Sankalpa Day 12

Ibex.  Foto Credit:  #1 Son

Husbandman came home early from his trip.  This is good news indeed.

My former school is going through a hard time right now.  Big restructuring changes.  Front page news. Discussions around the issues on the facebook, email, texts.  I am inspired by the way people are making their voices heard. I need to beef up my confidence level that these peeps are making a difference.  Somewhere along the way,  I've become kind of a "There's probably no hope" kind of gal.  Whats up with that?  That's why confidence is a good sankalpa for me.  And creativity as well.  I wish schools could be judged on their creativity and not on their test scores.  What if schools got extra $ and HIGH GRADES for having the most interesting inquiry projects, art events and avant-garde performances?  Everyone would be scrambling to hop aboard the creativity train.  

Sankalpa Day 11

Do you love this photo as much as I do?  Or less? Or more? 

I'm thinking about changing my sankalpa to something like, "Creativity and confidence flow through me."  Not sure.  I'll keep you posted.

Today started off sad so I took myself to see Saving Mr. Banks.  It was good.  See it if you want.  Emma Thompson always does her best.  I'm curious about P.L.Travers now.  I loved hearing her voice during the credits. I was sad to read that her grandchildren said that she died not loving anyone and nobody loving her. Isn't that depressing?  In the movie, P.L. Travers is portrayed as both confident and creative, so I know there's more to life, but I feel like I have all the love I could ever want and I certainly love a plethora of peeps.  So confidence and creativity.  I'm going to fool around with both this week and get back to you.

Sankalpa Day 10

I can be quite content being alone for long stretches of time.

I think being a teacher for so long has made me this way. Teaching is frenetic and every day has countless interactions with many people.  I will be ready to get back into the game this summer, but for now being alone in this space suits me fine.

I went out for a slog today, and I can now slog for 24 minutes.  I'm shooting for 30.

Sankalpa Day 9

Husbandman headed off to Toronto last night.  I drove him to the train station at one in the morning.  As in 1:00 a.m. Today my groggy demeanor got me to thinking.  You know how human beings tend to run around thinking that they have to make every second count and time is so precious etc.?  What if they pretended instead that they were immortal and time didn't matter because there was just so much of it?  Reverse the whole supply and demand train of thought so to speak.  Imagining my immortality, I declared today to be International Plenty of Time to Waste Day. I read some books and now I'm watching Project Runway Season 12, a series I currently own having purchased it with my own money. It took a lot of courage to blow off my obligations and fritter today away. My sankalpa seems to be working.

Sankalpa Day 8

Read about post project blues (PPB) today and figured out that's what I was experiencing yesterday.   An internet creative suggested overcoming PPB by doing one thing to move your project along each day. So I summoned up the old sankalpa, set the old timer, got started and actually made some headway. Not as much as I wanted, but that's neither here nor there.  Progress was made.

Changing the subject, we had some hairy scary moments today and I'll tell you why.  We have neither washer nor dryer here, but we drop off some clothes each week at a laundry place where the clothes are taken from us and return days later clean as a whistle. You'll be pleased to know that we're still washing  clothing in the kitchen sink each day, but we give ourselves a pass on items like denim jeans for obvious reasons.  Come to find out, our clothes went missing from the laundry place and we kept going over there, searching. The owner of the place has been out this week (visiting her family in Russia) and the worker left behind speaks no English and in fact speaks mostly Russian. We dropped in several times this week speaking our English and she would speak back in her Russian and then we'd leave without our laundry.  It was getting tense, what with Husbandman's trip to O!Canada! coming up tonight, so in dire desperation we called in LandWoman (LW) yesterday.   LW listened attentively and then told us not to worry.  Like WonderWoman of yore, presto, LW shows up tonight with our freakin' laundry!  Boom!  We just sat back in amazement.  Then LW gave us some cake.  In other words, all is swell that ends well.

Sankalpa Day 7

Anish Kapoor, Israel Museum

 I'm going to be honest, I didn't feel courageous today.  Rather I felt kind of like a huge dork with no ideas, a flat tax time waster, a veritable wastrel.  As time slipped by, I focused on past transgressions and yes, even did some self loathing.

With a Sankalpa, the self-loathing that comes from dwelling on past transgressions can begin to dissolve. In its place is an exercise in effort and surrender—create an intention and open yourself to the universe.

On the good side, I did take a slog and it was sunny and warm.  And I'm perking up now, heading to a movie.  Tomorrow's a new day.  I'm going to be open to the universe, if possible.

Sankalpa Day 6

It's time for the Monday Writing Report (MWR).  Today I read in Julia Cameron's book that it's more important to focus on what we are doing, than how we are doing.  So even when it seems like we're not doing that great with our project, we can just focus on the doing and keep going.  Today I did not work very hard on the proposal for the conference, but I did write down some notes.  The theme of the conference will be STORY, the landscape of experience.  Something like that.  My article fits well into the theme because I'm writing about how kids write their stories and how teachers can help them revise their stories.  So I'll keep plugging away.  I have a little over a week til it's due.

The EDITOR wrote me back just about 10 minutes ago. She had some suggestions for changing the outline, making it simpler and more focused.  I'm not positive I can do what she wants, but I'm going to give it a try.  Even though she wasn't ecstatic about the outline, she wasn't telling me to get out of her face and never contact her again or she'd call the police and have me arrested.  So, I'm going to stay strong and give it another go.  Yikes.

Sankalpa Day 5

Eilat

Stayed pretty strong today.  Did some slogging, started dabbling with writing a conference proposal, attended my awesome international book club on Skype. 

I was fooling around on twitter during my lunch break and saw that much admired Jane Lynch tweeted about her astrologer.  I headed over to meet her astrologer right away. If she’s good enough for Jane, she’s perfect for me. Come to find out, the astrologer’s a wise one. She said that 2013 wasn’t a great year for Libras.  Bingo, Bet it all Beaver.  7/12 of my year could have been a Stephen King novel.  Astrologer also said that 2014 is going to be  good year for Libras! Good, that is, if I follow my heart, more than my head.  I’m not sure what following my heart means, but I’m going to be googling it and learning more.  

Sankalpa Day 3

We've been gone for 5 months.  Our sabbatical is half over.

I really didn't need much courage today because we had a beautiful brunch at the home of Husbandman's colleague.  Then we napped and read books and now  we're watching The Talented Mr. Ripley. V. creepy. Matt Damon keeps killing people and he needs to knock it off.

Sankalpa Day 2

#1 Son gives me a heart attack in Timna National Park

Just returned home from a cheerful walk along the Mediterranean Sea.  Now I'm reading more about sankalpa at this cool website where the writer ties sankalpa into different chakras. My sankalpa of courage  has to do with some issues with the third chakra Manipura. I only skimmed the article, so take everything I say here with a grain of salt.  The website author offers a list of sankalpas for me.  I think my fave is "I am powerful, capable and strong."  Sounds good right!?

Let's not forget that part of sankalpa is not buying stuff for 24 days.  And getting rid of stuff for 24 days. Today I got rid of a bunch of old computer files.  I really don't have many possessions here, but my computer keeps telling me my security disk is full, so I've got my work cut out for me. Bingo Bet it all Beaver!

Guess what peeps???  I sent off the article today.  It's out there in the hands of others and I'm going to have to wait courageously for news about whether or not it's accepted.  In the meantime, I'm going to have to garner up some super strength to write to the book editor this week and ask her why she hasn't written back in 3 months. We probably all know that this is not going to end well, but I'm going to stay strong and work on sending out the book proposal to others.  And I'm also going to stay strong. No matter what.

We didn't see American Hustle last night so tonight we are heading out early.  

Sankalpa Day 1

This is the honey badger. 

I took a little refresher course about sankalpa over here. I really like the whole concept. I want to be stronger and more courageous and with sankalpa, I start with the belief that I already AM strong and courageous.  So...easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Case in point.  I was strong twice today.  First, I was super strong when I had to write two extra little side bar articles to submit with the main article.  Even though I was annoyed with this requirement because if they don't accept my article, I spent time on sidebars for no reason, I wrote the sidebars without further ado.  Then I had the second case of courage.  At the end of another day of working on the paper but not finishing the paper I started getting flipped out about how long this has taken me to write and how I'm so slow at everything and how if it's not accepted I'm going to jump off a bridge, etc.  But then I just decided that I'm doing everything I can and I should stay in the present moment and why not go see American Hustle and eat some popcorn?  This is the kind of strong minded approach to life I want to cultivate in 2014.  So glad to hear from Nance and KC about their sankalpas today.  We're off to a good start.