All the Things in Everyday Ramblings

From Tuesday. Happy early Equinox! Fall and cooler temps for hunkering down, spring and blissfully longer days. They say this is the earliest equinox in 124 years. Along with everything else in our lives, another exception to the norms we are used to.

This is a post snow picture of the park that in 1918 during that pandemic housed the county hospital. One wonders what our hospitals now will look like in 100 years. One can hope there will be parks there too.

I am doing fine but I realized, after a bout of irritability yesterday, that I am not as relaxed as perhaps I could be considering that other than being prudent and doing all the things, the social distancing things, the hunkering down things, there is nothing much else I can do to make the situation better.

To address the grumpiness I did a physical yoga practice and then a calming grounding meditation practice and at the end of it I understood that the reason I am grumpy is that everything I am doing is self-directed. One of the things working and teaching and getting out there taking care of things does is in the routine of it you do what you need to do.

I don’t get up and say, oh, shall I teach today? How shall I teach, who shall I teach, where shall I teach, can I teach? What new tools do I need to learn to teach?

Instead it is, okay, today is so and so day and I am teaching at this place at this time and addressing these issues and my mind is preoccupied with solving problems and keeping my commitments and the totally random joys and challenges of dealing with what arises in these routine circumstances.

For all of us that has been, umm, excuse my language, blown to hell.

There is a lot of pressure in the yogic community to produce classes online. So far I am resisting but I also know my students are not practicing on their own, at least most of them. They come to classes for a reason

So as I build a structure to hang my days on that includes writing and keeping in touch and eating and exercising on my own I need to keep in mind that every day it would be good to have a big block of zone out time. Time where I can go on automatic and not think to much about how and why and when I am doing something.

Carlo says that works for him. 15 minutes of rambunctious play, a half hour of uninterrupted leg sitting on time and more frequent food breaks.

Both the cats approve completely of having me home more and available to wait on them more. I have managed to get Diego’s puking to around once every three or four days. I tested out a carpet cleaning paste of salt, vinegar and borax last week and although it doesn’t get every particle of stain out of the rug it helps a lot. Mostly though he is throwing up on washable things and I am grateful for that.

I have a daily alarm set for 6AM so that I do my pushups then. I am writing in 750 Words every morning. I get my cardio in as early as possible in various ways.

And then it is a free for all of mostly puttering and listening to endless podcasts and checking in with a few folks.

On Monday afternoon I did do some cleaning and sorting and organizing and one of the things I did, big step, only 4 months into retirement, is throw away 12 years of steno books with daily work notes in them.

It is instructive to think it took me that long to accept in a deep way that the change is permanent; I am not going back.

We are not going back either. When we get through this, certain things will be different. Who knows what they will be?

The key now is to get through and be kind. Prudent and kind.

Those are the things that matter.

Last updated March 19, 2020