Generally I’m a pretty
active person. I have many things to do
and I enjoy the challenge of doing them.
For the last couple of days, however, I’ve been having a problem with
motivation – or lack thereof. Blame it
on my knee that’s been bothering me, blame it on the recent discovery that my
darling cousin is fighting Stage IV cancer, blame it on hormones - whatever,
but there it is! I feel all of a sudden, as though I’m having
to force myself to do things: exercise,
clean out my filthy car, or the refrigerators, or my house (usually I enjoy
doing such things, believe it or not – I sort of use them as a spiritual
practice – to enjoy whatever it is that needs to be done at the moment, even if
it’s spending three hours vacuuming out the car – it is a pleasant feeling of
accomplishment and a helluva(n) arm workout!) But I don’t feel like doing right now.
I don’t want to just sit and vegetate though,
not at all – nope, instead I’m thinking back to my youth when spending an
entire afternoon reading a book somehow didn’t seem like a waste of time at
all. What I really feel like doing is
being; I want to meditate, pray, read – books and blogs and poems, I want to write- in my journals, on my blog,
on my stories, and of course, I want to create (okay, that’s doing, but it’s
also a little like breathing for me – can’t not do it!)
Of course I’ve got a long list of to-do’s but
I don’t feel like striking the iron, so to speak. Maybe the summer heat has made me indolent, I
don’t know. But for the first time ever
in my adult life, I think I might be in a unique position to give in to
it. I’m on my own for a few days – my
husband and son are in California, and so I’m going to experiment, and just do
only exactly what I feel like doing, whatever that is at the moment. I realize it is a huge luxury, but I’m
calling it a Soul Time. So what if the
house needs cleaning, so what if I have errands to do, phone calls to make,
etc. – they can wait a couple of days, none of them is particularly urgent. I’m going to do the some of the quiet things
that I often put on the back burner until I’ve fulfilled all my other
responsibilities (which rarely happens, of course!)
I’m thinking this is a fine
idea - that allowing myself this time to
sort of catch up on quiet time will allow me to go back into my regular life
with renewed purpose, vigor, and joy. I also think it will lead to more and new inspirations, as being quiet often does. Who
knows, if it works out, I may plan on doing it on a regular basis – once every
so often just giving myself a day to do – nothing in particular. Sounds pretty dreamy but also it reminds me
of the Sirens in Odysseus – don’t want
to get lost in a vortex of not doing for too long! I’ll let you know how it all works out, of
course. Just – if you don’t hear from me
in a few days, send someone in after me, okay.
WIP UPDATE:
Been working on a quilt for charity – it’s
the first patten quilt I’ve done in quite some time – lots of little
squares! But I finally got the top
finished and am on to backing and quilting.
I admit I had to bring myself to presence several times; I found it a
tiny bit irksome because it has been rather time-consuming – especially in my
quest for perfection. It’s been a good
practice to remind myself that I want to infuse everything I do with joy,
especially something like this which is going to someone who needs it, and I
wanted it to be special enough to show the recipient how important he is (it’s
a boy quilt). Anyway, here’s a picture
–
I'm calling it "Down the Red Steps." It's a simple split rail pattern, but I still like to think up fun names as pieces are developing. I’m pretty pumped because I
really have gotten so much from these fabrics – and one purchase! This is the third piece I’ve
completed using this collection – I am so glad I bought it! It’s a really inspiring line, I must say – if I had any more of it – I might
come up with some more ideas! So kudos
to Carrie Bloomston for a job well done
– I know she’s designed more fabrics for Windham – can’t wait to check them
out!
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