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Life & Walks #050Friday, September 20, 2013
Living in the Moment

It's Friday afternoon and I just finished up a bunch of small projects for a client. I love it when Fridays end this way, all neat and tied up in a bow.

I took some time today to watch a video on the website "On Being, with Krista Tippett". I love the site so much. It nourishes me in ways like no other. The other night I watched an interview with Eckhart Tolle, today it was an interview with the poet Marie Howe. Too dense to have on in the background, I stopped and watched while I ate breakfast, and then later lunch. Most of Krista Tippett's interviews are like that, you need to just stop and listen. She is eloquent, natural, and open minded.

Their conversation covered topics like being fearful of the silence in things, to the magic of technology vs. it's addictive qualities. She read some of her poems that moved me to tears.

The conversation on technology deeply resonated with me. I realize now that to be who I am authentically means to disengage from it quite a bit. In order to be available to the voice in me I can't be gazing at my screen too much. I need to stop and listen. It is things like poetry that bring me back to myself, not Pinterest. I love Pinterest, for me it is a good way to organize visual information, kind of like the idea notebooks I kept for years with pages ripped from magazines. But if I look at Pinterest for more than say 20 minutes I get overwhelmed and anxious. Too many possibilities, too much visual information jammed in too small a space. I can't digest it all and even with editing out a lot, most of it starts to feel like wallpaper without much meaning.

I just started back meditating again and it feels so good, it makes everything slow down. It makes me mindful and more grounded, so I know when I'm getting off track and away from myself.

It's all a balancing act, but staying in the moment has been the best thing for me. Now I know my rhythms are slower. And ironically giving myself permission to throttle back and live a smaller more contemplative life gives me larger creative space to make things with more meaning and depth. That has been a huge shift for me these last several months, permission to be myself.

Have a wonderful weekend.