Keeping Balance

DAY 16

Speaking of balance, from yesterday’s post... I struggled a lot today, which let me know I am out of balance. I am out of balance with this blog. Spending too much time working on it every night (2-3 hours), going to bed too late, waking up tired with Emilio. Feeling irritable and not remembering to slow down enough to enjoy life. The problem with being ambitious, is forgetting that non doing and doing just for fun are also important. For every truth, its opposite is also true. I have been too focused on trying to accomplish things which brings out the “taskmaster” in me. (The part of me that has endless tasks and to do lists and little patience for how long they take to get done.) The result is I become perfectionistic and anxious and constantly feel rushed. Feeling rushed is one of my biggest blocks to happiness.

Resolutions are forming for the week:

1.    I want to to get 8 hours of sleep each night. I also want to try going to bed earlier and getting up earlier.

2.   I want to spend less time working on my blog and trying to accomplish things in general and more time relaxing and having fun. (Not to say my blog isn’t fun. But it isn’t relaxing. It’s very stimulating, and it’s hard not to want to make every entry as intricate and thorough as possible. But I need to lighten up with it a bit, or I won’t last the full year.) Maybe I will experiment with writing earlier in the day.

3.   I want to take the pressure off--stop myself from feeling rushed by reminding myself it’s okay to slow down.

4.   I want to set up my sewing space so I can start sewing again. If I sew something, that’s great. But I don’t HAVE to.

Here’s something I wrote in my journal several months ago:

Being happy is a choice, 

and you have to work at it, 

or at least put things in place, 

(according to your heart)

so you can open up to grace

the grace state of happiness =

gentle attention + discipline + compassion

Here’s something I read today by Carl Jung:

Meaning comes... “when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama. That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think Carl Jung is rad. In the true meaning of the word, radical. He is the grandfather of the art therapies, and the indirect grandfather of AA. (He believed spirituality was a cure for addiction.) His theories on the process of individuation and archetypes are gorgeous. I need to read more of his works. I will do a future post about his theories and how I have integrated them into my life. I also want to see that movie called A Dangerous Method about his relationship to Freud.

Here are some things that made me happy today:

I went out to our new microbrew pub to hear our friends play some great music: a mix of rock, classic r & b, and even some swing! Some of us danced like no body’s business. I love living in a small town where going out means just a few people enjoying music, there’s always room on the dance floor, there’s parking right out in front, there’s no traffic, and I almost always see someone I know.

I borrowed my mother in law’s ukelele and started writing my first ukelele song. Ukeleles are fun to play and their sound is so cute and old-timey. 

Today is Mexican Independence day. A real fervor. Everyone was at the beach, or out on the streets. There were celebrations galore.

Already I’ve kept my resolution, this post only took an hour to write (with a few interruptions.)