Stopping to travel

In a book on motor development I have read that the most  sophisticated form of movement is stillness, because that's when it's the hardest to keep the balance. 

It's a bit like with traveling. To really let the traveling experiences sink into you, you need to find the time after the travel to reflect on it, to write, to talk to other people about it.

Such days maybe seem uneventful and slow, and actually hard to fit in the schedule, because when you come back from travel or go on to the next one, there are so many urgent things calling you...

In a way all of my travels have been incomplete because I have been missing up on days like that, the days in-between, where you can be with your head and heart  before you embark on another journey.

This is my travel resolution: to find times to stop in order to travel more fully. 

Loving the process

While doing some procrastination today (though I have been fighting hard!) I read a compelling post by Tara Sophia Mohr on how we look at our career (but other life goals too) mostly through the moments of completion and achievement. Tara notices  that we can have the false impression that these are the moments which constitute our happiness. What about everything that is in between? What about living the present moment? And here comes Tara's important point: if we don't love what we do, if we are not driven by the inner joy and passion the way towards the goal/deadline/completion of project might not be more than blood and tears.

This made me think how I view my work. How sometimes it is so fragmented, bouncing between the moments of completion and maybe achievement and all those days when I cannot get into the process, and then end up doing things last minute, stretching my limits and resilience, fighting off the little voice of imperfection. What does that mean? How can find love for the process of the things I do?

In between writing

I have missed my blog.  It has been waiting here, patient yet eager to be nourished. 

There is some joyfully sweet sadness in me right now. This little blog of mine has become an important part of my life and if I miss it, it's because I want to write here.  I am starting to understand what I have been reading about in the last months that in order to live a creative life you need to make a commitment to it.   For so long I have been struggling to make writing an every day commitment. And this blog is becoming my commitment, my  stepping stone to a creative life.

When I tell people that I started blogging, some of them sigh nostalgically "I tried blogging for some time but didn't manage to keep it up."  It's not about comparing myself with them. Probably blogging was not their way to nourish the creative muse and I am sure that they will find their own path.  But being that  person who could  never stick  to  new habits I can see that little change coming. After my first longer blogging absence I am back. And I want to stay.

Me and my blog  need to build some more trust. It needs a place in my life between my work, travels and thousand of other things. I need to learn how to look after it and make it grow as you grow a garden. Because it promised me that something in my life will bloom. 

The curse of May

Don't get me wrong, there are some things I love about May. The world looks so beautiful in May, people start to walk around with this dreamy, joyful look in their faces and there is a bubble of excitement in the air.  But because everything happens in May, sometimes it is too much. 

May is a month of graduations, conferences, exams, project completion (or beginnings), parties-you name it.  Take this week for example. I could be at:

- 2 interesting trainings 

- birthday party of a friend  in France

- an interesting event on employment in Brussels

- an important event on the future of an NGO I am involved with

- a social (possibly networking?) event in Warsaw for translators

- one of the most important documentary film festivals in Warsaw 

...and to add up to this I am leaving for work for Paris to work  next Sunday

Of course there is no way I can make it everywhere. I have tried to make the best choice I could, this time thinking about the commitments I had already made. 

This is May though.  So much is about choices, priorities and strategies that it's hard to just breathe in its beauty

The world from the sandbox

Today was my first outing with both of my niece and  nephew. I have been out with my niece before, but logistics is much more sophisticated when you have got one in a stroller and the other one running around freely.  

We spent the morning on a playground in the park. Luckily that even though I felt clumsy   (how do you take out and put back in a six month old gracefully into the stroller) my little group was confident. It was their world after all, and  I was only a guest.  They were so angelic too, simply wanting to have fun and asking for my attention when they needed it, but no tempers on that day.

I did a lot of bench watching. I wondered who all these women were (there were mostly women). I thought I could identify mothers and grandmothers, but now I am wondering if there were  any babysitters or aunts like me.

It was quite a social scene, especially in the mythical sandbox. First lessons on cooperation and sharing (do I let the others make the sandcastle with me?), age differences (a three year old and a one year old are ages apart!) and  different visions of creative process (one sandcastle mold doesn't equal the other!).  And adults navigating in all that, trying to teach manners, solve conflicts and showing how to find  the wet sand to make a real sandcastle.

The playground seemed like a very safe and protective place on that day.  Adults were looking out for children, not just their own-it was nice to see that mothers actually played with the kids, and how they accommodated other children,  into the play. (Not that I did not try to have my eyes everywhere).

The pure joy children find in play, it was good to be away from intellectual work, from the computer, and wonder when to serve snack.

And next time I will be the experienced aunty- I will handle the stroller more gracefully, know how to divide the time between  my little guy and  my little lady, and definitely bring the suncream!

Resistance and serenity

Gorgeously warm, sunny long May holiday week.  I have been wiggling in my chair on the garden balcony, trying to focus on the work I planned to do, but a part of me kept pouting that I am not soaking the sun far from civilization.

I took this picture on an evening walk near by my flat where there is a little pond, a touch of nature among the  expanding blocks of flats. I thought of all the people that I saw going for lazy walks and even making small picnics on what ever small spaces of green they could find. And a wave of gratitude came to me that this one of those times when people are remembering to stop, to spend some time with their friends and family, to just breathe in life. Even if I cannot do this completely right now, my time will come. Resistance  to what I chose to do is neither helping me to get the work which is important to get done neither to relax. And what ever I do I can still enjoy the moments of beauty like at that pond. 

Why I can't seem to get to the post office

I love getting letters.  I always look into my mailbox with this kind of hopefulness (but no expectations) as if it was still the era of sending letters. And I am always thinking to whom I would like to send a letter or a package and I imagine the joy they could have from receiving it. 

Yet when it comes to actually getting that letter written/package wrapped up and then actually going to post office and sticking on a stamp it's such a dread to actually make it happen. 

The post office is right behind the corner. I have a set of nice cards at home. And even some envelopes. 

True, the post office no matter what time of the day I  go  is always crowded. And there is that reminiscence of irrational post-communist era fear that when dealing with public servants you will do something wrong and they will tell you off or say something unpleasant.  Not to mention that horrible sound of post marks being stamped with full force on the envelopes. 

But there must be more to it. Is it about writing the perfect letter? Is about the big decision what to put in the package (it must be perfect after all)?  Is about that impatience ( I will have to wait so long for the letter to reach its destination)? Or maybe because sending letters and packages feels so real, has its own procedure and pace that you cannot control. 

Not that writing e-mails feels any easier, but there is such a difference when you actually write, seal and stamp an envelope. There is a  gravity and solemnity to the whole process that sending e-mails will never have.