like pebbles on the beach

Today is my fortieth birthday. I celebrated by washing my floors. I'm not very good at housekeeping, and steadily working at transforming my attitude and aptitude by learning that it is a gift to myself to make the house tidier and cleaner, less full of clutter.  So my floors aren't perfectly washed, but many things in this life are worth doing imperfectly, and so I'm carrying a little less dirt into the new decade.

I also purged all the acrylic/novelty skeins from my yarn chest, and tidied it up a little. I hate knitting with acrylic, and having skeins of it just makes me feel like I should be doing something with it.

So it seems I'm starting the year with a spirit of letting go. Expectations, yarn, old habits, negative self-imaging... There's lots I'm quite happy to release from my life.

In my twenties, I worked on an undergraduate degree, came out of the closet, had two kids, got married, was baptized. I listened to Ani DiFranco and breastfed babies and read bedtime stories. I lived on low wages, or welfare. I learned to knit. I drank pints of beer in pubs where I knew the band. I planted my first gardens.

In my thirties I went to grad school, left my marriage, continued to struggle with depression. I bought three houses, left behind two gardens, lived beside the beach. I started to live part of my life online. I readjusted to being a single parent, and began to settle into my vocation.

In my forties...? I guess we'll see what comes next. 

One of the seemingly universal pieces of advice about spiritual practices: They take practice. Especially on the days when you don't want to, and it goes wrong and you are sure it's going to accomplish nothing. In one of Thomas Merton's books, he advises that if prayer always feels great, you're doing something wrong, because you need to pray through the bleak empty times as well.

One of the things I'm loving about yoga practice is the quietness of mind that I reach during it. And yesterday, when I woke up having a crap day, and didn't manage to start my morning practice until 3pm, I knew that quietness was probably going to be out of reach. And knowing that is probably one of the things that kept delaying me from trying. But I'm trying to practice every day during Lent, no exceptions, and I know that the days I am too busy/don't want to/feel useless are days that I really need to push through.

And then suddenly, when I was reaching for a forward bend, and realized I needed to let go rather than stretch, I experienced one of those shifts, and it wasn't just physical. More of an epiphany than a piece of quiet - and I realized that maybe letting go was what I needed for the problem that had thrown off my whole day.

I feel a bit more at peace this morning, and am going to try to carry the sensation of letting go and relaxing into the bend from my physical pose into my heart and actions.

crossposted tosun_salutation 

SGA
Disclaimer: Not mine. Nothing in my hand. Nothing up my sleeve.
Warnings: mention of character death
Reason I'm not writing this: Character death. And all of the accompanying baggage of killing off female characters as a handy plot device.
Reason I did write it: I've had this scene in my head for months, and it gets in my way when I'm trying to write something else



( Maybe if I write it down, it will get out of my head ) 

My flist has been growing, while at the same time I've been spending less time online. Which makes catching up after a couple of days maddening. So I've cut down my flist a bit - if this affects you, and you'd like me to reconsider, drop me a comment. 

Commment Fic: originally posted insheafrotherdon 's journal, inspired by her subject line

Context, if you need it


( As Mrs. Rachel Lynde said: You're never safe from surprise until you're dead. )

Mission Report: M5B 1Y7
Gate Team SGA:1
Submitted by: Specialist Dex

Terrain: Forest
Inhabited: Yes
Possibility of Trading: Yes.
Potential Trade Items (Import): Cheese, cultural exchange.
Potential Trade Exports: Pole dancing Cultural exchange, some of that orange noodle stuff McKay and Chuck hoard
Intercultural Cues: Physical contact between SGA team members may be interpreted as inappropriate sexual overtones needing more appropriate expression.
Followup: McKay will be out of the shower and wiping the server in about 5 minutes; download the pictures while they're still on it. Confiscate Teyla's camera - authority Dr. R. McKay.


You know, as opposed to breaking my characters in half and filling them with cream cheese and Splenda and putting them it tutus so they can express their love via interpretive dance.     - beadattitude 

SGA story
forbeadattitude
prompts: John/Rodney, crickets, bottle, polish
Kind of an accompanying piece to Sleeping Arrangements
Spoilers, yup.
Characters not mine.

Bead - *spreads hands hopelessly*  It went in an unexpected direction.


( And then it all goes to hell... )

SGA story
Woolsey/Sheppard *glances warily around*
Not mine, or that subtext would be text

Episode Tag: Ghost in the Machine, lots of spoilers therein

( Did you say the monkey was flying? )

 

Bleh. Been sick since... hmmm? Friday night? The fever finally seems to be abating, although my appetite has not returned.

I've read most of Master and Commander; watched The Future is Unwritten, and Weekend at the Waldof, and I think some nature documentaries - those were while I was really feverish. I suspect some shark related giant fireball bad dreams are in my future. I also caught the end of the last SGA ep - I suspect running a fever was a bonus there.