Tag Archives: calm

Fivenineteen is Five!

05 Sunday Oct 2014

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Life has whoooooshed by so rapidly these past few weeks I forgot to acknowledge that fivenineteen turned 5 last month.  FIVE!!  Holy smokes…launching this blog back in September 2009 seems like a lifetime ago.  So much has changed…for the better.  I’m back to work (goddamn that 2009-2010 era sucked), I’m in the best shape of my life at age 47, and just so much more happy and confident.  Content.  Calm.  Balanced.  YES.

But it hasn’t come without conscious effort to make changes for the better.  And I’ve had a lot of great help, support and coaching along the way.  Nobody does it alone…that is one of the themes that drives me and how I choose to live my life.  And it feels good to know your Truth.

There have been struggles for sure.  Most recently, getting abruptly cut from my contracting job last May put me in a tailspin.  Thankfully not a severe one, for our job market is a lot stronger than it was 5 years ago, and I’d already built up a lot of great habits thanks to the Lean Eating for Women coaching I’d been working through the past 10 months or so.  I could have easily said fuck it and sabotaged myself, wallowing in my sudden state of unemployment and drowning myself in too much food and plopping my sorry butt on the couch.  But nope, the discipline was there to keep on going.  “Keep on going…” the wise words of encouragement I hear so often from my Dad.  I love it.

In a warped way, I could say that Manager who cut me from my job (for reasons I’ll never know) did me a favor. I hate to give out credit to someone I have zero respect for or reason to emulate but I think it’s partially true.  It lit a fire in me.  It made me realize I’d come to the end of an era and it was time to take a leap and jump into something different career-wise.  Meaning, searching for a place to hang my hat…and get off the eight-year contractor merry-go-round.

So while I was happy to land a new position mere weeks after losing my previous job, I knew they weren’t my Tribe for the long haul.  GREAT team though.  Really wonderful, hard-working people.  But the networking wheels were in motion, and another great opportunity was already whirling around.

And it surfaced.  And it happened.  And I couldn’t be happier.  Last week I started a brand new full-time, permanent job in a field I’ve always wanted to work in.  And I’m doing the kind of work I’ve grown to love over nearly 14 (!) years…and I’m back to working in downtown Seattle again.  I’ve found a wonderful new team to collaborate with.  You can feel the warmth the minute you step off the elevator.  I’m not kidding.  I’m no energy expert, but I’m very sensitive to the vibes an office space or home gives off when I step inside.  Maybe I’ll blog more about that later.

What a shift!  I haven’t worked in Seattle proper in (gulp) 17 years.  And while things are still new and gelling, I’m really enjoying my new commute.  I’m lucky to be mere minutes away from a park & ride lot which has quite a few buses heading into Seattle throughout the morning.  Now, sure, in time this will get to be a routine and maybe even a grind when the weather turns crappy and it gets darker earlier, but for now I’m savoring it.  Some people asked me if I was going to commute in by car and I said absolutely NO WAY.  I’m not going to slowly chip away at the physical and mental improvements I’ve made over the past year by killing myself with a grueling drive in traffic, a toll bridge and expensive downtown parking.  Nope, rather I can meditate on the bus, take a nap or play with my phone.  Ahhh.

Now it’s time to head out to the lake and enjoy the gloriously sunny early Fall weather.

Come Meet My Soul – the Journey, Part 4 of 4

16 Sunday Dec 2012

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I have to laugh a little at myself because it seems whenever I try to do a ‘mini series’ of themed posts in here I lose my weekly blogging pace.  Exhibit A:  my review of the Four Agreements book last year.  Normally this glorious Sunday blogging ritual is something I look forward to…waking up with a smile after sleeping in a bit.  Sitting down at the keyboard either totally ready and knowing what I’m going to blog about…or with zero idea and just seeing what happens when I type.  I love both scenarios actually!  There’s no need for a safety net in here.  Last weekend was recovery from mental exhaustion, and I just needed to truly chill and not do much of anything except get in the gym and enjoy some downtime and cooking. 

So, it’s good to be back here after an unexpected vacay.  It’s a steely-grey, damp Sunday morning.  Silence save for a few occasional cars out on the main road.  Funny how I can tell what the weather is like before I even look out my window every morning.  The cars sound totally different on wet asphalt vs dry.

Back in mid November I started this 4-part “come meet my soul” mini series.  Joy.  Passion.  Kindness.  Today’s theme is PEACE.

How wonderfully fitting that this peace post falls right smack in the holiday season.  It’s what we all wish for and pray for.  Sometimes it’s a hard struggle out there to imagine a world with peace.  This horrific school shooting in Connecticut late last week makes me want to cry and throw up all at the same time.  I teared up when I saw my cousin’s Facebook post that “….more parents have lost their children today.”  Those words were a kick in the stomach.  My cousin and her husband lost their son in a drowning accident in 2004.  On Father’s Day of all days.  He would have turned 10 this year.  And I saw a list of the shooting victims and their birth dates.  Children born in 2006 (2006) lost their lives.  I just don’t have any words for this.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get to a state of world peace.  But I think however we get there it’s a personal responsibility…it starts with each of us as individuals.  Every day.  What choices do we make from what life puts before us each day?  Do we go through the motions unconsciously, or perhaps with a state of anger?  Or of calm?  Of happiness?  With a hunger to change things for the better?  And how?

I’m told I have a calm, grounded presence in times of stress…and to me that is peace personified.  Honestly I am much better at ‘holding’ that stance at work rather than outside of work.  But again, I’m human.  Sometimes I get jittery and rattled when my confidence is challenged.  I think we all do though.  I’m trying to continue to practice breathing through problems…and asking for help and support when I need it. Being vulnerable when I need to be – and it’s OK.  This is far easier to do when I’m feeling – well – at peace.  Rested, fed, getting enough exercise…all the basics that fuel the best Me.  If I’m tired, cranky or had a tough day at work I’ve got very little left in my reserves to deal with much more.  Lately that’s how it’s been.  Man, actually for the last month work has been nutso.  Normally this time of year is the slow winding down before the holidays.  This year it’s been nothing but madness.  But madness in a good way.  This team continues to blow me away with how collaborative and helpful and respectful we are to one another while fighting the fiercest of fires.  It’s a true ensemble cast without backstabbing or finger-pointing or not saying ‘that’s not my job,’ when we all need to put other priorities aside and focus on fixing the most burning ones.  When this work engagement wraps up for me next month (by design), they’re going to be a tough act to follow.

So peace to me means being calm.  Bringing a state of serenity and grace to those around me.  Which in turn brings warmth…and love.

And this weekend has been a glorious self-refueling to get back to that center of peace.  Sleep.  Exercise. Excitement…I finally broke the 30 minute barrier in my 5000m rowing machine sessions – hit 29:26 – woohoo!  And celebrating by making a pot of hot and sour soup from scratch…topped with fresh crabmeat!  Getting the Christmas tree decorated and figuring out what last-minute shopping I still need to do and vowing not to be in the mall on Christmas Eve like I was last year, eesh.  I love weekends where there’s a list of stuff to do but no rush to do them.  This is the time I need to mentally reset.  I have 3 social evening events in the city this week and need to figure out how to make more hours in the day, ha ha!  Work is still going to be intense with longer hours required of all of us. 

So today is a day of recharging and refreshing.  Gearing up for a whirlwind, glorious week ahead.  Book club at a wine cafe.  A concert at Benaroya Hall – what a treasured jewel right smack in the heart of downtown Seattle.  And a major birthday celebration for a wonderful friend of mine to cap off the week in style.  I simply can’t wait!

The DVR and the Labradorite

04 Sunday Sep 2011

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I’m in one of those moods where I am feeling both a little anxious and yet blissfully, almost gluttonously relaxed. Here we are on a long Labor Day weekend and it is absolutely beyond gorgeous outside.  It’s sunny and the air is thick and hot with hardly any breeze.  Not a humid thick, though.  It’s that warm, gentle reminder that Fall is right around the corner.  And even in the heat the shadows are a tad long as we’re well past the Solstice. So I don’t dare bitch at all about the heat.  After all, this summer was a total bust save for maybe one week in August.  In the Pacific Northwest we appreciate and savor our sunny days, for we know the clouds and drizzle are just a few months away.  We pay a price for it being so green here.

I grasp hard at August, kicking and screaming as she wraps up.  There’s something about those last few days before September kicks in that make me feel a little whiney and cranky.  I don’t WANT it to be September!  Maybe it’s that deeply ingrained childhood memory of the end of summer vacation.  Yuck, I didn’t WANT to go back to school.  But of course once I did it was great…mostly.

So it’s a staycation holiday weekend for me…no worries there. Just getting totally random things done and also, just relaxing.  I decided to get into the 21st century even more for real and switched my landline over to my Comcast internet and cable package.  I found out I could bundle my phone service in with my cable and internet and pay less than I was paying for my current Comcast services (huh? wow) AND save the $55 a month I was paying for my old school landline.  AND keep my same landline number.  AND get a DVR for my TV.  What’s not to love about this?  I weighed the pros and cons…when the power’s out or when Comcast is down I’ll be screwed but then again, how often does that happen?  I have a super old school curly cord phone in my bedroom with the ringer turned off – I have it for emergencies and have two other cordless phones here in the townhouse.  When we had a two-week power outage back in late 2006 that old school landline saved me.  Cell phone towers were knocked out and we were pretty much brought to our knees, crippled with minimal if any communication.  I’ve been reluctant to cut the cord on my landline because of that, but then remember that that was a freak once-in-a-lifetime storm.  

So yesterday two Comcast dudes show up and within an hour, voila. I have a new, higher speed modem for my internet (which now hosts my landline phones too) AND a DVR for my TV.  Don’t laugh…I still haven’t converted to a flat screen TV yet.  I will. My old curly cord phone is now as useful as last week’s newspaper so away she goes.

They explained how the initial upload and refresh of the TV channels can take awhile which seemed reasonable to me.  They showed me how to set up my voicemail for my new landline service – all good.  I was very impressed with how helpful they both were.  And they even showed up a little earlier than my appointment timeframe.  Nice!

Guess it was too good to be true.  I waited a little while before playing around with the TV.  When I did, my remote was pretty much useless.  Did the batteries die?  Nope.  I could adjust the TV volume and mute the sound with it, but could not change channels nor get to the channel lineup guide.  Stuck!  God, help me…my TV’s stuck on the E! channel and just my luck it’s a Keeping up with the Kardashians marathon.  I can only stomach that scripted reality TV crap (krap?) for a few minutes at a time.  

So Comcast rebooted my TV and cable box remotely.  All’s well…or was.  Within an hour it froze up again…and Comcast had to reboot it remotely for the second time.  After that everything was fine for the rest of the evening.  As I was heading to bed I realized I’d forgotten to try the DVR out but I figured I would do that today.

I woke up this morning and decided to play around with the TV more before heading out to meet my good friend J for brunch.  UGH.  This time the TV turned on just fine…and then 5 minutes later the cable box rebooted…on its own.  It’s possessed or something.  HELP!

Comcast is sending out a crew to swap out my cable box this afternoon.  I was pleasantly shocked that they could do a same-day service, especially here on a Sunday, but I’ll take it.  It’s the least they can do to make this right.  

And yet, it’s just TV.  Sure I want it working right as it should, but I’m not going to get overly upset about it.  Now if it was Stanley Cup Finals or something that would be a different story.  Just trying to keep perspective…

…meaning it was a tough week these past few days.  My Dad’s cousin J passed away suddenly from a heart attack.  The next day my co-worker L’s Dad passed away after a long battle with Parkinson’s and dementia.  And the day after that my friend T was hit on her morning commute into work…her car got rear-ended on the freeway by someone who wasn’t paying attention and she’s still feeling the after effects, though thankfully not severely injured.

I was talking about this with J this morning over lots of coffee and a nice bacon and cheese omelette.  Yum, I may not even need dinner I’m so full.  She agrees, yes, it’s all about perspective.  Sometimes it’s hard to find that discipline within. I guess it’s ongoing Life Work.

We walked around the shops near where we had brunch…wonderful little boutiquey specialty stores full of everything from art to home accessories (my weakness) and crafts like rubber stamping and beading.  No patience here for either of those but it’s fun to look.

And we ended up in a fantastic shop we both love to visit.  It has tons of candles and aromatherapy things (oils, humidifiers)…and lots of stones and crystals.  I LOVE the chunk of Celestite I purchased there nearly a couple of years ago – it’s right next to me here by the good ol’ laptop.

Once again, something pretty much leaped off the shelf into my arms.  Labradorite.  The picture in my post here is of a polished sphere…my chunk is, well, wonderfully imperfect…half of it is polished and the other is rough.  Deliciously asymmetrical and hunky.  I love the greens and greys.  I asked the woman in the store to tell me a little about it. “It’s a magic stone,” she explained.  She pulled out a huge, well-worn book and turned to the page.  “Helps one remain calm within chaos.”  Ahhhh, sounds good to me.  Here’s more .

So my new Labradorite holds a tea light or votive too.  Love it.  And the woman who works there is so nice…she is very gentle, knowlegeable and grandmotherly and reminds me a little of a therapist I used to see about 10 years ago.

I’m not yet sure where to put this new beauty, but I think I’ll keep it near the TV and DVR for now.

After all, it couldn’t hurt.