springtime urges
It's not yet spring despite today's near springlike weather but I've found myself mentally making the shift. Every spring I get this urge to take really good care of myself by getting more sleep and exercise and eating better. Today I even did a shoulder stand at the gym after my workout, knowing that if I waited until I got home I wouldn't bother.
I've been reading up on health and fitness and I experiment with different things, browsing the NYPL's online catalog as if it were my personal library. Spring, how I love you. Although you are not my favorite season, you may very well bring out the best in me, inspiring me to juggle a little more meditation practice and dharma study into my busy mornings or to find some extra precious moments with Norbu to start the day.
I have so many time consuming interests and pursuits. Naming running, yoga, meditation, reading, and writing only begins to skim the surface. I'm working with how to balance all these practices given that I can't pursue them all as ardently as I'd like, and I'm hoping that learning to find that balance may help me to appreciate them more.
I spent many years not ever really spending much time doing the things that I loved, or perhaps I'd do one or two of them whilst abandoning the rest as if they had never held a place in my life. It amazes me, for example, how calming and soothing reading for pleasure is for me given that I hardly read for pleasure at all for the entire duration of my extended academic career. (I still recall how deliciously indulgent it felt that one break between the semesters in graduate school that found me reading a novel!) I'm afraid to schedule to many things in my life right now lest I go that route a second time, and thus spend a two to three hours each day engaged in some combination of those activities mentioned above. I think that once I find that balance, though, I'll be able to relax around my need to schedule this "me" time (just in time to find something new to work with, I'm sure.)
Sometimes I write out of a burning need to exorcise my inner demons, while other times I journal to amuse myself. This was more of a "just sharing" kind of post, since one of my dearest started blogging again.