Don't be cynical!

Don't be cynical! Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.

If you don't happen to know, that's roughly what Conan O'B. said toward the end of his last appearance as host of the Tonight Show. I like the message. It seems wise and good.

light and delicate

...cut your attachment to the earth and like unto the essence of the spirit become ye light and delicate. Then with a firm resolution, a pure heart, a rejoiced spirit, and an eloquent tongue, engage your time in the promulgation of the divine principles...

When I was pregnant with my first child, I gained a lot of weight, and got very, very tired. The simplest little thing - climbing a single flight of stairs, or walking to the kitchen to get myself a cup of water, or, heavens forbid, bending down around that huge belly to tie my bootlaces (which was actually quite painful) - became a challenge for which I had to psych myself up and, truthfully, avoided if possible. I was neither light nor delicate and I engaged in rather little. I even got boots with zippers instead of laces.

During that time, and since then, I experienced a similar heaviness of spirit. Initially, I think it was related to the physical exertion and sleep deprivation that came with that particular pregnancy and built up with the months and months of sleep deprivation that followed, but I think it then became a habit that I've been needing to recover from. Things have been harder and slower for me to do than they probably should be, and I've been discouraged. I'd go so far as to say that my spirit has been downright muddy.

Ye are even as the bird which soareth, with the full force of its mighty wings and with complete and joyous confidence, through the immensity of the heavens, until, impelled to satisfy its hunger, it turneth longingly to the water and clay of the earth below it, and, having been entrapped in the mesh of its desire, findeth itself impotent to resume its flight to the realms whence it came. Powerless to shake off the burden weighing on its sullied wings, that bird, hitherto an inmate of the heavens, is now forced to seek a dwelling-place upon the dust.

Fortunately, in recent months, I've been feeling a lot better, and I think this is a really good time in my life to focus on being lighter and more delicate, and just not bothering to be bogged down all the time. I'm tired of it. Maybe I'm over-interpreting, I don't know, but it's working well for me right now as a concept of general self improvement. I've been thinking about it in ways like:

• If a thought of "ugh, do I really have to do that?" or a feeling of laziness comes, I'll cut it off and replace it with just doing the darn thing! There is usually no need to waste time waiting a few minutes, remembering, forgetting, remembering again, dreading, or wondering "why me?"
  
• If I start to feel overwhelmed by the multitude or magnitude of tasks at hand, figure out if any of them are actually urgent, and if so do those. If not, just pick one and get started, and don't bother with fretting about excessive and unnecessary prioritizing, which (for me, these days) wastes valuable time.
  
• If I start to worry or get annoyed about something that doesn't matter, just stop.
  

A friend of mine recently facebooked an article that seemed relevant. It says that if you're merely tolerating something, it is taking valuable time and energy away from what you love. So you should either choose to love it or say "no" to it. I'm not really up for a huge change right now, but I think I can apply the concept in ways to help my current project. I can think about getting rid of obnoxious things in my life, or if I can't get rid of them, really appreciating them instead of being all bothered.


I am still trying. I have a long way to go. I know I will be coming across much more mud and mire, and with my luck this will be happening before I even get rid of all I've got already. I am excited about this, though. I really feel like I'm getting lighter on the inside, and it is making it easier to do things and be even and happy. I can also still see a lot of mud on me, and that is ok. I am up for shedding that too. (Hopefully!)


Here is the rest of the quote about the bird:

Wherefore, O My servants, defile not your wings with the clay of waywardness and vain desires, and suffer them not to be stained with the dust of envy and hate, that ye may not be hindered from soaring in the heavens of My divine knowledge.

And, just because I like to cite my sources (even though it's just a form that I am borrowing), and, of course, since it's a good point:

When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love.

My Hair

I'm secretly vain. There, I said it. For much of my life my strategy was to try to look nice without looking like I tried, because I didn't want to care, or at least, I didn't want people to know that I cared. Now that I've been in a professional arena for a while, I do want to look like I'm trying to look good, because that is the professional thing to do, but not, you know, because I didn't look good anyway. I'm just adding some nice polish because I am that awesome, and by the way, might deserve a raise. Or something.

I've felt a little better about my secret vanity since it came to me one day that beauty is a virtue. Of course! But still, I think I should be happy either way. Wouldn't that be better?

My hair has a surprisingly, and somewhat distressingly, big impact on how I feel. Maybe this is common, I don't know, but it is sure true for me. If I think my hair looks bad or weird, it can a serious social and emotional handicap for me. I think I'm finally starting to realize that, when my hair is having a good or a bad day, week or month, I don't look as different to other people as I do to myself, which is helping me with the old philosophy of "Just smile and act like you look great!" which I've noticed working really well for others in the past. But still. It's there, at the corner of my mind. Distracting.

I recently got a new haircut, with bangs. Among my haircut experiences, it is most similar to the home haircut I used to get when I was in the 4-7 age range, which is saying something, because the cuts are not really that similar at all. Pretty much every day is a big improvement over the state of my hair just before the recent haircut (which was just before Christmas), which is good, but it seems like it is different every day. It's funny, because it's making me feel a little confused! Today it looks pretty good, but nothing like it did when it looked pretty good last week! And some days in between it looks weird, or frumpy, or...just weird. It's like a little tiny identity crisis. Just settle in to one of the good-looking looks please!

You know, hair tends to drive me crazy anyway. I don't like finding it places. I don't like mine long, and anything shorter than long gets complicated to organize. Honestly, I think hair may be more trouble than it's worth and I wish that really short, maintenance-free hair would become stylish, though I'm not willing to be the leader in that trend. Not yet. We'll see, I guess.

Ok. I guess that's enough about my hair. It's funny that of all the things I've been thinking, this is the one I've managed to post about.