Random Thoughts

My Mood, due to frustration over not being able to get the photo at the end of this post to rotate to an upright position!

Photo: Green Renaissance

I’m feeling a little fuzzy or something.

No, fuzzy doesn’t accurately capture what I’m feeling, but at the moment I can’t come up with a better adjective.

Over the past several days, I’ve sent myself a handful of emails with links to articles I’d like to include in posts I’ve yet to write. It’s funny how that works. I’ll go weeks or even months without reading anything I’d think to share with you. And then there’s a spate of ten days or a couple of weeks when practically every other day there’s an article on something I was just thinking about or contemplating writing about.

But every time I’ve thought about taking one of those ideas and running with it lately, I’ve known in my heart that I would end up writing way too much. Believe it or not, I try to keep these posts short enough for you to get through with a cup of coffee. I realize I may have been long-winded lately. So…I’ll try to keep it short tonight.

The Allure and Distraction of Reading

I read a lot. Indeed, I think that’s the worst part about Facebook for me: all the links to articles from magazines and other sources that I never would have sought out before, but which I’m now so grateful to have access to: The New York Times (no, I wasn’t a regular reader – but now I’m a subscriber), The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, the New Yorker, etc.

So much to read, so little time. And that’s not even counting the three or four books I have laying about the house (beside my bed, beside the chairs I sit in most often, and at least one nestled in the woven bag I take with me whenever I leave the house).

Ugh, there’s nothing worse to contemplate than being stuck somewhere without anything to read! Of course, that’s almost difficult to do nowadays, what with the access our phones give us to everything. But that ‘fear’ of realizing I have a bunch of extra time (because I ran out of gas, or a client is late, or there’s a long line at the DMV) and have forgotten to bring something to read – is a terror that dies hard – and probably never will completely.

Being Prepared

I have to laugh. I head out for the grocery store and before I get in the car I inevitably have to gather up my journal, whatever book I’m reading that calls out to me to be included on the excursion (and I am astounded at myself by how I can vacillate on making a choice between my books), and sometimes my laptop (in case, you know, I’m suddenly overcome by a desire to work on the manuscript of my next book). In spite of this, I almost never (unless I stop beside the creek first – before venturing anywhere else) stop and allow myself some truly isolated ‘me’ time. Time in which I would actually have the opportunity to select from my traveling companions the book or writing repository that called to my soul in that moment.

I have to wonder about myself. Because nine times out of ten, I return home with a couple bags of groceries in the car and am then relegated to not only hauling the bags into the house but also schlepping in the woven bag with book, journal, and laptop stuffed into it. It’s as if I just took them for a ride.

So my fuzziness that I initially alluded to was a vague sense of dismay, I think, at having to choose which among the many topics I’ve been musing over to tackle tonight.

And so I chose none of the above.

I’m going to end this (mercifully for you) with a few quick thoughts.

A Tease About My Walking…and Then a Message

Since my birthday, I’ve been walking almost double what we used to walk – and sometimes far more than that – every day. I don’t know why. This activity-bordering-on-compulsion definitely deserves its own post. Perhaps even a couple of posts.

But today, as I was moving right along, I asked for some guidance. I pulled a card from my Crone deck that I’d never chosen before: The Emperor.

Without getting into it, and without even quoting you the deeply thought provoking text in the accompanying booklet, I will simply state that the card was all about setting up boundaries – and finding my power within that act. Creating order; claiming authority; establishing the world.

And then I encountered these clouds not five minutes after reading those words and contemplating the need to establish structure, discipline, and order to my world: