Everyone loves a fresh start
Last night I read something in the July Shambhala Sun that struck a chord with me:
So! My burning desire of late to be somewhere else, anywhere else, is maybe not such a terrible character flaw after all. Maybe it's actually taking me in the direction of art and work of the imagination!
I will admit to feeling sort of disappointed when I saw that this month was the "Annual All Buddhist Teachings Issue," expecting it to be full of dry boring scriptural citations and commentary, sort of like some of the religious magazines I grew up with. But no. I've been enjoying it so much I stayed up reading half the night, and again this morning in the shady reading area Mr. A set up for me under the walnut tree. Its branches hang all the way to the ground, like heavy curtains, and inside it's like a little green room. We have three chairs, a couple of tables, a rug, and some potted plants in there ... it's one of my favorite places to sit at the moment.
Here's something else I read, in a piece by Zen teacher Darlene Cohen titled "The Scenery of Cancer." She's talking about acceptance, and the practice of nonpreference – in which you make a point of not picking the thing you want. "Most of our preferences don't make much difference, like whether to choose chocolate or orange. But if you always go with your preference in every matter, then it's harder when it does matter – like preferring health to cancer. The statistical weight of your always choosing what you prefer becomes enormous, and your flexibility sags under it."
I could say the same for my experience with diabetes. If anyone had asked, I would have told them I'd most definitely prefer to NOT have diabetes. In the last week or so I've been regressing a bit, I guess – sagging under the weight of my wish to be totally healthy when I'm now permanently less than totally healthy. Finally feeling some of the sadness and despair I hadn't been allowing myself to feel in the first weeks, when I was so busy trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing that I didn't have the energy to pay too much attention to what I was feeling. I cried the day I was diagnosed, and the day after, and haven't shed a single tear since then, but this week I can feel there's a big cry coming on. Maybe just from the stress, certainly from PMS (which seems to be getting more and more intense as I get older), and also because after a month and a half or so of steady progress it seems like now suddenly I'm not losing any more weight, and my blood glucose numbers seem to have stalled at an average of more than 15 points above where I want them to be (though still much better than where I started).
This morning I dreamed a new variation on my "trying to get home" dream, the one where I'm about to miss my plane. Usually when I have that dream, I'm on my way to the airport at the end of a vacation in some city, when I realize that I'm way too late to catch my plane on time. This time, I couldn't even remember where I was trying to go. I found myself in all the houses I've lived in over the last 20 years, as well as the dream houses that always show up in my dream life – but I knew I'd already moved out of them. So it wasn't like I knew where home was, but just couldn't get there – it was more like I couldn't even get a picture in my mind of where I was supposed to be going. I was crying, and asking my sister, "Can you tell me, do you remember? Where do I live?" Then I was alone in the kitchen, and it started to rain, and I ran to make a cup of asian pear green tea, thinking "It will be so beautiful to sit out under the porch roof, drinking tea in the rain. I hope it keeps raining all day."
A sad and lonely dream, but hopeful. I might not feel very grounded in my life right now, but I can still see the beauty in it, and enjoy it and feel grateful for it.
Well, this is my fresh start. I don't know if I'll stay here or not; I kind of liked my old site, but I feel weird knowing that people from work were (and maybe still are) reading it, or trying to.
For the curious, here's what happened. My boss asked me into a meeting, in which she reminded me that blogging is specifically NOT an allowed use of company computers, and that I had been observed blogging at work and that I should stop doing it. That's basically it – nobody yelled or threatened or was mean or scary. The most mortifying part was when she opened a manilla folder to show me a few pages she'd printed from the old blog, topped with the ginormous picture of the pink sewing machine – which was embarrassing not because I'd been "caught" but because I felt like that particular post highlighted my frivolousness and shallowness and insecurity in such an especially humiliating way. I guess for me, it's one thing if I reveal my silliness and self-absorption to kind-hearted friends and strangers, but when uninvited colleagues discover me congratulating myself on my strange esoteric style, for example ... well, that's embarrassing.
One bright spot in all this is that at least I had the good sense and self-restraint to NOT write about anything work-related, except in the most general and non-inflammatory way. Actually, there are some things in there – for example, about wanting to quit and go back to work for myself someday, or go back to school – that might cause certain eyebrows to fly up in alarm ... but it's never been a secret that I've had my own clients the whole time I've worked there, and I would never leave them in the lurch or do any other damaging thing to them if I did quit. Besides which, I've never named the organization I work for, or anyone I work with, or even the exact town I live in ... so I'm not worried about any repercussions from that.
As for blogging at work, it did cross my mind to point out that many of the posts that were timestamped during "at work" hours were actually written at home and only posted from work, because the upload is so much faster there – and that I rarely spent more than 10 to 15 minutes writing when I did write at work, because I didn't want to waste any more time than was legally allotted to me as "mandatory break time." In fact, I'd been part of a conversation just a few weeks ago in which my boss and another employee and I talked about the internet-use habits of someone else we work with, who was spending entire days doing basically nothing but playing games online ... So I already knew the company was keeping an eye on "excessive" use of company computers for personal pursuits. I guess I just didn't (and still don't) think my own use ever really fell into the category of "excessive."
But whatever – the company obviously did think so, and so I didn't make any excuses or try to explain. I just apologized and told them it wouldn't happen again, and it hasn't, and it won't. End of story.
Except that now that domain name is kind of ruined for me, at least for awhile. So I'm writing here instead.
Hello!
... 2. Longing To Be Somewhere Else Is A Virtue. The longing for a fresh start is an ancient and basic feature of consciousness. All art and work of the imagination is touched by it and depends on it. Taking it seriously is a step to finding a new way of being.
3. Mind Is Your Friend. Skepticism is real too, and you might as well embrace it. Doubt seems to have an element of longing mixed with disillusionment. However, if you look into doubt closely, it might be your friend. It might lead you to disbelieve the thoughts that keep your reality in place, which might be a good thing.
4. Go Ahead, Get Elightened. It really is possible for people to make fresh starts, complete turnovers in their way of being. This is not a delusional event and has nothing to dow ith believing in something. It is a natural human capacity for transforming consciousness...
So! My burning desire of late to be somewhere else, anywhere else, is maybe not such a terrible character flaw after all. Maybe it's actually taking me in the direction of art and work of the imagination!
I will admit to feeling sort of disappointed when I saw that this month was the "Annual All Buddhist Teachings Issue," expecting it to be full of dry boring scriptural citations and commentary, sort of like some of the religious magazines I grew up with. But no. I've been enjoying it so much I stayed up reading half the night, and again this morning in the shady reading area Mr. A set up for me under the walnut tree. Its branches hang all the way to the ground, like heavy curtains, and inside it's like a little green room. We have three chairs, a couple of tables, a rug, and some potted plants in there ... it's one of my favorite places to sit at the moment.
Here's something else I read, in a piece by Zen teacher Darlene Cohen titled "The Scenery of Cancer." She's talking about acceptance, and the practice of nonpreference – in which you make a point of not picking the thing you want. "Most of our preferences don't make much difference, like whether to choose chocolate or orange. But if you always go with your preference in every matter, then it's harder when it does matter – like preferring health to cancer. The statistical weight of your always choosing what you prefer becomes enormous, and your flexibility sags under it."
I could say the same for my experience with diabetes. If anyone had asked, I would have told them I'd most definitely prefer to NOT have diabetes. In the last week or so I've been regressing a bit, I guess – sagging under the weight of my wish to be totally healthy when I'm now permanently less than totally healthy. Finally feeling some of the sadness and despair I hadn't been allowing myself to feel in the first weeks, when I was so busy trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing that I didn't have the energy to pay too much attention to what I was feeling. I cried the day I was diagnosed, and the day after, and haven't shed a single tear since then, but this week I can feel there's a big cry coming on. Maybe just from the stress, certainly from PMS (which seems to be getting more and more intense as I get older), and also because after a month and a half or so of steady progress it seems like now suddenly I'm not losing any more weight, and my blood glucose numbers seem to have stalled at an average of more than 15 points above where I want them to be (though still much better than where I started).
This morning I dreamed a new variation on my "trying to get home" dream, the one where I'm about to miss my plane. Usually when I have that dream, I'm on my way to the airport at the end of a vacation in some city, when I realize that I'm way too late to catch my plane on time. This time, I couldn't even remember where I was trying to go. I found myself in all the houses I've lived in over the last 20 years, as well as the dream houses that always show up in my dream life – but I knew I'd already moved out of them. So it wasn't like I knew where home was, but just couldn't get there – it was more like I couldn't even get a picture in my mind of where I was supposed to be going. I was crying, and asking my sister, "Can you tell me, do you remember? Where do I live?" Then I was alone in the kitchen, and it started to rain, and I ran to make a cup of asian pear green tea, thinking "It will be so beautiful to sit out under the porch roof, drinking tea in the rain. I hope it keeps raining all day."
A sad and lonely dream, but hopeful. I might not feel very grounded in my life right now, but I can still see the beauty in it, and enjoy it and feel grateful for it.
Well, this is my fresh start. I don't know if I'll stay here or not; I kind of liked my old site, but I feel weird knowing that people from work were (and maybe still are) reading it, or trying to.
For the curious, here's what happened. My boss asked me into a meeting, in which she reminded me that blogging is specifically NOT an allowed use of company computers, and that I had been observed blogging at work and that I should stop doing it. That's basically it – nobody yelled or threatened or was mean or scary. The most mortifying part was when she opened a manilla folder to show me a few pages she'd printed from the old blog, topped with the ginormous picture of the pink sewing machine – which was embarrassing not because I'd been "caught" but because I felt like that particular post highlighted my frivolousness and shallowness and insecurity in such an especially humiliating way. I guess for me, it's one thing if I reveal my silliness and self-absorption to kind-hearted friends and strangers, but when uninvited colleagues discover me congratulating myself on my strange esoteric style, for example ... well, that's embarrassing.
One bright spot in all this is that at least I had the good sense and self-restraint to NOT write about anything work-related, except in the most general and non-inflammatory way. Actually, there are some things in there – for example, about wanting to quit and go back to work for myself someday, or go back to school – that might cause certain eyebrows to fly up in alarm ... but it's never been a secret that I've had my own clients the whole time I've worked there, and I would never leave them in the lurch or do any other damaging thing to them if I did quit. Besides which, I've never named the organization I work for, or anyone I work with, or even the exact town I live in ... so I'm not worried about any repercussions from that.
As for blogging at work, it did cross my mind to point out that many of the posts that were timestamped during "at work" hours were actually written at home and only posted from work, because the upload is so much faster there – and that I rarely spent more than 10 to 15 minutes writing when I did write at work, because I didn't want to waste any more time than was legally allotted to me as "mandatory break time." In fact, I'd been part of a conversation just a few weeks ago in which my boss and another employee and I talked about the internet-use habits of someone else we work with, who was spending entire days doing basically nothing but playing games online ... So I already knew the company was keeping an eye on "excessive" use of company computers for personal pursuits. I guess I just didn't (and still don't) think my own use ever really fell into the category of "excessive."
But whatever – the company obviously did think so, and so I didn't make any excuses or try to explain. I just apologized and told them it wouldn't happen again, and it hasn't, and it won't. End of story.
Except that now that domain name is kind of ruined for me, at least for awhile. So I'm writing here instead.
Hello!
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