what came first?

When I notice that my life feels unmanageable because I don’t have a schedule, I wonder which came first the schedule and then I learned to love it - or I needed structure and so I invented my own schedule.  In fact, in most of life, which came first the need or the means to satisfy the need.  

There are all kinds of needs.  I’m noticing that as I age, my needs are less about building things and more about discovering things.  I feel a need to understand myself better.  I feel a need to understand what builds communities.  Am I following an age old schedule?

A promise is a promise

It's been a full day - up at 12:30 am to go to work, catch a quick nap for an hour and then go help my mom with her bills and finances.  Home again, home again - and finally time to relax - WHEN I remembered my promise to myself to write daily.

It's only a short note to say "I remember and honor my promise - to me" but I do feel happy that I'm trying.  I guess that's what "one day at a time" really means.

Schedules

It's funny how we think that having no schedule frees us up and gives us more time. I've been finding that without a schedule, I'm floundering and not getting things done. I spin my wheels and don't have a direction. At the end of the day I have a list of things I should have done, but during the day, I can't hardly think of what I should be doing next.

We are in the process of changing where and how we work. This is a HUGE change and I feel so a drift. I realize that I need a schedule. Schedules actually create freedom. One of the things I'm going to put on my schedule is time to write daily.

Weaving Webs

I went to a celebration dinner party at my friend’s house.  It was so easy and wonderful.  Why don’t I do this more often?  Life should be a celebration daily, yet I get caught up in the details.  

Here’s to Jill and her wonderful friends.  All invited were from all aspects of her life and all got along so well.  Some only knew one or two of the others. Yet all were connected through Jill.  I felt as though I knew these friends forever.  It is interesting how we are connected to people we don’t even know through someone else.

The webs we weave can be wonderful webs of friendship.

New decades

Tomorrow I turn 60 - I think of this as the beginning of the last third of my life.  I’m kind of excited - it’s a whole new beginning.  I wonder if I’ll suddenly feel wise?  

Tine Bank

Rich or poor we all get the same days. Or, no matter how big the bank account, time is the same.

I was working at our plant in San Francisco.  Someone came in and was suggesting that I was getting rich.  I demurred and said that no, I wasn’t as rich as he was.  We were about to have a verbal throw down on who was “poorer” when I realized that this was silly and suggested that “rich or poor, we all get the same days.”  We both nervously smiled and he left.  

I am rich, but not in the pocketbook, I’m rich in coming to value the days and hours of life.   I’m rich in becoming aware that the relationships I populate my life with are the coin of wealth.  I’m rich in celebrating my blessings. 

New Year's Celebration

The new year always starts in September, for me.  Programed by school beginnings and birthdays, new years start in September - still and always.  The crisp edge to the air.  The new slant of the light.  There is a mystery of things to be.  There is the excitement of presents to be opened.  There is the joy of family gathered.  There is the promise of books to crack and lessons to learn.  

September is a big box of Crayola 64 crayons with a built-in sharpener.  So full.  So new.