The inspiration of good company

How is it that the smallest things can be such important pivot points for us?

I went to Acharya Adam Lobel’s talk Wednesday night because I knew it couldn’t fail to help get me back on track from my increasingly negative and murky state of mind. Worked wonders.

I always love to re-discover the energy of a weekend with a good amount of unplanned time. I used to spend every Friday night cleaning and dancing around the apartment, but last night was the first time I did that in a while. When I'm in the right spot mentally, open weekends have this amazing energy, simplicity, and potential - a chance to appreciate each passing moment as I make progress with things I care about.

So I've argued that maybe meditation isn't so vital for me to understand and integrate the fundamental principles of Shambhala in my life. I've let this thought roll around in my head along with other related ones about the importance of meditation, etc. And I seem to come back to the same conclusion: perhaps I do come at this from a different angle than most, but I suspect a more regular meditation practice would do wonders for me. I have an unusual ability to notice the details of my life and the workings of my own mind, and I can make progress in my understanding by applying that ability. But the challenge for me is keep my mood, my emphasis, my attention on an even keel. The touchstones of meditation, readings, and interaction with others at the center matter as the elements that keep me steady in this progress, keep me inspired. I can see my own mind clearly, and know that I believe in basic goodness and joy - and still feel myself in an anxious muck of a mental mess. There is something about interacting with others who consciously embody these principles, and making a conscious space for its cultivation in my life, that keeps it FEELING real.

I'm still working to get many, many things integrated into my daily routine. Physical therapy stretches, various sorts of exercise, eating more consistently, etc. etc. It's not worth it to me right now to focus too much on meditating daily, because it becomes one more thing on that list and drags away the feeling that it's something I WANT to do. But I can accept that it is something I WILL find a way to incorporate eventually, I can be glad that all of the other things I'm working on do in fact contribute to that larger picture of physical and mental health (and insight, and effectiveness). And I can augment the emphasis on routine with more efforts to inspire myself with positive company. The more time I can spend AT the center, the more I can cultivate relationships with others, and the more I can bring these principles into my interactions with existing relationships in my life, the better.

Lovesick

This is worse than being in love, or having a terrible crush on someone who doesn't know you exist. Here I am, pining away after a company. Oh, IDEO, if only you'd call me. *Sigh*

And on top of it, now I'm longing for ways to get more blues dancing in my life. Went to a great workshop weekend, and feeling blues to call out to me more now even than swing dancing. And yet, very little opportunity for practice and such.

I've done what I can with both these things, so there's no use in thinking about them more. I've submitted my cover letter, my resume, and my website to IDEO. I will call them again tomorrow, and this time when their voicemail kicks in I'll just leave a message. And they probably won't call back, or if they do they'll just say "yes we got your application" on my voicemail. And I've contacted someone about practicing blues dancing with me. It's just that it might be a month or so before we can even try practicing once. I can't afford to go to Austin, Texas for BluesShout, so there's no use in thinking about that anymore.

Last night I couldn't sleep because my whole body was on high alert, thinking about blues dancing and IDEO. I'm not sure how I manage that. Too many waking dreams? How do I manage to daydream so much about a job interview? Seriously... do normal people do that? Walk around living their lives while they imagine what they'd say to this or that question, making up scenarios and opportunities in their head? I seem to manage it rather well myself.

It's wonderful that I've found things that excite me. Why not appreciate that and let go of all the longing? Reminds me of something I read not so long ago... looked it up. From Ruling Your World: "Desire is a creature with an endless appetite. Like a spark put to dry grass, it just consumes. By its very nature, it can never be satisfied, because it is rooted in the aggression of looking outside ourselves for relief. That expectation always results in disappointment, self-generated pain. It's the mind giving itself a hard time." Right. Makes sense. So... I was feeling fairly content, and then finding something I get really into somehow made me more unhappy because I got caught up in desire and expectations and disappointment? Well, we can't be having any of that. I found these things in the first place because I was just settling in and enjoying what was in front of me. It's fundamentally good for me to explore and appreciate them. Just need to have my mind stop giving itself a hard time now.

It's easy to see the power of desire... My daydreams about IDEO (which I've clearly managed to idolize the way one unrealistically idolizes an object of romantic infatuation) can actually be quite enjoyable themselves. It can be hard to let go of grasping desires when the very experience of desiring can be thrilling. But I find myself losing my focus on the life in front of me. There is so much to appreciate and interact with, and I'm letting it slip away the more I long for things like IDEO and blues dancing. Enough so that even realizing this, I can't just snap back to being present, I just find myself still grasping and desiring, wanting to get back to where I was in the moment and somehow still not there. Yes, that's right, I'm grasping at the desire to let go of grasping and desire. In the past I'd just get further twisted up in that - because ultimately, that's always been my largest desire and I've let my head give me a hard time about it so many times over by now. But this times around, there's a certain lovely irony in it. It's amusing. It's human. I will simply do what I can.

Professional reconsiderations

I'd say that I seem to be entering a new phase in my life, but the fact is that all kinds of things are shifting all the time and "phases" are fairly subjective distinctions about where we identify turning points. At any rate, my interests, professional aspirations, and educational plans are undergoing some interesting shifts.

Professionally, I was thinking for a while about staying at M&I for some time in order to take advantage of tuition reimbursement and get my MBA. I figured it couldn't hurt in general if I got another corporate job, but it would also be an opportunity to put together my business plan and work towards opening my own small business. And yet I came to some realizations a few weeks back:

1. While I still think I would thrive in a small business setting, the actual businesses I've been interested in opening matter less and less to me. The particular businesses I used to care about feel less important, and I want to do something that... matters more? Maybe it's just that my definition of what matters has changed.

2. I'm somewhat disgusted with what I feel I'm contributing to in our department at M&I Bank. I believe the people I work with are basically good people, that our excesses are not really worse than our competitors, etc. but I think we're just another example of an industry gone wrong with no one willing to stand up and make a real change, working in a system that does not allow anyone but those at the top to do so in the first place. I have become better at managing within this system and being patient, and even so my real motivation to contribute is at an all time low. I am no longer willing to stay much longer than is necessary to find something else that will actually feel meaningful to me.

3. I find my interests shifting over time, away from the purely abstract, theoretical mucking around in thoughts for the enjoyment of it, and more towards the concrete, the scientific, the practicalities of living in the world and helping to make it better. And since consciously realizing that, I have found the beginning of some direction for where to put my curiosity and focus. More about that in another post, I'm sure. In a general sense, though, I'm doing more and more reading, listening, exploring - entering more of an active self-education phase.

This was all more fresh and exciting to me a few weeks ago, when I actually started writing portions of this post. Now it's more mundane to me, but I'm glad to see some new opportunities opening up for me. Funny how some days being glad or joyful is more of a mental awareness, and other days I FEEL it. I'm on a strange edge somewhere between right now, trying to totter myself back to something more visceral.

Muddy knees aren't so bad

I just walked in the door, dumped all my stuff on the hall floor, and plopped down on the sofa to check who's DJing at the Brew Haus tonight. I was thinking about trying to go dancing for a while, since it's been so long. But the DJ doesn't interest me, and I realized that I'm exhausted and have no real desire to go dancing. So I checked TV Guide online, and determined there's nothing good to watch. I thought about playing a computer game. I thought about folding this pile of laundry. I thought about finishing tidying my apartment. I thought about reading stuff on IDEO's website. I thought about doing some yoga, as I know I badly need exercise right now. I thought about calling someone, because it seems a bit lonely.

Choosing to write this blog entry is probably the most graceful choice I could/would have realistically made, all things considered. It will hopefully help me gather myself, and then I will get up and do something productive with newfound energy. Or if nothing else, at least I'll have written a new blog entry.

It's so obvious to me, that this is the same old, age old problem. I fall into the trap of laziness and comfort... failing to take care of my surroundings when I dump my stuff on the floor... failing to engage directly with my life by seeking outside entertainment... failing to exert myself and do what should be done and will make me feel better long term. I'm not fond of my repeated use of the world failure there - it's more like avoidance. But the point is that it's all recognizable, it's all connected, it's all got really very simple solutions.

But I've always been aware of how connected these challenges are, and how much of our lives revolve around habit. I often wonder whether I've always had deeper awareness of this than most people, or if it's just more true for me. My experience with the Shambhala path seems to suggest that there's some deeper wisdom there, something fairly universal, and perhaps I am just gifted with that amount of awareness without being very disciplined in practices that cultivate it. But I've also long ago learned not to overgeneralize my experiences as being true for other people. And ultimately, does it matter? Does it matter whether I'm just more aware or it's more of an issue for me? All that matters is that I AM aware, it DOES matter for me, and so I should use that awareness to make a difference in my own life.

To reiterate what "it" is - the interconnectedness and importance of habit and physical functioning in my life. I spent one crazy week spending every waking hour outside of work creating a cover letter, resume, and website for an executive assistant position at IDEO, and now I'm totally screwed up. I'm tired, I'm achey, I'm out of practice for doing the 10 different things I'm supposed to do each day for my various doctors, I'm not focused, I'm not motivated, I'm not present. And to get back to something decent, I have to exert myself consistently, carefully, and semi painfully - to heat up my warm milk and get to bed right on time, trying to settle into it in order to fall asleep... to exercise even though my body has NO desire for it... to leave the television off and just wash some dishes in the silence to listen more closely.

It's amazing how fast I can turn from calm, centered, focused, and healthy to tired, negative, semi anxious, scattered. Somehow the transformation doesn't shift the other direction quite so fast. But I'm trying to give this some sincere thought... and I think perhaps it shifts the other way more often and faster than I'm inclined to give it credit for. I've trained myself. The more often I make that choice and switch back, the more I become skilled at doing so and even fall back into it without enormous effort sometimes.

This blog can only be a good thing. While I don't delude myself that anyone's really reading it, I know someone could be. It's technically public. That being the case, I stick to my original rules - I won't just complain to complain. Even if lamenting some difficulty in my life, I will try to use this as a place to reconsider, remotivate myself, and continue to work on living my life as skillfully as possible. And even this time, I seem to have accomplished my goal. Discouraged at how fast I fall into this puddle of interconnected muck, I've reminded myself how good I've gotten at getting out of it. One of the best skills in the world.

I wonder if it's better than the skill of not falling in to start with? I don't have enough experience with the latter to compare. Let's say for the sake of me feeling good about myself that getting up after falling down is a more useful skill than avoiding falling down. You can't avoid it forever, so you might as well get started now on not letting some mud on your knees bother you too much.

Have you noticed my newly discovered joy in bolding sections of text that I consider the main points? I used it on my new website in hopes of getting people to at least scan the relevant points if they won't read the over-long walls of text on my website. And I find that I like it. I think it's the wave of the future for some kinds of writings.

Speaking of which, if anyone is in fact reading this and hasn't seen it already, feel free to take a look at my new website: www.dianaluepke.com. I created it essentially as a supplement to my IDEO application, but hopefully I'll find other uses for it as time goes on.

I'm going to do some yoga, pick my stuff up off the floor, wash a couple dishes, and go to bed with a cup of warm milk now.