reality for pausing

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

To be honest with myself, I'm not sure I can handle today: bookstore day. I woke up with a headache, and I'm already imagining how to tell the owner this will be my last month of volunteering. I don't think I can deal with numb fingers and toes and a runny nose from the dust and cold. I'm sick of needing to call her phone after or before hours, for some reason or another, and not getting an answering machine or voicemail. This is the end of 2009: get a goddamn answering system, so I can leave a message!

Listen to this! I'm already ranting and grumpy and I haven't even gone into the place yet. Clearly this is not working out for me. I must speak up for myself.

3 comments:

Courtney said...: Yes, you must speak up for yourself!; December 17, 2009 at 4:33 PM
Da MaMa said...: Tell them Julia!!!! Why be miserable!! Wanna hear you did it!!! Love ya; December 18, 2009 at 10:08 AM
mavina said...: Sometimes the drama of not saying something is worse than the moment of "utterance". When it is over there is mostly a sigh of relief. You will feel better later, I think. THe unfortunate part is thst you are mostly the only person thatcan stick up for you. You can do this!! We support you with love.; December 18, 2009 at 3:51 PM

Post a Comment

about this blog

Originally, I created this blog for family and friends to stay updated with our location and happenings while we were traveling the country. But only a few months after I began blogging about our travel adventures we drove into the sweet, slow town of Bisbee and ended up staying. We actually moved five times while living there, thanks to generous neighbors who asked us to long-term housesit in between our rentals. We are on the move once more, and so it seems we are habitually in transition.

Traveling and moving so often stirs up questions for us about what we really need to feel content, comfortable, and energized about life; it emphasizes for us our relationship and attachment to things--ours and other people's things that fill our living spaces; and it encourages me to appreciate the value in staying put, while realizing that frequent physical change underscores the uncertainty and occasions for choice that exist in all moments of life.

MARCH 2011

After a three-month pause for reflection, I'm coming back to this blog with a renewed perspective on what I want to share. I stopped blogging because with so many transitions happening in my life (moving, traveling, moving, and moving again in only a few months)--and, well just ordinary life happening--nothing seemed particularly notable for the sharing. I was feeling tired, overwhelmed, bored, dispassionate, stressed out, worried, weighed down. What did I really have to say? We all feel that way regularly enough, and who needs to hear more?

Pema Chodron touches on this in an article I just recently read in the March 2011 issue of Shambhala Sun: "When we look at the world around us--our immediate world and the bigger world beyond--we see a lot of difficulty and dysfunction. The news we hear is mostly bad news, and that makes us afraid. It can be quite discouraging" (48). Sometimes it takes unthinkable effort to stay encouraged by life when surrounded by so much obvious sadness and negativity--and it's difficult enough to summon the energy to reach beyond the anguish to share the beautiful moments. Maybe we even convince ourselves that the ordinary pleasures of life are insignificant in the face of such suffering. I don't understand the tricks of mind that I play on myself, but I know I repeatedly lose my vision for pausing in everyday reality, for seeing the smallest moments of magic.

Chodron tells us, there is a "basic queasiness that leads us to all kinds of self-destructive and other-destructive habits" and a "whole chain of events that emerges from our fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what in the world is happening or what is going to happen" (49). I feel an urgency to interact with this chain of events; to interfere knowingly--though perhaps innocently; to respond to my abounding fears and uncertainty with intent. I want to return to the primary assumption of this blog--a reality for pausing in: to not overlook or disregard the small points of joy, but to connect them; to appreciate the magic that is present in that which is obscured by routine; to actively express gratitude and to meaningfully alter the "chain of events that emerge" from my thoughts and practices, my surroundings.