With all this free time on my hands, post-retirement from job and concert series, I am attempting to sculpt some sort of schedule, without throwing myself back into the same scrambling, chaotic life I have lived for the past 4+ decades. When I have the whole day/week/month ahead of me, I tend to put things off... but when I had an organized agenda and knew I only had a hour or so to accomplish something, I shoehorned the task into the available slot. Plus, now I have no excuse not to look out for own best interests. Radical Self-Care rocks!
Below are my current priorities, which are very do-able... :-)
DO IT NOW!
D
O
I
Take my B-12, multi-vitamin, magnesium, calcium, low-dosage aspirin
N
O
Walk at least 30 minutes/stretch as soon as I get out of bed (no later than 8 a.m.)
Read/write something (anything!), meditate, eat mindfully, go to bed no later than midnight; reach out to someone in a personal way (phone call/e-mail or e-card/snail mail card or letter) weekly.
New blog post twice a week: Mindful Monday and Thoughtful Thursday!
SONG: I Have Been Around the World by Dar Williams
BOOK: Change Your Reality, Change Your Life by Robin McKnight
POEM: My Totally Awesome World by SeSe Geddes
My husband has just left for work, and I’m already knotted
by the window, watching him like a dog. I should paw the glass.
I’ve got problems, man. Let’s get that out of the way.
Just look at me sitting here in this fallow
slant of morning light, like I’m stuck in a Hopper painting.
I’ve got a Harley rumbling on high idle in my chest and a mind
that catches and kinks like cheap cassette tape. This is the third
time it’s come back — the panic I thought I’d beaten
with the help of my shrink and a rainbow of Rite Aid generics.
And I feel guilty, ungrateful, un-Oprah-like, swaddled
in this voluptuous excess of useless sensation. If I could, I’d pull
the energy from my body and just do something with it —
jump-start cars, anything. But I can’t even leave the house.
And to make matters worse it’s springtime in Northern California,
and the trees are bursting with buds. Also, I’m wearing chenille.
I’m wasting my life, twisted up on a faux-leather
sofa in the middle of a weekday morning, and as I gaze down
at the bright spill of CDs across the carpet, all I want
is to be in Morocco with the Rolling Stones,
and I want it to be 1967. All tiny blue tiles and LSD.
I want to walk slowly through the arched doorways
and courtyards wearing a sheer caftan over my naked body.
I waft through whitewashed rooms with a joint drooping
from the ruby-encrusted fingers of one hand and a snifter
of cognac in the other. I want my long, straight hair teased
into a perfect dome, my eyes rimmed in kohl, a talisman
against evil dangling between my high breasts, and I want to find
Keith lounging in the sun, his face still young and unlined,
his silk shirt wilted open. I kneel beside him, lift the grass
to his lips, the jewel-like coal glowing in the early-
evening North African light, a pale blue deepening
into an indigo minaret of sky. I exhale with the ripple
of the fountain. Keith sighs and closes his eyes,
and I say, “That’s ok, baby. Everything’s cool.”
QUOTE: "Do not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work. Do not wait. Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind. Work with what you have right now. Work with the people around you right now. Work with the architecture you see around you right now. Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression. Do not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom. Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing. Do not wait until you have enough technique. What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors. And, at the same time, be patient." ~ Anne Bogart
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