Monday Morning Reflections

Driving home from meeting yesterday i found myself experiencing surges of regret. My usual bolt away from the community after meeting: is it just habit? Why, really, do i run away? As i got to Middlefield (a long road that must have a long history), my thoughts turned to appreciating the fall leaves and being stunned that it's November. My intention to ride my bike to Meeting during the fair and clear weather, made in February.... What have i done this year? Much, i'm sure, and yet i'm beginning to sense the lack of goals as not a release from arbitrary pressures but as a lack of grounding.

I take this to mean that i am healing from the years of work focus, that i've slipped free of survival and i'm back to asking What Can I Do For This World?

The challenge of interacting in community remains for me: that is where procrastination has drifted. There's a large tension in myself between a sense that my growth of self may be best shaped by stepping out of myself and my own inclinations to be semi-solitary. I note the

.... and i stopped writing.



Side snark, from a Mercury News article about the approaching 9 Nov Google Books hearing (although the article seems to just mention a "deadline"): "It's absolutely partially about Google's size," said Daniel Clancy....

(no subject)

After i started thinking about community yesterday, i followed up on some emails that were bothering me in my role as liaison to the congregation that uses the Meetinghouse. I have again spent this morning with those emails. Somehow, this doesn't register in my consciousness as doing or giving or participating, despite the reflection i need to go through. These emails in particular are difficult because i'm in the "landlord" position, and i'm trying to negotiate my way between the clerk in charge of the building and the congregation. There's something bothersome about how she addresses the congregation through me: a presumption of them overstepping bounds as opposed to balancing needs and uses. It's much more rule-oriented than creative.

So i am ministering here, serving, both in mediating the Meeting's relationship with the congregation and in trying to reflect back some of the inclinations of the building clerk.

***

Work was OK yesterday, although i found that work that was reported completed wasn't, and a number of pull-my-hair-out things came up with the Product staff member. Everyone else was out of the office for a long variety of reasons.

After work i rode to dinner listening to the game, happy that there's a game six. I had hoped to catch some of the archived game last night after, but it wasn't available.

Dinner was with the Minnow work colleagues to celebrate a birthday for the young mom. Christine joined us, and it was a pleasant evening. I felt strained by the end of the three hours, though. I don't know if that's because i kept to my diet and and wasn't indulging, or just the dynamics of being with this group.

I was happy to keep to my diet though, i think i may simply try to make this my diet going forward. In fact, i wish i had skipped the desert. My body has adjusted to the simple diet and i find myself thinking that i don't want to risk having this rich thing, that alcohol, this other hunk of bread. I only ate the lemon cream filling and the meringue out of the desert (yeah, there was probably butter in that) and found leaving the sugar crust a simple choice.

I don't know how i'm going to manage challenges for dairy (again) and corn with November as it is. I'm off to a conference for the next few days.

***

I did go walk for twenty minutes, reading notes about goals on my treo, beginning the check-in for the next goal season: November and December get treated as "the holidays."

One goal for this season: twenty minutes of basic activity every day. There's no reason i can't do it now. I've done it sporadically, i know how it helps at work, i have a way to do it at home.