Most of this weekend has been spent sitting in my front room with the windows open, either smelling the late April breeze still speckled with cherry blossoms, or listening to the soft rain patter against the dark green leather leaves of the bush tree below the sill. Minutes passed and then hours passed and soon days will pass.

The silent quality of this gentle drizzle, the birdsong behind it, the lack of voices and machines lets me hear my own breathing, uncoils my thoughts that have been so tightly wound around the spoke-stem of my reality. Each day I've gone for a walk, half an hour to an hour throughout my neighborhood in a practice I began when I returned from the doctor some weeks ago. At first it was exercise and my heart rate complained and my legs screamed for the sanctity of sofas and cartoons. But then I hit my stride and the weariness of steps turned to circulation and the feeding of energy into my joints and muscles.

And now when I walk, it is how it used to be. My legs move and my breath rises and falls, and my thoughts and laid out behind me like breadcrumbs, and my thoughts go before me like swallows, and my thoughts spin around me like small planets on which infinitely small civilizations go about the business of ecosystems.


It's allowed me some space to breathe and stretch and remember what it's like to be me, to connect to the important things and to disentangle myself from creeping ivy and kudzu that green my clear vision and that burrow so deeply into my sense of comfort, of safety, of sanity. But it's hardly enough. I haven't done well by myself lately. I haven't been particularly happy and haven't been honoring play and have held things as so important, as so binding and unchangeable that much of my time has seemed to turn to routine and hardship and bearing the weight of worry.

I have also not written or been able to find enough peace in my hours alone to adequately connect to the place of my imagination. My days have been full of work, long hours and late evenings of misplaced importance and stress. Meanwhile, my mind has been full of any number of large subjects.

There's my long-distance relationship which continues to inspire and fulfill me, but is one of the most challenging tests I've ever undergone. In this realm are immigration lawyers, financial planners, trips to England and related money expenditures all squeezed into a sixth month period, but also the daily work of relationship building, which is nearly impossible sometimes in the two hour windows of connection afforded to us three to four times a week.

There's work and the aforementioned long hours, the seemingly constant scramble to keep up-to-date on new technologies and maintain a monthly income based on being competitive and flexible, while still managing the boundaries of good balance. I'm not and will never been a gear-head geek, or a code-monkey who soaks into Ruby on Rails during his free time, or someone particularly interested in the depths of technology. And I struggle with accepting this, being okay with it, and figuring out how to continue to freelance and present myself as a result.

There's my journey to better wellness, which began with a discovery of hypertension and has led me in a search of doctors for a regular checkup, lab results, and life changes. Insurance claims, time off work, body worry, and a lingering (but unwelcome) resistance to overhauling my bad habits live in this camp.

And then there are the stragglers, the moth cleanings, the looming sale of my apartment building, questions about my future career and earning ability, all of which are manageable, but which added into the mix can seem to take on an exaggerated largeness.

My life is in transition. And I'm very uncomfortable.. I'm not doing well thinking that I have to mount and control this pile, that I have to know everything and be everything, that I have to be okay with all of it at all times. But mostly, I'm not doing well with turning to the things that give me healing, partially because being unhealthy is easier and being broken is something I'm eager to believe and have been good about reinforcing.

But I am trying. And as the rain stops here and the twilight yawns its arms around the grey sunlight, as these last clinging drops on the railing plummet with wet smacks onto the wood, I feel spacious. And I know that I'll find my way through. My watchword is joy now, adding joy back into the things I do in my own time, making writing purely a joy (and selfish) pursuit, allowing myself gifts and outings I may not have ever allowed myself or done for myself. For me, it's now about finding the formula that fits the life that is transforming and shifting underneath me, but also truly embracing the quiet times between the challenges, trying to infuse them with energy and lack of expectation and judgment. I short, I want the sparkle and I want to let it free in my moments of choice.

Meanwhile, I've come to an understanding that journaling in a social network is about the social network for me. My friends who are distant and even my friends who are close value the intimacy of connection that posting about my life (and reading about theirs) can bring. I get that now. So, my plans are to largely divorce creative writing from Live Journal and move them to Blogger, without the ability to comment. I want to return to posting here without the need to adhere to form or flow, as a way of chronicling my life not for the sake of catharsis or memory, but for the sake of those people who might read me who may want to feel connected to what is happening in my life.

Things can tend to feel very hard for me these days, and I acknowledge that I make them harder often. But it doesn't negate the fact that they are hard and that sometimes they hurt. And I think the lesson I'm learning in regards to my relationship to myself is that hurting doesn't mean quitting and it doesn't mean hiding. It's simply sometimes the way through.