A New Year

I just looked through the last month's post and I'm shocked with the anger I feel coming from these posts.  Anger is something I'm not good at; I dissociate most of it.  There was a time when I would not have recognized it afterwards like I just did.  What I remember feeling is numbness and helplessness. 

Despite all that, I have happy moments every day.  I do something meaningful to 'repair the world' almost every day.  I continue to experience a lot of peace.

I went swimming for the first time in almost two weeks yesterday and I feel much better.  Later I went to the grocery store and picked up several things for Shabbat dinner (which I didn't have until lunch today).  We were off yesterday and I picked up the living room and did some cleaning in the the bath and kitchen.  Today I cleaned off the kitchen table--there was a stack of stuff about two feet deep.  I wanted to be able to eat at a table; increase the graciousness factor of my life.  Strictly speaking, I should not have done this on Shabbat, but it felt good when I ate my lunch there. 

I did light candles last night, which I've always loved doing.  Treasure knows this is a special time, when I do this and chant the blessing, so it makes her night a little special as well.

I'm trying to re-establish some of the things I've loved doing the past few years. To re-establish a healthy routine.  Doing the things that work for me.

I still want to go through one closet in the apartment before I start on anything in any locker or storage.  I want to declutter my art supplies.  There are things that I've purchased for one reason or another and either used just once or twice or never used at all.  As part of my decluttering, I need to give up the dreams and thoughts associated with those projects in order to make room for new ones.

I hadn't been doing much reading most of the year and have been making up for that the last few months.  most of my life, this was how I coped, how I kept life making sense.  But I relied on it too much. Now I hope to find the balance between the gifts that reading brings with the gifts other activities bring.

I'm sure there will be more things I goof up and more things that get to me, more times I am angry without realizing it.  But I know I can get through it, I can make improvements. 

I know part of it is focussing on 'how', not 'what' is part of the answer.  As Oriah Mountain Dreamer says in 'The Dance', to paraphrase, "What if it is not what you do, but how you do it?"

I remember in 2006 when I was talking to a Rabbi.  I had started my current job and found parts of it boring, mindnumbingly boring.  I told him that and he suggested that it was ok, I could put my creative attention to other parts of my life.  As a child of the 70's raised on the liberated, 'superwoman' ideal, I was blown away.  Not to be super-achiever at work?  At volunteer projects, at everything?  How could one live with oneself?  Did that not mean that you were not reaching your full potential?  And wasn't achievement and success what it was all about?

Well, no, that's not what it is all about.

It's about simplicity and enthusiasms, however long or short lived.  It's about community.  It's about organizing the business side of your life so as to be able to focus on the more satisfying parts of your life.  You can do all that and make your contribution as well. You may not be the next Oprah or Obama or superstar of the moment.  But you can still influence many, many people positively.  Probably more than you ever know.

And that's what I want to focus on.