EVOLVING

I search around in this muddled mind of mine, looking for some thoughts or an experience that might work for another blog.  My goal, more or less, is to post a new blog about once a week. I don’t have the discipline to do it every Friday morning or some other specific time like some newsletters I get.  I enjoy and appreciate Whitney Johnson’s “D is for Disruption” newsletter and I am proud of my colleagues at Leadership and Design for their recent series of “What’s The Future.”  If you want some humor, check out “Jennifer Mills News”, a one page newspaper about her own life.  Every Friday?  Friday must be a popular release date. Maybe they figure people will have more time to read over the weekend?

I prefer flexibility and a range of topics rather than one specific theme such as leadership or travel or change or our relationship with nature, or you name it.  This is not a blog about writing a blog.  I see those too.  Nor will it be about my flawed efforts at writing.  I have a children’s book on the to do list and will be talking with my illustrator and designer soon to see if I can get it off my plate.  I continue the 3 pages writing exercise from “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.  A friend belongs to a 5 AM writer’s group!  I admire that kind of discipline as well as the Zen Writer’s Group that meets every Thursday evening.

What is evolving as I write this blog are some of my thoughts about how I spend my time and Annie Dillard’s great quote about that comes into view from her book, “The Writing Life”.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order- -willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

One phrase that pops out for me is “decades later, still living.”  What I would add to that is living differently, living well and living fully.  Maybe it is “a haven” but I do not see it  “set into the wreck of time” or a “lifeboat” as I regard time as a precious gift, every day, every hour of every day if you want the micro message.  Yes, we have a schedule of sorts, plans with dates, places to be, things to do, people to see.  I spend, or as I like to say, invest time in being outdoors, in walking and absorbing where I am and what I am seeing, sometimes sharing that with others, either in descriptions or with a photo.

I spend/invest and use this gift of time to read, cook, eat, wash, pray, love, talk, think, sleep, take pictures, connect with others, friends and family, deal with technology, systems, agents, doctors, work and play.  There are more items on that list which goes on as I do.

Our love of travel and being in different places is what may have prompted us 20+ years ago to become involved in the RV world.  As a result we have had the benefit and blessing of seeing much of the United States and large chunks of Canada and Mexico.  And here we are now, having just returned from a trip to San Miguel Allende, in the state of Guanajuato, in the highlands of central Mexico.  It was our 6^th visit there over years of travel. We like it sufficiently to take up part-time residence there for the next year in a community just north of the city called Los Labradores.

Change is constant and why not?  It keeps us moving, and moving not only to different places, but also moving forward in exploration and discovery, learning and loving and sharing with others.  This is how we have evolved over time and we are enormously grateful for being able to appreciate and enjoy this time given to us.  How are you evolving?

• * Credit to Lila Ash for the Cartoon from the 9/21 New Yorker Magazine.