Marsia's Diary

For me to watch when I need it "discipline is self-love":

From another of his videos, "The thing you think you will get through food, sex, drugs, consuming, you will not get. These are disingenuous, bogus emblems of bad cultural programming we have to unpick and undo."

PS, just meditated and feel better!
 
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Seeing the decimation of trees is heart-breaking for me too. It was hell when our neighbour had a bulldozer in for a week & a half & the sound of the dozer, trees crashing to the ground & then the chainsaw was my idea of hell. The guy is a nice guy, but so many people see trees as something in their way, instead of being vital for the health of our planet.
I'm glad there will be wildlife where you're going. It will be so good for you.
That 4 lbs will go quick smart.
Edit: I just watched that video. He makes the point well.
 
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Thanks Cate! I really empathize about the bulldozer and the neighbor's trees - that's just heart-wrenching. I hope you're right about the 4 pounds. I feel like I am starting to get a handle on what I need to focus on to be healthy permanently instead of constantly fighting to lose weight. I like that I found a Russel Brand video on what I was just figuring out for myself. It's nice to have someone in recovery say the thing I just discovered, and even nicer that he knows how to implement what he learned!

We went for a sunset walk on the beach today and there were lots of places where rocks washed up and lots of nice beach glass, too. I found a glass marble that had been sand-blasted by the ocean and was now a frosted-glass marble. Funny find. Had a lazy day with some packing thrown in. I wish K didn't always have so darn much homework, but really I should be packing everything up now so I have time to get my plants in the ground here before I leave. I am giving away some bed frames and guide books of the area, so it's a nice excuse to ask friends if they want them and go deliver stuff to them to get to go visit one last time before I leave.
 
Marsia said:
Meditation instead of reaching for food needs to be a part of it. Actually everyone is still asleep, so I'll start now.
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Right now is the best time for change. That said I've been trying every day for the past two weeks and I really struggle to get into it some days. Maybe I should look for some brainwave music: do you know if that still exists?
 
Hi LaMa! I found stuff on YouTube just now that says it's brainwave music, but I don't know anything about that, and wouldn't know if it is the real thing or not.

One thing I like about my teacher is that he thinks it's fine to let the mind be noisy. He has our attention sink down into the belly and feel the relaxation and peacefulness of the breath and of the body relaxing while feeling the breath. He says you are just finding the peacefulness that is already there, you don't need to struggle to manufacture it by trying to re-train the monkey mind that always hops from idea to idea. Your monkey mind can be going a mile a minute, and you can still feel the stillness and peace under all that activity, like how there can be ripples on top of the water bouncing everywhere and intersecting, but underneath the surface, the water can be peaceful and still.

I also don't mind if I have a tumultuous meditation. I view it as putting the time in and knowing that eventually I'll naturally be better at letting myself relax into peacefulness. I had years of tumultuous meditations that made me give up on meditating consistently until I just decided that it's ok to have tumultuous sessions. Then I got a lot better at meditation very quickly. Acceptance is magical, I think!
 
Marsia said:
One thing I like about my teacher is that he thinks it's fine to let the mind be noisy. He has our attention sink down into the belly and feel the relaxation and peacefulness of the breath and of the body relaxing while feeling the breath.
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Marsia said:
I also don't mind if I have a tumultuous meditation. I view it as putting the time in and knowing that eventually I'll naturally be better at letting myself relax into peacefulness.
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Agreed with both of those. And I'll definitely keep at it. Like with running: it takes a good few hard runs to reach the stage where it feels effortless. The problem is more that if my mind stays TOO busy my body isn't content to stay still. I guess in those moments I could go for a walk instead. Or first. Thank you for your insights!
 
Thanks LaMa and Cate! LaMa, I'm glad to share my meditation struggles so hopefully you don't have to go through them as long as I did! I meditated again today and feel so much better from just 2 days in a row! Cate, I was so lucky to find the nicest in-person class when I started meditating, and that is why I stuck with it this long. I highly recommend finding a good group.

Today was really mellow. I am packing up K's things and finding lots of interesting projects she's done. I also found a framed flattened dried snake - yuck! Glad there was glass between me and it!! She is working on an animation for school, and it is taking forever but coming out great. I drew a little on it today, and that was nice to get some drawing practice in. I got out early this morning and watered the tree that I could reach with the hose and saw how badly the hill is de-nuded now. So happy to be moving!!! I have to do more yoga tonight - my back is a little twinge-y from moving heavy boxes around. I started writing in my journal again, and that felt nice. It was a strange day weather-wise - alternately very foggy and sunny and cool. When I opened the door at one point, it looked like clouds were blowing right in the apartment! Good food day.
 
It will be lovely to hear about your new life, M. I have enquired about meditation classes before, but haven't had much luck finding anything close. I'll keep asking.
 
The only ones I seem to find are expensive enough that I'm not interested. My dad started meditation classes back in the 90s and while it did him a lot of good (and he's kept going on his own for over two decades now) he paid through the nose and the money went to a guru who lived in a mansion with golden taps and marble floors. I'd be fine with paying the same as I would for an exercise class but not the same as a WW class!
 
Hi Cate and LaMa! There are so many teachers on youtube for meditation now, maybe you will find someone you like. I like Jack Kornfield and his insight meditation techniques. It's hard because each school has their own emphasis in mediation and each seems to positively affect different parts of the brain and nervous system. Some schools work more on stilling the mind or on concentration, some more on awareness and mindfulness, and some more on the more transendental meditation bent where you are asked to find the peacefulness that is already within you. I like how working with the breath gets you more in your body, too, and that seems to be the case with most mediation practices.

I meditated an hour today, which was really nice. Got a lot of K's stuff packed up. Mostly worked under her loft bed and kept forgetting it is a cave, and hit my head all day, but got good stuff done and had a nice walk with K on the cliffs above the ocean just before sunset. I need to get out more. I was so stir crazy today, but J wanted to do my errands and then pick up K, so I only got out for a walk. Being in a tiny apt. all day is not good for me. I'll go do nice things tomorrow. Ate well again today, but want to wait a few days before weighing again.
 
Weighed in and re-lost 2 more pounds. 2.5 more to go for low weight again. Doing much better with snacking. Meditation to the rescue!
 
Marsia said:
Weighed in and re-lost 2 more pounds. 2.5 more to go for low weight again. Doing much better with snacking. Meditation to the rescue!
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That's excellent, M! G is at golf today so I might see if I can find a meditation video I like. I'll look up Jack Kornfield xo
 
Thanks everyone! I think I probably stayed even with weight today. I was doing well until I found the blue cheese in the fridge, and I adore good blue cheese. Even still I had a good non-snack-y day before then. Got good things done and went to a cafe with K after school and the dollar store to pick up some cleaning supplies and things for packing. Found some of my favorite bulbs there - they are called tigridia and they have lovely accordion fan leaves and flowers that look like big wild ginger like grows in Hawaii. Also the realtor took pics of the azalea in bloom at our new place. The lady who lives there was part of a garden club and grew a forest full of azalea. They look amazing in bloom - a sea of flowers under all these huge pine trees! It's getting close enough that I am getting all excited to move now!!
 
Thanks everyone! I had a weird week where I just didn't care if I gained or not. I think I got depressed. But I am feeling better now and will start over. It just felt like we'll never get out of here and like packing and being cooped up in the apartment would go on forever. And every time I planned to take the car out and do something different, J used the car or did my errands for me without asking first. I think he needed to get out, too, though he has way more activities he does regularly outside the apt., and I am in charge of packing, so I really shouldn't do much besides pack until it's all done. Also there were workers here all last week, and they are weird, so I felt like I don't have my own space. I even dreamed that we moved into a communal house that was astronomical in price with a tiny room just big enough for our beds, and it was the biggest bedroom in the house which was overbrimming with people. I also am in the middle of helping with taxes, so that stalled my packing progress.

It's less than 3 weeks now until I move out, and I really have a ton to do and really want to concentrate on having the move go smoothly. So I think I am over all the weird feelings of defeat and feeling trapped in a little gray box of an apartment. Remind me not to paint anything gray when I move!

Oh, we did do something nice. Yesterday we dropped off the rv in a town 3 hours inland to have it looked over for the warrantee. There are also a couple of improvements and fixes we needed to do on the rv. So, the town was a nice little college town where I had lived previously, and it was so fun to check out the campus and the little sweet town full of happy sculptures and a lovely botanical garden along a river. Then we drove through San Francisco on our way back and saw a bunch of our old hangout places and our old house and nieghborhood there. That was really nostalgic and nice to do before moving away forever.

I also wrote the school to complain about a teacher the kids all hate, and got back a brush off letter. But my friend with kids there, too is also going to pester them about the teacher, so it's nice to do a tag team thing and hopefully get the teacher to grade fairly. All our girls always get straight A's and the teacher is giving them D+s for ridiculous reasons. The new principal is acting like the teacher is whipping our kids into shape. I think we got a lot out of that school when it had an excellent principal and great teachers, and now there is high turn over and I am happy we are moving on. The school was a major reason we were staying, so it's good to see that we really should just go be happy!

Here is one of the pics of the azaleas the realtor took for us:
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Azaleas are amazing! I'm sorry to hear you struggled this week but I'm glad your fighting spirit is coming back. Moving twice is such a short time must be exhausting, especially when one of the moves is to another state :grouphug:
 
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