Greetings Travellers,

How was your Monday?

I was off work today. Truth be told, unless I have travel plans, I’m not good at taking time off work.

I’m extraordinarily bad at it in fact. I have to have an itinerary of things to do or I feel bad… I get listless and sad.

And I end up always feeling like my life isn’t going to turn out well after all.

Seriously, it’s bananas.

I think I’ve always been this way and I’m not fully sure why…something I ponder…in case you may have missed it, I’m a fan of a good pondering.

This evening, I thought I would share a little list of thoughts that might be worth tumbling around in your brain, should you feel like pondering…these are things that have popped into my brain over the past few days.

BUT FIRST, I found Faline lounging like a boss on the front couch this afternoon…it’s the look on her face that always makes me laugh…

And EQUALLY awesome, since I was home today when the tornado test sirens went off, I got to witness Lou howling. There is something about the way she throws her head back, purses her lips and howls that makes my heart swell. I LOVE IT, so then I howled too and she howled with me. And the siren. This went on for let’s say just long enough for me to not appear crazy. I have no idea why I find that so wonderful, but I do…

Now here’s the list, in no particular order…

~Small Ordinary Moments…do you seek them? do you create them? how many of us are watching for them? They mean so much to our health. The ability to satiate your senses in the moment you are in is of utmost importance to our well being. Humans are not meant for all this mental time travel. Ordinary has a power of it’s own making.

~Which led me to this thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’m inching my way into the Gram: Our strength and our stories lie in our imperfections and our scars, if you edit it all out, what’s left of you?

~I appear to have two plantar warts…one is on the ball of my foot, and I think it’s going to kill me from pain. And it’s little. First it was the divorce, then a pandemic, then two injuries, a feisty squirrel, Dave’s suicide, and now I’ve met an adversary that truly scares me…has anyone else made an internal list of all your pain since COVID arrived? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like all of humanity is getting it’s ass kicked in very personalized ways, am I wrong? NOT a poor me list, but just a shit list of things you’ve had to deal with…am I right?

~Who first said, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger? And what were the circumstances in which that person came up with that phrase? Was it an act of heroism or a paper cut from hell? I’d like to know…and why do we repeat certain phrases and not others? Is there a committee? How do I get on that committee? Show of hands, who would like to be on that committee???

~How holding onto our emotions can breed resistance. As in, just changing your words from “I am” to “I feel” with consistency and daily practice helps us separate our identity from our emotions. And that’s sort of powerful, isn’t it?

~Working off of that, let’s ponder the peace we can create in of the practice of self-observation, don’t just feel your feels and think your thoughts, but give yourself some space inside to hold them away from you. It’s taken me over two years in therapy to really get ahold of this and I still have to work at it. I’ll work at it my whole life. I have visualization techniques. We are such busy easily distracted creatures and if you can insert several seconds to stop, step back, observe, it’s amazing what you can learn about yourself. And that in turn will help you learn about others. Funny how that works…

~GOING FIRST, someone is always first in line aren’t they? Are you that person, or are you the middle man or last man standing kind of human? What do we learn by going first in conversations, or into the coldness or into the unknown? What is the value in being first and by going first, doesn’t it put other people at ease? I should go first more often, shouldn’t we all?

~Knowledge is knowing lots of stuff and wisdom is understanding how your mind uses it. Mark Manson said this in his last newsletter that I read and am I the only one who wants to really understand how my body works versus believing it’s just like everyone else’s?

~Resilience, which is a word I just love to say and it’s really interesting how some souls seem to be more resilient than others. I would put it to the nature/nurture conversation, but what if it’s something more than that? I had brunch with a good friend yesterday who works with people who have had truly terrifying lives and we were talking about why are some people able to get back up and others can’t?

~Part 2 of that is something that has always intrigued me and that is our dysfunctional coping mechanisms that we pick up from trauma in youth. Where does alcoholism really begin for example, someone in the bloodline starts it, where does that come from, why is that their vice versus all the other choices? Why did I become an anorexic and not a drug addict? Why have I always been repelled by drugs and drinking for the most part? Why was I able to craft this life, why did I seek therapy, why has EMDR worked for me but not for others?

~What are we really? Fully serious, what are we made of beyond the obvious, because not to sound woo woo, but in my deepest movements or silent moments with my dog or gardening, there is some kind of something, isn’t there? Like THE FORCE. And in the above mentioned thoughts, there is more here, in us, I think…and I don’t feel like it’s a God thing, it’s something about our very nature.

~ The fifth limb of yoga is called Aparigraha, and for me, it’s about expectations and our attachment to the end goal versus embracing the journey AND not attaching to thoughts and emotions that constantly swell within our being. Let’s be honest, we can’t attach to anything in this life really, every single thing is temporary. Most of this world lives in a constant state of change, and attaching to things, wanting same same, just causes us to suffer.

~Lastly, I’ve been thinking about how art works and this includes writing. Isn’t all writing an art form? I fully believe each sets of eyes that find my words will understand them differently. Because we each take everything in through our filter. Our filter is our education, our experiences, our beliefs, our sex, our age, our race, our everything, so I can’t help but hope that all other writers and creators feel this way on some level. How could they not, and don’t all our interpretations make it richer and fuller?? Isn’t that how all art works? I know that’s always my hope, that my words speak to you, in your world, in some way as I write their meaning in mine. Art lets us know that we have never been alone.

~Last thought, We can remain extraordinary, even in our darkness. If I get onto that aforementioned committee, you’re gonna be saying those words again, trust me!!

Good night!!