"I Guess It's Half Timing, And The Other Half's Luck"

Wednesday, September 9, 2009
1:29 pm Fam Room

Sooo I should probably be doing some work from home right now, but I took a little break to blog. What can I say? Procrastination is my middle name.

Anyway, things at home have been really good lately. After getting the news that I didn't get my dream job on Friday I thought I would never be happy again, but I'm actually in a great mood. (Over-dramatic is my other middle name.) I've finally accepted that I'm going to be at home for a little while longer, and it feels kind of nice not to fight it. I figure I might as well make the best of it.

I've started my part-time job in Westport, and I absolutely love it. I'm learning a lot about web stuff, and they're letting me write a blog for them! I'm getting PAID to BLOG! Hello, new dream job. I really love working there, and since the drive is so long, they let me do 10 hours a week from home. So that's a total of 20 hours a week with them, and around 15 a week with the toystore. I've been busy! It's nice to be making money...

The only thing that's hard about being home is that most of my friends aren't around. But, a lot of my friends from college are in the same situation I am, so we call each other to commiserate as much as possible. In order to keep my social life alive and well (and to keep me from throwing myself in front of a bus), I have started planning monthly trips to visit my friends. September and October are already planned, with my first trip being to Lowell, MA to visit Eliz. I can't wait! In the meantime, Steph and Andrea are home, and I always have the Bingo ladies :)

I started reading a new book called, "One Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go" by Martin Boronson. I'm not very far, but I already really like it. The other night I was reading it when this passage really struck me:

"On a deeper level, if our sense of contentment is dependent on circumstance, then it is vulnerable to a change of circumstances. If we are only content because life is going well, we will not be content when life is going badly. That's just not a very stable or deep kind of contentment. True contentment transcends the 'ups and downs' of life. It embraces life as it is now, with all of its imperfections. In other words, the only way to be really peaceful is to be fully content with what's happening now - even if, sometimes, it isn't peaceful." (xix)

I mean... RIGHT?!?! So that's what I'm working on: being content with my current circumstance.

A few weeks ago, Mom, Dad, Steph, Kaitlyn and I all went tubing down the Farmington River. It was a little cold and cloudy out, and I was nervous about the "rapids" people kept mentioning. So, naturally, I hadn't been in the water more than 5 minutes before I realized I was headed straight for these low-hanging branches by the side of the river. I started kind of flailing my arms and legs in an attempt to steer away from the branches, but it only brought me closer. Mom and Dad tried to "help" by yelling useful things like, "Kick your feet!" and "Don't go toward the branches!" I was doomed. Minutes later I emerged from the branches, bruised and covered in leaves and twigs.

As we were floating along later, Dad suggested that maybe getting stuck in the branches was a metaphor for how I treat situations in my life: I fight them instead of flowing with them. I countered that getting stuck in the branches was definitely a metaphor for my life in that my parents like to yell unhelpful suggestions from the side every time I get into trouble, but he did have a point. So now I'm trying to flow instead of fight.

And the flowing has been pretty rewarding so far. The other night before bed, Kaitlyn came into my room and told me that she was sorry I was sad I didn't get the job I wanted, but that she was glad to have me home with her.

It made me that much more content to keep going with the flow.

Love,
Tara

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