slowing down

[joflasher]

Last night, for the first time in a long while, I left work after only 9 hours and not because I had somewhere I had to go. Instead, I went home and relaxed. By relaxed, I mean I planted the umpteen flowers and herbs my mother sent home with me, pulled weeds, trimmed the hedges, deer sprayed everything and picked blueberries. Okay, it wasn't really relaxing BUT I didn't have a deadline I was pushing for. I wasn't trying to squeeze yard work in between 20 other things. I didn't HAVE to do any of it (except maybe plant the flowers before they wilted any more). It was nice. I stayed out while the sun set and admired how pretty and yellow green everything was. I listened to the Boy remove the steps from the pourch and felt no real need to go help him.

I made bruchetta (sp?) for dinner, which takes 5 minutes to cut up things and mix it together and slop it on bread. I decided if dishes didn't get done afterwards, oh well, and sat around watching B5 instead. I decided "fuck it" and didn't do anything I didn't want to and didn't rush through what I did want to do just because other stuff was waiting to get done.

The ironic thing is, I still got a lot done, just with less stress. Made me wonder just how much of my tension and worry and rushing around is self induced. Decided to try hanging on to that state of mind for a few days and see what happened.

Of course, I missed my exit off of I95 this morning and was 20 minutes late for a meeting because MA is stupid and just because you can exit a freeway doesn't mean you can get back on in the opposite direction and god forbid they tell you that before hand and now I'm eyeballs deep in deadlines and only ass deep in time.

*sigh*

So much for a less stressful Jo.

Comments

[prusik.livejournal.com]

bruschetta.

Most of Italian is spelled the way it sounds. Unfortunately, this is only useful advice if you actually know some Italian or have been taught Italian diction in vocal diction class.

In the case of bruschetta, there's a popular mispronunciation so that advice may be doubly unhelpful.

BTW, if you're a good Buddhist, you probably believe that all of your tension and worry and rushing around is self-induced. (This is probably over-simplifying things, but I never claimed to be a good (or bad) Buddhist.) There is something to be said for not holding onto the things aggravating your life though. (And I believe that thing to be said is, "Easier said than done.") Still, it's good advice if you can manage it. I suspect this is why there is all of that meditation.

I'm sorry that your life seems relatively sucky right now. I hope things get better for you.

[shoebox-bird.livejournal.com]

Silly, there's no such thing as a "good" or "bad" Buddhist. It's not like Catholicism. :-)

Anyway, taking time to relax daily is incredibly important. Our culture has this weird "Idle hands are the devils' hands" thing going on, and that mindset causes a lot of misery. (Which causes non-productivity. Vicious circle, eh?)