And a Third

A third day of night writing.

But it was a great day. Beautiful blue skies, temperatures in the 70's, low humidity. Spent time with a friend on her back porch and in the pool. Drove ten minutes from there to the beach to watch the ocean for awhile. A nice ride home in the cooling evening. Watched the sun sink into the river as I came into town.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life..

Night Writing . . . Again

Another late night writing session. I need to schedule writing time for the morning. The lateness of the hour reminds me yet again. The day's been a quiet one. It was a long week at work and I appreciate the time to regroup and restore myself. I made good food and went to the grocery store. I thought I might do some reading or tidying, but the day got away from me. I'm spending the day tomorrow with a friend at the shore. Can't wait to look at the ocean. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

Tornadoes and Tomato Sandwiches

Thursday is my Friday.

So, it's the weekend. (Yay!) And I'm ready for a rest. Didn't have much energy for cooking tonight, but my office admin brought me a bag of tomatoes from her garden. Talk about wonderful! I sometimes forget how amazing sun-ripened garden tomatoes are. I had  just enough energy to slice one and use up the rest of the small loaf of sourdough I bought to make my daughter sandwiches for her flight back to Chicago the other day, slap on some avocado oil mayo, and cut the sandwich in half.

I took the sandwich into the living room. I've been popping back and forth between news coverage of the tornadoes threatening our area and the movie The Day After Tomorrow. A tornado touched down near a local mall, an observed tornado. And another was observed in the skies just north of me. The storm has now moved away from our area, but I've noticed that this summer we've had several storms like this, with tornado warnings and actual tornadoes touching down. I don't remember tornadoes being an issue here when I was growing up. Seems like a consequence of climate change. I'm just glad I didn't end up in the basement tonight.

Now it's off to the Olympics and the women's all-around competition. I marvel at these courageous women who hurl themselves into the air, doing mind-bending feats. I remember as a girl doing a little bit of gymnastics. The feel of flight was mythic. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Pausing at the Crossroads

The sun is out and it's a beautiful day. I haven't had much contact with the outside world yet. I made the mistake of hoping to make a quick call to schedule an oil change, but there never seems to be the ability to make a quick call these days. Is it me? Or just dumb luck? I also looked at email. I try not to do that before heading into the office, so I'm clear to write, when I can write in the morning. Decided to do that today.

Why am I thinking about mind clutter?

I wasn't before I began, but as thoughts begin to come, I am reminded of settling into meditation, when thoughts come unbidden and take the mind off in different directions, as if I am the crossroads and my thoughts are the spokes of the wheel heading off into different directions and bidding me to follow.

Bid to follow the unbidden thought.

But I am at the crossroads, and it's such a great place to be, so I'll pause here a bit and just look out over the many vistas available from this vantage point. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Treasure

It's a good kind of tired.

I spent the day with my daughter, her last day before flying back to Chicago. She offered to help me move boxes from the storage unit to my new office. She's such a treasure. My son usually helps me. He's treasure too.

He's settling into new responsibility in his work and hasn't been able to get the time yet to come up here, so she thought she'd help us both out. Believe me, it's a job. But not as bad as she thought it would be, she said, so that makes it an even more precious offer.

Really, it was only a tiny part of the day. Two trips over and back. I was able to park right next to the door, on the grass, and I'd found a dolly to help get the boxes from the car to my office. We spent most of the day just talking and laughing together. We have a special place we've gone for lunch or dinner since she was a teenager, and we drove up river to have lunch there. So glad we did. It was perfect. 

Then the long drive down I-95 through Philadelphia rush hour traffic to the airport. Only, there was no traffic in our direction. It was stunning. There was no anxiety about getting there on time. Massive hugs before I let her go, wishing I could keep holding on. Forever.

I drove back north and decided to go over to my office to keep my mind off the good-bye. Unpacked most of the boxes and got most of the books on the shelves. I am ahead of the game with that. I've got meetings tomorrow, so it's good to have the space clear and ready to receive people.

When I finally dropped what was in my arms as I came into my apartment, I felt every inch of the exhaustion of the day. Thought I'd better write before I'm too tired to write more than three sentences. I am grateful for the tiredness of this day. It's a happy kind of tired.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life..

 

 

The Narrow Part of the Spiral

On Monday morning I give myself space to breathe.

Right there in the morning, when most of the developed world is driving itself aggressively to take on the challenges of the week. It's a way that I work with my own tendencies to over-function at work and sometimes grind myself into circles in ways that give me headaches. 

Sometimes I wake up on Monday mornings with headaches. Bad ones. Like today. They remind me to take time to settle myself in time and space for what will be expected of me in the days to come. And to care for myself. I'm in a caring profession and am no good to others if I am not taking care of myself.

It took me decades to learn this.

Not that the lessons hadn't been there all the time, over time. The life lesson, though, has been like as spiral, as most are. I move around and down, or out, and come to the same point again and again, but differently.

So this morning, while sipping tea and finishing Morning Pages and thinking about the day and the week, my hair wet from about 45 minutes in the shower allowing very warm water to loosen the muscles that tightened overnight and exacerbated the headache, I noticed my writing pattern since my new work began 14 days ago. Night writing. Often the last thing of the day when I was exhausted and had little to give. Showing up, but just barely. Grateful to have shown up, even if it was not my best work, which was being given away with little of me left for the writing. 

Last night may have been the cherry on that cake. I went to bed and then, while settling down for sleep, remembered and got out of bed to take fifteen minutes to quiet myself and allow an image from the day to emerge. Flowers. Joy, The wonder of having too many wonderful things to spend my life on. Family. Friendship. Home and my changing relationship with that. 

So I wrote and then took the joy to bed with me. Woke, and allowed whatever was working its way out of my body to gently release in streams of water and go down the drain. Washed the dishes I'd not gotten to last night. Wrote my morning pages. I notice a pattern of release here on Monday mornings. Clearing up, letting go - in the shower, in the sink, on the page.

Remembering myself as everything else clears away.

Remembering that my best writing happens in the morning. Remembering that the writing is the most important part of my day. Wondering how I could have lost that - again. As I started new work. And then dismissing the part of the thought that held judgment and held on to the part of the thought that holds the lesson and the wisdom. 

I have a little sign on my writing desk. Schedule what is most important first. Always. I've written about this before, and it seems I'm on the narrow part of this spiral, since I'm back here again so soon. There is something deep and focused that I'm meant to learn here. And I'll work with myself around it.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

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The Joy of Flowers

I was given two vases of flowers today. One, beautifully arranged with flowers from her garden and flowers she bought at the store, the other offered from the hands of a small child and cut from a garden, fragrant with herbs and blessed by a found blue jay feather. One for my desk at the office, one for my table at home. 

I am fortunate to be blessed by such bringers of joy.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

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