Lose Weight, Be Strong, Meditate On All Things Lovely

I have been on a quest for health, fitness and overall well being.  My vacation from work began two weeks ago and that's when my journey began.  The plan: lose twenty pounds by September,




 workout rigorously at least four times  a week,




stop drinking on week nights




and enjoy the quiet side of life.



So far, so good.  I am bordering on major boredom, but still appreciate this time when there is nothing to do. 


I'll admit though, I'm not so sure why I'm limiting my calories to under 1200 a day (or at least trying), and limiting my alcohol consumption to the weekends.  It used to be that I wanted to be attractive.  I still do, don't get me wrong, but as I know that my life is .......well..........uh.............over middle age, I'm not so sure I just don't want to induldge myself into all things unhealthy.  I know it sounds crazy, but yes, I guess I'm a person of instant gratification.





Still, the desire to look good, feel stronger than your average woman, and be in control over my own body is stronger than the desire to consume all things sweet and drink all things with an edge.

I'm sitting here musing over the fact that life is short yet I can still  expect some things out of my body.  If I continue to lift weights, run, cycle, jump, and enjoy sweating, I will see the fruits of my labor.


That's it for now...be healthy!

Tuesday Afternoon On A Saturday Afternoon (thoughts on happiness)

It's a great Saturday afternoon; extremely hot, but I've been inside, puttering, rearranging my living room, listening to a great Pandora station (thanks to my son)..... and I have been  pondering happiness.  Good music does that to me.  It evokes emotions that, for no seemingly good reason, surface and cause me to think thoughts deeper than what goes well on the wall by the stairway. 




It's usually insturmentals that do it; that bring about these feelings that are as vivid as photographs from the past. Anyway, because music, especially insturmentals, are a bit abstract, my thoughts are slower to arrive at the brink of my consciousness than the deep, gut emotions of desire, longing and a familiar nostalgic ache.



This music takes away the restlness that so often becomes my roommate.  I've been thinking lately about happiness, and what makes me happy.  Even the word happiness causes me to wonder.





How long has it been since I've just sat down and let happiness just "sit softly on my shoulder"?  Hmmmmmm....maybe the dictionary would be a better place to find out what that word means?

Here is the web dictionary definiton: " state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy."




It's all still very fuzzy and unsure to me, although I consider myself to be happy, fortunate and full.  What more could I ask for?  Nothing really, but I do, we all do.  We always ask, or desire for more.  I have a theory on that too, it's because, as CS Lewis put it, "we know we were made for better than this."





 It's sort of a home-sickness.  It's as if we once were complete, as if we were once perfectly and beautifully satisfied, or more, with all things at all times and then wham....you're on a journey out of your mother's belly into this unnatural light that you had no desire to be a part of, because you were so, well, so happy before. 



Have you ever had a dream where you were flying?  I have and it's glorious.  It's pure, unadulterated happiness.  In my dream I was in the middle of a crowd of people, and I gave this little twirl and up, up and away I went.  Flying.

The feeling was magnificent. Words really can't describe what I felt, and still feel at times, in that dream.  Maybe, just maybe we did fly once.  Where does this memory come from?  There is a desire in all of us to go back to Eden.  Maybe we were there once, maybe it's all about connection.  And for sure it's about the knowledge of good and evil.   The end of innocence.  Deep in our souls, our spirits we know we were made for better than this. 

Until then, I'll keep rearranging the living room, listening to music and doing what I do. 

I hope your Saturday is full of music.  Take care.


(Tuesday Afternoon lyrics, by the Moody Blues)

Tuesday afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.

Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near, I've got to find out why?
Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.

I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind,
It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love.
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of..........

Boredom, Funkdom, and Dependence

When my kids used to tell me they were bored I would say, "It's okay to be bored."  Now, I'm not so sure.  If I turned towards introspection on my boredom, as usual, I would take total responsibility and veer slowly on a downward spiral focusing on my minor and sometimes major addicitons.  From the online medical dictionary this is what I found for "addiciton" ; Addiction is a persistent, compulsive dependence on a behavior or substance. 



It makes sense to me.  However, here I sit, on a beautiful, but very hot, Saturday afternoon in June, and I realize I'm bored out of my mind. 




Today I was very excited because I was going to buy something for my house that I've been eyeing for quite some time now.  Not that I "need" anything at all.  I "buy" things to make me happy. That fact, in itself,  is interesting and has caused introspection.  It turned out that on this very hot day in June, we had to put out over $800 to fix an air conditioning unit in our home.  My gut was telling me NOT to buy this beautiful piece, but I decided to do it anyway. 



As I reached for my card, (Fortunately I wasn't in the store and ready to buy this object of desire.) I realized it wasn't where it always is, safely in my wallet.  I figured it was somewhere.   But it wasn't, it wasn't anywhere. Deep inside there was this thought that maybe this was just a 'sign' that perhaps I shouldn't go through with the said purchase.  After going to the bank and telling them I had sadly lost my card, the nice man stopped any sort of action on my lost card and ordered me a new one. This time I listened to my "gut" and went home.

Then it began!  The question, "What should I do now???"  Because I'm on a never ending quest to lose the extra pounds I've gained in the last five years, I'm being very, very careful with what I eat.  I wanted to eat though.  No, I wasn't hungry, I was bored.



Okay, let's see, it's only a little after noon.  Way too early to have a glass of red.  That's not eating anyway.  Geeeeeeeeez

About now I'm totally seeing myself as a slave to pleasure and all kinds of fun stimulus.  What am I learning that's good?  What do I see that is productive?  Wow....



Life is strange.  Being in the moment is a beautiful thing, but being in the moment and learning to just 'be' is something I obviously haven't mastered.  Pondering life, the meaning of life, and what to do in the empty spaces is not easy in our American culture.  Especially if you've been used to a fast pace and it sort of slows down all of a sudden. 

I have a book that I read over and over.  It's a huge source of inspiration to me.  It's called "The Awakened Heart", by Gerald May.  Here is a quote from that book that refers to exactly what I'm experiencing this day;

"It is an addiciton of the first order that we feel we must always be filling up our spaces.  (Meaning times when there seems like there is nothing we really want to do.) It goes along with our addictions to work, to productivity, to effciency.  Sometimes, though, we do not like spaciousness because of what appears to us within it. Ever since Sigmund Freud's work, psychology has understood that human beings try to keep unpleasant things out of awareness.  "   May goes on to say, and I'm paraphrasing, that we need to live and accept the ache in our hearts for "more". 

Sometimes the "Protestant Work Ethic" just isn't all it's cut out to be.  Sometimes it just encourages busyness to the point that glancing within our selves just isn't on our agenda. 

So, today, I'm glancing...nope, I'm really looking and asking questions of myself.  Do I have any answers yet?  Maybe, but that's another blog. 

Hope your Saturday is filled with...well....hope your Saturday is going well. 
Love to you.........




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