The question of the day is, how fast can I type?

Another beautiful day here, a day I am cherishing for its warmth and color and oh hell, for its NOT novemberishness-self. Things are feeling just so good and I am savoring it deeply.

By contrast, last July I had a dark night of the soul that lasted about, um-- ten days and ever since emerging from it, I still have that quick gasp of breath every now and again that reminds me-- oh my god, I feel good. I feel good. I'm no longer in the grip of that hell.

And just what is that hell? Different for each of us, no doubt-- and depending where I am on the spiral, it may manifest in any manner of painful contraction. For me, last summer was being caught in an unrelenting undertow of future thinking. Now I know that sounds both weird and contradictory, but it's not-- at least not to me.

What was going on for me, what mired me into those miserable ten days where the first three I'm thinking, oh, I don't feel well-- I must be coming down with the flu and then the next three oh-- it wasn't the flu I must be hormonal and then the next three, nope-- not hormonal, could this be anxiety? Ding. Ding. Ding. And what do we have for the winner, Johnny?

There it was: another bout with my friend anxiety. Lucky, lucky OH SO lucky for me, I had two visitors arrive on the very day I was planning to separate my head from its neck parts and pitch it off the roof. Jecca has long been an angel in my life, never more so than when she rolled up the hill last summer and quickly helped me identify what was going on with me: future thinking.

Perhaps this is not the technical term, but it's what I call it. You see, I have a very active inner project manager. She is Miss Detail, Miss Get'er Done, Miss Listmaker. What I didn't realize is that time doesn't funtion the way we think it does--- and all of my thinking about the many (many<--! oh god so many!) projects ahead of me caused my inner project manager to have a conniption. She can't tell the difference between something that needs to be done today and something that might be done eighteen months from now. In her world, there is only the present moment. And so, all these thoughts of all these projects were unbearable to her because of course no one could get all that done in a single day.

Hmm, I don't know that I am explaining this very well to you, but once I got it, really got it, I shifted gears in a big way. I let go of this need to be driving all the time, and stretched back into letting things evolve more organically with an occasional toe poke from me to keep it on course.

I stopped thinking about anything but what was in my day. And holy hell, if the world didn't just shift and open and spread out like a giant daybed loaded with velvet pillows.

But, I have failed in my speed typing mission because I have a conference call starting up and must get off this post-- but chances are I will come back to this subject as I have only barely scratched the surface.

Meantime, some photos of the silly kids.

They are sitting and waiting while I go to the mailbox because I don't let them near the road and then when I give them a whistle, they are allowed to rejoin me as we head home.

Bisous, E

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