There it is

It’s been a very long winter, and even though it isn’t over quite yet, the path through has begun to emerge. I’m grateful for the lessons along the way, for the coming season, and for the path in front of me. Welcome to February. It’s not Spring, but I can see it from here.

The Way will open.

Beltane: Bloom

 

Beltane May 1 - June 11: Bloom Where You’re Planted

Yoga, meditation, anti-inflammatory foods, gardening, composting (with worms!!), love.

Welcome to a truly Druidic Challenge.

Grounded. Like an errant teenager or an injured pilot, like the third prong on the electrical plug, this challenge I am grounded, or looking to get that way. Me, being me, I’m taking this as literally as I take everything else, and I’m looking to dirt and roots to help me out. Even my yoga sessions are on the ground, and meditation is definitely that way.

Nourish Flower and urban farm shares (including eggs!) start this week. Nearby farm vegetable delivery starts May 17. I need to make sure I have the fridge and tools prepared and waiting. Eating farm-to-table is a mindset more than an activity, and having the right structure in place makes all the difference.

Weekly vegetable delivery means weekly cooking. Last year was a wash with me having no motivation or energy. Truly, it was a sad year on the cooking front. Looking forward to this year in the kitchen.

Vermicomposting, the nerdiest druid thing to happen in the dirt. I’m super excited about this. I’ve wanted to do indoor vermicomposting for years, and am finally making this happen. I have the composter ready to be assembled, and lots of thoughts about worms. The composter isn’t large, but every square inch matters in this small apartment, so I’ll need to figure out where it will live and how collecting vegetable scraps and tea leaves will fit into the workflow.

Plants! Vivian wants to plant roses and lavender in containers on the rooftop terrace, and I want to have fresh herbs again, especially rosemary and basil, and possibly sunflowers.  Look for green thumb reports. :) 

Bask I’m kicking the challenge off with a session of sound bowl healing, one of my favorite activities. A second session is scheduled for the first week of June as well. The weather is warming up and there’s a couple free yoga sessions each week with an instructor I really like, so I’m adding those to the calendar, in pencil as my energy level allows.

Acupuncture and milk each week help me keep my glow. I have two passes for a salt float (similar to a sensory deprivation tank, but larger) that are like a deep meditation session, and I’ll add those where and when I can.

Love I get to see Vivian every other Saturday, still, and we are supposed to start adding in time on the following Sundays, as well as video chats on the Friday before. I’m looking forward to that.

Academic Housekeeping: I need to finish up the semester projects and send them off. I’ve been dragging my feet and will have them done and turned in by the end of zero week.

The Way Will Open

 

 

 

 
NF Challenge -- February 14
This challenge begins during a time of converging paths, each with their own pressures: PhD classes, interpersonal conflict, editing work, physical challenges, emotional balance, spiritual wholeness. At times it feels like I am navigating under a starless sky, and all I can do is trust the sails and be grateful that the water lifts the boat.

I hadn't meant to make an Earthsea challenge, and it's been forever since I read the books, but here we are. Writing often reveals the Way; as Ged found, words have power to restore balance to what has been upset.

The way will open.

Snow Falling on Warm Ground

When I sit

Let the thoughts come.

Welcome them even!

With an open heart, I can receive them

Drifts of snow falling

On warm ground.

 

When I am work,

Let the chaos come.

Welcome it even!

With a centered heart, I can embrace it

Drifts of snow falling

On warm ground.

 

When I am play,

Let the obstacles come.

Welcome them even!

With a calm heart, I can resolve them

Drifts of snow falling

On warm ground.

 

When I am in the world,

Let the difficulties come.

Welcome them even!

With a full heart, I can release them

Drifts of snow falling

On warm ground.

Amazoning

My journey to this point has taken me into some hellish and dark spaces, a trap-laden trek encountering demons; at times there was a sea of despair. I have been stripped of so much along the way, walking naked through the dark without even the light of the moon. But I kept walking, and when I couldn't walk, I sat. Rest is not an admission of defeat. Over the challenges this year, I stood up and walked again, however slowly, a miracle in its own right. The demons are now familiar companions; there is no fear; there is no fight; I have no enemies.

I feel as though I'm on the other side now, and I barely remember how I passed through the obstacles, I only know that they are no longer in front of me.

Now it is time to move forward, walking and preparing for the future. The battles behind me weren't really battles at all -- they weren’t even really a fight. They were an origin story.

Now the real work begins, and it takes me back to my Ranger roots: it's time to suit up. My battle lies in the distance, and I go forth with love in the spirit of justice, knowing my true source of strength is the Company I keep.

Challenge 32: Bloom

Bloom

My challenges are usually about measuring what I am going to do, and that’s all good.
But this time I’m doing something a little different -- I’m going to report on what I do.

I’m not interested in giving myself grief or being all judgey -- I’m interested in seeing what I do that is on-target, a check-in to see where I am at the habit level. I have a suspicion that it’s lots higher than I am giving myself credit for.

So this time around, I am celebrating my successes. I’m looking forward to seeing how I’m doing with physical and emotional wellness, educational balance, and financial fitness. (See what I did there? That’s a 3+1 old school formula.)

Meditation

Meditation isn’t quite like other methods of self-improvement. It’s not as though you can say “Let’s meditate three times a week!” and then schedule it, show up a the gym to lift heavy things or run fast and far, and have it in any way be done.

Meditation is a mindset.

It is not mindlessness. Do not confuse meditation’s stillness with emptiness; many folks speak of the blank mind, but that is not the case, truly. More it is the mind empty of attachments, neither leading nor following, simply watching the stream of consciousness travel by.

Think of being on a bank and watching the river. You only see a portion of the river, but it is the river, all the same. You sometimes see a leaf on the river, but that doesn’t matter; the leaf travels on and the river still is. That is how the meditative mind works, as an observer to the river, with thoughts like leaves or twigs that appear, float along, and move out of view. They change your observation -- your mindset -- not at all.

Beginning meditation is not the same, exactly, as starting weight training or walking to Mordor. The way that success is measured is different, because meditation is a mindset and not a single activity. It’s not even, in the way of martial arts or yoga, an activity in process, but we can approach understanding the measure of meditation more readily if we think in terms of the activity of it.

Think of meditation as a song, and the practice of it as singing.

If you had a goal of being able to sing a song, then you might want to practice singing three times a week for fifteen minutes each time. Starting by singing for an hour once a week wouldn’t actually be as helpful as singing for a few minutes, maybe even in the grocery store or in the shower, throughout the week.

We don’t measure the success of the song by the volume of it, or by its duration, but instead it succeeds as a measure of its quality. Letting the song be exactly as it is can be difficult -- we are tempted to add trills to make it more interesting as we sing it, or to add harmonics to show off our skill a bit. But those “extras” are not the song.

Simple can be hard, not because it is hard on its own, but because it’s hard for us to leave it alone.

We want more; we want interesting; we want complex and complicated; we want showy.

But meditation is the art and practice of simplicity of thought, without ego and without ornamentation.

To begin a meditation practice, do not look at how often you can increase the practice, or how long you can sustain it. Look instead at the quality of the experience. What was smooth and what was difficult? In answering the question, we begin to play the practice, for it is through reflection that we are able to understand where we are simple and where we are showy. Sometimes, while singing the song, we are able to hit the notes, and sometimes we are not; sometimes the melody flows easily from us and sometimes it does not. But it is always singing. The difference between a novice’s warble and a virtuoso’s solo is simple: practice in an environment of feedback, not one of failure. There is not so much success with meditation as there is ease.

And when simplicity of thought comes with ease, all things will be more in balance, and the Way will be more clear.

As you consider taking on the practice of meditation start by answering:

• What is it you hope to gain through meditation?
• Describe successful meditation
• Tell me about one who has mastered meditation:
• What does her life have that yours does not?
• What abilities does she have that you do not?

GL moment

Challenge: Choose Wisely

Main Quest: Let Go Or Be Dragged Current Mission: Choose Wisely

But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.

This challenge is all about spending my resources more wisely. Not just money, though that is certainly a piece of it. Time and space and energy as well. I have been spreading myself far too thin in recent years. After having devoted some serious work to thinking about how and where this has manifested in my life, I have the beginnings of An Attack Plan.

This is a consciousness-centered goal, even though it will have tangible efforts and measurable results. Grading it overall will be extremely difficult, because even with concrete items, this is more about achieving a certain zone. I will definitely be keeping regular posts of what I do, and tracking my tasks and such, but the final analysis is going to be how closely I achieve the ideal space that I'm envisioning. Obvious increases are to CON and WIS and DEX.

I think I'll leave it at that and take five points each for an A, with percentages for lower grades taken across the board. Keeping track of all that there is to be done is going to be a challenge in its own right. I'm not certain how best to do this, short of printing the pages below out and taping them on a wall, making tick marks on the various items. [Wait. That idea has merit suddenly.]

Alternately, I could group the items by date, since some of them are clearly Before the Move or After the Move. Heaven help me, but I don't really want to get into spreadsheet land again. Also there are obvious groupings of one-offs versus weekly or monthly items. GAH. This will take a hard hat.

Time: It's about time that I let other folks do the heavy lifting with regard to regular task management. Subscriptions help in this immensely for me, since I don't have to revisit a decision I already made (buy X every time_period). Also, it keeps me from doing the food security freak out that results in me buying caseloads (not hyperbole) of food.

Tasks: 8/8 A+

1. Beef: Buy and process a steer. Store beef in weekly distribution amounts in a small chest freezer. Feb 18 - steer ordered and cut sheet delivered. Awaiting notification of pick up date. April 5
2. (N.B. Buy a small chest freezer if the upright one doesn't fit in the apartment.) April 5.
3. Local, seasonal fruits and vegetables: Set up a delivery subscription with a local provider for fresh, local, organic produce. Feb 18
4. Coffee: Set up a delivery schedule with a local roaster for organic, fair trade coffee delivery. Feb 17
5. Wine: Set up a monthly subscription for delivery of my favorite reds. Feb 17
6. Contact housekeeper to set up weekly services. Feb 18
7. Contact Peacock Salem for dry cleaning pickup and delivery account. Decided we are going to do our own laundry as part of weekly chores.
8. Pay car insurance for the year. Feb 18: found out six months is as much as can be bought at once. Done.

Routines to Establish: 3/3 A- for not actually writing them down, but we have been great about communicating and then following through, and that's really what this piece is about. We are still planning to write all this down in a checklist format for the week, and also to have a shopping list for the week posted on the board so that we can list our preferences (there are no guarantees, of course) taken into consideration when the shopping actually gets done.

Weekly Food purchase - no more than is needed for the week, enforced by cash. This will be supported by a Menu Plan for the week, finalized on Monday nights (the night before the produce delivery) when we do the weekly refrigerator clean out.

Chores - everyone's chores explicitly stated, posted, and with a check-off sheet, updated daily and replaced each week.

Daily routine - posted as part of the No Surprises plan, especially including kitchen closing time, quiet hours, and television and entertainment schedules

Space & Stuff: I need to clear my space, literally as well as metaphorically. I have been weighing myself and my family down with stuff, and we haven't really been as mindful about what we have. Clutter drives me crazy. Cray-ZEE. So we are getting rid of everything that doesn't fit, that we don't use regularly, and reducing the rest of it to Very Useful Items. To help make me do this, I'm moving into a very small, two-bedroom apartment from a medium sized four-bedroom house. I looked around a long time before choosing the place we are going, since the places we have been have been nice, but not well laid out, and inefficient in their construction (can you say utilities bills?) as well as use of space. The place we are going is modern, with a maintenance staff around the clock and high-efficiency everything. We are looking forward to it, all of us, even if it means that privacy is going to be hard to come by.

Tasks:   14/14 : this list is complete. There is some unpacking and settling in that remains, but very little indeed. This is a major win. A+

1. Sort Clothes. Donate everything useful that we don't want, don't wear or doesn't fit. Feb 19 - nearly done with mine. Began Vivian's as well.
2. Have everything must go sale on craigslist once all other stuff is moved to new place.
3. Donate anything that doesn't get moved or sold.
4. Sort bathroom items and pare down to essentials.
5. Sell current queen beds and dressers
6. Buy twin beds with built in storage
7. Deal with the Basement Boxes: they all have to be dealt with no later than March 30, so start now. Feb 14 - One Box
8. Deal with the Scary Closet. Feb 18 - First Round. Feb 19 - second round. Nearly done.
9. Sell washer & dryer
10. Sell lawn mower
11. Donate the majority of the books.
12. Sort toys and personal items in our bedrooms and closets.
13. Pare down to one foot locker and a four-foot closet bar with shelf.
14. Donate everything that doesn't go.

Money: I need to reduce my regular maintenance expenditures in general, and deeply rework where and how I’m spending my limited resources. I need anything that goes out to work actively toward the keeping of my sanity and health; everything else must go. Financial health is its own freedom. To that end I need to pay debts as quickly and as timely as possible; I need to decrease my weekly / monthly expenses; and I need to increase my weekly and monthly income. (Gosh, when it's written down like that, it seems so simple, doesn't it?)

Tasks: 12/14 The things I haven't done are essential post settling in things that allow me to make some money. I have talked with my brother and he's going to start taping a weekly cooking show that I will post on you tube. (I can cook, but have no clue about videography and editing. Yet.) This might end up tying in with money or it might not, but I'm looking forward to it and in the meantime, I'm still financially sound. Still, this is a solid A.

1. Submit two resumes a week to jobs that actually work for me. Being selective isn't really a luxury most folks have in this economy, and I’m right there with them. But if I die of a heart attack from job stress (a real and pending concern), I won't be able to provide. Feb 18: Pace, L&K, March 6, March 21, March 22, March 27, March 31 (Crowning Touch) April 3 (Finch), April 4 (leclair ryan & Bella)
2. Keep credit cards at 25% or less. Period. If it has to go on a card, pay it off from the bank account. Chances are I can get by with what I already have. Cards go t hit hard when I needed to do the final moving push and found myself in a bind. I'm really glad I had the room on them to make the choices I did, and I have a plan to work them back down over the next challenge. Three of them are below 25%, and the fourth is at 57%.
3. Establish automatic payment to credit cards. 2 of 4 as of March 1.
4. Make a schedule for debt payments with amortization dates included. This schedule has been made and will be a backbone piece of next challenge.
5. Make a note of my credit score every month. February: 518 (ok, that’s embarrassing) March 5: 525 (better but still red-faced about it) April 1: 559 (that's a nice step in the right direction)
6. Establish automatic draft for electric, cell phone, rent and amenities payments. The finance company charges a pretty penny to process stuff automatically, so I'm setting up a routine for the electric, rent and amenities payments. Cell phone is established.
7. Cancel gym membership February 18,
8. Cancel water, internet, gas accounts after the move. Scheduled for Monday, April 7, but that's technically after the challenge ends.
9. Downgrade the cell phone plan drastically. February 18
10. Verify automatic payments for student loans, medical debts, and credit cards. March 6
11. Investigate to make certain all medical bills from this summer have been found and collected into one account. Wow. This is like falling down a rabbit hole. But effort has been made, and that was the point of this item. Some bills have been found and payments established. Others have been relegated to the wait-and-see stack as we here in Virginia try to find out what the heck is going on with Medicaid and the ACA.
12. Make automatic deduction to savings for emergency fund. Set this up as a task in my calendar, and will establish a routine amount now that I know what to expect from support.
13. Let people have the opportunity to buy my food. Online subscription for the week.
14. Clean apartments. Set up an appointment schedule for folks to hire me and a teenager to come in and do basic cleaning on their apartment for $50 a week.

Energy: The whole reason for this mission is to acknowledge that how I spend my energy is deeply meaningful to my health in all its manifestations: emotional, physical, mental and spiritual. I deserve a life that is calm, predictable and lovely. I can't be a good mother or provider or student or friend if I don't make the effort to achieve and maintain a life that allows me to be my best.

Tasks: 10/11

1. Regular acupuncture and medication for the heart (at least one per month). February.
2. Regular hair cut (at least one per challenge). Feb 21
3. Daily quiet time. This has saved me.
4. Study time to improve my chances of switching careers well. There are a million burger-flipping jobs out there, but no one really wants a 44 year old graduate degree holding technical guru for that. And since I’m done with the IT world, I need to beef up my credentials in the legal world in order to transition without destroying my family or myself. On track to have a 4.0 for this term, and have signed up for two classes for next term.
5. Networking: Monthly meeting of the paralegal professional association or similar group Networking breakfast; Toastmasters
6. Classes: Two paralegal classes a term until certification is complete Feb 17 - April 25
7. Professional Associations: Join the local chapter of the professional association.
8. Cooking. This is my Happy Space, and I need the luxury and energy to revisit it in a loving, creative way at least once a week. Once I moved into the new place, I have done happy cooking nearly daily, and I am truly loving it.
9. Yoga. Bend but do not break. Yoga helps my in so many ways. Find a weekly class that fits my schedule and my budget. The Sunday classes at the new place have been sporadic, but will hopefully become more regular.
10. Water. Drinking water regularly helps flush toxins out of my system and keeps me grounded in a way I don't really understand, but have truly come to love. So I need to keep doing that. Two litres or more a day. As of April 1, this has been a breeze. Thank goodness for having established this habit over the past several challenges.
11. Walking. Keep track of my daily steps. Minimum of 5,000 a day for this challenge. This was a challenge indeed, but there has been meaningful progress over these many weeks. I nailed this in March, and am looking forward to keeping the momentum going. April has seen no day under 5,000 steps, and quite a few at 10,000 or more.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Heidi

Do. Do Not. Stop Trying So Hard.

Howdy, Druids. I'm a Ranger who has to refocus a bit on the center, so I'm teaming up with you guys for inspiration and hand-holding. It's wicked-difficult for me not to do everything-all-the-time, and over the last year I have driven myself into the ground, so this challenge is about focusing on what I need to do and what I need not to do in order to get and stay grounded. This is all about outlook and keeping the negativity away while I nurture my center.

I can't do anything if I don't take care of myself, and that lesson came to roost this year in a big way. I know now what I need to do (and not do) in order to stop destroying myself with stress and anxiety. Having no job does indeed suck, but wearing myself out about it will only make me incapable of working. So here's to a meditative, balanced challenge.

Do Baby Steps: I always feel as though if I haven't gone to the gym and biked five miles or lifted hundreds of pounds or done hundreds of crunches that I'm somehow Not Doing Anything. This is malarkey. I am in fairly constant motion, and that counts in its own right. So I got a fitbit zip to measure the number of steps I take. My goal is to walk ten percent more than my baseline every day, without really going ballistic about it. (Something tells me I do this just trying to figure out where I left my coffee, my pen, my book, my purse. . . ). So at the end of the day, if I notice I'm a few thousand steps behind my goal, I can walk around the block or do a load of laundry or whatever to get those extra steps in without feeling like a complete failure. And frankly, if I walk four miles and not five, it helps me know that I'm still making progress. (Note: if you want my fitbit account information to help cheer me on and keep me accountable, send me a message -- I love encouragement and support!) I'll set my baseline in the pre-challenge week, then update the number of steps to be baseline plus ten percent.
NNNN steps a day. 36-42: A 29-35: B 21-28: C 14-20: D STA +3 Final Grade: A- Stamina +2.75

Week 0 was an average of 3200 steps a day, with a couple days at very little above 2000.
Week 1 goal is average of 3550 steps, with no day below 2500.
Week Two goal: 5k/day,with no day less than 3500.
Week 3 goal: daily average of 7,500, with no day below 5,000.

Do Not Stress: Finding time for being alone and focusing on myself is difficult with two teenagers, a toddler, a live-in brother, and classes. But I'm going more-than-slightly mad without time to myself, and this makes me fragile and anxious and inflexible. This goal is about carving out time for myself and making self-nurture a priority no less than food or water or anything else. I matter, and I need and deserve tending.
Meditation 5 minutes a day. 36-42: A 29-35: B 21-28: C 14-20: D CON+3 Final Grade: A Constitution +3

Do Healing: Taking care of my health is mandatory, and part of that is acknowledging the damage that has been done and addressing it. My body has lots of trauma spots, and only a long-term program of healing is going to fix it -- no one shot is going to address the underlying problems. This is expensive, but perspective is everything: surgery, lost work, migraine medication are all expensive too, and they don't really heal the system.
Massage or acupuncture every week. 6: A, 4-5:B, 2-3: C, 1: D CON+3 Final Grade: C Constitution +1

Do Learning: I'm in limbo as I switch career tracks from IT Project Management to paralegal, and it's an anxious time for me. As a breadwinner, it's difficult to be without work and not to have multiple offers on the table, but I simply can't continue in the high-pressure zone that I have been living and working in. I'm a big fan of immediate results, and working slowly toward my certification, applying for a job here and there and letting the application go free without expecting any return is beyond difficult. But this is the path I'm on, scheduled to receive my American Bar Association paralegal certification in September, and my Master Black Belt Six Sigma Certification in April. It will take steady, persistent work, and no flash of brilliance will be able to take the place of dedication and consistent effort of at least an hour a day.
Classes and Classwork each week. 36-42: A 29-35: B 21-28: C 14-20: D WIS +3 Final Grade: B Wisdom +2

Do Not Break: Pilates / Yoga every week. 6: A, 4-5:B, 2-3: C, 1: D DEX +3 Final Grade: C Dexterity +1