Any more thoughts Einstein?

After shovelling my neighbors and my driveways one night this past week I leaned against my car, took a look around, gathered my thoughts and felt this moment of sadness that I had a hard time describing, I thought what the heck is missing? I know there's those everyday moments where things are never perfect but somethings just not fitting; even though I felt like it, I'm just too old to pack up and run away. Ok, so when in doubt, phone a buddy, someone who knows all about me, from my quirks to my qualities. We had a good talk late into the night and sometimes you just need to run your stuff past someone who'll give you some feedback to get you out of yourself. I hadn't taken the time to appreciate life, or perhaps got caught up in my busyness to look at everything as a gift; "everything is a gift, everything around you", from the smallest and simplest of things; the ability I have to make a living, the ok'ness of hearing the furnace kicking in and knowing I earned that benefit of that warmth, the food in the fridge, a place to call my own, a woman who cares for me (even though sometimes I wonder why and try to screw that up as much as I can), I could increase the list infinitely, but even the smallest of the small in life is a gift. An attitude of appreciation was eluding me. I got caught up in my own thoughts and that's such a active place of nothingness to be in. I was being selfish, I was thinking about my "plan" and how life should work out instead of giving of myself and being available. I know I'm not much, but darn it, somedays I'm all I think about.......but then again, that's when the trouble starts.

Enough

This was another week where I was out of town working from Sunday until Friday. I came to the point of "enough" as I found I wasn't treating myself very well on the balance front; my responsible eating habits went right out the window; you can have what ever you want with an expense account but there are only so many healthy choices one can have when you don't have the abilty to cook a proper meal and when you get into your hotel room late at night. You can have steak with all the fixins' every day but that gets old real fast if you think about it. Once back at the kwoon on Saturday I started resetting the damage; after Tai Chi, fitness and a swim with Sihings Krebs and Langner things started to fall back into place. Then I was back in my kitchen after a big grocery run and cooked a meal that my nutitional guru (Ms.Donahue) would have been proud of; even though I was waaaaayyyyyy late for "date night", it was well worth it. I'm not sure what road food does to a person but my knees were swollen for the week which made adapting to my work ergonomics difficult and the thoughts of "why am I doing this" kept me having a constant conversation with my self most days. On the meditation and prayer front, I found I wasn't grounded to be calm and collected in my thoughts and daily dealings with people; I let my work get the best of me as I came up against a problem that I had to have the factory engineers invloved in and their response was, "good luck, let us know what you find"! What initially started to be a single mechanical problem turned out to be 5 different repairs,then I managed to settle things down, but still, I found it hard to be efficient and kind to others when the garden hose sized vein in my forehead took me up to what seemed to be about three hat sizes and even though trying to take in a deep breaths when the barrage of salesmen, customers, mechanics, tech support staff and engineers were all taking turns at asking throughout the week as to how the job was going. I guess looking back over the week I let myself get too tired, ate poorly, I wasn't taking time throughout the day to reset and although these individually don't sound like much, all put together there were some frustrating moments. I'm not sure where work will take me this week, but looking back at the damage path, all I can say is "enough", take care of yourself a bit better. Robert.

This one flew by

The week started off with me finally being able to breathe; I couldn't fathom just how everything was affected by not being able to take in a full breath of air. Once I had my breathing back (almost as if I had never had an issue) things took off again and is was time to play catch up. My pushups came back, my sit ups came back and in fitness class I was able to make it through and give it as much as I possibly could. Between all that was work (overnight and out of town) but I managed to make the most of it by finding a pool, a gym with enough space to do my forms, and balancing my workload to make it back to class. The key word for this stage of my perseverence is "balance", especially where work is concerned; finding out how many work hours I need to do vs. how much my ego wants and watching how it affects my progress. Since finding out really how much free time I can find in the cracks and crevices of the day, it's really not that hard to get my commitments done. But then again here it is, late Sunday night, in another hotel room, an ice pack on my knee, wondering where the week went, yet ready to start all over again tomorrow.

All Quiet on the Western Front

This week I thought I was starting to feel better, then whatever secondary bug was hiding came back and I'm on round two of antibiotics and am starting to get some breathing back, hoping this round of drugs works. My numbers for pushups and sit ups aren't where I would like them to be, but I'm managing to keep up with all my other requirements and numbers. I spent the latter part of the week and weekend working in a remote mountain location; no internet, no phone service, no healthy people to converse with and by Sunday night I felt trapped by my own thoughts; my methodical daily routines were interrupted with no one to vent to and that's never healthy for me. But, all wasn't lost, I managed to get together with a close group of friends and we were able to talk about getting out of ones self, basically staying out of our own headspace. I'll be working local for this week and will be able to get back into my routine,just glad this week is over. Robert.