling lately and how she partially attributes that to the fact that she’s stopped trying to find fulfillment from her job. Though she works hard, she views the work mostly as a means to an end, and in adopting that approach, she’s found freedom. And as we all know, money may not buy you happiness but freedom sure does. Instead of looking for happiness at work, she’s started creating it in the non-work space of her life. Filling up her hours with music and art and food.

In some ways, I envy her this approach to life. I know it’s one that many people, perhaps even most people, adopt. Just pushing through to get to 5 o’clock. Living for the weekend. You know. Whether or not it’s a survival mechanism, it works for them. And I know it’s true that you can be less than thrilled with your job and still be really contented in life.

For some reason, last year I got this crazy notion that your job should (ideally) be your passion. That you should spend your days doing something you love doing. I knew that didn’t mean that some people couldn’t be happy in jobs that they didn’t love, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t be.

And so I set off on this grand adventure to find my passion, yet here I am six months later, still unsure of where my passions lie, cloudy on the point of what I want to do with my life (or if not with my life, at least with the foreseeable future), and I haven’t even found a way to make money doing things I at least know I enjoy. I’m disappointed and bit embarrassed to report that all I’ve gotten myself is a lot more confused and whole lot more broke. (Damn it!)

So when I came across Caitlin’s post I thought, that’s what I should do! Give myself the freedom to not find my purpose and my fulfillment in what I do for work. Maybe I don’t have a passion. Maybe I just have interests. (I’ve always been a little averse to the word passion in this context anyways.) Maybe I can entertain those interests in my spare time and view my day job as just that – a day job. Not my life, just what I do with my day.

I’m not saying I can’t. And I’m not saying I won’t. But if I do adopt that approach, I think it will mean laying to rest a certain part of me that always hoped for better. That expected better. A little dreaming part of me, my romantic side. That little part thought I would grow up to have a great job that I love. Something that I excelled at. We all dream of that, right? Not just getting by, but being great?

I think about the examples of strong women in my life. Women who cared for their families and worked when they had to to make sure they had what they needed. They didn’t love their jobs but they didn’t really care. That wasn’t the point. It’s almost like a sacrifice but they wouldn’t see it that way. Maybe it’s a generational gap, but I can think of so many women who didn’t even factor in fulfillment when it came to their jobs. They would probably laugh at me for being so bent on this. Work is work, I imagine them saying. Stop trying to make it more than that.

And yet I have never been one to turn a blind eye on anything. I don’t bury feelings. If something is wrong, I want to talk about it. I think a lot. I analyze constantly. I strive to know myself and, once I understand something, I can’t just let it go. In fact I have a problem with letting go in general.

I guess it comes to this: if work can be a means to an end for you, then that’s great. I think there’s a strength and wisdom in that all its own. But if it can’t, if you need more, then you always will. And it will become impossible to deny that. I think I’m one of those contemplative “rare breeds” Nietzsche talks about in his stance on Work and boredom. I am one of those thinkers, one of those sensitive spirits. I do fear work without pleasure. I am choosy and hard to satisfy.

I just hope I don’t remain idle for too long.

It’s not that I mind getting older. The number really doesn’t bother me, never has. Maybe I’m too young to feel bothered by my age but I’ve always felt older than I am anyways. So usually it just feels like I’m that much closer to catching up.

The one question that keeps coming up for me is, am I satisfied with where I am in my personal life and in my professional life? I recently had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. After catching each other up on our lives, one thing became blatantly obvious: they are exact opposites. Her career is soaring. She has a great job that allows her to travel the world and an understanding and supportive boss who cares about her career. But it is a job that demands her full attention and most of her time, leaving little for finding love.

Me, I’m floundering about a bit, career wise. After dramatically changing my approach to work and money last year and quitting my full-time office job (wonderful though it was), I thought I’d easily establish a flexible new schedule for myself that nurtured my passions without hurting my wallet too badly. Turns out, that’s easier said than done. (Crazy concept, right?!) While I’m enjoying my new schedule, I haven’t been doing nearly the amount of exploring of my passions that I intended. And moreover, my wallet is hurting. Loads. I can’t tell you how much I miss financially contributing in an equal way. How much I miss saving money and having a little extra pocket change for things like, getting my nails done or buying a new shirt every now and then. As much as I wanted to say, forget money! I don’t need money to be happy! Turns out, I kind of do. Because even though money can’t buy you happiness, it can buy you freedom.

On the other hand, I couldn’t feel happier or more thankful about where I am personally. I’m madly in love with my best friend, who I’m fortunate enough to call my husband. We own a beautiful house in a lovely town in a great state. We’re seriously thinking about expanding our family. We have a small but dear group of friends and endless love and support from both of our families. As jostled and confused as I feel professionally, I could not feel more secure in my personal life. And for that I am very thankful, every day. It’s what keeps me sane, what gives me hope.

This intersection though, of professional satisfaction (ie: having a meaningful occupation that you like, plus bonus points if it pays the bills) and personal fulfillment (ie: feeling loved and valued by your mate, family and friends) and how they relate to happiness is interesting to me. I know it’s possible to have it all. My husband is an example of that, he loves his job. But if all the pieces aren’t in place for you, can you still be happy? In an ideal world, yes, the scales would all be somewhat in balance. A little of both. I understand that.

But if you’re facing extremes, like my friend, like me, do you just rejoice in what you have and keep the faith that the other stuff will fall into place eventually? What do you think?

What’s that? Not wonderful? Oh right, true. It’s actually crap. But aside from the fact that I brought home with me an extra, microscopic souvenir (and arrived to find my car battery dead in the garage), my trip to San Francisco wasn’t half bad. In fact, I would actually classify it as quite good. On the business end, we got a lot of quality work done. And from a personal point of view, I walked away feeling refreshed somehow.

Was it the change of scenery, the change of pace? Perhaps. I can’t quite put my finger on it but for some reason, I tend to leave San Francisco just a bit happier than when I arrived. Last year was a no-brainer, what with all the jumping and the wine. This year was far more subdued, but it’s amazing what some good conversation, and coffee and pastries in the sun will do for you.

Lately, so many things have been flooding my mind as I lay in bed at night. Ideas, worries, dreams, hesitations. Sometimes they all converge at once and thoughts start coming at me rapid fire, my brain a frog hopping from one lily pad thought bubble to the next in no particular order. It can be, well, overwhelming to say the least. But ultimately I end up coming back to the realization that I make things far more complicated than they need to be. That I need less thinking, more doing.

In my last hour in San Francisco before I had to head to the airport, I did a bit of shopping on Market Street. At one point I looked up at the windows of the Diesel store and was struck by their new “Be Stupid” ad campaign. I had seen it before, but this time it started to sink in.

Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls. Smart sees what there is, stupid sees what there could be. Stupid is trial and error, mostly error.

Smart listens to the head, stupid listens to the heart.

I haven’t blogged about it much but lately I’ve been feeling sort of lost along the path of discovering myself. This path that I so brazenly and, in some people’s opinions, so stupidly, threw myself on. Granted, life has thrown me a few lemons. (Or just one nasty one, really.) (I’m not making excuses here, just trying to give myself a rare break from my inner critic, she’s one tough cookie.)

But the whole point of this grand experiment was to follow my heart. To maybe fall down a few times. Stupid might fail, but smart doesn’t even try. I threw caution, logic, reason to the wind once before. It was scary and it hasn’t quite paid off yet but I still feel it was right. I just need to keep doing it. Keep pushing comfort zones. Keep taking stupid risks. And maybe stop asking if we’re there yet. Because NO, inner critic, we’re not. Be patient. Sweeping, massive personal growth takes time.

I guess what I’m saying is, it takes more than just one great leap, what I’m doing here. You have to keep hurling yourself over cliffs. Again and again. So that’s what I intend to start doing.

Just as soon as I get over this cold.

Mostly though, I’ve been thinking. About what I’m really doing, and what I really want to do. Trying to compartmentalize now projects from later projects, good ideas from viable ones. Sometimes when my head gets crowded my blogging fingers get a bit gun shy. I can’t exactly explain it. How much I blog has so much less to do with how busy my life is, and so much more to do with how busy my brain is. Busy brain, quiet blog. That’s how it seems to be.

Anyways, aside from all the big questions like “where are we going?” and “are we there yet?”, A and I have been wrestling with smaller yet no less important questions such as, “what color should we paint the office?”

Our office has become the dumping place for unpacked boxes, tools, framed thing that are still searching for their wall homes, and all other odds and ends. And while it served a good purpose during moving, we’re really ready to have the office be a functional space in the house.

We’re thinking of going dark. The room gets so much sunlight and I love the look of offices with dark walls. They can really contrast well with all the books and papers.

What do you think? I’m thinking of tackling this project next week.