Lessons in Gratitude

I’ve had a number of good conversations with people over these first days on the job. Each day I come home relatively exhausted but grateful for the day. The challenge with living so far from where I work and having a dog at home is that I can’t hang out late at the office or dawdle at all lest I get home even later. In fairness to Honor I need to get home as soon as I can so I can let her out to relieve herself. After 11 plus hours cooped up on the house, she needs to get outside not just to take care of her business, but to get a little energy worked out. I need to give her more time to run around and I wish our yard was fenced. Our house is on a lot at the corner of  two relatively busy streets. I am not sure I can trust her off the leash to run around without running out into the street. Perhaps this weekend I’ll work with her using the  long training leash I have. This should give her room to run around but also means I can yank her back if I need to. If I can train her to understand the boundaries of the yard I hope I can eventually let her off the leash and know she’ll say put.

The blogs for the past few days I’ve been talking about  the long commute I’ve experienced the first two days of work. The ride in to work has been easy–45 minutes of decent traffic flow. The more challenging ride has occurred during the drive home. On Monday I was one hour and 45 minutes and yesterday wasn’t too much better (I took a different route.) Today I had purposed to try yet another route when I decided not to and to go back to the first route (the reverse of the one I take in in the morning) even though it had taken me nearly two hours to get home. Tonight I was pleasantly surprised to arrive home in under an hour. I have determined that I am going to “make friends” with the commute–I will listen to my audiobooks, perhaps learn to speak a language or two during the hours of my life I’m likely to be spending behind the wheel. I plan to make the best of the commute as I can because the alternative modes of transportation are nearly as slow. My sister who helped me find the house I’m now living in has been extremely apologetic, taking it on as a personal mission to help me find as easy a commute as possible. I had to tell her yesterday that it was my decision to live so far from work because of my desire to live close to my sisters; she can’t take responsibility for my decision and its impact on how I get home each night.

The truth is, I am really coming to like my little house and my neighborhood. I am happy to make friends with the commute because living here allows me some breathing space and also allows me the opportunity to spend time with my sisters. This evening I made contact with my oldest sister whom I haven’t seen since Christmas last year. We made tentative plans to hang out on Saturday. I am excited and looking forward to it. I am three days in to my new work life. I am still getting into the routine of going to work every day and working full days–it’s been many months since I did that, so I find myself wiped out at the end of the day. But it’s a good kind of wiped out and I know as I get into this new rhythm I’ll find my feet and get more comfortable with it. I am grateful to be exactly where I am and while there are some challenges with getting from point A to point B, I at least plan on making the trip fun.

Have I said lately how grateful I am for those readers of this blog who spend a little time with me each day pondering some small thought about navigating life’s challenges with a grateful heart? I am grateful and gratified that you make the time to read these thoughts. I hope you spend time contemplating the things you’re grateful for in your life and you are perhaps inspired to do some of your own writing on the matter. Thank you for being here with me on this journey and for inviting me into yours. Travel well.

Today was my second day on the job. Some aspects of the day were very similar to yesterday: uncooperative dog, breezy commute into work, long commute home, and exhaustion this evening. It is good exhaustion–I am not dispirited by it in any way, it simply is what it is: my body adjusting to new schedule, new demands on endurance, new time zone. I am being patient with myself as I work toward creating a routine, getting into a different rhythm. My intention for getting to sleep at a decent hour continues to fall by the wayside. My hope is to turn out the light by 11 p.m. tonight. The 5:45 alarm will ring all too soon, unfortunately.

Nonetheless I am grateful to have had a good, if long day. It was a much busier day at work as I am just beginning to settle in. I am grateful to be working with a really good group of people who are committed to the work they’re doing and committed to each other. Over the years I’ve worked in areas of diversity, social justice, multicultural education and related issues I have often worked in isolation either as a one or two-person office with major responsibilities. To be working with a team of folks who are all dedicated to making the campus a better place is a pretty exciting prospect. I’m looking forward to doing good work in this next phase of my work life.

Tonight I am too tired to have much profound to say. It’s a night for simple gratitude: for a good day at work, a safe drive there and back. I live in a safe, comfortable, home in a nice are (several neighbors have come over to welcome me to the neighborhood; one whole family came over bearing a plate of brownies.) I am grateful for living close to my sisters–a factor which I plan to take increasing advantage of in the days and weeks to come. The commute to work is long, but I’ll still trade it for being minutes away from family. I am grateful that I have food in my refrigerator and heat in the house, running water and so many things that so many of us take for granted and others would love to have. I have my share of challenges in this life, but by and large I am blessed beyond measure.

As I look at the clock I see that I have failed to make my 11:00 p.m. curfew. Oh well. I can only promise to try to do better tomorrow. Tonight as I take my rest I’ll do so grateful for the day that has just ended and looking forward to the day to come. May it bring new possibilities and good things.

This evening I conked out on my bed, only I wasn’t in my jammies and it was definitely not bedtime. I took a little nap after I got home from work. I woke a short time ago at bed time, which it now is. When I looked in the bathroom mirror a few minutes ago the striped pattern from my study pillow that I’d lain against was etched into the contours of my face–it looked kind of cool. As I’d predicted, I hadn’t gotten to sleep until a bit after midnight last night and woke around 5:45 this morning. I am whipped and likely soon to reattach myself to my pillow and take my rest. I am grateful for how this day unfolded start to finish, though parts of it didn’t exactly go according to the script I’d written out for myself for the day.

I woke with the alarm, rather than before it and after writing in my journal, set about my morning ablutions while my coffee (set to turn on at 6:30) started brewing. By around 7:00 or so I was outside with Honor walking her to do her business. My plan was to leave my house by about 7:30. According to Google maps, my commute was going to take about 45 minutes and my goal was to arrive around 8:30. It all sounded pretty good except that my beloved canine companion seemed very disinclined to take care of her business. I walked her around the yard for nearly as long as my commute was going to take me and she would not–well, do what she needed to do. If she didn’t she was in for a very long and uncomfortable day at the house. At one point I yelled at her in frustration, which only served to make her even less inclined to want to do anything at all, and so in disgust I took her back into the house not having cajoled her into doing anything. There are probably some dogs who will “go” on command; mine is not one of them. Finally I took her back outside and got her to go. In the end I left the house at 7:55, nearly a half hour later than I’d planned to leave. The ride in was quick and easy, thank goodness, and I found myself at my office only a few minutes later than I’d planned to be there. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can make it at my desired arrival time.

Tonight I am exhausted and nodding off at the keyboard and will soon retire. I am grateful for having had a good first day at work. My trekking around the yard with Honor for 40 minutes meant that I’d had no time for breakfast nor to prepare a lunch. It was all I could do to grab my backpack and a couple of boxes of books before hopping in my car and taking off. I spent most of the day with the office manager as she showed me around the building, introducing me to a dozen people whose names I’ve forgotten if I managed to catch them in the first place. She showed me parts of the campus and bought me lunch, during which time she filled me in on a variety of pieces of background information, history of the past two years in the office, and her perspective on a wide range of subjects. I received many warm greetings and welcomes from members of the staff and other folks with whom I’ll be working. It was a fine day. The commute home was not pretty, but even that was manageable. I talked to my sister for part of the way and the older of my two brothers surprised me by calling to hear how I was doing. Between those calls and my audiobook, I managed the commute and arrived home in good spirits.

I am grateful for the day just past. I am exhausted and will be happy to put my head to my pillow and rest, but will do so smiling. Tomorrow, as the stating-the-obvious Scarlett O’Hara observed, is another day. I am looking forward to meeting it fully as I did today. Now if I can just get Honor to go on command…

Tonight I am staring at the cursed blinking cursor of death (less dramatically referred to as writer’s block.) I should have a lot to say, after all, there is a fair amount going on in my life and as always many things to be grateful for. However, as sometimes happens, I get  tongue-tied, or rather finger tied, and can’t figure out how to say what I want to say. And, as often happens, once I get started, I find that I do indeed have something to say. So here’s hoping that happens this evening.

Today I reclaimed more of my kitchen from the boxes. My goal was to complete it today, and I made a lot of progress. I would have completed it, except I got sidetracked doing laundry and a few other things. I am grateful for all that I was able to accomplish today. I still have more I need to get done over the weekend, but made a nice dent in things today. I have to go to the grocery store and do some real shopping. The other night I went out to get something to eat and ended up passing by the fast food places I saw and went to the Giant supermarket instead. I bought some random stuff–much of it didn’t seem to even go together, but that’s what happens when  you go after 8 p.m. when you’re tired and really hungry and ar not thinking clearly. I don’t have a microwave (yet) and I kept forgetting this fact in making the purchases I did. I had to reacquaint myself with making things on the stove top using–gasp–pots and pans.

I am exhausted and nodding off at the keyboard yet again. I am wondering when I am going to feel rested. Perhaps I won’t set an alarm for tomorrow morning and will see how long I sleep. If it goes as it usually does, I’ll awaken early anyway. Tomorrow will be another working day, though I hope to catch up with my oldest sister who’s been away and I haven’t seen since I moved here. I plan on checking in and seeing what she’s up to this weekend. I am once again deeply grateful to be here where I can hang out with my sisters as much as I’d (and they’d) like.  I’ve already made plans for some bonding projects to do with my sister Ruth–some at my house, some at hers–and will no doubt find ways to bond with my other two sisters. I’d like to get my house a little bit more presentable before I encourage any of them to come over. Ruth has already seen the place (she picked it out for me after all), and she was here with me when the movers delivered my stuff. I definitely need to tidy more before it’s even remotely ready for company. Still, progress is progress.

Over the next few days I hope to really exhale and spend a little time writing about my gratitude for my new job and workplace. I’m not quite ready to speak about it just yet, but that will shift in the days ahead as I start working and begin getting a feel for the place. I drove down to the campus this past Thursday to practice the commute, sign some papers with HR and stop in at the office where I’ll start working on Monday. It was great to be there to see the place where I’m going to be spending a lot of time. Some of the staff were out, but several were there and I was pleased to connect with them. I am looking forward to getting started. More to come about that.

I am grateful to be at the end of a long work day. I am looking forward to my first weekend at home and though I plan to work through much of it, I also plan to spend some time plopped on the sofa watching football. It’s been a while since I sat still and did nothing on a weekend; so many of them were spent packing and readying myself to move. I plan to practice doing nothing one of these days soon. In the meantime, I’ll soldier on as I’ve been doing lo these many months, celebrating each step with a grateful heart.

Not very creative lyrics to be sure, but they do get stuck in one’s head. Every once in a while I find myself wondering just what Mama would say if she were still on the planet interacting with me and giving me the benefit of her thoughts. I think she would probably urge calm on my part: it has been a day of bouncing around from one thing to the next trying to create some semblance of order from the chaos. Yesterday the movers deposited dozens of boxes, furniture, gardening tools and a wide variety of paraphernalia from various phases of my life, from relatively recent acquisitions to pieces of furniture that belonged to my mother and is still stained and antiqued in the original  drab green color she painted it with more years ago than I care to remember. (What would Mama say about that I wonder?)

I spent several hours yesterday unpacking several kitchen cartons and locating important things like my bed linens. I was determined to create a sense of homeyness in my bedroom even if it existed nowhere else in the house. Mama used to say, “A made up bed is like an oasis of clean in an otherwise messy room.” I used to say that to my kids as well, but it never seemed to have much of an impact on them. Still at the end of a long day yesterday that commenced with being awakened by the burglar alarm going off in my sister’s house, dogs barking, and general mayhem, it was with a sense of exhausted relief that I dragged myself into my bedroom in my new house and sighed at the oasis of clean that greeted me. I sank gratefully into bed last night, writing and posting this blog on my phone for the second time in as many weeks.

An Oasis of Clean...

Tonight I am sitting at my fully assembled desk in my home office working on this blog and bouncing back and forth between other things I need to do as they cross my mind. I’m sure that if Mama has been watching my activities from wherever she hangs out these days she would shake her head gently and invite me to take some slow, deep breaths. In addition to a general sense of overwhelm at all of the physical chaos in my house, I found myself feeling a bit emotionally chaotic for the first time since I closed the door on my condo in California ten days ago. I even shed a tear or two today, though it was nothing like the meltdowns I’d have on a semi-occasional basis over the last year. I realize that I am now undoing everything I spent so many weeks doing–packing up my possessions, canceling utilities and other local services, attending to myriad details associated with leaving a place. Now I am turning around unpacking and starting them all up again.

Perhaps that’s what got to me–that feeling of starting all over again…again, of reassembling my life along with my furniture. I am experiencing what a friend called letting go and letting come, an ebb and flow of loss and attainment. From simple things like the call of the wild turkeys as they paraded through the parking lot at the condo–let go, let go–to my first glimpse of a Northern Cardinal flitting from a tree in my new back yard–let come, let come. I am in the midst of another transition in a period of my life that has been full of transition and change. It makes sense that the occasional storm will rumble through my heart offering release. I’m overdue most likely and I suspect a storm or two will blow through some time soon. There are many good things that I am looking forward to experiencing in the days, weeks, and months ahead as I fully embrace my new life and as my what’s next becomes my what is.

I am grateful for the awareness of the letting go and letting come. It feels appropriate for the season of the year. Autumn is a time for reflection, for gathering in and harvesting, for winding down in preparation for the quiet hibernation time of winter. After a wild and riotous summer (with many rides on Mephistopheles the mechanical bull…remember him?) a little quiet will be quite welcome. I still have a lot to do to get my home into some semblance of order, but I have plenty of time and no pressure to hurry it. I am fully embracing the old saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and allowing myself whatever time it might take me to begin to build my own little place into a home for me and my four-legged sidekick. Each of us has adjustments we’ll need to make. I’m confident that each of us is more than up to the task. Mama said there’ll be days like this. Mama was right.

Sometimes simple gratitude is as much as I have energy for; that is somewhat true tonight. This morning I was cranky and low energy. I had a hard time getting myself going. It didn’t help that it was cold and gray and rainy. I wasn’t hard on myself about any of this, after all, Mama did say there’d be days like this. And mama was right. It’s a good thing I have so many good people in my life to whom I can turn for inspiration. I don’t necessarily have to speak to or interact with them; sometimes thinking about them is enough to lighten my mood. My sister Ruth is one of those people, and I have a small number of friends and relations who fall into that category. I am so grateful to have them in my life and particularly appreciative to be living close to my sisters (I know, I’ve mentioned that before. And, it’s still true.)

My restlessness this morning no doubt has directly related to my lack of settledness in my own space. Tomorrow when the movers come and deposit all my “stuff” in various rooms in my house I’ll then be dealing with another issue–boxes and paraphernalia will be everywhere: chaos will rule. One one hand, I’ve been missing my bed and my possessions and my favorite coffee mug, on the other the mass confusion of having boxes and furniture and miscellaneous things like barbecue grills piled into rooms in and around my house is making me shudder just thinking about it. Still, I’ll be glad to be surrounded by my stuff even if it is chaotic.

I have an early start tomorrow morning and I am nodding off at the keyboard. That too makes me smile a little bit. I am still adjusting to time differences and such, I think my body clock is all out of whack and I am trying to figure out how to manage things like blog writing and bed time. Much of this will be helped when I am in my own space surrounded by my stuff, though I will be making many adjustments over the next several weeks. As I become accustomed to my new routine can begin making micro-adjustments and fine tune my schedule. I suspect this will take a little while.

Through it all, patience with myself and the circumstances will be key. One does not trek 2800 miles across the country to a new place, new job, new territories to navigate without having a few bumps in the road, the occasional hiccup and at least one good breakdown (for which I am overdue, I might add.) All such transitions require that we be incredibly gentle and compassionate with ourselves as well as those around us. I hope I can manage that along with all the other things I’ll be handling. It’s good to know that I have a support system a few minutes drive away or seconds away via phone. I can scarcely imagine navigating this brave new world without the steady presence of family. They are the  net of support beneath me that allows me to swing out there and reach for my what’s next. They are there, the safe place to land if I should lose my grip and fall. I am exceedingly grateful for that.

Tonight as I prepare to lay my head down and rest, I offer prayers and thanks to my sister Sandy and her husband Al for providing a place for Honor and me to exhale and relax while we waited for my belongings to come from California. And for my sister Ruth and her family for her support throughout the entire process of relocating from California–helping me find the house I will be inhabiting for the next 12 months at least, feeding me many meals, and keeping me encouraged when I got down or scared or just plain cranky.

May they be peaceful and happy. May they be safe and protected from harm. May they be healthy and strong in body, mind and spirite. May they  live with joy, ease, and wellbeing. May their generosity and good fortune be magnified and returned to them. May God bless and keep them. May it be so for us all!