Archive for January, 2011

Sometimes we start out with the best of intentions and the best of plans.  We get off to a strong start, but then something in our life derails those plans.  In my case (I suspect, like many other people), I’m better at starting projects than in seeing them through.  But I’m improving.  My sitting practice is regular, I regularly sit with a group – all goals that I was very sporadic about for some time.

But with blogging, I found I needed to take a break to keep my sanity during the winter months and the holiday season (also the birthday season in my household).  As was the case with some other bloggers I’ve read, I found I had to choose, for a while, between practice and blogging.

I had several posts I had meant to write between October and the New Year:  I was finishing one up about meditation, was in the process of writing one about gratitude, wanted to write one about the worst Christmas card I ever received ¹, and one about resolutions and goal-setting.  But exactly none of these were completed.

In early November, I went on retreat.  When I go on retreat, I usually have a small “realization” of some sort.  Usually it’s a pretty common-sense realization about something obvious but that I overlook, or read about, but don’t really “get,”  like when I used to read about practice = life, but then went around complaining that everyone was interfering with my “practice.”  When sitting, it just came over me that everything was practice, and changed my perspective, just a bit, though I still need to remind myself of this all the time.  This time, I dawned on me, again, that THIS is IT, and that my life needed attention.  I was loving blogging, but that my physical self needed more attention, and my family needed more attention.  Since then, I’ve lost those 10 pounds I wanted to lose, am exercising regularly, and feel like I’m taking better care of others, too.

I now feel ready to get back to blogging, but may take it slower with fewer posts, and I may not be able to read and keep up on tweets as much as previously.  I had a couple of blogging resolutions ² for January I’m finally catching up on:  to catch up on my twitter followers (done), to post a new header (done), to write a post like this (done), to start posting some quotes again (in process- plan to start Monday), and to edit and finish one of my posts (in process) – and to stay in balance, keep sitting, and keep exercising as I do so.