Category Archives: story

How not working ain’t what I thought it would be

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Stress is the perversion of time. ~ John O’Donohue

Since leaving full-time employment at the beginning of December, I’ve struggled with how to structure my days. This is the first post on how that’s going for me.

Every full-time employee dreams of being able to call her time her own rather than trying to squeeze her life into and around the 40-hour, Monday through Friday workweek.

When I was working, I dreamed of owning my time, of getting up when my body was ready to get up instead of when the alarm woke me. I dreamed of doing yoga and meditation each morning before a leisurely breakfast and then working productively on my writing, meeting friends for lunch, going for walks, taking or teaching the occasional yoga class, taking my laptop to a coffeehouse for a chai and wi-fi just to get out of the house. In the evenings I’d read or watch movies, cook, have friends over, and occasionally go out.

Well. That was the ideal, not what was real. It’s been more of a struggle than I anticipated.

I had just put my house on the market before leaving my job, so I’d already done a lot of downsizing and cleaning. My goal was to get the house listed by the end of November, which happened. Yay, I reached my goal!

But to reach it, I had stuffed a large pile of papers (mail, bills, receipts, papers I had no idea what to do with but couldn’t just recycle) into a cardboard box and stuck it on a shelf in my study to make the house look tidy for prospective buyers.

(I feel compelled to explain that I am messy by nature. I like being able to see things, having them out in full view. Staging is the antithesis of that. You make your house look impersonal. You take down all your photos and get rid of your clutter. You start living in a house that doesn’t feel like your house. It feels like somebody else’s house — somebody who lives in a magazine.)

It took a few days to get around to that box of papers after my job ended. The first weekend I spent as an assistant at NLP training. The second weekend I participated in an Evolutionary NLP workshop. In between, I’m happy to say, I did get that pile of papers sorted and filed.

And there was the excitement of being contacted about possibly being on a TV show, Sell This House. Ultimately, my house wasn’t chosen, and I don’t know whether to feel sorry or relieved about that. All this during December, with holiday events and parties and activities galore.

For Sale

The other thing that brought my dream schedule down to earth was showing the house. Realtors would call about showing it to prospective buyers either later that day or the next, and I would need to clean up and leave, usually right before they arrived.

I’ve got this down to a quick routine 5 weeks later, but it took awhile to learn to tidy one room at a time.

  • In the kitchen, wash the dishes, dry them, and put them away. Then clean the sinks, countertops, and stove top. Eyeball the room for anything out of place.
  • Take my caddy of toiletries out of my small bathroom and hide it in the laundry room. (This is so people can imagine their stuff in my bathroom!) Eyeball the room for anything out of place.
  • Shove my desktop-type clutter of calendars and bills and receipts and magazines into a basket and stick it on the shelf in my study. (See, I learned well and upgraded from a box to a basket!) Eyeball the room for anything out of place.
  • Check that my bed is neatly made and dirty clothes in the basket, preferably not with my underwear on top. Eyeball the room for anything out of place.
  • In the yoga/meditation studio (formerly the second bedroom), roll up my yoga mat and put my foam roller away. Eyeball the room for anything out of place — except I decided that people need to see that yoga mat and foam roller out and being used. Seeing these items out makes them (that is, me) feel good.
  • Make sure the house smells nice. Clean the cat’s litter box and sweep up around it. Take out the trash and recycling. Upend the fragrance sticks in the entry hall to diffuse the aroma.
  • Eyeball the entire house, porch, and yard for anything out of place.
  • Leave. Don’t come back for at least an hour.

Sometimes there are two or even three showings a day. I’ve done so much housekeeping in the last five weeks, I could become a maid.

The truth is, I appreciate my new habits very much. I enjoy living in a clean, tidy, spacious, decluttered house. It feels very Zen.

And now it’s January 8, and I still haven’t settled into the kind of structure I imagined. I go to bed later and get up later. When I do get up, why, sometimes I get sucked right into my laptop (Facebook, email, and blog stats are like crack) before I’ve done any yoga or meditation, and the next thing I know, it’s 10 am and I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. And then a realtor calls and wants to show it at 11….

I want to do better than this.

My heroes of 2010

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I want to acknowledge some people who are heroes of mine in 2010.

My daughter Lela Reynolds graduated from nursing school earlier this month. She is a single mom raising a child with some special needs. That child is now 10. Since Hannah was very young, Lela has been working and going to college. She went to school full-time the last two years. Nursing school is tough, people. She hit the books, did the work, learned the knowledge.

Soon she will take her licensing exam to become an RN. This career suits her well. She likes being useful, is resourceful in a crisis, and is fascinated by humans and health. I think she will work well in settings like hospitals, and she has a couple of employers interested in hiring her. They’ll be lucky to have her.

I am very proud of her, and she did it mostly by herself, with just a little help from me. Way to go, Lela!

Anna Carroll is an amazingly resilient woman I know who discovered she had breast cancer this year. She combined Western and alternative medicine and is nearly done with treatment. I saw her last weekend, and she’s looking good. Anna has a well-developed and creative ability to tap into whatever resources she needs.

Katherine Daniel is another friend undergoing cancer treatment. She kept quiet about it at first and then created a healing circle of friends to provide a supportive community. She’s nearly done with Phase 1, the radiation and chemo.

Both of you, blessings on your journeys. Cancer is a tough one, and you’ve risen to the occasion. Kudos on creating what you need, and I send you my wishes for full and complete well-being.

Abby Lentz is a nationally recognized yoga teacher who lives here in Austin. She created Heavyweight Yoga (aka Heartfelt Yoga) and has made two videos, Yoga for the Body You Have Today and Change the Image of Yoga.

If you have ever considered that large-bodied people couldn’t possibly do yoga, I invite you to watch her videos.

I appreciate Abby for getting the word out — yoga is not just for the young and already fit. It is beneficial for everyone.

I also have great admiration for my cousin Heather and her husband Michael Mazza. They are the parents of six children. They provide an inexhaustible supply of love and direction and leadership for their brood. Watching them with their children in a restaurant is amazing. The kids are well-behaved and friendly, and Heather and Michael enjoy themselves as well. Well done.

I’ve asked friends on Facebook about their heroes for 2010. Glenda says her sister Annie got off her cancer medicine, and that is really GREAT! Yay, Annie!

Katie mentions Linaka Joy for all her explorations and triumphs with health this year. I second that! (My friend Linaka has been a quiet hero, not tooting her own horn but showing us her changed self.) She has changed the way she relates to food, lost weight, and along with the pounds, become lighter in spirit! This year she founded the San Antonio NLP meetup, taking more of a leadership role in the central Texas NLP community. You rock, Linaka! This work will go far.

Katie also considers her cousin Madison a real hero “for the fantastic way she has handled her best friend (who’s also a teenager) having a baby. She stayed upbeat and supportive and used it as a way to strengthen their friendship, despite lots of criticism all around.”

I also want to recognize Barbara Diane Beeler, a fellow blogger and friend, who lost over 60 pounds and is no longer considered obese. She wrote about it in her post Letting Go of Obesity and Regaining a Life. Diane, good going.

Last but not least, I want to mention Gretchen Wegner’s mother, who taught her two-and-a-half-year-old grandson two yoga poses to make diaper changes go well: downward facing dog and bridge pose. Yogis, you get it. Gretchen posted this on Facebook; I haven’t met her mother. I must say, Gretchen, your mom is brilliant! I love that kind of resourcefulness!

Now, who did I omit?

Celebrating the luminosity of Christmas

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We rarely all gather, my two brothers, their wives, their children, my daughter, my granddaughter (at her dad’s), and me. Even though we all live in the Austin area, each family has its own lives and interests. But on Christmas eve, we gather, and it’s very sweet.

We come together, catch up on each person’s news, enjoy a feast we prepare and share, give and receive gifts, and play games, then we separate back into our separate lives, staying in touch about important stuff, until we gather again the next Christmas eve.

We see each other not quite enough — enough to feel deep pleasure when we do gather, but not so much that we get entangled in differences in values about politics, lifestyle, and whatever else may sometimes seem to accentuate our differences from others.

Most enlightening for me last night: watching my brother Will and my other brother Frank’s daughter Grace, age 13, take turns doing silly card tricks.

Oh, and by the way, I got the best white elephant gift of all, a package of “Party Rats, colorful rodent lights for your fingers –Ideal for NIGHT BLOGGING. Whether you’re dancing at a rave with a few hundred of your closest friends, or plugging in for some night blogging, Party Rats are the fun way to have fun!” You slip them on your fingers, flip the switch, and voila! Colored lights shine forth from your fingers.

Watch out, y’all, for some wild and crazy night blogging!

The other funny white elephant gift was a beautiful basket filled with canned ham, Spam, Velveeta, Cheez Whiz, and other highly processed nonfood items. Will put that together, and Frank ended up with it. He’s planning to regift it to someone at work. Ha!

The night before I also gathered with relatives, at Artz Rib House. My daughter and I met up with (I need a list for this roll call):

  • my third cousin John (the instigator — our great-grandparents were siblings), age 77
  • my late mother’s first cousin Wren (my second cousin and the last of that generation in my family), age 93 (still quite lucid and driving)
  • John’s daughter Heather and her husband Michael
  • their six children Elena, Peter, Lidia, Mark, Nina, and Luke Rocco, who range in age from 11 to 2 months

Most fun for me Thursday night: watching my daughter interact with those adorable children, watching them hang all over her, making silly faces for the camera! She needed that.

Since my daughter grew up and left home, I love having absolutely no obligations on Christmas day. It makes it truly a holy day. I get to do all the family stuff before Christmas and have this day to myself (or not, if I choose).

Christmas is a fantastic day to get out in nature and go for a long, leisurely walk, if the weather permits. Crunch on leaves, see bare trees, hear the birds, feel the cold rocks, experience the earth laid bare in winter. Today, with temps still in the 30s and very gusty winds, probably not.

Christmas is also a good day for going out to a movie, an increasingly rare occurrence with Netflix. What would you go see? I’m up for True Grit, The King’s Speech, or The Social Network, if anyone else is up for going out.

If not, I could be perfectly content to stay in, snuggle with my cat, cook, eat, and read. Throw in some reiki, yoga, meditation, Facebook, and it adds up to sweet serenity.

Wishing you peace, moments of stillness, being centered, and delight.

Experiencing loss on a larger scale

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To recap where I left off, I lost my keys on Saturday. I shifted states to find them, first shifting from being upset to playing with Trickster, and also shifting time perception from mainland time to island time. I shifted behavior from frantic, frustrated searching to tossing a ball from hand to hand with eyes looking up.

I then followed an impulse that showed me where my keys were. Problem solved.

On Sunday, I returned from the workshop to discover a bigger loss. My house had been burglarized while I was away, and the thieves took my laptop, wifi router, cable modem, and computer accessories, my DVD/VCR player, my old flute, and (I discovered today) a sports watch.

Other human beings entered my personal living space and took things that belonged to me! It’s Friday, and I still feel a little bit of outrage about that.

Yet I recognize that losing keys, and losing stuff, are minor losses compared to losing one’s health, loved ones, a home or livelihood with no replacement, life. Perspective is important.

They were thoughtless about it, too. For instance, they took the remote to the TV but not the big 27″ Sony TV — too big and heavy. They took the cable modem that I lease from my ISP — useless without an ISP enabling it, and it has an ID. They took the cable to my digital camera, which was dangling out of a USB port — no good to anyone without a camera and software. Stupid, you know?

Mostly they grabbed things that were easy to pawn. I reported it to the police, and they’ll be on the lookout for the items for which I had a serial number.

That’s a lot of inconvenience. Luckily, I have good homeowner’s insurance, albeit with a $500 deductible. I’ll be filling out forms soon and eventually get a check to buy replacements with. But I didn’t have anything backed up, a serious error on my part. I’d been meaning to do that but didn’t have a clear idea of which method to use, so I procrastinated. Now I know — external hard drive, kept separately.

I wanted to spend Sunday night away from home, due to feeling discomfort in my own home, but didn’t. I’d already been away Saturday night, and I missed my kitty Mango. He was my first clue that something was amiss. I had asked my daughter to let him in Saturday night because of the cold. When I pulled into the driveway on Sunday, he was outside. The burglars must have let him out.

Monday morning, I smudged my house with palo santo (fragrant holy wood), brought to me recently from Peru, to clear the negative energy. Moving on through this experience, shifting states.

The burglar of my imagination is a young man between 17 and 21 whose frontal lobes are not finished developing, who therefore lacks the ability to foresee consequences. His ability to empathize with others is also lacking. I imagine, but do not know, that he will eventually get caught and spend time in prison. Not many people who engage in this kind of behavior turn their lives around before going to prison. It would take exceptional awareness of consequences and strong intent to change one’s path. It could happen, though. Those frontal lobes will kick in at some point.

I feel sad and disappointed that humans behave like this and that someone did this to me. It’s personal, yet I know it happens to a lot of people. It’s not the first time I’ve had things taken. Last year in Maui, thieves broke into the car and took my large duffel bag crammed full of stuff.

Because I was on Maui, how upset could I be? Who wants to ruin a perfectly blissful vacation getting bent out of shape over some stuff? I was on Maui, with friends. Perspective.

There’s also recognizing the reality of economic disparity. People judge themselves to be poor or rich in comparison to others and have stories about that. I don’t actually know that I am poorer or richer than these burglars. I am a freelance yoga teacher at present. They probably are freelance burglars, who wouldn’t do this if they had a job.

Like the Kathy Bates character in Fried Green Tomatoes, I’m older and have good insurance!

On a different note, I have seriously been downsizing my possessions, taking stuff to Goodwill, selling it to Half Price Books and on Craigslist, and giving it away. My house has become clean, spare, and spacious, and I like that.

This burglary was an extension of downsizing energy, even though it came from someone else liberating me from my stuff. I’ve decided to donate the remoteless TV to Goodwill and go without. I can watch DVDs, movies, and TV shows on my replacement laptop (and will get a backup system at the same time). I’ll rebuild iTunes and can recreate documents as needed.

So. It’s not something I’m moping about. I secured the window and use the alarm consistently. Just one of those things, a more serious contraction than losing the keys, but still, a momentary blip in the big picture.

Universe, if you’re listening, please hold off on the downsizing and boundary violations for a bit, okay?

How to lose and find something with equanimity

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This past Saturday morning, I prepared to go to a weekend workshop, Harmonics of Healing, with Tom Best and Steve Daniel. (Tom is my long-time NLP trainer, whom I now assist at trainings, and Steve is a didgeridoo player and sound healer extraordinaire.) Held at the Tree of Life Sanctuary in Radiance south of Austin, I was planning to sleep over and packing my sleeping bag, ice chest, and the various items I’d need over the weekend.

I got everything loaded in my car. Ready to leave, I reached in my shoulder bag for my keys — and they weren’t there.

Searched bag. Searched front seat, floor, sides of passenger seat, all around driver’s seat. Checked ground between front door and car.

No keys.

Thought maybe I’d left them inside the house, now locked. Climbed in through a window and searched. No keys.

Perhaps because I was on my way to a workshop/retreat, I began observing myself. I realized that every time I lose something, it’s as if I’ve never lost anything before. I seethe with impatience and frustration and arrogance.

How dare those keys go missing right when I’m ready to leave?

Just that bit of self-awareness helped me slow down and realize that I’ve lost things many times before. This is not a new experience.  There is something familiar about this. The Native American tradition gave us Trickster. When items go missing, it’s Trickster, playing games.

My keys are hiding from me! How cute! How precocious of them! What a surprise!

From this perspective, losing my keys became very, very funny! I called Katie and told her my keys were hiding from me, and that I didn’t know when I’d be there. I was smiling as I called.

I also noticed that I had switched from mainland time to island time. Trickster feeds off pomposity and arrogance and loves to make people look like buffoons. Getting present instead of racing ahead mentally to the next thing is one of the best things to do.

I remembered a technique for lessening anxiety called Mind Juggling, and that is to toss a ball from hand to hand with my eyes gazing up. The activity and eye direction change one’s state. I got out a tennis ball and began tossing it from hand to hand, gazing up to where the wall meets the ceiling.

After a bit, I got an impulse to bring in some yoga props from the back seat of my car. I’d been intending to do that for a while. Why not now?

As I was removing yoga blocks, from the corner of my eye, I saw my keys on the ledge behind the seat. Just where I’d set them when I had loaded the car, cramming the ice chest in.

I had completely filtered that out from my memory.

Ahhhh. Game over. I win. Thank you, Trickster, for your lessons and the stretching I develop to meet the moment.

Keys in hand, I locked the house and went to my workshop/retreat, which was lovely.

When I got home Sunday evening, I unloaded the car and put things away. I made myself a cup of tea and was ready to sit down and check email.

Guess what? No laptop. And no keyboard, mouse, carrying case, DVD/VCR player, antique flute.

My house had been burglarized.

Stay tuned for more about loss.

Sukha and dukkha, expansion and contraction

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Sukha is a Sanskrit and Pali word often translated as “ease,” “happiness,” “pleasure,” or “bliss.”

In yoga, sukhasana is the Sanskrit for “easy pose,” which is simple cross-legged sitting.

Dukkha is a Sanskrit and Pali word often translated as “suffering.” The First Noble Truth of Buddhism: Life is suffering. Life is dukkha.

Wikipedia provides these meanings. Note the range, from mere discomfort to misery and anguish:

suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration

Wikipedia’s entry on dukkha includes this on the etymology of the word:

Sargeant, et. al. (2009: p. 303) provides the etymology of the Sanskrit words sukha and dukkha:

It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and dukkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning “sky,” “ether,” or “space,” was originally the word for “hole,” particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, “having a good axle hole,” while dukkha meant “having a poor axle hole,” leading to discomfort.

Good space, bad space. Pleasure, pain. Sweetness, stress. Sukha, dukkha.

How about this word pair? Expansion, contraction.

These terms get the concept across in a less judgmental way, and they are keys to your energy map. Does something expand or contract you? Is your mind or heart expanding or contracting? Big mind, small mind, big heart, small heart. Expansion, contraction.

Works for me.

What key question do you ask yourself?

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For many years, I didn’t really work on taking care of my health and wasn’t very aware of my body. My identity resided more in my head than in my heart or my body.

Then I was in a car accident. That started me on the healing path.

The healing path has led me so many places! Massage, chiropractic of many types, Rolfing, yoga, Pilates, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, diet and supplementation, cranio-sacral therapy, regular therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, Zen, and I’m sure I’m leaving out some good stuff.

About 5 years ago, I got tested for food sensitivities, and as a result, I cleaned up my diet. Most unexpectedly, I felt a whole lot better.

Hindsight tells me that I probably have been gluten-sensitive for most of my life, and getting wheat out of my diet made the biggest difference in how I felt from day to day than anything else I’ve ever done — and that’s saying a lot.

The difference in how I felt pointed me to the realization that I truly had no idea how good it was possible for me to feel. I don’t mean feeling good in a hedonistic sense. I mean basically experiencing myself as healthy, happy, whole, resourceful, alive, alert, intelligent, present, competent, able, capable, loving, compassionate, strong.

That became my key question: How good is it possible for me to feel?

Of course, there’s no answer to that! Who could possibly know? That doesn’t mean it’s not a great question!

The question began to influence my choices. For instance, f I had a choice between eating something that I knew would probably make me feel not-so-great, the question gave me more motivation not to eat it.

The question helped me stick with the program.

Other people have key questions. “How perfect is this?” is one. ” “Which choice brings the most joy?” is another.

Do you have a key question that guides your choices? If so, I would love to know what it is.

Jumping off the train, or the joy of being wrong

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It’s been 10 years since I jumped off the train, and my life hasn’t been the same since. It’s been so.much.better.

Ten years ago, I had just moved from Dallas to back to Austin to a new job. I was very wound up about some choices that someone close to me had made, choices that were terrible, with dire consequences, in my opinion.

My friend with whom I was staying followed a spiritual teacher called Prasad. I went with her that day to one of his satsangs.

I wasn’t sure what to think of him — a long-haired American dude with a Hindu name, dressed in white, sitting on a carpeted platform with flowers, answering questions as if he was a guru.

He looked like a hippie putting on airs to me. I was silent during the satsang, observing.

But Prasad said something about “jumping off the train,” meant in the sense of shifting into a more authentic way of being. “Jumping off the train” was a nice metaphor. It stuck in my mind.

That night, which was the night before I was to start my new job, I laid awake, mind whirling with anxiety and anger about what this person had done and what I believed the consequences would be.

I could not fall asleep. The clock slowly crept past midnight into the wee hours as I lay awake, monkey mind going a hundred miles per hour.

I knew how important the first day at a new job is. I wanted to make a good impression, not be bleary-eyed and tired.

That part of me was really annoyed that I was letting this worry get to me so much. That part was self-centered.  That part remembered “jumping off the train” and decided I had nothing to lose by trying it.

I imagined myself on the top of a train speeding through the darkness. The train was my train of thoughts and emotions. Monkey mind on speed.

Crouching atop the train like an action hero, I could feel the cold air and the wind generated by the train’s speed.

I began to think about jumping off. What would happen to me if I did? Could I die?

Yes, definitely I could die from jumping off the train!

I did it anyway. I flung myself off the train, somersaulting into the air.

And what happened was this: Nothing happened. Literally. Nothing happened.

I found myself experiencing dark, silent stillness. I didn’t land. I didn’t die. And in that nothing was a blessed, blessed relief. Peace. Peace of mind. At last.

I slept like a baby the rest of the night and felt rested my first day on the new job.

I later recognized that jumping off the train was an experience of ego death. What died was my self-important belief that I had to worry and suffer because someone I loved made what I thought was a dire mistake.

I began to accept the situation and recognize for the first time in my life that worry doesn’t do a thing for anyone, especially the worrier. I found ways to love that person without losing sleep, without taking their choices personally, without suffering but with compassion. For both of us.

I have since noticed that when one experiences ego death, humility accompanies it. Humility and humus come from the same root in Latin. It is grounding to experience humility, and it brings grace.

Ego death. Believe me, we spend a lot of energy fearing and avoiding it. And when it happens, grace follows.

How else can I be wrong and find grace?

Leaving a job, embracing the unknown

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How much change do you need or seek?

I need a certain amount of change in my life, and I’ve worked in an environment for the last six years where people often stay in the same job for decades.

I gave two weeks’ notice at my job on Monday.

I once worked at the same place for eight years, although that job involved promotions, various managers, and several reorganizations. In my current job, I have done the same thing for the same manager for six years. I’ve liked working with her. She hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve felt comfortable with her supervising my work. She’s a literate technologist, and I appreciate her. Now she’s retiring, and I’ve come to see it is also the best time for me to leave.

Even though giving up a secure job brings insecurity, I feel strongly that I did the right thing anyway! I feel exhilarated and insecure, free and scared and adventurous.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I have — to work in a health food store, to work in a garden center, to spend more time with my granddaughter, to catch up on my reading, to devote more time to improving my blogging, maybe travel a bit, take some workshops that intrigue me.

To rediscover my own biorhythms instead of those artificially imposed by an employer’s needs — yippee!

And of course as I’ve mentioned before here, I’m selling my house, planning to downsize into a vintage trailer, and have been accepted into the Academy of Oriental Medicine of Austin with a summer start date.

I am witnessing doors open — like being asked if I’d be interested in teaching an “old men’s” yoga class!

I notice a kind of shedding that accompanies leaving this job. My mind feels sharper and more resourceful. I feel more alive.

I am not who I was six years ago. Dang, but I have done a lot of yoga since then, substituted for my teacher, and finally trained as a teacher.

I’ve taken two levels of NLP training and presented on NLP topics, with plans to do more and some coaching again.

I finally read all the Carlos Castaneda books and discovered some great poets and took up the pennywhistle.

I’ve traveled to Maui twice and discovered West Texas.

I’ve been in and out of relationship a couple of times.

I’ve been a support for my daughter while she’s gone to nursing school.

I’ve been an integral part of my granddaughter’s life.

I’ve worked hard on several health issues with a lot of success.

I’ve made some friends at work and gotten kudos for my work.

And of course, I started meditating and started this blog.

Really, I cannot count all the changes I’ve made while working in this same steady job. The job has made it possible for me to grow and change, and now it seems I’ve outgrown the job.

I’ve come to accept that truly, life is change, that change is the key characteristic of life. I walk towards it now.

Downsizing, simplifying

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Haven’t posted much lately because I have been getting my house ready to sell. There’s been yard work to do outside — pruning and sifting compost — and weeding through stuff inside that I’ve accumulated over 10 years.

I’m ready to downsize and radically simplify my life.

A few friends came over on Sunday and took art, furniture, and more. Lots of stuff went out to the curb for the city’s bulky item pickup, and most of it got picked over by resourceful scavengers long before the city trucks appeared today.

A big pile by the front door, gathered this evening, is waiting for my daughter to see if there’s anything she wants. The rest will go to Goodwill.

I love Goodwill.

This letting go feels so good! Like the more stuff I give away or sell, the  more space (and freedom) I feel in my life. I feel my energy brightening up.

Funny that I didn’t notice stuff weighing me down, holding me back, keeping me stuck — until all of a sudden I felt compelled to simplify.

A good question to bring into my life when it comes to material goods is, “Do I really, really need this?”

I’ve pared back on possessions a couple of times before. Moving is always a good occasion for it. But this time I will have even less stuff accompanying me into my new life.

Because really, how many teacups — with saucers — does one woman really need?