Walking the Walk

I am sitting here at the close of a glorious weekend watching the pale blue sky turn cotton-candy pink at the horizon that peeps from behind the naked maple, walnut, and poplar trees on the far bank. I am fortunate enough to be able to sit on my living room sofa with rippling water within view. It calms me.

Because my partner and I both work hard during the week, we try always to guard our weekend together time. It's not an easy thing for me to stop thinking about projects and deadlines in order to be with him in a mindful way. It takes discipline and a certain amount of self-talk using that inner parent voice.

Were I not in a relationship, I could easily spend my entire weekend alone--ping-ponging from chore to chore, absentmindedly picking up where an earlier job was left off, then remembering the one I'd abandoned to do that one. John Sivell says I have a Type A personality--unable to sit still, always nursing several projects. I did not believe him until last summer's major abdominal surgery forced me to lie still for large portions of each day. Now I notice that about myself.

The good news is that in the past week or two a previous brain fog--probably resulting from hormonal extremes--has lifted. Suddenly ideas are popping into my head at all hours. Do I have too many irons in the fire? Let's see...

The Classy Graphics course with Tony Vincent came to an end this past Tuesday. Wow, that was a steep learning curve! I have a ring light and green screen en route to my house this week. I don't know if I'll ever be good at making videos, but I will give it the old college try.

I promised myself that no matter what else came up this weekend, I would spend at least two hours on my slides and script for my two upcoming presentations, one for ATESL and another for the TESL London spring conference. I'm pleased to say that ideas for how to better communicate the concepts are surfacing in my mind like bubbles from the murky bottom of a lake. The ideas came fast and furiously this morning before I had even thrown back the covers. I had to spring from the bed in search of a pen and a ripped open, discarded envelope in partner's mail pile. (Stacks of opened and unopened mail are guests of honour in his apartment; they get their own chair.) I'm feeling good about this iteration of the old Back to the Well workshop. It is evolving and is about to undergo a growth spurt, I think.

Then there's my Sunday blog post. Right up until about 2:00 p.m. today I had thought I would be posting a video for you tonight. At some point, though, I realized I had to make some choices; I couldn't have it all. I could make the video and do the subject justice. I might or might not finish it before bedtime, but in either case I would have to postpone grocery shopping until Monday. I could do the grocery shopping (a non-negotiable if I'm going to eat in a healthy way all week) and give the video a lick and a promise. Or I could take good care of myself, accept the fact that the video would be late, and post something else here tonight instead.

By now you know which path I chose.

Once I had taken a deep breath and accepted the fact that I wasn't going to make this self-imposed (and promised to others) deadline, I relaxed and took my time with the week's worth of groceries. A couple of items I had to go get myself, the rest of it I allowed the Click and Collect staff to get ready for me to drive through and have deposited into my waiting trunk. Gosh, I like that service. Discovered it when participation in the Fast Metabolism Diet had me completely overwhelmed with continual meal prep. But I digress. Let's digress some more. For the couple of items St. Clair Beach Zehrs did not have, I popped into my local Zehrs and felt the universe tugging me toward Value Village. I don't usually scan the book section but thought I'd look over the diet and cookbooks. My eyes landed on a nearly new copy of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook by Stahl and Goldstein. The CD was still attached to the inside back cover. I nabbed it.

Before sitting down to eat my dinner, I took a peek inside my new book. I thought these words from the foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn were worth sharing with you tonight: "Mindfulness involves an elemental and spontaneous openness to experience, grounded in the body, in the timeless, in not expecting anything to happen, a befriending and inhabiting of this present moment for its own sake."

Deep breath. The video will be late.