(I miss my dishwasher)

 It’s well and good to say I must clean each plate and bowl as I use it. (Which I’m doing for the most part)   But I MISS my dishwasher!  I miss how out of sight everything is. (I’ve yet to get on top of emptying my dish drainer every day) I miss how guaranteed grease free the dishwasher dishes are.   There’s less work in this little space but there’s also more work. (Though I will say sweeping takes 5 minutes including the stairs)  And the setting new habits takes attention and energy   There’s a part of me that’s tired of it  

 If this is truly a candidate for being the last place I live, can I really make this comfortable and easy?  Too soon to tell if I can attenuate and no longer notice all the uncomfortable new things.  How long? Maybe 6 months? Or so?   So check in with me in March.    

I think I’m just cracking a bit of my denial.   This was/is one hell of a Life change!!  What the Fuck was I thinking!?!  About time for that thought to come to the fore.  I talked about voluntary freefall but I’ve always hated diving boards, I was unlikely to step off a cliff.  So perhaps acknowledging a little discomfort, a little grousing about inconvenience is getting down to the real stuff.  (About time!)  But I suspect missing my dishwasher is going to last for a while

Idle

 I feel idle   I’m used to having a long list of should ottas.  Granted I have lots of “it would be good to get done” tasks but no urgency   This is the no wind in my sail moments  that I said I wanted in order to discover what “I want to do with my one wild and precious life”.   Napping, my default,  still feels good, but ….    I’m used to being productive, putting food by, building designing.    Somehow I’m reminded of Adam’s ceramic teacher in collage who saw how every assignment to work on a skill was used to make something utilitarian, and so gave him a challenge to make something frivolous    He made a ceramic purple cow head. On a plaque.  Which hung on the wall at Pipers Nest for years.    

It’s definitely against my habit to invite “trivial pursuits”.   But perhaps cultivating idleness might reveal new delights.   But it at least fuels the restlessness which could indeed feed the search for something new

Habits

 I  fast with the actual data but it’s generally true. used to tell my students that “24 times in a row makes a habit”. That’s a little loose and fast with the data, but it’s generally truism   And so 26 days in  I can feel that daily writing and walking are set enough that no need to daily chart them anymore  the pattern of doing them is largely established   War\ter drinking not so much. I wonder why. Seems like that’s easier? Hmm. Perhaps because it takes less effort I didn’t feel I really needed to TRY    ??

There’s some definite mood perks to at least starting the process 9I don’t want to claim success prematurely_  so I’m adding one which could really help . Daily floor sweeping.  I don’t know why but I’ve resisted daily floor sweeping, have preferred cleaning as an occasional Big Deal when in fact of course, a little incremental effort can be far more effective.  

If I can pull off these “healthy adult habits” it gives me hope that this really is beginning a new phase of my life, not an effortless fading asleep into my death

Stories

 I 5think the shift I’m feeling is because I’m shifting from the story I’ve been telling about “the move from the farm into the city”  and the why and the how, to the reality of the felt experience   The stories that guide us are by definition a step removed, a metacognition of what’s happening. The stories enable seeing the Universal in the specific   But that remove doesn’t enable living in the skin of what’s happening.  

All good.  I’m a story teller and that’s what I hope to refine with this daily writing. But living in the sensory reality of the dirty floor or the ability to see my with my new technology is what’s going to let me evolve the little day to day details of actually functioning well in this space and noticing/appreciating it.    

I’m remembering dreams; I started listening to music on my new little speakers. It reminds me of landing in my little dorm room at UofC in 1967.  Scared, hungry for a new life. 

I’m here, now

 I woke up this morning feeling as tho I’d landed back into my body, the here and now of being alive.  Not sure why It’s been 3+ weeks, it feels like it’s no longer  part of my moving story but as part of my life  It’s sort of like my psychi caught up with my body and I felt like I could chose to do something or not.  A little bit of agency.  I’m loving here now so what am I going to do with it?   I took a 2 mile walk with Honey  set up an eye a[[t  swept the floor.   Starting to write with my new keyboard monitor work station  It’s awkward   May start touch typing exercises.  I may not have anything worth saying but I’m listening  

I’m here now. There’s no going back 

Making Things Work

I loved planning all the details of this transition and now I’m face to face with what doesn’t work well. How much is just the newness? I feel like a dog turning in circles before lying down. Nothing, well not much  feels comfortable.  Including writing when I don’t have any nugget to communicate.  So. I guess it’s a step by step trying to iron out the wrinkles, the bed, the chair, and then setting new patterns which hopefully will become comfortable in time. I was hoping to feel inspiration from the change but may have to settle for the doldrums   

What is working well? I like the space, love when the owl calls at night tho he’s been gone for a week or so now.  Right amount of contact with Adam et al, dogs are settling in.    New tv is lovely and the speakers sound good Not too noisy or too much light (all things I wondered about) walking to Quaker meeting feels good and I’m getting the hang of the morning walks …

What’s a little uncomfortable?  The bed feels a little too soft, not great on my back.  I haven’t gotten the hang of my new IPad keyboard and desk/chair set up but it’s too early to tell. My tv watching supposed to be “comfy chair” isn’t really comfy yet.  I’m not staying on top of my fridge/cooking/cleaning set up.  Besides the fridge being hard to see into it may just be time.    I said I needed to be uncomfortable in order to be open to New,  and now I’ve got it.   

One constant is I’m still lousy at keeping the floors clean. 

Everything feels so awkward

 Nothing works quite right.  The refrig, dealing with dirty clothes, what to do with myself, I’ve entered the woods of my new life and am not sure which way is up.  I broke the edge of one of my paintings that I’d stored in the garage too close to where I needed to park. Feels like a metaphor. I can’t find the right words   Everything takes effort; the walking hurts and my new technology  blows raspberries as I try to do simple things.  I’m three weeks into this  new Life and I feel awkward, at 7s and 9s  (I’ve always imagined that was referring to the 7s and 9s timetables which I never truly memorized so they always awkward).  I really do feel a faint sense of vertigo    Now there’s the work of figuring out what do I actually want    Blah  said Toad

Recommit

 I wanted to establish new habits with the move into town, a new venue being one of the best times to establish new patterns.  I committed to walking every day, drinking more (2 liters) water and writing in my journal (this blog) even if I didn’t have anything to say.  2 1/2 weeks in I lapsed. I just really didn’t feel like walking. And I Really didn’t have anything to say   And to be honest the water drinking has been my most erratic habit of them all.  I knew and feared that this moment would come  

But during the night, woven, into my dreams, I dreamed of wanting to recommit   Interestingly as a dream it folded in that the lapse was needed to make me aware that I DID really want these new habits even if I didnt feel that I wanted to do them.  Not sure I have the words. I think it was tied in with the conversation with Piper re whether or not to quit piano.  But I love it when my unconscious taps me on the shoulder. I believe that back room guide sometimes more than my bossy well intentioned mind.  Recommitment doesn’t mean I’ll be perfect (which was never the point). It just means I’ll persevere even through lapses

Intro Psych

 I walked 1.3 miles into campus and found the building and classroom. It’s right next to the clarion which still has a magical feel for me.  The class was sort of slow but interesting.   I’d said that this was the one thing Id sign up for and commit to. And I did it.  As I’m going thru the motions of new activities i feel the presence of some part of me directing    I’m doing things that sone distant voice is saying “just do this and we’ll evaluate it in a couple of months”   The Intro Pstcg class was going over brain communication and hemispheric differences.   It reminded me how much I like to think about my thinking. Metacognition.  Noticing the invisible guiding hand leading me through this transition  is one sense of it.      And then I walked the 1.3 mi back.   And felt good about myself

And more of who I am

 I’m 76 years old and I think out loud.  WhenI find myself orbiting a sense of something I want to communicate, it often takes several go rounds to become clear.  Which means I talk a lot.  I’ve been embarrassed about this tendency all my life, from back in the days of “Chatty Cathy” to now when in my exuberance following an idea i cut off people and don’t leave any oxygen in the room for others to speak.  I struggle with it. I try to pause. If I catch that I interrupted as someone was starting to say, I stop say “go on”.   But the truth is  I talk a lot.   And it’s part of who I am for good or for ill.   I love the taste of words, finding the cleanest clearest way to communicate , particularly if it’s a subtle fragile idea and hard to grasp.  I’m a translator too.  I’m good at explaining things across perspectives, like helping liberals hear conservatives or adults, kids.   I used to call it articulating the in articulable      I still try to mitigate the harm my uncontrolled wordiness can do but also forgive myself and value my gift with communication.  At 76 it’s unlikely to change.   But it’s also a tool I can use  and perhaps if I can overcome my resistance to writing, it may be a gift I can give

“Become such as you are, having learned what that is”

 That’s a quote of Pindar which found me recently.   It reminded me of a feeling I’ve had most of my life,  you’re always growing but you don’t know what to, but you can sense when you’re on the path or off the path.  The point is that sensing, rather than the content of any particular choice.    I feel like that’s part of what I’m doing with this move, becoming more of who I am, because I’ve learned who that is.    

I’m a noticer.  I notice little things, big things, and think and wonder about them.  That noticing and questioning is  an essential part of me. I sensed that it was time to leave the farm, because if I didn’t I would never do anything besides grow and put by food, feeding folk because I can.  I needed Less, to be restless and bored so I can feel around for the next right thing to do and be.   That’s why mindless tv and napping might be dangerous, filling the void and lulling me into comfort and “the arms of Morpheus” as my bro likes to say.                                                                                                                                         But sometimes dreams and the dream state allow me to see things out of the corner of my eye,  to notice the unexpected      So in the recovery of the move perhaps I should let that languid flow happen  as long as I’m still noticing.    

Which finally gives me a good feeling about this forced daily journaling I committed to.  I feel like I’ve been pulling words out of my ass so to speak, not really having anything to say.   But perhaps that allows for some random thought from the “radio in the back room” of my mind to tap me on the shoulder.   And because I’m Free of should oughtas  I could pursue.     

Greasy Film

  One reason for the move was to be able to stay on top of keeping my space clean.  I’ve been putting off vacuuming, dust mopping and washing the floor.  All maybe 150 sq ft  of it.  Finally did it today. And it took maybe 5 mins.  But probably even less. I need to feel in ny bones that it’s no big deal. That I have the energy to clean the floors EVERY day if I want to, it’s NO BIG DEAL!      I have. A lifetime of avoidance to overcome  and build new muscle memories.   And then there’s washing the Very FEW Dishes I use.  It’s been fine cleaning as they go to the sink  but i basically need to wash in cold water and even with lots of soap it’s hard not to leave a greasy film.     I’ve loved my dishwashers of the past and thats probably what I miss most at the moment       But.   These are real things that I need to learn to deal with now or they Will become a problem!    How truly odd.  

Silence

 I was reminded this morning about a particular flavor of Silence  which I savor.  I went to Quaker meeting for the first time in probably years.  I’ve always loved silence (odd for a person who thinks out loud,  talks a lot).  And there are so many different types,  kind of like there are different tastes of water or of breathed air.   I’ve had a moment of silence before eating since Adam was about 3 or 4.  Somehow the contrast to the hustle bustle  of meal prep makes that stillness shimmer a little.  Silence in a large group has some of that shimmer but also the contained energy, the potential energy of a lot of people.  The charge is palpable   Quaker meeting stillness has the additional ingredient  of spiritual openness   A room full of people who are consciously inviting a manifestation  of their Life Force to move them has a definite charge to it.   It feels good to be reminded of it    I’d like to think and write about the different flavors of silence.  I need to remember what I’ve noticed 

It’s So Tempting

 It’s so tempting to fill the void  rather than sitting with the emptiness.   I chose this , this lack of things that must be done so that I could be bored, be restless be Hungry for ? *what I don’t know yet??                TV is a comfort particularly at the end of a hard day but it’s too easy to fill the time and space I worked so hard to carve out for myself.  Perhaps I need to build in more emptiness, limit my tv or mindless reading of NYT articles I’m not really that interested.  I know when I’m doing it.   No need to yell at myself.  I just need to acknowledge the urge to fill the void   And resist, rest   And see what emerges

10#s of stuff in a 5# Bag

It’s interesting what will wake me up and get my juices flowing.  We have a parking problem  there’s a two seater garage but not enough room for two cars to park and charge.  Ahh but is that true?  There IS room we just need to see space to fit everything in more efficiently.    And on the pad outside, to see unused space that the trash cans can go in and leave 5 ft or more of parking pad  so everyone can fit.   What is that about my brain?  Who knows it might have been a big part of my motivation to fit my Life  and my most beloved objects into this 350 sq ft space       Its a spacial puzzle but more than that its about prioritizing, and imagining the usage  to optimize the efficient use of resources.     Perhaps part of my not wasting obsession?    But when I can get everything to fit and to work,  it feels Sooo good!

Escapism

 I’ve got a new tv.  Yes it’s an indulgence that makes my nest feel well feathered.  But.  It is so easy, so comfortable, so distracting.       I feel so ambivalent   I fear it eating my attention but i want its limbic stimulation.   When is escape part of a healthy life? What  is the balance which makes it soul food not a drug?    Is it the quality ? I try not to watch junk   Or is it what I do with the time on either side?  Perhaps it’s letting it inform the rest of my life. The movie about the middle aged housewife during WWll who journaled her way into owning her life,   Kind of like the use of remembering dreams so I can integrate my unconscious perhaps the escape can be food for thought and not       I”m grasping and gasping for meaning.  Perhaps that’s enough of a balance for now

Night Noises

 I’ve always felt the power of background noises to set the feel of an experience. Kinda like the way that background music in a movie can change a romance into an anxiety based fear    The night noises of my new life are surprising and evocative     There’s a train whistle at odd times through the day, distant enough to not grate and easy to ignore. But at night the whistle seems to shimmer a little, reminds me of the Glass Menagerie or the song Last Train to Clarksville. Fodder for the imagination.  And then there’s the Great Horned Owl which nests a block away.  Near enough to sound a presence but far away enough to be ethereal.   The crickets aren’t as loud as at the farm but they followed me here.    I feel like I have the beginnings of a soundtrack  now I just need to discover the storyline

Persistence

 Each day I make a list, attempt to get through it by the end o the day. My inner9 year old is tired and doesn’t wanna but I keep on.    Not sure why except I feel like my new life is just  under a layer of effort. The value isn’t so much in what the task is but in persisting.    I’ve been polishing copper a lot lately and the the scrubbing and then letting it sit with the polish on and then more scrubbing.  My life feels like every bit of effort to make a new habit, not leave any dishes in the sink, write this journal when I have nothing to say, brings me closer to some deeper essence, revealing something   Not sure what yet.   But each day in this new life, each week, is a chance to scrub deeper reveal some part of me that’s deeper than wanting

Old. Dog

 I’m getting new technologies and am face to face with my calcified brain and hands. Part of me feels l;Ike a two year old  “I don’t Want to” do anything that requires effort.  I did my 1 mile walk today, but everything in me didn’t Want to!  Adam set me up with the keyboard and I want my old touch screen,   Here I am Face to Face with the Second Step  and part of me wants to turn and run.   I can’t blindly make myself (I guess I can with the walking) but the New habits I want are going to feel awkward and not easy and somehow I need to keep doing them til I break through  A birth of sorts isn’’t comfortable, but that’s why I did this transition.  New dendrite growth!

Weeds

 Out at the farm again  to pick raspberries and beans.  I realized how much I let the garden go this year. With all the rain we had  my ignoring of the garden in July led to 6-7 ft tall weeds in the garden.  

I’m tired.  I think I’m ready to be done with gardening.    Perhaps thats why i don’t feel great loss. I’m ready to be done.   Something in me has switched off.    Do I believe that?   Time will tell. But the tiredness runs deep

First time back at the farm

 Yesterday I went out to the farm and had the oddest sensation.  I had a list of to dos. But no energy.  I did what I could and then started to pick beans (not many big enough) but felt sort of woozy and disoriented, more psychologically than physically     I definitely wasn’t in productive mode.    Then today was another long deep sleep day.  Perhaps I AM fighting off some sickness.   But it crosses my mind that my body is just starting to grok that something has changed and the body mind disconnect may be the disorientation.  I’m curious what tomorrow will feel like 

Tired

 Today was one of exhaustion and deep sleep.  I think the depletion of the last few months caught up with me.  I struggled to get thru the water. Only walked ,3i mi  and ate a whole box of cookies.    But I’m writing now  and will keep on putting one foot in front of the other til I make it into my new Life.   I rather like the feel of its newness,  the order that is starting to evolve in my new space.   Perhaps this is how to get to the endlessly awaited  “rebirth of wonder”.   To move forward with curiosity into……?

Third Day

 I’m starting new habits      Three days is only the first step, but 30 will be the beginning of new habits.   I still find myself wondering Who is the decider in me that is the architect of both the move but also the shedding of old skins, the driver of the new habits?  Perhaps the daily walks will become something I look forward to? Perhaps the daily journaling will get me back into writing…. But somehow I feel the presence of a part of me who is taking me in hand, who wants me to step into something new, not necessarily better, just different..  and for some reason, it makes me feel hopeful.  Like an older Me is reaching back accross time and guiding me. All I have to do is do it one step at a time

Working out the kinks

 second day living in Madison.  I still don’t feel it I’m busy sorting storing ironing out the wrinkles     When will it hit me , the enormity of what I’ve just done.   Starting new habits  drinking 2 lots of water, walking and journaling every day.   Who is this person who decided to do this?  Away from my beloved fields of switchgrass    I’m waiting for the pattern to emerge     But who am i now?  What am I growing toward?  

First day of the rest of my life

 I moved.    I packed up my life piece by piece   I picked up each object or picture or writing and decided   I decided to keep or give away or toss, burn and bury.    I did it one step at a time, one foot infront of the other.  And Now I’m living in a little 350 sq ft apt above Adams garage        I feel.   I don’t know yet.   I feel  relieved that it’s done I feel tired and in pain.  I feel determined   To be open to whatever comes.   I want to know  What else is possible???