elainegrey

Grumbles: ( Read more... )

I posted this reflection on recovering from being too busy (and resources for recovering and slowing down) to the meeting email list this morning: ( Read more... )

While i was in Ohio i did a private entry evaluating time goals for the next quarter and half year. I will be trying to not take vacation for a while as a form of savings and to take a bit longer off in February. During a meeting i wrote out some goals for myself, for F&F, for work, for community. It's a little daunting to look at in parallel (as well as out of focus), but there it is.



Busy days ahead, i think, and then ponder how to frame this in slow time terms.

Beloved! Your autumn moon light is spilling down the hallway! Our home is aligned to the west, and the equinox sunlight makes it to the office. This morning, though, the full moon light floods my path as i go down the hall to make tea. What a mirror, that pale globe, reflecting the sun not yet risen.

And the harvest is here.

I am so happy that my mood shifted yesterday afternoon. Physical, chemical, some switch shifted. I'm not sure what to think of harvest, and i'm scared to think about harvest and work (knowing for days that i felt incompetent to keep up with what was laid in front of me).

Christine, though, Christine has networked into a good place for her. Folks who can talk to her about setting a career direction. Thank you! It is good to see her work bringing forth fruit.

--==∞==--

A friend from meeting suggested acupuncture for my mouth:

I would have never thought of that! I've a return to my therapist scheduled for Friday, to help me work through dealing with stress. Skimming the internet, it seems most traditional Chinese medicine practitioners treat canker sores with herbs, and, just as their Western colleagues, they advise reducing stress. So, i think returning to work with my therapist might be good. She works in the "somatic experiencing" model of dealing with trauma, and has helped me make some significant recovery from childhood trauma. I rather think that some of the stress is that i'm not leaning on old coping styles, but haven't quite learned how to let the demands flow easily around me. (I look at several colleagues who also recognize the dysfunction and demands, but they don't seem to be falling apart. How do they do it?)

Yesterday afternoon it was as if an emotional fever broke and i feel much more bright and optimistic. I still worry about all this stress leading straight to another winter depression, and wonder when i'll ever have tomato sauce again, but some shift happened and i can feel hope. Perhaps i just got enough rest to push my energy to the sufficient line, but that rest comes about knowing that others are carrying concern for me and that i could lean on them. Thank you!

I still need to discern what a "good job for [Elaine]" will look like. Maybe i can somehow create that at my current employer, maybe not. But figuring out what elements are needed for me to thrive is the next step.

I saw this during my journaling time, can you tell?

Thank you again,

me

--==∞==--
Today i should review community.

I've looked in my mindmap and cleaned out some old tasks.

I need to go through Meeting committee email and update some notes. Reply to the person taking over the clearness committee job.

Morning writing has mainly been in response to a "cold call" like email, where i've been sent an alarming message about a cement plant in the watershed. The correspondent signed his name and attached a photo, but didn't point out he's "a spokesman for the Quarry No group." http://www.quarryno.com/

One thing that bugs me about the activism against the quarry is that i think there's a huge NIMBY thing going on with the Cupertino residents who don't like the trucks and noise of the quarry that has been there longer than many of them have. I don't get the impression many of the activists are ready to forgo building and cement in structures. While i want the quarry regulated and managed and monitored, i rather thing it's a good thing that the extractive industry needed to support the bay area's sprawl is local to us. Cement is not being hauled from near Mt Shasta (i think that's the next closest location for cement), cement is not being extracted in some remote rural location where there are no citizens with time and clout to make sure it's well managed.

So i felt Mr Quarry No was trying to use me by sending an inflammatory message ("[Quarry] Expansion Spills Into Park") -- is it really? Or can you just see the piles of dirt? -- and not noting his affiliation with the activist "group."

Is it a group? Or is it him? He's also the owner of the domain, signs letters "[person], on behalf of the Members of QuarryNo." He's the founder of the group, per this article http://www.losaltosonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19575&Itemid=46 . A TV website says "[person] is the founder of a group called QuarryNo with some 400 members," but what constituties membership? Clicking the "sign up" button? There are no meetings publicized on the site, no place to join in discussion.

The creek group may have dysfunctional leadership, but there's a board and there are multiple voices.

--==∞==--

Today i'm supposed to write about "2. Friends and family" but i seem to have written about "3. Meeting and Community." I know my inspiration for moving focus every day was to make sure that i balanced the morning time i have across the different areas of my life. Does order mater?

Friends and family should include our cats, and i was thinking of the ephemeral nature of the nicknames we use with them. (What do i have to remember these nicknames, the tender moments that inspire them, when the cats pass away? I miss the sweetness of Greybrother and the force of Greybeard's personality, still.) Mr M has been "Honey bunny" for a long time, capturing his affectionate, easily spooked nature. I dubbed Greycie Loo "Bossy Biscuits" one day, watching her kneading Christine's lap one evening. She has a very self possessed air to her, an arch look, and an engagement in what we are doing. Edward had been dubbed "Honey bear" -- his pale gold coloring well described, his strength and size captured. Edward is endearing himself so deeply to me, in how when he comes home from a walkabout he often comes to find us and say "mrrow," and he's learning to come into the bedroom in the morning, an hour or so after breakfast time to ask politely to be let out.

So now our clouder is one on honey and biscuits, which is quite fun.
--==∞==--
Work skypes. I'm about to disappear into the all consuming activity.

I am stressed by it, but i did manage to leave it all night.