“Sometimes I get these feelings of being completely out of place. Distant from understanding anything. Then they pass. I don’t get them often. I kind of like them because they help to re-order my thinking. Regain some perspective. Yet, they have an undefinable wistfulness them that seems important. So I try to honor the feeling because it seems like a type of teaching I am being given.
Actually the above paragraph (?) is truer than I thought it would be. I think I’ll use it as a taking off point for my blog and personal writings. I always feel truer around you . Weird, huh?….”

Isn’t that how the mind works? Thinking, feeling, assessing, worrying, and then revisiting some more and, sometimes, sharing. In the sharing the process changes from being inwardly convoluted (bound), to outwardly expository and revealing (loosening). A shedding of light by exposing intimate process to another. Similar to the experience one can have when involved and concentrating on a task at hand that has a private aspect to it; (Drawing, creating, sanding some wood to good finish, sewing, assembling something intricate and useful, any activity that draws us into it.) and, while we are in the activity we sense another person watching us intently. If we are connected in some way to the watcher it is slightly different than if the watcher is someone we either don’t know very well, or not at all. In either instance we get a heightened sense of awareness of ourselves, the activity, and the presence of the watcher. A fuller view of something.
This is the process of sharing.
When truly done, it has transformative potential for the doer, the observer, the exchange between the two, and the activity (the doing and the observing thereof), itself.

Yep, the above is how the mind works. One of them anyway.

The quote is from a text I sent to a longtime friend at 6:00 a.m. after I had texted earlier that I was feeling out of sorts and, in response, was asked, “Why out of sorts???”

That’s what friends do.

They ask?

We ask.

They respond.

We respond.

The small exchanges.

In every conversation I engaged in today people expressed that they were very glad the holiday was over and that they hadn’t enjoyed it.  At all!  How did we end up at that point?

Presumably it has to do with expectations. Casinos and expectations and most hope in general is/are based on a false premise.

Every time I’ve tried this it turned out THAT way. This time it will be different; it will turn out THIS way.

As an old Irish acquaintance used to say, “You can’t have every which way!” Still we try.

Oh, well. Maybe next year will be different.

I was at an AA meeting today and heard a young woman talk about the experience of having her first sober Christmas since her early teens twenty years before. She was so grateful for having socialized with people and family as a sober responsive person. One who didn’t drown all her, mostly self manufactured (she has now realized), sorrows in a bottle or drugs. It was a really wonderful thing to witness. I hope she’s around to say the same thing next year.

As I walked along the Vallejo waterfront this afternoon there were several groups of kids with their parents on new bikes(the kids, not the parents), and scooters that Santa had brought them. In kids their wish for gifts is still natural and their joy (mostly) at getting something is quite intense, although usually short lived. Perhaps there is something we can learn from observing this yearning and wishing for things that make us feel better; and relatively soon the feeling vanishes with familiarity. We’re all that way. We can see it in the children and call them childish when they behave this way. Yet we do the exact same thing. For essentially the same kind of stuff. Anything new. Anything is better than the old. Anything.

Happy New Year! All beginnings are new.