Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Catching up 2!

Catching up? I think I need to look at things differently, catching up seems impossible. I think that I should accept the fact that what I do is what I do. Living in the present, mindfully,  is valuable and I think it might be time for me to adopt this practice.

Over the years I have sought to attain "mindfulness",  to focus my attention on what is happening right now. For example as I Blog instead of letting my mind blast off in a thousand directions like a large Roman Candle on the 4th of July, I need to focus on my writing. Feel the keys under my fingers, how they fit gently into the slight hollow the engineer designed to make using the keyboard a more pleasant experience. How with each letter there is indeed, as my husband claims, a click clack of noise. How a moment too long pressing on the keys produces more letters to the word than belong there. How a brief distraction can change the thought being transferred to the page and take the piece in a totally different direction. I need to shape and form the words and sentences into a well crafted piece of writing. Instead.......?

How hard it is to focus. Mindfulness is a practice, and as such it calls for dedicated attention. I have long attributed to myself the name "Butterfly" brain, in any minute I can probably flit through 20 to 50 thoughts. Centering Prayer has helped enrich my meditation time. I have learned over the years not to "catch" the thoughts but let them go, but at other times I tend to follow the the thoughts wherever they lead, even when they lead me far from my orginal path. At one level I appreciate this because it gives me lots of creative ideas, at another level it is very frustrating because it sometimes makes completing a project a much longer process than I anticipated.

If you came to this Blog anticipating that "Catching up 2!" would have filled you in on what has happened in my life recently I apologize, but I thank you for allowing me to explore where I am in the process. I read somewhere a number of years ago that Blogging helped you to find your "voice". For me Blogging is sometimes, like today, an opportunity to discover that nothing of consequence is filling my thoughts today.