Tuesday is Quasi-Tranquil

It was a busy weekend, mostly with personal items, but otherwise pretty nice.  I had a bit of epic sleep on Sunday.  I got home from running assorted errands about four PM and laid down to take a nap.  I slept for an hour, woke up on the alarm clock, reset it and slept for another hour, then simply gave up with the whole napping concept and just went to sleep.  I slept until about midnight and then woke for an hour, watched the first episode of "American Gods", and then fell back to sleep for four hours.  Once again, I certainly needed that sleep!

Monday was a bit of blur with the usual work related chaos, but today has been smoother. In the rhythm of work, for whatever reason, I am also light on meetings on a Tuesday, so I actually get a chance to get things done.  The morning has been productive and the afternoon should be as well.

We're heading into the high 80's here in this part of California, so that should be nice, especially after the long wet winter.  We definitely broke out of the drought this year and everything is pretty amazing and pretty green.  Which of course plays heck with the allergies, but that is okay.  I enjoy the green and I enjoy the bird-tribe that congregates on my patio.  They are endlessly entertaining.

Peace, Serenity, Tranquility

It’s been an interesting morning here at work, at least for me. I can never tell if the things that interest me interest other people or not - that is always guess work for the most part. I slept fairly well last night, though it took me a while to drop off, once I dropped off I slept the night through. I am not sure what had me tossing and turning, it was as if something agitated me but I didn’t know what that agitation was.  I did have a spot of agitation a few hours before I laid myself down to sleep,  so I guess it is possible that I carried that to the threshold of sleep.  The agitation point was not enough to carry it into today though, so I won’t go into the details here.

I had a bowl of Special K for breakfast, chased by a cup of black coffee.  The commute in was pretty smooth and I spent most of it listening to NPR’s ongoing coverage of the IRS scandal.  I really only have one general opinion there - power corrupts, so I am never surprised when people in power use their power for corrupt ends.  Perhaps it is tragic that my expectation immediately lands there, but I think it based on simple observation over the period of time.  One of the things that astounds me about the whole story and that I hope the press ferrets down, is that when interviewed by the IRS IG, the agents who were doing the targeting refused to say who directed them to do it. That is pretty amazing to me and yet another sign of the extend of the corruption of power.  I don’t really have a lot of faith that the press is going to chase it down either, largely because I think much of the press is also corrupt.

I arrived in the office and bounced through a few email, then blocked off some time on my calendar for a couple of things that I needed to accomplish today.  The first of them (a set of regression tests) is complete and I am going into the second of them immediately after hitting the send button on this email, some practice reporting running and analysis so I can learn a monthly task that I will be taking over from one of my co-workers while she is out on maternity leave.  I am going to have to run through it a couple of times to get it down pat, but I basically have all the month of June to practice, since she won’t be leaving until July.

So, in between tasks I walked over to our conference area, spun a chair around, started my timer and sat down facing the wall for a period of meditation.  My monkey mind locked onto the end of my relationship with T.R. and spun that around for a while.  Then, it jumped over and locked on my low opinion of my leadership.  Then, it leaped over and jumped on my challenges in dealing with projects that are moving without a defined process. Finally, without warning, it let go of those objects of attachment and I fell into the soft and quiet rhythm of breathing.  When I do this type of meditation at work, I always set my timer so I remember to pull out and return to the working day.  I usually set it for ten minutes - that is long enough to allow me to reach a state of calmness and reside there for a while before returning.  When I am successful at this type of meditation, the monkey mind spins for a bit and then drops away.  Today, it spun for what felt like two or three minutes, then I took a deep breath or two and…the timer went off.  I was still and calm and rested.  That was awesome. Lately I’ve been meditating on three words, in sequence, trying to capture the feeling - peace, serenity, tranquilty.

A Tranquil Feast

Today was a tranquil feast for mind, body and spirit.  And that is all I need to say about it.