The struggle for zen in a non-zen world

I'm torn between two worlds. On the inside I'm desperately trying to create the blueprint for a better, calmer, more Zen existence and on the outside I'm still engaging in the things that cause me stress.

Today I engaged in my inner monologue again, which I absolutely can't stand doing. I also engaged in a Facebook post with someone who only seems capable of making me angry lately.

My zen for the day was shattered. It's hard to keep the inner ocean calm in a world where people are more worried about their right to pack heat than anything else in the world.

It sickens me that there are so many people who really think a world where everyone is armed is a better world to live in than a world where no one needs to be armed. I don't get it. It's frightening to think that fear has made so many people so arrogant to think that if they were armed they could save the world, or save their world or their own life if it was threatened. Perhaps it's wrong to want to live in a peaceful world - and maybe it makes more sense to say hey, we can never create a truly peaceful world because in doing so someone will have to give up their right to be violent. Maybe I'm just living in a pipe dream, but I don't think a world where everyone has a firearm in their pocket is a better or safer one. It makes me physically ill to think some people are so stupid that they do think that.

Anyway, that's not why I'm here - okay, it is why I'm here.

I know I should just work on changing the way I operate and not feel I have to justify it with explanation, but I do feel that way. I feel like I have to say it.

So I come here to say it.

I want 2016 to be the year I leave most of the Internet behind. I want it to be the year I can truly 'let it go' and live my life in my life and not live my life in the middle of the internet lives of everyone else.

I don't know if I can do it. I've been trying to break up with Yahoo for years. I just deleted my extra Facebook account for one of my pen names, but I still have my main one and that one is a problem. I feel tethered to it. I'm just learning what freedom from writing feels like. I don't know if I can handle freedom from the cyber world yet.

Off to make more photos and write some haiku.

The KonMari Method

Organization - something we all have a bit of a love/hate relationship with. I love seeing things organized. I hate doing the work. I go through periods where I organize the crap out of everything and it usually all falls apart at some point.

Apparently this is common, according to Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo. She wrote a best selling book called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which I just bought after going a Google search on the term 'life changing'.

I know how to organize things, and I know how to purge - but according to Ms. Kondo, there is a better - in fact a best - way to do it. It involves a lot of rules that I won't go into here, but the main concept is about getting rid of things that don't bring you joy [or that are not useful - ie - your tax returns may not bring you joy, but you can't really get rid of them.]

So I spent today implementing the parts of her design that make sense to me and discarding the parts that don't [for instance she empties her purse every night and puts everything in it away somewhere. - Normal people don't do that. The reason you have a purse is so that all the things you need if you have to leave the house in a hurry are in ONE PLACE. Separating them is cute until you have to run out in an emergency and have to waste precious time collecting your wallet from under the bed. Let's get real people.] Aside from that, she makes a lot of sense.

Today I purged bags of useless clothes from my closet, organized my shoes, cleaned out my art supplies and dealt with the mind-numbing, depression causing mountain of paperwork that I hate to file and can't get rid of. Turns out I CAN get rid of most of it and now I don't have to keep every scrap of paper that comes down the pike.

I feel lighter.

I feel less stressed and for the first time in weeks, I'm not weary and in pain. I'm not sure the KonMari method can take credit for all of that, but I think it helped.

I also wrapped Christmas presents ,believe it or not and purged a lot of the Christmas crap I've been keeping forever because I 'hated' to get rid of it.

The kitchen is my next target - that's going to be a doozy. Then the basement.

One of the other things Ms. Kondo says is you can't expect others in your household to fall in line with your new maniacal cleaning regime, so don't try. This of  course is my chief source of stress. I can clean up my own stuff, but nobody else will clean up theirs so I'm still living in an ovecluttered house. Her belief is seeing the clean will inspire others to clean. I'm not sure she's married and I don't think she has children. That's why her world is rainbows and  unicorns. But at least I'm in charge of my own stuff and I'm making that work.

What's next in my Zen life-changing project? I don't know but now that I've gotten rid of junk and lowered my stress level, anything is possible.

Zen attempts

Most of the research I've been doing into Zen lifestyle changes mentions taking things slow and doing one thing at a time.

That's not easy for me. I want all the things now. There's so much that needs attention. So I made a list of the things I'm trying to work on all at once. Hopefully I won't bog myself down in the details.

1. Stop the monologue. [I've been having moderate success with calming my mind and avoiding the incessant chatter that used to go on in my head. It hasn't been easy.]

2. Spend time on things that bring me joy or peace. [I'm putting a lot of time into taking pictures and working with them to create images I like. My goal is to spend time doing things that don't make me feel like I'm wasting time.]

3. Find an invigorating activity. [This has been a constant challenge that, to be honest, brings me more stress than enjoyment. Every attempt I've ever made at consistent exercise has turned to crap including the bike riding which actually got harder and more exhausting each time I did it. I would love to learn yoga - and I'd love to take a class, but I have NEVER once been happy taking a phys-ed class. Every one I've ever taken has been a disappointment or a disaster and I don't know if I have the discipline to learn yoga properly on my own.]

4. Declutter. [This is another hard one because all the stuff that's around is not all mine. I could easily declutter my own life, but it would still be entwined with the clutter of others and I don't know what to do about that.]

Photo crazy

All right, I've gone so photo crazy that I started a photo blog where I can put up my images since Pinterest isn't really working that well for me.

It's here: http://zenclamphotoblog.blogspot.com/

And for now I'm posting whenever I want, but I'm going to try a dedicated photo a day for 2016.

I'm just having too much fun playing with photos.

Image obsession

My Photo A Day project is consuming me. I used to love to take pictures, back when you had to have film developed and seeing your photos cost money! I stopped for a while taking pictures as an art form and now I've discovered it again and I love it.

It's funny that I'm having a lot more fun taking photos with my PHONE than I ever did with a camera.

My new dilemma is this though, I'm posting my finished pictures on Pinterest, and I decided to sign them. Not that I'm really worried anyone will steal them, but they are original art work since they're enhanced with photo manipulation software. They're not just pictures, they're a daily work of art. But I'm signing them with my real name, which I don't particularly want to post here. So for now I'm just going to post the original, unretouched photos here.

 

For instance, a collection of veggies.

 

And a close-up of my palm tree.

 

I don't want all my photos to be of stuff around the house though. I'm hoping to have more slice of life photos rather than just a collection of found objects.

 

I think if I can keep this up until the end of the year, I'll start an official 2016 Photo-A-Day blog.

Start Now!

There's no time like the present, so they say. One of the problems that always arises then there's talk of starting something new is - when is a good time? It seems like something always needs to be begun at an auspicious time - like Monday, or the 1st day of the month or the 1st day of the year. What usually happens is, the idea is chosen, the date is chosen for its' auspiciousness and then the path goes awry before the date arrives and the idea never takes form.

Then the cycle starts all over again. The other day I started looking into something called a 365 Project. Taking a photo a day has always interested me. I know people who have done it for a while and I thought it was a nice idea - creative and also therapeutic.

So I decided I would start a Photo a Day Project - but of course - it seems to make sense to start one on a 1st - day of the month or day of the year. A Friday - especially a Friday the 13th seems inauspicious.

Then I reasoned that one of the things I want to start doing is to start doing things. I started bike riding - I just picked a day. I didn't wait until spring or until the first of something. I just started. So I'm doing the same with this and hopefully with all other things I want to do. I'm tired of waiting for the right time to do something.

So without further ado - my Photo a Day Project begins. Whether it lasts a month or a year or forever, we'll see. If I'm still doing it on the 1st of the year, I may call it from that point forward the 2016 Phot a Day Project, but I may not.

Here are my first two photos, from yesterday and today. The theme is 'Things I love' - and basically it will just be images of things that make me happy. I'm taking an unfinished photo and then I'm embellishing a little with GIMP to make the photos more of what I love.

These are both finished photos.

 

A little bird and a nest with polymer clay eggs that sits on my desk.

 

Purple flowers that grow among the rocks at the corner of the street.

 

I probably won't post every photo for every day. I'm using Pinterest to organize the pictures and I'm keeping them in a folder on my hard drive too and considering if I get enough good ones maybe going for broke and making a really nice Snapfish album out of the best of them.

 

The upside of this is so far it doesn't seem like a chore and it's a few minutes a day that I can focus on something creative without pressure.

 

Off to write. No pressure there. ;)

"Mindful" as a buzzword

 This is my carrot soufflé - it turned out delicious!

 

 

I’ve been doing a lot of research on topics like:
 

 ‘no diet diet’ {most hits turn up a diet]
 

Mindful eating [a lot of the hits are good, but many of them are focused on weight loss through mindful eating rather than actual health through mindful eating]
 

Intuitive eating [same as above]
 

Ditch the diet [also same as above – ditch the diet but do something ‘else’ and you will lose weight]
 

So a lot of the research just feels like being sucked into the diet industry cesspool through a different sewer. It’s like bait and switch.
 

I really need to stop researching all together, but that’s a therapy topic for another day. Research is one of my coping mechanisms. If I learn about something I can control it better. So I do a lot of peaking into topics to try to find support for my opinions and beliefs. That in itself is problematic because I need to embrace the idea that I don’t need justification for anything. If this is what I want to do and the way I want t live, I don’t have to see if it’s okay with anybody else, or if research supports it as a good thing or if someone else has had success at it. All I need to know is, this is what I WANT and therefore that makes it okay.
 

I really need to turn my newfound energy to a new project, but I’m torn as usual. There are a lot of things I want to work on, but one of my problems is always feeling like I should be doing something other than what I’m doing. That’s another project in itself – getting to the point where what I’m doing is okay, not because I can justify it by saying it’s the most opportune time to read as opposed to crochet, or I should write now and exercise later because the weather will be better later or I should I exercise now for half an hour and then do laundry for seventeen minutes…
 

It’s an exhausting way to live and I’ve done it for far too long. I’m working on being Zen in that area of my life too. What do I WANT to do? What NEEDS to be done – laundry? Okay, I’ll do that. Then I’ll cook something, then I’ll write if there’s time unless I feel like going for a bike ride, then I’ll do that and to hell with writing. I’ll wash the dishes later because I want to go out in the garden now and I want to write a blog post because if I don’t, I may find myself ruminating on the topic and that will interfere with my calm thoughts.
 

I bet you think I’m going nuts. I may be. But this is all about engineering improvement in whatever way works.
 

As an aside, I finally got myself a bamboo plant and added it to my indoor garden. It’s going to be the start of my mini zen garden.