Tired

But.

In a good way.

I got up at 6:30 a.m.

I didn’t get my full night’s sleep, but I got close, I had been up later than I wanted to the night previous, so I was ready for bed when it came last night, but my thoughts were busy being annoying, it took a little while to drop of.

But when I did.

Holy shit

I did.

Slept like a rock.

Grateful for that and that I don’t hesitate to getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, I don’t hit the snooze, I just get the fuck up.

I  read somewhere once that snooze actually back fires on you and it’s better to just get up and go, of course I could just be making that up, but that’s what I do.

I get the fuck up.

I got dressed.

I put on my interview shoes.

I peeped the weather.

Fuck yes!

The rain cleared and I was able to take the cover off my scooter and ride it down to my interview today with my new supervisor.

Yes.

That’s correct, my new supervisor.

I have another.

Score!

Very, very, very happy about that.

It’s a small piece, but I piece I needed to address and I’m so grateful to have it taken care of

And actually.

Scratch that.

It is a big deal and it was more than just a small piece, I put in some work to find this person, co-ordinate my schedule with him, ask questions, collaborate with the practicum placement office and do my homework.

And I showed up.

On time.

Early.

I found motorcycle parking by the Ritual Coffee house in Hayes Valley and I had a full punch card from when I was nannying by the Ritual in the Mission, so I scored a free latte and happily traipsed over to the office on the corner of Fell and Gough.

I let myself in using the code and went up the stairs.

I paced around the waiting room, paid the bathroom an unnecessary visit, just in case, and practiced breathing.

Then.

I met him.

My new supervisor.

We went into his office and talked for an hour.

I told him a little bit about me, how I came into the program, what I was planning on doing with the degree, first my MFT (Marriage & Family Therapist) license, then eventually my PhD in Psychology.

I told him about having taken one class as an undergraduate and then what happened when I was at Burning Man, yes that is where I decided to go to grad school, and how that experience unfolded and led to me applying to CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies), how I balance my recovery with my work, and where I will be doing my practicum hours at.

We had talked for about a half hour when, and I’m not sure exactly when the shift happened, but it happened, and there I was saying, “well I hope that I will be working with you,” and then.

Then.

Then he looked at me, almost surprised, “oh absolutely, the slot is yours.”

Thank you God.

I opened up my binder and handed over my paperwork that I needed him to sign and yes.

He signed them.

Thank God.

And handed them back to me, I felt like I was handling precious metals and jewels so carefully and reverentially I put back those papers, 3/4s filled out, I just need my school advisor and the head of the department to sign off.

He’s one and the same for me, so that should be pretty easy.

Actually.

I should e-mail him too, set up a time to make sure that I had them to him, he signs, then I walk over to the practicum office and hand them off.

God damn it will feel so good to have this all sorted.

It basically is.

And I like my new supervisor quite a bit.

He happened to intern with my favorite professor, which was a serendipitous conversation, he’s psychodynamically inclined, also a hot modality for me, and he went through the same program that I am going through, so he has experience with the school.

Although he admitted he’d not worked with any interns that were getting their hours through the site I’m at.

And we talked about that.

And we talked about my schedule and we set our first date to do the work.

I will begin with him on Monday, April 24th.

I will meet with him once a week for three semesters while I am in school.

Every Monday morning at 9 a.m. for one summer semester, one fall semester, and one spring semester.

Three total semesters of practicum must be compete for me to graduate.

I will graduate from the program in May 20018.

And I’ll get to walk with that graduating class complete in my practicum.

A lot of folks don’t start their practicum until next fall semester, the majority of my cohort, from what I can tell will be starting then,  and they’ll be able to walk, but not graduate officially until after finishing the summer of 2018 practicum.

I will circumnavigate that and be free to walk as a graduate.

I am so down with that I can barely breathe.

I mean.

It’s a hell of a lot of work.

But.

As it was suggested to me today.

“Take a minute and appreciate what you accomplished today,” she admonished me over the phone, “don’t just jump into the next thing to be anxious about.”

Gah.

I know, right?

Because I was so ready to go there, but there is no there there.

I am allowed to enjoy this moment, this work has been, well, work, and I deserve to acknowledge to myself that I have been showing up to it and meeting it and matching it.

And I have a phone interview in the morning before work to secure a therapist.

Fingers crossed that will be taken care of tomorrow and then.

Shit.

I can go back to just “worrying” about my homework.

Bwhaahahaha.

Sigh.

I did that too, today, I did homework on my lunch break.

Maybe I take myself out to do something sweet this weekend, really take a moment to let myself enjoy what I have done over the last week and a half.

It’s been a lot and it is an accomplishment.

Yes.

There is more work to do.

But.

For right now.

Let me just.

Take.

A fucking.

Moment.

You did good today kid, you really did.

Seriously.

Rejection Is God’s Protection

Maybe it’s the full moon.

Who knows.

But the date I was supposed to go on cancelled very last minute and it put an odd taste in my mouth.

Tinder fail number four.

Le sigh.

Full transparency.

I don’t need to be on Tinder.

I’m doing pretty good on my own.

In fact.

I turned off the app again.

My person was right.

There is nothing wrong with the app, but I also know when something doesn’t work for me and this is not working.  It was fun.  It was titillating.  It was and appears to really just to be about fantasy.

And.

Well.

This lady has had enough of fantasy.

I like the real deal.

The smash me into the man deal, the full on kiss, the I want you, you’re sexy.

I can have that.

I am aware of my needs and the TInder and the OkStupid, again, I come back to this again, haven’t cut the mustard with me.

It’s fun.

To a point.

Then it seems.

I don’t know futile.

I was actually a little relieved when he cancelled.

I have had plenty on my plate this week and I’m finally feeling like my cold is passing.

A little lingering cough in the morning.

I figure one more day of sleeping in and I will have the little fucker kicked to the curb.

I’m planning on hitting the yoga studio on Thursday and get back into the flow of that again.

I have missed it.

The being in my body, the stretching, the achey muscles.

Yeah.

Ha.

I’m ready for sore muscles.

Too funny.

Full moon.

Spotting this morning.

Ovulated yesterday.

But not the full on roaring hormonal monster that had me in its clutches last month.

Just a normal cycle.

The moon though.

Have you seen it?

Magic in the sky.

I imagine it descending over the ocean and how it will paint the sand dunes white and silver with its light.

Splendid and alive in the sky.

Or perhaps just in my imagination.

A luminous pearl in the velvet sky.

Yes.

I can feel that I am doing better.

My head feels clear.

My heart feels clear.

A touch sad now and again.

But I have that love of richness, that emotion, deep and true and yes occasionally indigo blue jean blue, but so sweet and tender and alive, that I don’t mind.

I have had so many feelings, tender and vulnerable, strong and flexible.

I do feel that I’m coming out of something.

A little darkness and mourning.

And by perfecting my heart truly/I got lost in the sounds.

The opening of the crocus pushing it’s way through the soil, dark, and at first impenetrable, then, the flower bud plunges up and out and unfurls and yes.

I am like that flower.

Fresh as a daisy.

Silly and sunny.

Sexy.

Back to myself.

Out of the dark.

Into the blue.

The sky blue.

The light of day.

It don’t hurt that the rain stopped falling.

A break in the rain.

A reprieve from the storm.

The orchid on my night stand table has bloomed again.

Five times now since I have been here, I bought it the first week I moved into the studio.

Not bad.

It always seems to bloom at an opportune time for me to self-reflect, to see the purity that comes from the gnarled and twisted roots and the glory that faces into the sun and blossoms there from the ungainly and the knots of green.

I remember to not force the blooms.

To not rip open the petals because I want the full beauty.

There is beauty in every stage of the development.

Just like there is with me, with dating, with romance, with love and loving myself and learning what works and what doesn’t.

And not judging myself when I don’t bloom out as fully as I expected.

Sometimes the flowers on the orchid are six, seven, eight blooms.

This time around there were only two.

Yet.

The simple divine flowers floating in the air are such tender white magical things that I cannot imagine that there needs to be anything more.

I don’t need anything more.

Look at all I have.

My simple life.

My sweet space down by the sea.

My dear friends.

My good job.

My school.

I get to live this life, I get to revel in it.

I get to roll around in it and not take it so seriously and lighten up and go out and put myself out on a limb and take chances and change.

Open the door and meet the welcome face there.

Be swept up into the moment and taken along for the duration of the song, carried away, caught for a moment in the in between moment.

The twixt and the tween and see that here too, is still another way to go.

A softening and letting go.

A sweetness and surrender.

Everything must come and go.

Yes.

That too.

So seize the moment, let the life in front of you be joyous, full, and alive.

Being awake is sometimes a tender place to be, but I’m no good checked out, and I’m not good when I am in fantasy.

I am good here.

In this reality.

With all my vulnerabilities and mistakes and terrors.

The fear it fades.

The sun it warms me as I walk towards it.

And the flowers bloom on their own with out me forcing them to open before their time.

There is no there there.

I am the party.

I am the girl.

No.

I am the woman.

And this is my life.

I’m going to keep having fun and dancing in the hallways and crying on the yoga mat.

I’m going to keep showing up.

Going where I must.

And letting go of thinking I know where it should go.

It’s all the same road anyhow.

Even if I often choose the one less taken.

I bet they all end in the same place.

I don’t need to know my destination.

I just know that I’m on the right path.

Free.

Silly.

Joyous.

Heart on my sleeve.

Happy.

 

Bring Me The Money

Or at least the secret password and internal knowledge needed to figure out BMI.

My friend alerted me years ago that he had listed me as the lyricist and vocals for While You Were Sleeping, an album he put together using my poem as a framework and inspiration point for the album.

I never did anything with that knowledge.

Well.

I started a BMI account.

But I never registered anything with it.

I have no idea how to do it and I have sort of let it lapse.

However.

I keep getting e-mails from BMI and most of the time I just think, oh there’s that again, maybe I should do something about it.

Then.

I never do.

But as the days wind down and the nights get shorter and chillier, I am thinking, hmm, what if there’s a few dollars there, I could use that money to go to Paris.

I also recognized that I wasn’t investigating it because the likelihood is that there is no there there.

I mean.

It’s sometimes a nice little fantasy, that somewhere, unbeknownst to me, just when I really could use it, say in a few weeks when I fly to Paris, there’s a few grand just lying around.

Granted.

I got my grand.

And I used it.

Have you seen my scooter?

Damn she is cute.

Still parked in front of my house, haven’t gotten the permit paperwork forms from my boss yet, but they are in the works and I will get them and when I do.

Watch out!

Money comes in and money goes out.

I also paid my phone bill today.

And that’s nice.

Because that’s it.

The only thing I owed money on.

Well.

Aside from my student loans, but we won’t go there for a few years yet, ‘k?

I believe in happiness and abundance and prosperity and God will give me exactly the right amount of money to enjoy in Paris.

It would be nice to be properly registered on BMI, however, and to that end I did reach out to my friend who is the musician.

And.

Yeah.

I should get a hold of the gentleman because in a google search I just came across an Andreas Saag remix of the piece.

Nothing of my vocals, but those words.

Well.

Those are words are wrote and if there’s a remix being sold I should think that I should be getting a smidgen of the proceeds from the sales.

I was also thinking, in a less capitalistic, I better get mine sort of thing, that I would like to record again with Sunshine Jones, and perhaps record the sonnet sequence that I wrote.

Thoughts.

Random and parsed out while I type.

I am spending too much time trying to flip around websites and seeing what is out there.

I don’t know much about many things.

I am distracted with thoughts of Paris, thoughts of dating, hormones.

“You should go on a date,” my friend said to me tonight.

Um yeah.

In what time?

I will say, I am pleased with the amount of reading I succeeded in getting through this morning before work, though.

I have a big paper I have to write next weekend and all the reading is done.

Now to winnow and sort and figure out what is going to go where.

Plus.

Um, yeah.

The other three classes I’m in.

I have to do the reading for those classes too.

So up a little early, again tomorrow, and reading some more.

I just have to keep up the momentum.

And perhaps I can squeeze in a movie date on Saturday.

That would be nice.

Although the movie I wanted to see, Rock the Kasbah, doesn’t seem to be playing anywhere.

Which is a shame.

I do quite adore Bill Murray.

There’s nothing out there that seems appealing either, other than the double feature at the Castro, but it’s big time commitment: Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line.

I mean.

Brilliant.

But will I be completely burnt out after sitting in the Castro Theater for four hours?

Too bad it’s not the movie that was on the marquee tonight as I pushed my bicycle up Castro Street towards Market.

Dazed and Confused.

Dude.

That’s like the perfect date movie.

Seriously.

But.

Not to happen.

It’s only running tonight.

I love the Castro Theater.

I’m not going to worry about Saturday.

It will take care of itself.

And if I’m to see a movie, then it will happen.

There’s other things for me to do.

Like read and write papers.

Bwahahaha.

Ugh.

There’s work to keep me busy and doing the deal and meeting folks and just life.

Which when I woke this morning, letting myself get an extra half hour, but still getting up earlier than I needed to so that I could read, I rolled up out of bed to greet the beautiful clear blue skies, high and blustery with wind.

The sun was out.

The day was bright.

My scooter parked in front of the house.

My bicycle, my steady and faithful steed, taking me to work.

The gratitude filing me up as I pedaled up Lincoln Avenue.

The hawks circling over head, lifted my eyes to the sky and I smiled.

Deep in my body, happy in my soul.

“Happy is my principle today,” I said out loud to no one in particular.

Perhaps just to hear myself say “happy.”

And I rode.

Knowing that I had a good job to go to.

That I still can afford to live in San Francisco.

That I am sober.

That I am healthy.

That I have amazing friends.

I have community.

I have a beautiful home.

I have a scooter.

I have a Macbook Air and an Iphone.

I have so much.

I have a trip to Paris.

I have love and abundance beyond my wildest dreams.

So if I don’t get some royalties from BMI.

Whatever.

I’m still going to investigate though.

Seems the adult, next right thing to do.

And whatever happens.

I’m ok with it.

Because there is nothing at all wrong in my world.

Not one damn thing.

Luckiest girl in the world.

There’s No There There

And it was lovely.

I received a cute text message from my ex-boyfriend this morning while I was making breakfast and plotting my moves for the day–what to pack, laundry to do, marketing that I needed to do before leaving to come back up here to Glen Ellen–I’m just in, 27 minutes ago I landed–and I had no emotional reaction.

I saw the text.

I recognized the number.

I saw the photo.

I laughed out loud.

It was a photo of an inside joke we had and that joke might have been one of the sweetest things about our relationship that I can feel now a warmth and fondness for.

It was so nice to realize that.

I cut up an apple and tossed it with cinnamon and nutmeg, and some sea salt, threw it in with the oatmeal on the stove, turned to the electric tea-pot, took the kettle, poured boiling water over the fresh ground coffee and felt my inner emotions.

Nothing.

No fear.

No excitement.

No anxiety.

Nothing.

Wow.

That is so nice.

No animosity!

Just a quiet gratitude for the man, for the message, and for the sweet memory that he sent me, a funny little inside joke that had been a place of resting laughter for both of us even when the break up was sad and hard to do.

It felt nice.

We exchanged a few more texts then he went his way and I went mine and I forgot about it until I was working with a lady bug at the house and we were going over some instructions on how to write inventory.

I pulled my notebook out of the stack and flipped open to the pertinent inventory and laughed as I saw my ex-boyfriends name at the top of the list.

I shared my experience with quiet gratitude and showed how I was able to get from that place of resentment to where I am now and that it works, it really works when I do the work.

Live and let live.

Easy does it.

First things first.

There again, an hour later with another lady bug, the same gentle reminder that the solution and the problem have nothing to do with each other and that really I can practice spiritual principles, stay in gratitude, and do the next action in front of me and I will be abundantly taken care of.

Exquisite.

In fact, that’s what this whole weekend was about.

What the last few weekends have been about.

Yesterday I got a text from a friend in regards to our busy ass schedules and how we had been trying to make plans to see each other before Burning Man and how it was obviously not going to happen, she was till packing and I hadn’t located my bins nor even gotten to the point in my day when I knew where or how I was going to buy said bins, and nope, not going to see you before the burn.

I mean, we live in the same town.

But.

There was no way to make it work so we made a date to go dancing on the playa–she and I and another friend had gone to the NIMBY Steampunk Masquerade Ball that the Airpusher Collective played at where the Flaming Lotus Girls Serpent Mother was fired up (yeah, I know, you haven’t been to Burning Man and have no idea what I just wrote) and the same group is doing a repeat of the ball on playa.

So.

I will be going to that.

And when we commiserated about work, and doing the deal, and all the stuff, when I texted her what I had to get accomplished before I leave for Burning Man, it left me breathless.

I mean.

Really?

How the hell am I going to get all this done and not lose my mind?

But then I read, again, “first things first,” and knew I would get it done by focusing exactly on the task in front of me and not living in the next hour or the evening or tomorrow.

I just stayed focused on what exactly was in front of me.

Then I wrote three pages long hand, did my laundry, made my bed, did the deal, knelt down asked for some stuff, said some thanks, pulled out the bins, started packing them up, slow and methodical.

I went to the grocery store and picked up a few things to just get me through the day and a birthday card and gift for one of the ladies who was coming over to the house.

Back to back to back.

I met with three ladies, did some reading, shared some experience strength and hope, asked in return that they do some things while I was away at work, confirmed our calendars for September–I won’t be able to meet with any of the ladies until after my first week on campus on school.

Then.

I texted my ride to Glen Ellen.

Confirmed a pick up time 20 minutes from the text.

I packed my bags up for Glen Ellen–a coupled days worth of clothes, my laptop, the books and readers and notebooks pertinent for the week and what I have to do for school before I leave.

I then proceeded to finish folding the laundry, take out the trash, and organize my bins.

I packed them more than 3/4s full and was on the last leg of packing when my ride pinged me.

I have perhaps fifteen minutes of packing left to do when I get back to SF on Wednesday.

I got my stuff for Glen Ellen, locked up the house, hopped in my friend’s car and we headed over the bridge.

A pit stop in Mill Valley for an hour of doing the deal, then a drive through the rolling golden lit hills of Sonoma to Glen Ellen.

We grabbed a bite to eat and figured out gas costs that I need to reimburse him for–he’s basically done the trip there and back and there and back and there and back for me, since I didn’t rent a car this time.

Then a dash up the road and I am here at 9:30 p.m.

It’s 10:15 p.m.

I am almost done with my blog, I’ll make a cup of tea, chill for the rest of the evening and get a good night’s sleep before work in the morning.

I couldn’t see how the day would play out when I was awoke with the bang and thump of my housemates little girl and her friend playing, I couldn’t have imagined such a smooth and seamless transition from here to there.

Nor that I would have such moments and pockets of grace and gratitude for the experience of just living my life to its fullest.

One day at a time.

One hour at a time.

One moment at a time.

Easy does it and there it is.

I’m here.

All the things are happening.

And I got done everything that I needed to do this weekend to be prepared for my trip to the playa.

Tomorrow and Tuesday I will write my two papers.

Then I am good to go.

I get to show up for work tomorrow happy and rested for the boys.

I get to continue to live this full, happy, joyous, free life.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Seriously.

I mean.

Have you seen my hair?