Nov 12th, update

well, here I am. Just got back from a cross country flight, from sea-tac in Seattle to the New Jersey pine barrens, to learn herbal compounding and mixing from Tom Brown jr. It was an awesome class, we learned some powerful techniques and info, and it was really really nice, to be with family again, which this group of people has become. That's because this was a series class, meaning we had met three times before already, throughout the year, doing homework in between.

I got myself a job working at the TM-Center, doing mindless pencil-pushing tasks for a day or two a week. Which is great. Something I can focus on to ground me, doesn't take up too much time, doesn't require any commute, and I even get paid a little.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to a Survival Techniques class with the Sherwoods (they run primitive skills school I'm doing) for the weekend, and from that going directly to a nearby beach for monday and tuesday to learn clamming, archery practice, and maybe making a bow and arrow hand-guard.

I'm a bit behind: I still need to go out and buy a few odd and ends for the trip, pack, finish my pencil pushing, and do laundry (which I really, really need to do. There's no laundry machine in the house though, so I have to go out to a coin laundromat down the street.)

So feeling a bit worried, as is my habit before almost all trips. This last trip though, I didn't feel that worried. Perhaps I am finally, finally seeing the other side of this deep seated fear. Fear of forgetting, something, I think. Linked with my general fear of doing something wrong. Of wrongness in general.

I remember, back in the first two years of collage, when I was really going at the spiritual enlightenment thing as hard and fast as I could, I would get these intense feelings of wrongness. Like my heart was just screaming at me that something was wrong, that I was doing something wrong. And it would really bother me, because I could never figure out what is was, that was wrong. I think it may have been a slightly bad interpretation on my part. I don't think it was so much that my heart was telling me I was doing something wrong, but it was trying to tell me something, period, and I wasn't able to listen, didn't know how.

I'm still not really sure what to do with those "chest bursters" as I call them, but now when I feel them, I just give myself some time to pay attention to them, and try to listen, understand what they want to communicate. What I want to communicate, to myself. right (or whole) brain to left brain.

Last night I had one, and eventual got that it was answering a question I had, about my sadness at not being as strongly disciplined and persevering as I would like. The reason I am that way is that I get discouraged, because my efforts don't seem well linked to my results, in the short run. I practice something, and I see myself getting better, quickly, and then it slows and maybe even stops, and I get upset and worry that I'm just wasting my time doing something that's not actually going to get me anywhere, make me any better at whatever it is I'm doing. Music, creating, writing, exercise.

Now I've got to ask the question of how to heal that.

Ok, done (for now)