Tag Archives: busy

Noisy Place

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This world is an awfully noisy place for a quiet soul. I am constantly reminded of this to the point I wonder if the world ever gets tired of its own nonsense.

If you ever wonder how I’m doing there are two ways to tell – the regularity with which I’m writing in my free time and the state of my refrigerator.

If I’m writing every day and my fridge is reasonably clean, I’m doing great. When I go missing from this space and the fridge is out of hand, send help.

There’s nothing wrong other than my inability to time travel or to add hours to most days. Everything is fine but my work and volunteer commitments have been demanding enough that any kind of creativity or even reading has been too much to ask. Even poor Scout has been deprived of attention.

I tell you that to say this.

Life happens in seasons. This part of the year is challenging because it needs to be. Another six weeks or so and life will go back to normal.

Maybe your season is even more challenging than mine. Maybe you don’t know when it will end. Maybe you fear it never will.

I bet it will if you give it time.

Personally, I have shifted out of the winter cocoon of reading and soup into a kind of survival mode where dinner is sometimes cheese and crackers while I watch the Andy Griffith Show. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Easy and gentle, steady as it goes. The only way out is through. This season won’t last forever. Last night I cleaned out the fridge. Today I write. Tomorrow maybe I’ll read. In a month or so I’ll start planning some spring adventures.

Difficult seasons won’t last forever. Give yourself some grace and do what you can. Everything is going to be fine.

And when the world is too noisy, be sure to protect your quiet soul.

Head Down

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This week has been busy and starting to feel long enough that I’m not even sure what day it is. Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out but it is a little disconcerting.

I hiked on Saturday and found myself and my bum leg on a rather steep stretch of hill. While better than a month ago, the knee and shin don’t always work together well so that hill was challenging. Rather than worry about it, I just put my head down and kept my eyes on the ground so the sheer steepness and difficulty wouldn’t intimidate me too much.

I made it up with no trouble and was quite proud of this small victory.

This has more or less been my approach to this week. I have mostly been away from home. When I do go home, I feed the cat and go to bed. Work has been busy. I look forward to the quieter days ahead when I can sit at a desk and dig into my to-do pile.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping my head down while I push up the hill.

The bright side is that many hours in the car have given me podcast listening time. The bad news is that creative projects aren’t going so well. It’s hard to feel inspired when you’re in constant motion and tired.

It seems the theme lately has been “I just have to get through THIS and things will be better.” Yet, I get through “THIS” and there’s always something else to distract and slow me down.

Does this sound familiar to you? Can you relate to the sentiment that if it’s not one thing it’s something else?

I’m certain I’m in good company here.

This brings me back to something I wrote earlier this year that encourages us to just do whatever it is we need or want to do because time waits for no one. You can read it here. I actually wrote that story for me because it was something I needed to read at the time.

Evidently, I still need the pep talk because it’s as relevant today as it was last month.

In one of the podcasts I listened to today, I heard an author say that she was having trouble writing and set a goal for herself to write one word a day. Just one. Some days, she literally wrote one word or two. Some days she wrote a thousand words. But in the days she couldn’t muster much, at least she was still doing something.

I liked this.

We tend to believe that we have to do the big jobs for it to count. If you never start a big project because you think there’s no time, that’s not nearly as effective as setting ten small goals and actually chipping away at them.

Remember, even when the hills are steep and especially when the hills are steep, it’s a good idea to keep your head down and focus on one foot in front of the other.

Now excuse me while I go figure out what day it is!

PS- Before you ask, the featured picture is from the hike but not of the hill. It never occurred to me to document that segment of the trail!

Getting There In Spirit

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“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”

― Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

This happened to me Saturday. This summer has been my worst in years. Rain, humidity, work at home and stress from life and work have occupied the driver’s seat much more than I should allow. After all, what’s the point of being single and childless if you can’t go do as you please?

I have needed time in nature for a while now and just couldn’t swing it so I made a bargain with myself Saturday. I had more or less hit a wall where I could no longer function amongst normal humans. So, once my obligations were fulfilled, I would go somewhere that I could get lost for a while.

Unfortunately, the nearest hiking trails to my home are in the Hocking Hills State Park, a beautiful place that has more or less been ruined by the hoards of people who are loving it to death. But I foolishly believed that it wouldn’t be so bad by early evening and that I could make do.

Boy, was I wrong.

I shouldn’t have parked the car when I saw that the parking lot was such a circus. I shouldn’t have gotten out of the car at all. I should have just turned and left when I realized there would be no peace. But I soldiered on, regretting every step. Even on a trail that usually isn’t heavily occupied, there was never a time I couldn’t hear humans babbling about their jobs or about what someone said to offend them. There was rarely a time you couldn’t hear cars and the roar of motorcycles.

There was never a time I could tune out the babble and simply enjoy the canopy of trees overhead or the compacted dirt beneath my feet. The peaceful birdsong was all but obliterated by people who were oblivious to their surroundings. I just kept wondering why they bothered coming to the woods when they were utterly unaware of the power and beauty of it all. They could have been walking in a mall parking lot for all they seemed to care.

Who was I kidding? There would be no losing myself here. The only thing I was losing was my patience and desire to be there.

As Thoreau would say, I went to the woods with my body but never got there in spirit.

So I walked about 30 minutes out before I decided to stop punishing myself. Instead, I left and went into town to pick up some things at Walmart. Interestingly, it was more peaceful and people were more polite at the Walmart than at the state park.

Do with that information what you will but it’s a sad commentary if you ask me.

I hope to try a hike tonight but will go to another one of the parks or nature preserves in the area. None are as convenient but any should be a better choice for actually absorbing and enjoying nature.

And boy, do I need it.

Is there a moral to this story? One might be to carefully choose conditions that will improve your mood and trust your gut when it says to leave. Another might be to not allow outside forces so much power over your life. If the weather is poor when you want to hike, go anyway. If other people want to dictate how you spend your free time, resist. No is a complete sentence and it’s a fair one to use when you know enough is enough.

And don’t neglect your own physical and mental health for so long that it becomes a crisis. Look out for yourself, friends. No one else will do it for you.

Don’t worry. I’ll try again and I’ll keep trying till I get there in spirit.