"It's a force that appears negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend.  It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.  It's your mission on earth."
                                                                                The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Nesting is an instinctive behavior; the primal preparation for something to be born.  It is as if there had been a seed planted, by some unseen force, and the result of that wonderous creation is about to make itself known.

Fear not.

And get ready.

I feel my invisible spirit scurrying about: taking inventory, clearing the clutter, making space. 

"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, it's just a spring clean for the May queen..."
                                                                            Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

Perhaps all of this is a response to weariness - brilliantly and subliminally designed to fend off the creeping mildew of despair.  Regardless of why it is happening, I appreciate the illumination flooding through, washing clean the dirt and debris of 'making do' and 'sucking it up' and keeping a damnably 'stiff upper lip'.

Today I am starting spring cleaning in the fresh first days of winter.  As I open dusty cardboard boxes, retrieved from the deep corners of my closets, to explore their forgotten contents, I will also visit with the sleepy memories who, rubbing their eyes, have been disturbed by my light.  There are reasons some things have remained in those boxes, carted from place to place, unopened.  Sometimes souvenirs serve as tiny caskets to keep the dead safely tucked away from the eyes of the grieving.  This week I will be exhuming some of what I lacked the strength and courage to face before now. 

"Me? I say my prayers then I light myself on fire and I walk out on the wire once again."
                                                                  Goodnight Elisabeth - Counting Crows

I am driven like a full moon tide to start this year a little lighter.  Denying the darkness by hiding it in the dust only adds to the weight of it.  The dead deserve to have their grieving, and the living deserve to step away from the graveyards to play in gardens, unencumbered by the past.

I think I'm going to run up to Walmart to get me a shredder.  Not as good as a chain saw, but it'll have to do.  I've got plenty of Hefty bags, Pledge, Windex, and Kleenex. Soon I'll be good as new.

Maybe better.

Little blue robin's eggs are beginning to stir.  I can almost hear the faint scratching of life beneath the shells.

Peep, peep, peep...

WS

This is my favorite word of the day.  At first I thought I made it up, when trying to think of a way to describe my morning at work.  It was fun to say over and over and over in my head.  Ridiculum, ridiculum, ridiculum.  Maybe that's why things were all wiggy to begin with.  I conjured the ridiculous by saying it's name three times like Beetlejuice.  Or perhaps it was the Hogwarts effect - swish and flick - and poof.

Ridiculum - the study, observation and practice of the ridiculous, like "curriculum", except not nearly so stuffy.

So I was pretty bummed to learn that my nifty new word wasn't really mine at all.  It's Latin, of all things, so those blasted ancient Romans probably came up with it.

One thing I'm sure of, however, is there is no way they had as much fun saying it (and living it) as I did.

Carpe Something,

WS

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.  I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.  I cannot count one.  I know not the first letter of the alphabet.  I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.  The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things."
                                                                           Walden by Henry David Thoreau

My semester is over and as I must have a book in my hands to feel grounded, I have revisited Thoreau and his beautiful Walden.  [insert contented sigh here]

My previous ponderings, and grumblings, over the quest for abundant simplicity have been answered and quieted by these words and as my imagination flies away to a place long past I wish I too could sneak off to the solitary woods for a year or two.

Instead, I drift off each morning to the stillness of the mind and the seek out the peace of the birds waking outside my window.

We do what we can with what we have.

Pathfinding again,

WS

"If you go to heaven without being naturally talented for it, you will not enjoy it there."
                                                                                             - George Bernard Shaw

"There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lie happiness."
                                                                                               - Gelett Burgess

What to do?

For those of you who have been following my blog, you know that I've experienced some career "challenges" over the last few years.  In hindsight (which is not 20/20 like they say but rather like a slowly developing Polaroid photograph) I can see that the course of my career has been anything but a steady evolution.  It has been a series of circumstantial adaptations based primarily on survival rather than joy.  True, without survival there can be no joy, thus the reason for most of the choices.  But what do you do when a job sucks the juicy shiny right out of you and turns your happy grapey self into a grouchy little raisin?

I need to pay my bills.  I like eating and I like sleeping in a real bed under an actual roof.  I like having an address.  I'm working my ass off going to school.  I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to do something I love that wouldn't require a masters degree, because truthfully I just don't know that I can make it through 5 more years of school while working jobs that chew on me.  And my student loan tally by the end of it all may comparatively rival the national debt based upon my current age and remaining years to work to pay it off.  Neither one may ever be paid in full.

Becoming a hermit in the mountains somewhere has certainly crossed my mind but I don't think my kids would dig it much.

I feel like I'm being given a cosmic swirly.  On paper, 'resume paper' to be precise, it looks like I've been doing nothing but going backwards.  I once made more than three times the pay I make today, and I had the freedom to work fewer hours if I wished.  Even with a masters degree I may never again earn what I once did.  So why aren't I still doing "that"?  Because "that" doesn't exist anymore, and it may be years and years before that bus comes back around.  By then, it won't be my bus anymore.

I think there are a whole bunch of people who don't have a bus anymore.  We're all bumping around looking for a way to fill our immediate needs, and also the ones higher up on the Maslow pyramid.  When you were once on the cusp of self actualization, it's hard to slide back down to rooting around for food and safety.

There is great value in a life of simplicity.  This is something I know without doubt.  That is the place where I'd like to exist.  What I've learned is that abundance and simplicity go together like chocolate and peanut butter.  How can this be?  Because abundance is NOT the same as excess.  A life of excess is when the "stuff" is the show, and the show becomes the most important thing.  A life of abundance is when you have more resources than you need and you create a life that does not threaten to exhaust those resources.  There is more than enough to play with, but there is no desire to squander. 

Simplicity and scraping by are not the same.  I am currently living below the simplicity line.

What to do?

I don't know why I chose Beaker as the image for this post.  Beaker seems happy, and wise, and quiet.  He is an observer and a supporter.  He is useful and dedicated.  If I had to guess I'd say, most of the time, he is content in his work.  And he makes me smile.

Plus he says "me-me---me, me, me" all the time and no one thinks he's arrogant.

Gotta love that...

WS