getting it together in fits and starts

The view that greets me when I get home

I feel like I've been stumbling around a bit since getting home from Bali.  The first week was goofy thanks to jet-lag and my lingering crabbiness about not being there anymore and instead being back to my regularly-scheduled life.   I got past the crabby on Monday of this week, but still feel a little strange and unsettled, having some trouble getting my routine down, especially since I have yet to be restored to the ways of Early Bird which facilitate so much of my writing and thinking.

The weather has also been super-sucky -- coldest summer in forty years -- so that's made the adaptation harder.

But seriously, all in all, pretty hard to complain about going from one kind of paradise to another, especially since now that I'm back I have even more of my friends around, which is utterly delightful.  And the garden is raging, which is really nice.

Still, I'm slogging, trying to catch up, plug back in, get consistent, back on track.

All while making some needed day-to-day adjustments, particularly with my new strategy at my job -- work less, get paid the same.  That sounds like a horrible slacker approach, but honestly, I just mean that I'm taking some of my standard Type-A pressure off me and actually taking lunch, for example.  I had a sweet time today, for example, lunching with the amazing Katherine Powell Cohen who has not one, but two, books coming out over the next two months.  So nice to get out of the office and talk about stuff that matters with someone so smart, delightful and funny.   I am definitely cutting corners a bit on the length of my day, no lie, slipping out early this afternoon to hang out with Michelle Fliegauf and talk about her super-successful International Yoga.  Way to go, kick-ass women!

Which reminds me of a great class I took last night with Sean Haleen, the theme of which was aparigraha, non-grasping, greedlessness.  Sean made a specific point of mentioning all the travel his friends were embarking on, not to mention all of the travel he's been hearing about on Facebook lately (including my own trip, natch), and how easy it was to get caught up in wanting what others have, in comparing our lives to theirs, in forgetting to appreciate and savor all that's great in our own lives.  How instead we should be so happy for others when great things happen to them, recognizing that appreciating all that's good in their lives increases the good in our own.

And that's so how I felt today, talking with Katherine and Michelle.  First, just so delighted by each of them, so delighted to be friends with such remarkable, intelligent, creative, funny and beautiful creatures.  But also so pleased as punch by their accomplishments, so full of a strong wish for their expanding and continued success and happiness.

Being home -- i.e., not in Bali for the moment -- there's so much to look forward to in the short-term, besides harvesting food from the garden and apple trees, hiking and hanging around with my dog, seeing my friends regularly and Laura being back to teaching on Friday.  The Mammalogy class I'm taking at College of Marin starts next week, and then the Teacher Training in October.  I'll get into the swing of it as I need to, slowly, slowly, but for now savoring a bit this funny feeling of being outside my usual schedule, which makes it all the easier to truly enjoy what's unfolding.