Inhale.

It's been a long time since I last posted. Although it may look like I have succumbed to the long working hours of the job, especially with the new year and the newly important billable hours tolling on my desktop timer, this is not the case. In fact, I took a few weeks out of the office--driving up to Sonoma and then down PCH with my South African boyfriend, showing him my corner of the world, and trying to convince him to make it his. He was here for 5 weeks, and all that mattered during that time was spending time with him. Of course, there were the rough patches and the moments when I wanted nothing more than to go for a run , clean my apartment, or read a book in complete silence, but it went well, all told. In fact, he's moving back here in March, at which point some of my perspective on "what matters" and the importance of myself in all of that might change. But for now, I've settled on the idea of this blog as a tool for self-exploration, and an invitation for any readers (my sister, maybe?) to do the same.

And this also starts with my understanding that "self-tourism" is an adventure over an ever-changing landscape. Few things are constant, but the way you move over that landscape seems to remain the same. Being conscious of that, and understanding what your method of movement means for the way you interpret the world, yourself, and others, is very important.

My (ironically) slow realization about my own method of movement is that it is VERY fast. I jump from thing to thing to thing, and rarely do a great job tying up loose ends, or completely understanding something. I just think: sweet! mission accomplished! maybe I'm a genius, after all! and jump right into the next thing without considering what else I can get out of a particular experience. As you may imagine, this impacts not only my extracurricular interests, but also my dating life, and potentially, my career choices. I don't know if there is much I can do about my short attention span (do adults take Ritalin?), but I can control myself beyond the initial impulse to change activities/people/jobs. I can slow the action, if not the thoughts and emotions. So that is the project for now. Trying to be more thoughtful, slower, in my daily routine. Focusing on fewer projects at work, for more time, and pretending that the hours billed to a client don't matter. And focusing on a set number of things that I love to do, and really getting into those things: writing, reading, outdoors physical activity, drawing. And, finally, trying to relax about how bad I am at keeping in touch, how crazily my list of emails-to-be-sent and phone-calls-to-be-made and subsequent thoughts of self-loathing and guilt accumulate. It's ok to focus on the people more immediately in your life--everyone does it, and there's no point apologizing your mutual inability to communicate on a weekly basis across continents.