Mindfulness: The Here and Now

How often do we rush through life, through work or school or grocery shopping - just so we can return home and switch on the television? Our precious life passes by without us noticing the small meaningful moments in the here and now. Those moments completely escape us as we focus on getting the day over with or are too worried about the future and the things we cannot change. The answer to this plague of empty living is called mindfulness. Follower’s of this art experience many wonderful benefits such as a greater appreciation for life, decreased anxiety and depression, improved concentration and quality of communication and relationships, it helps master stress, and even builds up the immune system. Mindfulness is as easy as breathing, taking the time to focus on your in breath and your out breath.

That's the introduction to my mindfulness paper that I'm writing. I need to give a persuasive speech in a couple weeks so I think I'll do it on mindfulness. I'll write a paper first and then turn it into a speech. This is a topic I feel passionately about so it'll be easy to persuade.

What if you did what you've always wanted to do?

Tired of being just a cog in a machine, I strode out of the office without a backward glance. Too much of my life has been spent inside a cubicle, doing stressful work that in the end means ultimately nothing. I longed for something, anything outside in the real world. It dawned on me today that how you spend your days is how you spend your life. I have spent nearly everyday of my life working toward something that mattered absolutely nothing to me. I didn’t want to look back at my life and see a robot that always followed orders and never thought or acted for herself.
“Leaving already?” the receptionist asked as I walked into the main lobby.
“Yep, I’m done and I’m not coming back,” I announced proudly, as I spilled my briefcase of papers onto the lobby floor. “I won’t be needing those anymore.”
I smiled triumphantly and swung the door open, leaving the office world for good. I was on a journey with an uncertain destination. I just knew it would be better than being a responsible worker in a health brokerage firm. I was killing myself slowly with the stress and mindlessness of the job.
The gray sky was pregnant with rain, just waiting to be released. I sat on the curbside, waiting for the rain to come. The smell before a rainstorm is unique. It’s a sudden freshness in the air that wasn’t there before. The first few drops started to fall as I stripped off my black overcoat and tossed it aside. I was wearing a black skirt, a white blouse, and a black over jacket that made the outfit look streamlined and perfect. I didn’t need perfection anymore. I wanted disjointed lines and the unfamiliar.

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My room is scattered with white roses and candles. It's beautiful! I've got Emilie Simon's song "Swimming" playing in the background, I'm eating strawberries, and things couldn't be more relaxing.
I've been writing a lot lately. That beginning of a story above, I wrote at four in the morning when I couldn't sleep. It has potential to be something great, but I have a feeling it'll take a long time to flourish and grow.
Despite the serenity that I'm feeling, being surrounded by such lovliness, I'm a bit lonely and wishing Michael was here.

Dream, dream, dream ...

This morning, I woke up scrambling in bed to get away from a bunch of ants. It was a dream of course, but it felt completely real. In my dream, my left foot was entirely covered by crawling ants. According to, The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams, this means a few intriguing things.
The left side is associated with feelings, intuition and the irrational. “The positive aspect of ants lies in their incredibly industry, organization and persistence. Whenever they appear in a dream, whether as positive or negative creatures, they suggest that hard work and persistence will make a difference in your life. The negative aspect of ants comes out in their robotic nature. Life may be too structured. Ants can also indicate that you are feeling neglected and insignificant in your waking life or that petty things are annoying you.” If you see feet in your dream, it generally symbolizes your foundation, stability and sense of understanding. It also represents mobility and freedom, meaning that you might be reconsidering the direction of your life and that your dream is advising you to take one step at a time.
With the help of the dream encyclopedia, it appears that I need to not be so overwhelmed with life and to take each day as it comes. I’m working hard, but feel as if I’m a robot or just some cog in a machine. The fact that the ants were on my left foot suggest this is mainly how I’ve been feeling and thinking subconsciously.

I've thought of the perfect analogy to describe what I've been feeling. I get so low that I’ve gone through the pit of earth and am on the other side, where suddenly I’m back on top of the world. That's what this mood disorder feels like. I go days feeling so low that I can barely move and then suddenly I can do anything in the world and have so many fantastic ideas.

I wish so very much that I could just be a full-time student and not have to work. Its so difficult to do both at the same time. One day at a time.

It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home.

The desire for a home consumes me, raging through my veins like an angry fire. My soul is sick with want of a place where I can say "this is my home and this is my family." What is life without a home and family? These are the two necessities of a happy life. A wandering vagrant may be content in his own ways, but everyone needs a place to come back too, a place where you are safe and loved. A place built on love is truly a happy home.

A great restlessness stirs within me and I long to return to places of my childhood, to return to places where I laughed and cried and loved. I feel contained within an inescapable box. My dreams are filled with a home with children, a backyard with a secret garden, and an attic that I can call my own, where I will do my writing.

This, I wish for more than anything else. The grief of losing the ability to say this is my home is suffocating in its severity. Once you reach a certain age, you can no longer call the house in which you reside in your home until you've created your own family. Living in an apartment with my mother is a nice and wonderful opportunity, but I feel that home has escaped me and is just out of reach. It's pulling at my heartstrings, teasing me and whispering my inner most desire to me.

Lacking my own home, the stifling feeling of dependence looms over me. To be free! What a wonder that will be, to be free again. I've had a taste of it before and now I'm remembering and desiring it. The only place that I have ever felt at home was in a forest. This forest has been the only constant in my life since birth. It has been there through my 21 years and will continue on long after I am gone. I wish to be surrounded by woodland trees and the lush undergrowth of ferns. To hear songbirds singing their love songs, to hear the crickets joining in with a chirp, and the bullfrogs too, singing their guttural tunes among the lilies and cattails.

I am tired to my very soul, homesick for the feeling of being home. I long to be wrapped in my love's arms with a blazing fire before us, Lola asleep on the floor all curled up with her bone. To look out the frost-covered windows at the snow covered pines and cherish the warmth inside while the world outside is iced over and hibernating until spring. This eternal summer that I am locked in is not all sunshine and happiness. Vast amounts of rain fall and the hurricane winds wreck havoc and destruction.

My heart aches for change. To regain connection to a certain place that I can call home. The old saying, "Home is where the heart is," is very true. I want to take my heart and bury it deep inside a place and watch it grow and bloom with the tenderness of love.

Out and about

My love and I went to Butterfly World today :)

Artwork

Blow up your tv

I've been thinking about removing the television from my room. Television just enables brain rot. There are some good shows on tv, like those on animal planet, and I do watch a fair amount of dvds at night, but its just filling up time. The goal would be of course to replace the time spent watching tv with time spent reading/writing/painting/etc, and then I could always go watch tv out in the living room if I needed too.

Stephen King recommends "blowing up your tv" if you want to be a writer, but I'm thinking something a little less drastic will suffice lol. I've been writing a lot lately too since I've turned off the television. All of this week things have seemed more peaceful.

So, goodbye tv.

In other "news" I can tell the seasons are changing because I'm getting a sore throat. Woe. I absolute abhor being sick and refuse to let it get the best of me. Its finally starting to be a little chilly in the mornings when I take Lola-girl outside. The weather is all relative though because a chilly morning here would feel fantastic and warm up in Michigan.

Seize from every its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys

I've made some drastic changes in the past couple of months and I must say I'm happier. Firstly, no more smoking or drinking. I didn't think I'd actually want to stop smoking, even if it was just recreational and not an escape, but when you think about it, it's always an escape and why should I lose time like that? How you spend your day is how you spend your life. I had a revelation the other day. I wanted to smoke, but then realized that I've been so productive and have done so many positive things vs smoking that the desire went away. I'm appreciating reality more than the subreality that smoking creates.

Secondly, different medications = different feelings. I had a bit of a breakdown a couple months ago and went a little crazy. Uncontrolled shopping sprees, fantastic/grandiose ideas, extremely ecstatic for a few days, and then rock bottom for a few days. All the extreme ups and downs were freaking me out so I went to my psychiatrist. He said the increase in the wellbutrin's dosage to 300mg overstimulated me. Well he took me off it completely and then I went a couple weeks going crazy from having the wellbutrin leave my system. So I decided to see another psychiatrist in the practice where I go because I don't think it's smart to just take somebody completely off a medication without weaning them off of it. I made an appointment with Dr Thoma and she is absolutely fantastic. I liked her immediately. She spent a full hour with me, which is crazy because psychiatrist appointments are usually only 15 minutes long. By the end of the hour she said I've probably developed cyclothymic disorder, which is an off-branch of bi-polar II. Cyclothymic disorder is usually diagnosed in adolescence and young adulthood. I read a lot about it because I have so many psychology manuels, and it sounds just like me with my extreme highs and lows. The highs and lows haven't been so bad to the point of hospitalization so I don't have bi-polar I, but the offbranch of bi-polar II makes sense.

These last three months, I've painted about 19 paintings and started writing again. I have to thank my boyfriend Michael for helping with these changes I've made and his continued support. I also will have to thank Dr. Thoma for helping me so much in just one visit already. The new medication she put me on is for bi-polar, but it is a mood stabalizer. I'm not longer chronically fatigued all day and I'm sleeping better. I have so much more energy and desire to do things. Its wonderful :) I'm finally becoming more even-keeled and it feels wonderful.

Happiness is good health and a bad memory

I never thought I could be this happy.

And Lola-girl is super happy too! :)

Quick Update

Well, I've been keeping myself busy lately.

College is going wonderful and it's entirely possible that I'm going to end up with all A's this semester :) I just recently got a raise at work, so thats still going well too. I'm still deeply in love with my boyfriend Michael and things in the love department couldn't be better.

So, life is going rather well except for a bi-polar diagnosis which would actually explain a lot of things. Its comforting to know that some of my craziness was manic-induced and now I'm just working on not going on shopping sprees when a manic episode hits. Once I get this bipolar under control everything else should fall into place.

Lola-girl is two years old :) We go to the dog park a few times a week after I get out of work (the days I don't have school) and play with all the other dogs. Its so fun.

Cha-cha!

First blog entry...

Life is going wonderful at the moment and I'm very happy. I'm completely head over heels in love, starting fall semester at Broward Community College, I'm getting a raise soon at work, and Lola-girl has learned some new tricks.

Just wanted to post something to get me started.