When to travel

One thing I want to do more of is travel. I have always wanted to travel the world but it is expensive and hard to find the time to do once you have full time employment and a family to torture...I mean bring along with you.

There is a lot to see in the US still, although some of it I want to wait until Austin is old enough to remember the trip. Long trip to the Grand Canyon for him not to remember he was there! He will be old enough soon though.

Other trips I would like to go with just Courtney, though quite a few I suspect she may prefer I go alone. I'm not sure how keen she is on climbing the side of a glacier in Iceland or visiting the Maya ruins on the Yucatán peninsula.

I'll have to keep all this in mind as I plan our summer, I think everyone would like to go someplace new. The map below has a good number of the places I would like to find myself someday.

Go easy on me...

Change

I sit here
forlorn
anxious
frightened

Suffocating myself
with thoughts
with imagination
with speculation

I wish to be free
to contemplate without fear
to experiance without suffering
to dream without apprehension

I will awake to a new life
released of baggage from the last
I will open my eyes to a new world
that is bright and fresh and unfamiliar

There is happiness
and forgiveness
and family
and Love

I sit here
unafraid
tranquil
joyful

Music I like

Just a fast post, I have plans for another later.

This song spoke to me this morning, which is surprising as it is not my normal fare. It was the lyrics that did it for me, but it has a decent tune as well. Very catchy.

Here is the Veronica's with Untouched.

Trying to write again

One of my reasons for starting this blog is to relearn how to write something other than an office document; I haven't written something personally creative since High School. I used to write poetry (pretty poorly, but hey I was young) and the normal required short stories and other writing that my classes demanded. But since High School I haven't so much as kept a journal, much less tried to keep my creative mind active by writing or painting.

Even just putting thoughts on paper turned out to be wonderful, I have started a journal and am amazed at what will come out by just letting my fingers work. I hope to be more creative or at least insightful for my blog entries, but that assessment is best left to others at this point lest my desire for success cloud my judgment.

Restarting this process has been harder than I thought, for the poetry in particular. I have been trying for the last several days to jump start my writing. First I went and bought a few supplies; a notebook that feels right in my hands, a pencil that is comfortable, and a few things to fill out my binder. After more than a day of writers block I decided to go dig out my old poetry. While I found the binder that I had stored all of my writing and sketching work in, I didn't find what I was looking for.

Memories of my writing are mostly positive, though I fondly recall some poems written in times of anger or sadness. But reading them now, for the first time in many years, I see an underlying current of sadness and loss. I had a hard time finding even one poem that was bright or happy enough for inspiration, and that single poem dealt only with the beauty of nature. Not the material I had expected to find, but insightful nonetheless.

While I didn't find the inspiration I was hoping for, I did find inspiration of a different kind. Focusing on the negative has never served me well, and only now am I actively working to change those habits. Part of my own Happiness Project is to "rehearse happiness", I have a real problem with doing the exact opposite even when I am trying not to. Working on writing something that is truly upbeat will hopefully help me change my default mode of thinking.

And if it's decent enough, I may even post it here.

Islands of Ease

Zen Habits is turing out to be a wonderful resource for me. Today Mary Jaksch of the Goodlife Zen blog contributed a post about finding islands of ease (I prefer the idea of peace) in your everyday routine.

I found the first point particulary potent, the idea of spending time with ourselves in silence. I had not relaized until recently that I had been hiding from silence, in essence from communication with myself. Even though I would stay up late at night to do things on my own, I was always accompanied by the TV or the computer. The few moments of silence I had were from the time I turned off the TV until I had fallen alseep in my bed.

Only recently with my quiet moments of breathing to relax myself and some of the longer audio guides I have been useing (though not enough) for relaxation techniques I have started to allow myself to be truly alone again. While I need to make it part of my daily routine, I'll wait until I have several other new things down pat.