Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Gift of Slowing Down

At four clock p.m. today my vacation officially began. It was a quick day with about seven hours of it spent in meetings. I was in meetings from 8:30 AM until 3:30 PM. During those meetings I had no choice but to multitask, to work my way through the buckets of e-mail I wanted to try and clean out. I did a fairly good job. I have a bit of work that I want to do this coming weekend, I handful of e-mail that I have to write, some analysis that I want to get sent off. Nothing major, just a few hours of work.

After work I met Tony it By the Bucket for pizza. It's an Italian restaurant, and a pizzeria, and a seafood restaurant all rolled into one. The food there is excellent. The service is also very good. It can get a little expensive but expensive is always relative. It was an excellent way to start a vacation.

After that I came home and switched into some comfortable clothes and basically just put my feet up. I watched an episode of Warehouse 13 on DVR. I made a couple of phone calls to friends and family. Then I fired up my computer and started playing with Dragon NaturallySpeaking again. I tried to update my journal here in Internet Explorer nine using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but I didn't have much success. The problem wasn't to Dragon, the problem was Internet Explorer. I'm not really sure what it is but I seem to have problems updating blogger when I am in IE 9. Things don't seem to work like they should, it's like I'm missing some plug-in, or I don't have a setting in the right configuration. Maybe I'll take a little time while I'm on vacation play with it and see if I can clear it up.

I'm hoping to spend a good portion of time on this vacation just reading and writing and relaxing. Just the ability to slow down is such a gift in our busy world. I think that's a powerful argument for keeping the Sabbath day holy, just take a whole day, and do nothing with it. Okay, maybe that's not the intention of the Sabbath, but that would sure be nice. Of course, the reality of it is I could do that if I want, it's just a matter of choice. Once again we find ourselves circling back around to one of my favorite subjects choice.

The power of choice to shape our world is astounding. Our unwillingness to recognize that power can be equally as outstanding. Sometimes it seems like we move through life seeking someone else to take responsibility for decisions. Almost as if there was a deep-seated need to blame. It really doesn't matter who we ultimately blame, just that we have someone to blame, just that the responsibility lies somewhere else. Mindfulness is never easy. Awareness is never easy. Being present is never easy. Making choices is never easy. Yet they are all remarkably simple.

But those simple things can be such a challenge.

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