Reserving judgment is good too!
Day 27-August 4, 2021-Moving Forward
Note: Written on 8.5.21 regarding Day 27, 8.4.21
Yesterday was supposed to be writing via audio-recording, which I did as I walked from the beach to the studio, but when I tried to transcribe it, I freaked. It was practically unintelligible!
I went into a tailspin because I’ve done several recordings that I haven’t yet transcribed, and I feared all of them would be garbage. Immediately I went online to find noise reducing software to recover my thoughts, which wound up a trip down the rabbit hole.
By the time I made myself stop, I was dizzy with anxiety and needed attitude adjustment before my neighbor joined me for a dinner. I was supposed to cook, and I can’t cook, be creative, when I’m stressing.
Today proved even more frustrating as I tried to download, install, and launch an audio/ video program I thought might help recover my precious words. I was near to pulling my hair out and was shutting the whole computer down when somehow the program appeared, and I managed to piece together two of the three minutes of recording from yesterday’s walk.
YAY!
I will probably never recover the first of the three minutes, but at least I have something…
Portion of 8.4.21 audio recording–recovered
This 30-day project, which is nearing its end, has brought up a sharper awareness of things that are good for me, affect me in positive ways. When I’m mindful and present for whatever shows up, even if someone else might judge it as negative, I feel good.
This is the Buddhist principle of equanimity in practice—being OK with what happens in the here and now, knowing that its presence has meaning beyond a knee-jerk judgment made at the level of the human ego. It is soothing to walk in my own skin and know that I can be OK, no matter what.
Walking home from the lake I took Lunt, and on the corner near where the old Heartland restaurant always reigned there was one of those small neighborhood libraries, the kind that holds two small shelves of books and looks like a birdhouse on a post. I peered through the glass and a name caught my eye… Margaret Drabble.
I snapped to attention.
That name, on a tiny card, picked from a triangular ceramic bowl, black with abstract designs in mauve, blue, purple. In 1990, that bowl sat on my mantle and held a selection of two-inch cardboard notes. Each had a perforated front tab that opened to a thoughtful quote or saying. They functioned like high-end fortune cookies; I offered them to neighbors, at parties, as conversation starters.
One that I opened and kept was a quote attributed to Margaret Drabble. It read “When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” That saying and that little piece of cardboard has been with me ever since. I taped it to a wide clipboard that has been standing on my desk for as long as I can remember. I see it every day.
And there, in the neighborhood library, was a book by Margaret Drabble! I’m not even sure I realized she was an author. The book sat quietly on that little shelf; I opened to the title page and saw she published it in 1987. Transfixed, I thought, “WOW! Now I get to read her book—a work of fiction. Awesome.”
Quite an auspicious reward for the day.
Written 8.5.21 regarding 8.4.21 art
Yesterday’s art was so cool, all about clarity. I kept finding clear glass at the beach, and it came to me I was working on clarity in my life—my past, incidents of trauma, a nightmare that captured my fear called Armageddon, behavior patterns I developed to cope, my business.
I think the first minute of the garbled auto record recording spoke of this coming clarity, what is coming into view, shaping itself into images and words I can now understand to process and move on.
The art piece became a combination of those thoughts plus the previous idea about wanting to do feet, which became footprints. Today when I saw it sitting on the worktable, joy flooded through me; it reflects the thoughts and feelings germinated all month.
I am moving forward.
Until tomorrow... For Your Consideration...
What could you reconsider from the standpoint of EQUANIMITY?
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