Breathe

I wake up, groggy and out of sorts. The sky is gray, the house quiet and the mat is calling. How will my body respond this morning? Do I drag my ass out of bed or do I turn the first alarm off and get an extra 45 minutes of snooze time? My body is craving the movement, my mind is craving sleep - which one wins?
Movement.
I add baggy pajama bottoms to a t-shirt and stumble into the living room. The TV is turned on mute 'till I find a mellow music station. I can't abide commercials before coffee.
I dig through a drawer to find a stick of incense - something light and spicy. Once lit it gets tucked into a holder on the mantle.
I unroll the mat. Face the window. I sit and breathe. Slowly the movements come, each one building on the last, each one in concert with the breath. My breathing accelerates and threatens to run away with the movement, my heart pounds. I slow down and let my breath catch up with the movement.
The movements have evolved, in the beginning it felt like there were bits of fishing line holding my joints back. Now the larger tendons and muscles feel the stretch. I try for the perfect expression of the pose, but I take whatever my body will give. Ever grateful. Patience, while not a virtue I normally possess, is something I've learned to live with here. If I go to fast, push too hard, I will loose what I've gained.
Distractions tiptoe through, a cat that wants to show me how to properly stretch and assumes that my hands near the floor are available to scratch ears. I pause. I find the joy in the distractions. It's the universes way of saying enough.
I breathe.

3 things and 21 days

I was reading the other day about habits - both good and bad - and how it takes 21 days to develop a new habit. As the owner of many less that desirable habits and not quite enough good ones, I found this fascinating. Three weeks, I can make or break something in three weeks, and maybe keep it up for life. hmmmmm.
Being an overly analytical sort, I began envisioning my life as it stands and my goals. I decided that I want to achieve a few things in this life and that starting NOW I'm going to achieve them. That is not to say that I'm making radical changes, but I'm taking the little steps. You see I also read an interview with a rather well-known trainer and she pointed out that people who have much weight to lose often get discouraged by looking at the total amount and how hard that would be to achieve. She suggests that those folks set aside that large figure and focus instead on loosing that first pound. Baby steps.
I've often been discouraged by books and success stories that tout making long-term goals and, with a singular drive, reaching those goals months and even years in the future. I've set those long-term goals before, but my life has a great deal of serendipity in it. I spend a lot of my time living on plan B, or C or even D. Those long-term goals shift fairly regularly and when they do I feel a sense of disappointment and loss for them.
Instead I'll have ideals - and take little steps every day to achieve them.

• Radiant Health - I so admire people that have health, I have enough health challenges that setting specific goals here is frustrating - but I do have a vision of what that means and what healthy people do and feel. So every day I will do three things to be radically healthy, maybe not the same three things every day, but three little somethings to move myself along the path.
• Friends and Family - I used to be painfully shy, combine a soft voice with a childhood where my family moved at least once or twice a year and my social skills are still a little rough around the edges. My heart is in the right place, but I sometimes try too hard, or not hard enough. I will do three things every day to nurture those around me, to grow the relationships I have and develop new ones.
• Material Mastery - I've often struggled with finances, what it means to be responsible and accountable for my success. Quite frankly, for many years, success scared the hell out of me. I was very good a stabbing myself in the foot and walking away from a good situation or staying too long in a bad one. Three little things each day to build my confidence and new positive habits regarding work, finances and my physical world.

Nothing too radical, for instance today I had watermelon for desert instead of baking a cake. I did fifteen minutes of yoga before work and got my teeth cleaned. I also followed through on a couple of projects at work, gave away an old TV, tidied up the kitchen before bed and got the trash out to the curb for pickup in the a.m. Finally I dropped a line to a couple of friends and posted to by blog. Would I have done these things anyway? Perhaps. I think by making a conscience effort I'll try a little harder.

Piece of Cake -

Try this for a couple of days - let me know what you think.

Ahhhhh, Creative Space

After eight months of working in the dining room, shuffling books from surface to surface with myriad distractions and logistical challenges like actually eating in the dining room - I finally have my office back.

Rosie was using my office as her bedroom since they moved in. We even let her pick out the color for the walls. Green. Disney, Little-Mermaid green. Perfect for a six year old who's into princesses and fairies, not so much for an adult artist-writer-student. Happily she and her mom moved into their own apartment last weekend.

I thought about waiting a couple of months to paint, but the color was so intense that the light reflected green onto whatever was in the room, yes that includes people - when a person walked into the room they looked seasick. Not exactly the peaceful/creative space I craved.

After the truck pulled away my first errand was to the hardware store to pick up paint and primer. For the record it took a coat of primer and two coats of paint to banish the green. The new color is a little more intense than I thought it would be, but it reflects a lovely warm glow into the room and makes the most of the natural light from outside, which is good since the windows face north and west. My sister, Lois came up yesterday and helped me paint and then helped move the office furniture back in, she hung all the artwork while I replaced books on the shelves. I'm home at last. It feels great. Here's a copy of the results.