This week has been a rough one. Trying to find something to pique my interest, I started working on a landscape design for the front yard, mostly only to realize I don’t know nearly enough – either about the type of style I want or the plants to use. Better Homes & Gardens sample plans to the rescue! As I was sorting through their samples, a big huge fat mouse (that I mistook for an enormous cockroach, causing a near heart attack, until I realized it wasn’t a cockroach after all) ran across the kitchen floor, just at the edge of my vision. Now that he was fat enough to catch with the spring trap, we set it out and, voila!, a fat scared mouse ready for release. Sadly, yes, there are still more – at least one – and he didn’t join his buddy in the trap, that day or the next. Sigh.
But, all that has nothing to do with this week being hard. I suppose my allergies are acting up, but I feel like I can’t ever quite get enough air, and so am tired all the time. I hope that has something to do with the mental sinkhole I’m in. Everything should be fine, and it’s just not. Right now I’m treading water, just treading, waiting for something good to buoy me up. The budget news at work is terrible, projects at home cost too much to do, it’s to hot to go do anything fun, and I am bored and morose. I’m going to have to make my own good news.
Landscape isn’t likely to be that news, any time soon, since “excavating” the front yard is a quadruple-digit job. The work project I was so excited about is potentially on complete hold, again because of money. How is it that money makes the world go round so?
So, in the interest of pulling myself out of this by my fingernails, or teeth, or some other completely insufficient tool, I thought it would be good to come up with some goals for the week. I haven’t gotten up, or even woken up, early once this week. Tuesday’s bit of philosophy at class was about maintaining a practice, even when we don’t feel like it, and even though it really hit the mark, I did nothing. Actually, that also marked the start of this sinking sensation. So, this weekend, even just for 5 minutes, I will meditate both weekend days, and I will get up by 7:15 the rest of the week, no matter how little I sleep or how much I don’t want to get up. This is my promise to me. And it is a promise, this time, not a goal, so I will keep it.
Today, to keep the doldrums away, I’m going to print the pretty color versions of all those sample plans and flesh out my yard some more, along with a cost list. And I’ll keep looking for a better (read: cheaper) way of “excavating” what’s out there. Oh, to be engaged again, in anything…